Born: 27 May 1928, Leix Road, Cabra, Dublin City County Dublin
Entered: 06 September 1947, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1961, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1964, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 28 June 2001, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to ZAM : 03 December 1969; ZAM to HIB : 1978

Father was Government messenger, and parents were supported by private means.

Eldest of six boys with one sister.

Educated at a National school for five years (St Peter’s NS Phibsborough) he then went to St Vincent’s Glasnevin for a year and a half. After working for three and a half years at Guinness Brewery, Dublin, he went to Mungret College SJ

by 1956 at Chikuni, Chisekesi, N Rhodesia (POL Mi) Regency
by 1970 at Bristol University (ANG) working
by 1971 at Glasgow, Scotland (ANG) working
by 1972 at London University, England (ANG) working
by 1984 at Berkeley CA, USA (CAL) Sabbatical

◆ Companions in Mission 1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
Michael Tyrrell was a Dublin man and before entering the Jesuits in 1947 he worked for a short time for Guinness’ Brewery, becoming proficient at barrel rolling! After philosophy in Tullabeg, he came to Zambia, Africa, first as a scholastic in 1955 for three years and then again in 1964 when he came back as a priest. The first time, he learnt the language and taught in Canisius Secondary School. He returned to Ireland for theology and for ordination which took place in Milltown Park in 1961. Before returning to Zambia in 1964, he obtained his Master of Arts in History. When he came back he hoped to get into the newly opened university in Lusaka to lecture in history but unfortunately this was not to be. He was in Canisius again teaching the A-level course and he also got interested in sports. With Br Aungier and scholastic P Quinn, he helped train the Canisius athletic team which won the National Inter High School Sports at Matero Stadium in Lusaka (July 13 1966) at which a few records were broken. It was a proud day for the school.

He liked to walk and he liked to talk; he would laugh at jokes among the brethren even those against himself at times, with the oft repeated expletive 'James' Street'. Being a walker, he organized a walk from Chikuni to Chivuna, a journey of over 30 miles. When the walkers arrived, weary and footsore, they saw a large notice put up by the Sisters, “Blessed are the feet of those …..”

Michael was quite disappointed in not getting into the university even though he was a successful teacher at Canisius. He moved into parish ministry in the Monze diocese, at Kasiya and Civuna parishes.

His health deteriorated, a condition which was not helped by a failure by others to appreciate that he was genuinely ill and not just suffering from imagination. While on home leave, a doctor friend put him straight into hospital for surgery for a rather rare stomach condition which had not been previously detected. A second operation was deemed necessary, the doctor warning the family that Mick might not survive the night. However he did survive and was advised not to return to Zambia.

When he recovered, he entered the university chaplaincy in the British Province. As Mick had always hankered after the academic life, the twelve years spent in London University were perhaps the most fulfilling and satisfying period in his life. His specialty seems to have been working with post-graduate students, with whom he relished hours of discussion and stimulating conversation for which he was amply qualified.

In 1983 he went to Berkeley USA for a sabbatical year. On returning to Ireland he gave retreats and directed the Spiritual Exercises. In 1987 he was posted to Gardiner Street where he remained until his death in 2001. While there he was chaplain to Temple Street Hospital, assisted in Gardiner Street Church and was Province Archivist for three years.

Michael was admitted to Cherryfield Lodge on 17 October 1998 with an unusual degenerative condition of the brain. He had a problem of mobility and in the last six months or so he was confined to a wheelchair. His condition was treated with. medication. In the last few weeks his condition deteriorated rapidly, and he died peacefully at 9.30 a.m. on 28 June 2001, surrounded by his family and Jesuit colleagues’.

Note from Jean Indeku Entry
In 1955 he came to Northern Rhodesia with Fr. Tom O’Brien and scholastics Michael Kelly and Michael Tyrrell. They were among the first batch of missionaries to come by air and the journey from London took almost five days via Marseilles – Malta – Wadi Halfa (now under the Aswan Dam) – Mersa Matruh (north Egypt) – Nairobi – Ndola – and finally to Lusaka.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 112 : Special Edition 2002

Obituary
Fr Michael Tyrrell (1928-2001)

