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
Roger Casement: For account of A. M. Sullivan’s defence of 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’.
[ top ]