Life
1871-1959 [the Younger]; barrister; b. Belfield, Drumcondra, Dublin, 14
Jan; 2nd son of A. M. Sullivan (supra; 1830-84); ed. Ushaw, Belvedere,
TCD; friend of Oscar Wilde (of whom he reported that his favourite reading
was Swinburne); bar 1892; King’s Sarjeant, 1912 [last holder]; life
threatened after 1916; undertook defence of Roger Casement from sense
of duty, and broke down from nervous exhaustion during his closing address
to the jury moved to England after 1922; practised successfully to 1949;
retired to Dublin in 1949, considering himself a disqualified alien by
Republic of Ireland Act; died at his house in Beckenham, Kent, 9 Jan.;
Old Ireland (1927) and The Last Sarjeant (1952). DIB
[ top ]
Notes
For
account of A. M. Sullivan’s defence of Roger Casement, see H. Montgomery
Hyde, Roger Casement [Famous Trials 9] (London: Hodge 1960; rev.
Penguin 1964); Sullivan contended that, in conversation, Casement attempted
a ‘rhapsodical justification’ of his homosexual practices as
‘inseparable from true genius’.
An A. M. Sullivan, described as a poet and student of Irish history, reviews Anthony Burgess, Re Joyce (Norton 1965), in Sewanee Review, 25.12.1995, p.34.
[ top ]