27th May 1928: Born in Dublin
Early education in St. Vincent's CBS School, Glasnevin and Mungret College.
Before entering, he worked for Guinness
6th Sept. 1947: Entered the Society at Emo Park
8th Sept. 1949: First Vows at Emo
1949 - 1952: Rathfarnham - studying Arts in UCD
1952 - 1955: Tullabeg - studying Philosophy
1955 - 1958: Zambia - language studies; teaching in Chikuni College
1958 - 1962: Milltown Park - studying Theology
31st July 1961: Ordained at Milltown Park
1962 - 1963: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
2nd Feb, 1964: Final Vows at Milltown Park
1963 - 1964: Milltown Park - Special studies
1964 - 1970: Zambia, Chikuni College - Teacher
1970 - 1971: Glasgow - University Chaplain
1971 - 1983: London - University Chaplain
1983 - 1984: Berkeley, USA - Sabbatical year
1984 - 1985: Austin House - Retreat Staff
1985 - 1987: University Hall - Chaplain, Pax Christi; Directs Spiritual Exercises
1987 - 2001: Gardiner Street
1987 - 1991: Chaplain Temple Street Hospital and Pax Christi
1991 - 1994: Province Archivist
1994 - 1995: Assisting in the Church; Chaplain in Temple Street Hospital
1995 - 1998: Assisting in the Church
1998 - 2001: Praying for the Church and the Society

Michael was admitted to Cherryfield Lodge on 17th October 1998 with an unusual degenerative condition of the brain. He had a problem with mobility and in the last six months or so he was confined to a wheelchair. His condition was treated with medication. In the last few weeks his condition deteriorated rapidly, and he died peacefully at 9.30 a.m. on 28th June, 2001, surrounded by his family and Jesuit colleagues

Frank Keenan writes...
In November 2001, the London University Chaplaincy in Gower Street, London, organised a memorial mass for Michael Tyrrell. The students to whom he ministered there have long since moved on to take up their professions, get married, begin families. It was a tremendous tribute to Michael's work among them to see the packed chapel to which so many returned that morning to express their appreciation and gratitude for what he had been for them in their student days. From those who could not be at the mass there were written tributes, including some from well-known names such as Baroness Helena Kennedy Q.C.

Listening to his former co-chaplains at the memorial Mass, it was striking how much he had been appreciated by them, not only for the services he offered the students, but also for the companionship and wit he had contributed to the community in Gower Street. There were those present also who had been touched by the wide-ranging retreat apostolate that Michael had developed in England. The Irish Province was represented by Jack Donovan, Parish Priest of Custom House London for the past twenty years, and myself from St. Beuno's in Wales.

Michael had always hankered after the academic life. After tertianship, he asked for and was given the opportunity to do an MA in the subject that was always his first love - History. On his return to Zambia he hoped he might find a place lecturing in the University, but this was not to be. He had had a successful record as a classroom teacher in Canisius College, Chikuni, but was not enthusiastic about resuming this career, possibly as a reaction to his disappointment at not getting the University appointment. He ventured into parish ministry in Monze Diocese, which was not really his charism, and so followed some rather unfulfilling years in Kasiya and Civuna parishes.

His health deteriorated, a condition which was not helped by a failure by others to appreciate that he was genuinely ill, and not just suffering from imagination. Providence came to his aid on the eve of his return to Zambia from home leave. A doctor friend was unhappy with Michael's state of health and asked him to visit his surgery the following day. As a result of this visit he put Michael straight into hospital for surgery for a rather rare stomach condition, which understandably had not been detected by the limited resources of the Zambian medical services. A second operation was found necessary, with a sobering warning - without this second operation Michael would die, since his digestive system had ceased to function; but, given that it would be a second operation so soon after the first, he would only have a fifty per cent chance of survival. Michael recalled lying in a coma after surgery and hearing the doctors advising members of his family to prepare for the worst, as the patient might not survive the night.

Michael was advised not to return to Zambia, where the medical facilities might not be available, should he have a recurrence of the problem. He entered the university chaplaincy service in the British Province, and there he seemed to have found his true niche. From what I observed when visiting him in London on my way to and from Zambia, he savoured at last being in the academic world. His speciality seems to have been working with post-graduate students, with whom he relished hours of discussion and stimulating conversation for which he was amply qualified.

I often wondered at the wisdom of his returning to Ireland, where he did not seem to have really been able to find the sort of satisfying and effective apostolate, which he had been enjoying in London. During the years when he was chaplain to Temple Street Childrens' Hospital he made himself totally available at all hours, although he must have found dealing with children much less rewarding than his post-graduates. Eventually he found the work too draining and accepted that he had to retire. The illness, which was to be final, must have begun to effect him at this time.

The deterioration in Michael's condition, which left him, finally, barely able to speak, had been going on over a number of years. At this period he struggled to master the computer under my, at times, less than sympathetic tutelage. It was only much later that I realised that when he said he could not remember the most basic instructions, this was a symptom of the illness that was causing deterioration in his brain cells. Michael tended to make light of the symptoms, and, consequently, was somewhat misunderstood during this period even by his friends.

