Flanagan, John Woulfe

by C. J. Woods

Flanagan, John Woulfe (1852–1929), journalist on The Times, was born 6 April 1852, the eldest of six sons and five daughters in the family of Stephen Woulfe Flanagan (1817–91), PC (Ire.), a judge of the landed estates court and owner of 3,500 acres in Sligo and Roscommon as well as houses in or near Dublin, and his wife Mary Deborah (d. 1886), daughter of John Richard Corballis (1797?–1879), QC, a commissioner for national education. After studies at Oscott and Balliol College, Oxford, he graduated BA with two firsts in classics (1876), was called to the English bar (1877) and was high sheriff of County Roscommon, where his father had property at Rathfudy (1881). The Flanagans and Corballises were eminent Irish catholic legal families. John Woulfe Flanagan, however, practised only briefly (in England), specialising in conveyancing. Early in 1886 he joined the staff of The Times at Printing House Sq., London, where he remained until his death.

He was a protagonist in the newspaper's campaign against Charles Stewart Parnell (qv) which had as its climax a special commission of inquiry appointed by Salisbury's government (1888–90). In the words of Flanagan's obituarist in The Times, ‘while he had nothing to do with accepting and publishing the so- called “Parnell letters”, he was in fact the author of the series of articles on “Parnellism and crime” which brought out in relentless detail the truth of W. E. Forster's charge that “crime dogged the footsteps of the Land League” ’. The findings of the commission did Flanagan no harm and, though a staunch catholic, he remained a firm opponent of Irish home rule.

Later he became more interested in Continental affairs, on which he was well informed, having a knowledge of several Continental languages. He was a regular writer of Times leaders and during the first world war the chief one. As The Times was the daily generally read by men in high position, and as it was considered to be authoritative, Flanagan's influence may be inferred. He was a superb stylist, but his judgement was not always sound. In the leader he wrote for the issue of 26 April 1916 on the rebellion in Dublin, he dismissed the insurgents as pro-German and their actions as a ruse to keep the USA out of the war. After the signing of a peace between Germany and Russia (1918) he misjudged the Russian mood by advocating that Britain attempt to bring Russia back into the war by supporting intervention against the Bolsheviks by Japan (which had defeated and humiliated Russia in 1905). John Woulfe Flanagan died 16 November 1929 at his home, 31 Tedworth Sq., Chelsea. He married (29 April 1880) Maria Emily, daughter of Major-general Sir Justin Sheil (qv) and niece of Richard Lalor Sheil (qv). She was his second cousin, her mother, Mary, being the daughter of a Stephen Woulfe (qv), a judge, and died only eight years later (9 January 1888). They had a son John Henry, and a daughter Jane Mary.

Flanagan's fourth brother, James (b. 1864), a resident magistrate at Newry, Co. Down, was shot dead there by assassins on 4 June 1922 as he was leaving Sunday mass at the catholic cathedral.