John Jackson is a long-forgotten 19th century Kilrush-born writer
who also wrote under the pseudonyms of Andy Marinan and Terry
Driscoll.
We have been researching his life and works since 2019.
Jackson's output included journalism, poetry, satire, short
stories and more.
Terry Driscoll was to Irish newspapers in the 19th century as
Flann O'Brien was in the 20th century or Ross O'Carroll-Kelly is
in the 21st century.
Jackson wrote initially from Kilrush, before moving to Dublin in
1842.
He associated with much better-known contemporary writers such as
Gerald Griffin (1803-40), Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73) and Charles
Lever (1806-72), and deserves to be better remembered.
Our subject was at least the third consecutive generation of his
family named John Jackson.
John, Son of Capt. Jackson of Clare Militia was baptized on
Monday 25 September 1809 in the old church behind tonight's venue
by Revd. I. Whitty of Cashel (namesake and son of the Kilrush
rector; murdered in 1832).
Timeline:
Did Alice begin the long tradition of Waterford people migrating
to Kilrush?
John Jackson's Uncle Bob challenged his nephew to write an epitaph, which does not appear to have been inscribed on his grave:
Stop, stranger, this spot should possess some attraction,
For beneath it is buried the bones of Bob Jackson;
A more singular compound was ne’er put together,
He could talk in all companies - walk in all weather;
He loved dearly his pipe - his glass, and his daughter;
He dreaded grim death - and hated cold water;
Minded every one’s business - neglected his own,
And his dutiful nephew erected this stone.
There are two Jackson graves in this churchyard:
John Jackson is commemorated by a monument in
Mountjerome by sculptor Joseph Robinson Kirk (1821-1894), RHA
John Ormsby Vandeleur is commemorated by a monument in this
building by Kirk's father Thomas Kirk (1781-1845), RHA
See Ancestral Quest
See Ancestral Quest and thesilverbowl.com
It is unclear exactly where in Kilrush the Jacksons lived, but we
do know where some of them died.
Terry Driscoll recalled in 1850 how on The Night of the Big Wind (6 Jan 1839) he:
was afther putting up at Sam Lomas's inn at Kilrush, and Sam and myself wor afther turnin the youngsthers to bed … whin the hullaballoo beginned in the heavens. My hand to you, 'twasn't long till the slates thought fit to go on a voyage of discovery through the nibor's windies, and Sam had hardly time to fasten a seal skin cap securely ondeer his chin, whin he got a glimpse of the stars and the dhrivin clouds through the vacancy left in the roof. Well, d'ye persave, Mr. Lomas having been a seafaring man in his youth, I up and axed his opinion. `It's the tail oi a tarnado.' says he.
Lomas's inn in 1839 was probably in the terrace where The Galleon
is today. He may have earlier run Paterson's Hotel (now Cappagh
House) and he later ran the Vandeleur Arms (now The Monastery).
A plan to turn Jackson's newspaper sketches into a book was
hatched in Lomas's hotel in Cappagh near Kilrush, "not three doors
from where Jackson then resided."
Had he moved his principal residence to Limerick by 1839?
From at least 1846 (Slater's Directory), Uncle Bob's daughters
lived on Frances Street, two doors west of the modern Post
Office building, where Fanny (1879) and Kitty (1881) both died.
Alice outlived her son and died in 1859 at the house of her
daughter (Mrs. Alicia Trousdell), who had been living in 1855 in
the biggest house on Stewart Street.
Either or both of these houses may have been Jackson residences
in much earlier times.
According to The Poets of Ireland, Jackson was a school-fellow in Kilrush of his fellow short-lived writer of prose and verse William MacNamara Downes (c.1809-53), later a Young Irelander, and worthy of a talk in his own right.
A poem and accompanying note by Downes describe `the academy, and
my preceptor' as `the wood-surrounded dome where Allen dwell'd'.
They must have been educated by Revd. Henry Allen (c.1770–1834),
the local curate and keeper of a classical school.
Both writers published anonymously and/or pseudonymously, and Downes appears to have published Jackson's work in an anthology, including at least a poem inspired by the 1836 sinking of the Intrinsic:
THE LADY'S GLOVE.
"O, where is SHE ?
Ask of the wind, that far around
With fragments strews the sea. "-HEMANS.
What relic hath fallen from yon wild bird,
: A bider by sounding sea?