There was a basic simplicity and a certain innocence about Michael which he never lost till the end. In Cherryfield, he would still respond to the old jokes, and although he could not contribute to the banter, he clearly enjoyed it as always. He once recounted an example of this simplicity, which revealed a similar unsuspected spirit of simplicity in the rather forbidding figure of J R McMahon, Rector of Milltown, Provincial and distinguished legalist. J R was provincial when Michael was being interviewed for entry to the Novitiate. On impulse, Michael invited J R to tea with his family, to which the latter agreed promptly. In due course J R turned up on his antique bicycle, joined the family for tea and charmed them all. We would cite this to Michael as an example of his trying to advance his career in the Society from an early age, which never failed to amuse him, since he always retained a freedom of spirit, which was the antithesis of any tendency to curry favour with the establishment for his own advantage. For me one of Michael's most endearing characteristics was his clear interest in and love for his family. He spoke to me often of his admiration for, and gratitude to, his parents in particular,

Among several photographs on display at the Memorial Mass was one of the young Michael walking in the Wicklow Mountains in the 1940s. He continued this passion right up to the time when he no longer had the capacity, even achieving his ambition to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya. A walking companion has written the following poem in memory of the enjoyment Michael derived from showing others his beloved Wicklow Mountains.

In Memory (of Michael Tyrrell SJ)

Mullacor and Mullaghcleevaun,
Tonelegee and Lugnaquila,
These Wicklow Hills evoke memories of you:
I see you striding with ease across the heather,
Side-stepping the squelchy spagnum moss and feathery bog
cotton,
To disappear into the mists that swirl around their summits:
Or resting by the shores of mountain tarns,
Lough Ouler, Lough Tay, Lough Dan,
Art's Lake, where with Dunstan, we sipped cool wine
And wearied the sun with our talk:
Lough Bray, where you camped and prayed
Fighting the demon midgets with burning, smoking heather
sticks.
Your great spirit lives on in these hills
And hovers over the still, dark waters of these lakes.
There is freedom from dis-ease here.
Rest peacefully, Michael.

Elizabeth Mooney SHC), July 2001

Edward John Boyd-Barrett

Born: 29 October 1883, Tivoli Terrace South, Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1904, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1917, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1923, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 14 August 1966, Santa Clara Jesuit Informary, Santa Clara CA, USA

Left Society of Jesus: 16 June 1925

Edward John Boyd-Barrett

Father was very wealthy, a son of James Barrett JP, BL, and followed no particular profession. and died in October 1883.

Youngest of three sons.

Educated at Clongowes Wood College SJ 1895-1901

Worked at Arthur Guinness & Son for two and a half years before entering the Society

by 1908 at Leuven Belgium (BELG) studying
by 1921 at St Ignatius College Tottenham London (ANG) studying
by 1925 at Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA (MARNEB)

◆ The Clongownian, 1967

Obituary

Father Edward Boyd-Barrett (former SJ)

Even if we discount the nostalgia that remembered youth so often arouses, it is difficult for an old Clongownian of the last years before the First World War to look back on them and not find himself murmuring: “Ichabod, for the glory is departed”. And it is not really the last sunlit days of the centenary, the leaders of Church and State, the flags and speeches and feasting which remains primarily in the memory of a great time. It is the people, the masters and boys of that generation : “troops of grey ghosts in the corridors calling”, that make it a time to remember with pride and gratitude.

Even in such company Fr Edward Boyd Barrett was an outstanding personality. He had been a boy at Clongowes for five years, but he was to be a master there for only the comparatively short period of three years, 1911-14. They were indeed full years in his life. In the first place he was an outstanding teacher of boys : colourful, dramatic, methodical, straightforward, never subtle, never dull. He taught English and History to all the honours classes, and the least part of his achievement was the success of his pupils in the examination results. In fact he never referred to exams, nor slanted his treatment of a subject to ensure good answering. That in his last year his pupils, in each grade that he taught, got first place in both subjects, and on one occasion nine out of ten of the top places, is a remarkable and verifiable fact. And if the good teacher's work is not just to impart knowledge, but to rouse and foster talent, he did that in such a way as to win lifelong gratitude from scores of men, widely differing in character and ability.

