Update: Jan 10, 2019. It is alleged that his grandfather was at the Battle of Saintfield- 21 May 1881 (SOURCE: Downpatrick Recorder) Ros Davies site.
For quite some time, I didn't know who this John REA might
be and why his photograph was in an album of family photos that centered
on the family and friends of the JACKSONs of Urker, Crossmaglen.
Fortunately, I posted the photo in my "Mystery
Photos" and Mark DOYLE, a doctoral
student in Boston who is completing a dissertation on mid-19th Century
Belfast History, was generous in sending me more than a dozen pages
describing the tempestuous life of John REA. Apparently, the photograph
of him is rare.
My guess is that John REA's defence of members of the
Irish Land League would have been one of the aspects of his life that
endeared him to the JACKSON family and the reason that he was included
in their photo album. Daniel
Gunn BROWNE (husband of Margaret JACKSON and passionate advocate
for tenant farmers) as well as many of the other JACKSONs were noteably
active in this movement.
In time, I will write up a decent picture of John REA. For now, I
will simply post a couple of the obituaries that ran after his death.
Also, I have news article transcribed from the Anglo-Celt
by Kay Stanton.
Weekly Northern Whig May 21, 1981
“The
tragical end of Mr. John Rea has created a profound sensation in Belfast and
in the province of Ulster. He was, perhaps, the best-known man in this
town, for he has been before the public eye for thirty-four years with hardly
an interval, and has always arrested attention by his eccentric personality and
his extraordinary actions. Yet he was a solitary man through life. His
great vanity hardly allowed the possibility of companionship; his erratic course
in politics still more isolated him; and the very consciousness that he had little
work to do in the world, except in the way of attack, made him go much alone. Mr.
Rea was a man of great powers, but with the slightest possible ballasting for
so strong a brain, and thus his life, judged even from the most lenient standpoint,
was a melancholy failure. He might have been a wealthy man, in the exercise
of his profession, in a town where many solicitors, as young as himself, have
made large fortunes, but, so far as anybody knows, Mr. Rea has died a poor man. He
had no power of concentration upon anything, and the plan of his life was, in
many respects, like his speeches, very discursive, and without object. He
had a bizarre streak in his intellect, which, along with wonderful powers of
wit and sarcasm, made men listen to him for hours with an interest not to be
accounted for by the solid results of his interminable talking. Often
the zig-zag lightning of his brain upset the gravity of his gravest
judges, his sternest critics, and his bitterest enemies, and led many
a one to wish that he had had a steadier judgment to control the working
of such unique powers.
“Mr.
Rea was swept as a young man into the Young Ireland enthusiasm that carried away
so many promising young Irishmen five-and-thirty years ago. There was Nationalism
in his very blood. His grandfather was a character in his day, and made
his mark very visibly felt about Saintfield in 1798. But it would be difficult
to say that Mr. Rea had any steadfast appreciation of political principles through
life. It would be difficult to say, indeed, what he was in politics. We
suspect that his changes of opinion, if indeed he had any opinions, were determined
by personal collisions with members of the various parties he supported, who
could not get him to work harmoniously with them to any serviceable result. Thus
he was Young Irelander, Liberal, Cromwellian, and Orange Conservative, by turns,
till at last it would be difficult to say that he was anything but a reckless
and meaningless critic of everything done in town. His terrible appetite
for talk led him to seek election to the public boards, and wherever he succeeded
in making an entry there was a virtual end of business. He drove
chairmen to despair, and struck round him with a reckless vehemence
that often recalled the humours of Donnybrook, for there was wit in
all his malice, and to the last he could get a hearing from the working
classes of the town, who always had a relish for his plain-speaking
and the dash of libel that ran through his public addresses.
“It
is very sad to think of the tragical end of such a career. The Coroner’s
inquest throws no light upon the cause of his death further than that he perished
by his own hand in a fit of insanity. He had been in dull spirits for some
weeks back, owing, it is suggested, to his want of success at the Poor-law elections. There
always comes a time in the life of such a man as Mr. Rea when disappointments
of this sort have a depressing and unhinging effect upon them. The spring
and elasticity of life are gone, and strokes that twenty years before would make
no impression fall with killing effect. It is sad, too, to think of the
solitariness of his death. Of course, as Voltaire says, every man dies
alone; but there seemed to be a special solitude here. There was nobody
at hand to attend to his wants or to say a kind word that might have broken the
spell of heaviness which brought on the disastrous close. Belfast will
miss John Rea even in the midst of all its gravities and its hurries. He
gave a bit of colour to our sober Ulster life, and will be a memorable
figure in the future traditions of Belfast.”
Weekly Northern Whig - May 21, 1981
“Reminiscences
of Mr. John Rea.” (By
one who knew him.) [NOTE: no name given]
“…Mr.
Rea was a thoroughly good-natured man, as vain or egotistic persons usually
are, and made it a point to please his company wherever he was. He had
an irrepressible vivacity of talk in private that made him an agreeable companion,
but unhappily he carried his public life too much into private society. … Mr.
Rea never married. I once advised him strongly to marry, and he said
gravely, ‘Well, I think you are right. I will think about it.’ ‘But,’ said
I, ‘you have no time to lose. When will you see about it?’ ‘Whenever
I can get this Chancery suit settled.’ ‘And how long will
that be?’ ‘I think,’ was his reply, with much gravity, ‘if
it is properly managed, it might last five hundred years.’ … Everybody
remembers his doings in the Belfast Town Council. He had a special antipathy
to one gentleman, who had not studied his grammar to advantage in his youth. On
one occasion, when this gentleman was discussing some point with vehemence,
Mr. Rea rose up and said, ‘Mr. Mayor, I protest.’ ‘What
do you protest against?’ ‘I protest against a verb not agreeing
with its noun.’”
[Mark
Doyle points out that the article is entirely composed of anecdotes
of this sort – quite
amusing, good for a future biography.
Weekly Northern Whig May 21, 1981
Report of Rea’s death – town’s reaction:
“When
the newsvendors commenced to shout the sad occurrence through the streets
of Belfast on Tuesday evening there were very large numbers of persons
who paid little heed to the noisy youths. The name of the well-known
solicitor had in its time been associated with so many extraordinary
events, and the newsboys in their desire for sales had been in the
habit so frequently of playfully associating it with wondrous performances,
that many pedestrians on the thoroughfares little thought that the
fatal occurrence which was being bawled forth had really taken place.”