What relic, by booming surges steer'd,
: And white as the billowy spray?
Doth it speak aught of the perished there,
: Gone down to their stormy graves?
Bringeth it record of brave or fair,
: Sleeping 'neath ocean's waves?
A Lady's glove! O, bear it hither!
: Alas for the hand it press'd!
Fair cheek hath blanch'd - fond heart hath wither'd,
: And bright eyes closed in rest!
Of the cherish'd, at many a hearth and home,
: There's left but this Relic-toss'd,
Fragile, and light, as the deep sea's foam;
: A type of the loved and lost.
O, when shall the voice of the mourners cease
: To wail in the far-off land,
For her who has left the "vacant place,"
: And severed the kindred band?
Whose glove, like the dove-borne branch of yore,
: Is given for those that weep her;
A pledge that the waters can chill her no more,
: That sweet is the rest of the sleeper.
Kilrush, Feb. 1836.
Fr. Matthew Corbett, Parish Priest of Kilrush and Killimer,
opened a Reading Room or newsroom in Kilrush around 1822.
A schism occurred amongst the subscribers after the launch of the
Morning Register around October 1824, for which the new
paper, part of the campaign for Catholic Emancipation, blamed "an
Orange miscreant", identified only as a Coroner.
John Lucas was coroner for West Clare from 1820 to 1848.
John Jackson and his Uncle Bob frequented the "Kilrush newsroom,
then the emporium of all the county politics, and local gossip",
and it was there that Uncle Bob's epitaph was written.
When Dr Charles Lever
(1806-72) came to Kilrush during the 1832 cholera epidemic, he
joined a very social well-informed set, consisting of
They met every evening at the their respective houses, or at the Cholera Hospital.
The origins of John Jackson's pseudonyms are unclear.
A real-life Cath. Marinan married a John Cahill in Kilkee
Catholic parish on Monday 26 Feb 1838, the eve of Shrove
Tuesday.
Jackson was surely behind the report in the Limerick Star, which went viral in the newspapers:
On Sunday, Mr. Patrick Cahill, of Subathusa, county Clare, to Mary, daughter of Mr. Andy Marinan, and grandniece of Lord Lynhurst.
John Singleton Copley jr. (1772-1863) had become 1st Baron
Lyndhurst in 1827, but was born in America, although his paternal
grandparents had emigrated from Clare.
Was Jackson behind the report of another marriage which never took place, although announced in the Limerick Chronicle on Wednesday 18 Jan 1832?
In Kilrush, Alexander Elliott Esq, to Catherine, eldest daughter of Robert Jackson, of that town, Esq.Elliott married Harriot Carte in the following year; Catherine died a spinster in 1881.
There's lodging housesEqual to Cheltenham or the great Hot Wells:
For themselves and spouses,
Where oft carouses
The city swells:
Billiards and ball courts,
And sports of all sorts,
But what charms the batherTuck’d in by visithors at three o’clock!
Is the amphythatur,
Scoop’d out by nathure,
From the solid rock:
Och, ’tis there could punch is
Oft’n dhrank, and lunch is
Kilrush Courthouse was erected in 1830-1 and is still in regular
use almost two centuries later.
John Jackson's journalistic career began there, from where he
filed the Kilrush Petty Sessions sketches, initially published in
Limerick, and widely syndicated throughout the then United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland, and beyond.
There is always a thin line betwen comedy, humour and satire on
the one hand, and mockery, negative stereotyping, and racial,
national or sectarian bias on the other hand.
If Jackson was alive today, would he have become a stand-up
comedian?
Our forthcoming publication analyses Jackson in this context: Richard Mc Mahon, Paul O’Brien and Patrick Waldron, `The courts, the law and humour in the writings and life of John Jackson (1809-1857)’ in Sparky Booker and Kevin Costello (eds), A Sense of Place: Studies in British and Irish legal history in memory of W.N. Osborough (Dublin, Dec 2025).
A sample of Kilrush Petty Sessions.
Jackson's sketches concentrated on the witnesses, and he wrote
little about the lawyers and magistrates who represented and
cross-examined them, but George Unthank Macnamara attributed the
following verse to Terry O'Driscoll, stating that, if not true, it
is well invented, and is too good to be lost:
There goes an attorney
Upon his last journey,
The devil knows where.
If all the fraternity
Went to eternity,
The devil may care!