But he was not just a teacher. His good looks, his skill at games, his eloquence, his gift for friendship made him a natural leader. The long walks of by-gone play-days were to places of interest : Connolly's Folly, the Hill of Lyons, the Taghadoe Round Tower. And as they walked, he kept a whole class spellbound with imaginary adventures of the European “underground”. Social reform was in the air, but the wind of change blew lightly and fitfully in Clongowes at that time. He organised the first Social Study Club, with an admirably mixed programme of theoretical and practical work for its members, a small but enthusiastic leaven in the school. Before joining the Jesuits he had worked as a layman in Vincent de Paul circles, and he now called on old friends to help him educate his boys. Under that guidance they visited such institutions as the Seaman's Institute, the Night Shelter, and the Dublin Union Hospitals; and they helped regularly with the first of all Dublin Boys Clubs, that run by Dr Lombard Murphy in William Street.

To this practical work was added elementary theoretical study. There was as yet in those days no Social Science course on the Religious Knowledge curricula; but the club formed a little library of its own, and discussions and papers were the principal term activities. During the centenary celebrations a special meeting was held at which, in the presence of the cardinal and half a dozen bishops, Fr Eddie Coyne, then the club's secretary, gave the first of what was to be a long series of talks. From these activities sprang the Clongowes Boys Club; and an essential liaison with Dr Murphy brought to Belvedere as his heir the Newsboys Club.

Under Fr Boyd Barrett's direction the debates were important events, to which distinguished visitors came, such as the brothers Larry and Tom Kettle. And, if Gaelic Ireland was as yet a closed book to him as to most of his pupils, there was no doubting that he was himself proud of Ire land's heroic past, and hopeful of its future to a degree not easily matched in this age of disillusionment. He never returned to his old school, but he never forgot the boys to whom he had given his best years, and given also understanding, appreciation and even admiration. Fifty years later, when he was a continent away, he corresponded with more than one of them, and he is remembered today by scores of them with gratitude and affection.

To his nephews, three of whom were at Clongowes, we offer our sincere condolences on his death.

MB

History Ireland Vol 28 No 4 https://www.historyireland.com/the-boyd-barretts-and-the-new-irish-state/

The Boyd Barretts and the new Irish state : Privilege and change in the Catholic middle class

by Colum Kenny

One was a controversial Jesuit psychologist who left the priesthood and married but later recanted. One was a surgeon who served in the British Army but then canvassed for Sinn Féin. And the third joined the new Electricity Supply Board, his son becoming architect of the first major government building designed in independent Ireland.

These Boyd Barrett brothers are a metaphor for the conflicted modernity that marked the Irish state’s inception. From a solid middle-class background, Joe, Edward and James Charles embraced change - up to a point. Their grandfather, James Barrett, had been a barrister and justice of the peace who died in 1880, bequeathing the family Terracina, a fine house in Kingstown. Their father died in 1884, in his thirties, leaving his widow to rear three children aged under four.

The boys were far from the poverty of inner-city Dublin, as Edward later recalled. He wrote that Terracina:-

… was a large redbrick house with chestnut trees and elders in front and a gravelled drive. There were outhouses at each side and a large garden in the rear. The rooms were lofty with fine marble mantelpieces, and furnished in old mahogany. There were portraits and busts and a library of classical books, gathered by my grandfather …

Ring-doves in cages hung in a porch. In the garden were fruit trees and glasshouses for flowers, and a lawn for tennis. A pet donkey grazed at large while a stable housed the family’s chestnut horse, in the care of a coachman. These were privileged Irish Catholics.

The Boyd Barretts had a private tutor who prepared them for their education at Clongowes Wood, the Jesuit boarding school in County Kildare. In 1898 its pupils elected Joe, a keen sportsman, as their captain. He went on to study at the Catholic University Medical School in Dublin (later part of UCD when the National University of Ireland was created in 1908). He was a founder, and in 1903 captain, of its soccer club. A 1930 history of UCD reveals that Bohemians wanted four of the team’s best players, including Joe: ‘It is pretty certain that if Barrett had accepted our [college] Club would have gone to pieces’. His fellow students elected him to edit news from the medical school for the university’s St Stephen’s Magazine, which in late 1901 had rejected an article by the student James Joyce because it included mention of a volume on the Vatican’s Index of Prohibited Books.

Joe’s views on society hardened as he began to work as a doctor with children, becoming a surgeon in Temple Street Children’s Hospital. In 1911 he presented a paper to a public health congress in Dublin on the results of his investigations into the medical inspection of schoolchildren. In 1912 he said that ‘Ireland was the only country in which there was no state provision for the feeding of necessitous children, though no place required it more’. In 1913 he delivered a lecture outlining the desperate poverty of children in Dublin and calling for more children’s hospital beds and other measures to relieve it. He said that the State had failed the child. Speaking in 1915, he said that, ‘in addition to the medical work in the hospital, it was absolutely necessary to do something for the clothing of poor children’.

