Maunsell, James Poole

by Patrick Maume

Maunsell, James Poole (1855?–1897), journalist and newspaper proprietor, was born in Dublin, one of three sons and six daughters of Henry Maunsell (qv), doctor and journalist, and his second wife, Caroline (née Stevenson). The family were Church of Ireland. James was the only son to outlive Dr Maunsell (d. 1879) (as did three daughters; Dr Maunsell also had a daughter by an earlier marriage); hence some obituarists call James his father's only son.

James was educated at Foyle College, Derry city, and spent some time at an unnamed German institution before entering TCD, where he graduated BA and MA, taking prizes in history and political economics. He was a distinguished member of the TCD Historical Society, winning its gold medals for oratory and composition, and always retained strong social connections with TCD. Dr Maunsell intended to train his son as a journalist, and at his behest James supported himself through university by working as a reporter on the ultra-tory and pro-landlord Dublin Evening Mail, of which Dr Maunsell was part-proprietor. James also put in his term as a law student and for a time held a clerical position in the chancery division of the Dublin courts.

After his father's death in 1879, Maunsell resigned his chancery position and became editor and manager of the Evening Mail under the proprietorship of George Tickell (qv). The Maunsell family may also have retained some proprietary interest in the paper, for when the Evening Mail was sued for contempt of court arising out of its comments on the abortive trial of Charles Stewart Parnell (qv) and other Land League leaders for seditious conspiracy, Maunsell was described as co-proprietor as well as editor (Warder and Weekly Mail, 27 November 1880, p. 8; 4 December 1880, pp 2–3; 11 December, p. 2). The commentary in question – which compared Parnell to the amoral Roman aristocrat Catiline (who tried to lead a revolution to avoid paying his debts) and to the populist labour activist Denis Kearney (qv), accused the Land League of mounting a 'green terror', and suggested that Land Leaguers were outlaws who should be summarily dealt with by the sort of lynch law practised in the American west – is representative of the tone in which the Mail covered the land agitation of the early 1880s. Maunsell (along with the chief leader writer, George Ferdinand Shaw (qv)) contributed to the distinctive combination of rage and fear which marked the paper's editorial voice in the Parnell era: in 1881–2 it repeatedly called for Ireland to be subjected to 'Cromwellian' martial law as the only means of defeating the Land League 'jehad'. The Mail was noted for its patrician provocation, complaining that the property and intellect of Ireland, as represented par excellence by Trinity College, was threatened by the uprising of a 'barbarous Celtic horde' and by Gladstone's attacks on property and extension of the Irish electorate to 'a mud-hut franchise'.

In 1885 Maunsell left Dublin to edit the Derby Mercury and Express, receiving a testimonial from his fellow journalists of all political persuasions, with whom he appears to have maintained genial relations in private life. On 21 October 1885 at Taney church, Dundrum, Maunsell married Christina Pigot (1852–1933), a daughter of David R. Pigot, master of the court of the exchequer (who should not be confused with his father and namesake David Richard Pigot (qv)); they had no children. In 1887 Maunsell returned to Dublin to become manager of the Dublin Daily Express (the other Dublin ultra-tory daily), and wrote a series of well-received articles on the political situation for the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union. Around 1889 he bought the Daily Express from its founder and proprietor, John Robinson; after the death of Tickell in 1892 Maunsell also acquired the Evening Mail and ran the two papers in tandem. He undertook significant changes in the papers' formats and built new offices for them; in 1894–5 he floated the papers as a limited company, remaining the largest shareholder and managing director. For a time he was president of the Irish association district of the Institute of Journalists; a resolution of condolences passed by the Dublin typographical printers' association describes him as a generous employer. He was a member of the Dublin-based Shakespeare Masonic Lodge No. 143.

Maunsell took a prominent role in the late 1890s agitation demanding that Ireland be financially compensated for alleged over-taxation under the union (as claimed by the Childers commission on the financial relations between Britain and Ireland). In December 1896 he delivered an outspoken speech on the subject at a joint nationalist-unionist meeting in the Mansion House, and a series of his articles on the subject (from the Daily Express) were published immediately after his death as a pamphlet, England's debt to Ireland (Dublin, 1897). Maunsell's role in the tax agitation helps to explain why, despite his hardline conservative unionism, his obituaries in nationalist as well as unionist papers are overwhelmingly favourable (though this also reflected respect for his abilities and sympathy at his sudden death), and why a decade later Arthur Griffith (qv) recalled him as a patriotic unionist and contrasted him with the 'garrison' mentality of Lord Ardilaun (qv), his successor as proprietor of the Express and the Mail (Sinn Féin, 5 January 1907).

James Poole Maunsell died of peritonitis on 9 January 1897, five days after being taken ill at his and his father-in-law's residence, Churchtown, Dundrum, Co. Dublin; he was buried in Taney churchyard, Dundrum. He received many tributes; W. E. H. Lecky (qv) wrote: 'I can never forget the earnest kindness he showed me during my election at TCD [when Lecky faced some opposition on religious grounds]. I wish that I had many friends and Ireland many public men as true and as single-minded as he was' (Evening Mail, 12 January 1897).

It is unlikely that if Maunsell had lived the Mail and Express group could have challenged the longstanding position of the Irish Times as Dublin's leading unionist newspaper (the Times could call on the wealth of its proprietors, the Arnott family, and had a strong constituency amongst the city's protestant business and professional elites; the landlords who formed a significant portion of the Mail/Express readership were in long-term decline, and the group's ultra-toryism placed it in a more precarious position than the relatively liberal Irish Times), but his death marked a significant milestone in the papers' decline. After briefly being managed by cultural revivalists and liberal unionists influenced by Horace Plunkett (qv), the newspapers were acquired by Ardilaun, whose proprietorship was dominated by political rather than economic considerations. After Ardilaun's death in 1915 the papers were acquired by the Tivy family, Cork newsagents and merchants who lacked the resources to revive the papers or their other venerable conservative newspaper, the Cork Constitution (ceased publication 1924). The Express ceased publication in 1921; the Mail survived as a largely apolitical Dublin evening paper until 1962.