THE TALBOT O'KELLYS

Apothecaries and Doctors to Maynooth College for a Century

 

Although it does not have (as yet!) a medical faculty, the history of medicine in Maynooth College is an interesting one. The detail of medical and nursing appointments, and the commissioning of nursing facilities - the Junior and Senior Infirmaries - are largely lost to history, even after 1905, when the Daughters of Charity took over responsibility for the management of the facilities. The college cemetery, we know, contains the remains of one anonymous matron of the infirmary from the nineteenth century, as well as the remains of four Daughters of Charity from among the dozens who were assigned to health care and domestic supervision there for almost one hundred years.

The names of local doctors who were the attending physicians are generally not recorded in any detail in historical accounts (the college's visiting surgeon and principal consultant were 'distinguished Dublin professionals' according to Patrick Corish's history, though there were political issues in their appointment, and when one of them was elected an MP for Dublin he attempted to nominate a substitute; a critical case resulted in the termination of his employment, and his successor, when elected as a Parnellite MP, was also asked to resign because of intemperate statements).

One of the reasons for lack of detail in the history of medical practitioners in the college's service particularly after the decline offs that it was dominated by the O'Kelly family through three generations for a century  from 1804 onwards. Edward Talbot O'Kelly, who was still practising into his late eighties, was succeeded by his son of the same name, who died ten years after his father, and he in turn by his son Thomas, who was in attendance during the centenary celebrations at the college in 1895. 

The family became related by marriage to the Chamberlains, a prominent land-owning family in the immediate vicinity of the college, and from whom the college would eventually purchase a property at Crew Hill that allowed them to assemble an integrated holding that eventually became the location for today's North Campus.

The medical regime initiated by the Talbot O'Kellys had an important influence on the larger field of medicine, in that a young man named Dominic Corrigan, who had been a pupil at the short-lived lay college attached to the main Maynooth institution, continued in service to the students as an apprentice to Edward Talbot O'Kelly before continuing his formal education in medicine.

On the senior O'Kelly's death at the age of ninety on 16th October 1869, the following item appeared in the Freeman's Journal:

In the obituary list will he found one of the most respected names in the Catholic community, that of Dr. Edward Talbot O’Kelly, for nearly three quarters of a century medical attendant of the College of St. Patrick, Maynooth. The announcement of his death, which took place on the 16th inst., will be read with sincere regret throughout the length and breadth of Ireland, and especially by the Catholic clergy, many successive generations of whom passed under his kindly and paternal care, and remember, with affectionate respect, his untiring devotion to professional duty, his unaffected piety, his largehearted charity, his warm and genial nature, arid his honorable and blameless life. 

Dr. O’Kelly was born at Carrick-on-Shannon in December 1779, and his official connection with Maynooth College dates as far back as the year 1804, when, being admitted into partnership with Dr. Richard Magann, at that time resident apothecary of the college, he was appointed conjointly with Dr. Magann to this important office at the early age of twenty-four, and soon afterward succeeded to the sole resident medical charge of the institution. This office he continued to lamented death, thus living in the actual discharge of duty a period exceeding the whole term allotted to ordinary lives. 

Dr. O’Kelly had reached the patriarchal age of ninety years, and had been a witness of revolutions which it is difficult for the young generation to realize. Born when the slow and grudging relaxation of the Penal code had only just begun, while even the humblest forms of Catholic education were proscribed by the law, he lived to see the last shred of religious inequality swept away in the peaceful triumph of the present year In every step of this progressive revolution, from the first organisation of the struggle for Catholic Emancipation to the closing effort for the establishment of full religious equality, he took a warm and active interest. 

He enjoyed, from an early period, the friendship O Connell, and among the manv friends of the Liberator, not one could be named who was more entirely and unreservedly devoted. To the secular clergy throughout Ireland, with few exceptions, the character of this excellent man has been familiar for years. By them his memory will long be affectionately cherished, and, as he himself during life many a time loved to hope, will be held in pious remembrance at the Lord’s holy altar.