Joe served in France with the British Royal Army Medical Corps, but in 1914 he also ‘took a prominent part’ in the gunrunning at Howth by the Irish Volunteers. The fighting in Dublin in 1916 had a big impact on Temple Street hospital, and the British reaction to the rebellion further radicalised Boyd Barrett, as it did many other Irish people. Joe now associated publicly with the Sinn Féin movement and many leading figures of that period met at his home. Becoming a close personal friend of Arthur Griffith, he was acquainted with Michael Collins too.

In 1917 Joe wrote for Griffith’s weekly Nationality paper what the editor of the Nenagh Guardian described as ‘a remarkable article on Irish manufactures’. He also actively canvassed for Sinn Féin, speaking, for example, in 1917 on a platform with Arthur Griffith and Seán Milroy at Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim, and a week later with John O’Mahony at what was advertised as a ‘monster meeting’ at Goresbridge, Co. Kilkenny, and in 1918 at Cootehill, Co. Cavan. During 1918 Arthur Griffith’s son, ‘under the care of Surg[eon] Boyd Barrett’, had a successful operation at the Children’s Hospital. On 29 July 1921 Dáil Éireann appointed Boyd Barrett one of its department of local government inspectors, and he fulfilled those duties eagerly for years.

Joe was an amateur artist. The British Medical Journal reported that he executed ‘some admirable works in oils, after paintings by Sir Thomas Lawrence and Giuseppe Ribera’. It is said that he completed a portrait of Arthur Griffith and another of Kevin O’Higgins. There is a sketch of Griffith in the National Library signed simply ‘JB’. Dated 4 July 1922, it is said to be ‘the last drawing’ made of Griffith before his death. It was published without attribution on 16 February 1923 in the new United Irishman.

During these difficult years Joe’s brother Edward (also known as ‘Jack’) got into trouble with his Jesuit superiors for his views. They postponed his final vows because he criticised the Irish hierarchy for cowardice in the face of Britain imperialism. He later claimed that the War of Independence might have been avoided had the bishops been more supportive of Sinn Féin, which he saw as ‘essentially a pacifist movement relying on moral force’. He is also said to have expressed opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

His Jesuit superiors were already concerned about his views on psychology and his attitude to discipline, and began to censor his work on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. His book Strength of will, published in the USA in 1915, had been based partly on his dissertation, completed in Belgium. The poet Joyce Kilmer reviewed it favourably for the New York Times.

There was a possibility in 1924 that Edward would be appointed to a senior position at University College Galway, and the editor of Studies took up the matter with their Jesuit provincial on his behalf, but Edward’s superiors instead sent him to teach sociology (not psychology) at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Once he was there, the prestigious Jesuit publication America began to publish articles by him on psychology. It stopped as a result of pressure from the Jesuit authorities in Ireland. An invitation from Fordham University to deliver lectures also met with opposition. Today, Edward’s unorthodox and challenging opinions are again receiving scholarly attention.

Recalled to Ireland, Edward instead left the Jesuits. He was to describe graphically his personal crisis then. Estranged from his church, he set himself up in New York as a psychoanalyst and married Anna O’Beirne, with whom he had a son. He wrote books, some critical of the church, and in one hinted at child abuse by Irish priests. He also completed a romantic novel about Shane O’Neill, returning to Ireland for two years in 1932 to conduct research for this.

Edward eventually reconciled with the Jesuits. He attributed this to the prayers of his recently deceased brother, James Charles. The latter had tried his hand at stockbroking but later found work in the pioneering ESB. James Charles’s son Rupert became a well-known Cork architect, who in 1935 won the competition for the design of the building on Kildare Street in Dublin that is home to the Department of Industry and Commerce.

The story of the Boyd Barrett brothers is a story of transition, illustrating how one middle-class Catholic family negotiated the social and cultural changes that saw the emerging Irish state struggle to stand on its own two feet.

Colum Kenny is Professor Emeritus of Communications at Dublin City University.

FURTHER READING

E. Boyd Barrett, The Jesuit enigma (New York, 1927).
E. Boyd Barrett, The magnificent illusion (New York, 1930).
Paula M. Kane, ‘Confessional and couch: E. Boyd Barrett, priest-psychoanalyst’, in K. Roberts SJ & S. Schloesser SJ (eds), Crossings and dwellings (Leiden, 2017).