Journalist who turned his pen against Parnell

IRISH LIVES:JOHN WOULFE FLANAGAN (1852–1929), journalist with The Times, was born on April 6th, 1852, the eldest of six sons and five daughters of Stephen Woulfe Flanagan PC, a judge of the landed estates court and owner of 3,500 acres in Sligo and Roscommon, and his wife Mary Deborah, daughter of John Richard Corballis QC.

After studies at Oscott and Balliol College, Oxford, he graduated with two firsts in classics (1876), was called to the English bar (1877) and was high sheriff of Co Roscommon (1881), where his father had property at Rathfudy. The Flanagans and Corballises were eminent Irish Catholic legal families. John, however, practised only briefly (in England), specialising in conveyancing. Early in 1886 he joined the staff of The Timesat Printing House Square, London, where he remained until his death.

He was a protagonist in the newspapers campaign against Charles Stewart Parnell. In the words of Flanagans 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 WE Forsters charge that 'crime dogged the footsteps of the Land League'."

He was the chief writer of Timesleaders during the first World War, but his judgment was not always sound. In the leader he wrote for the issue of April 26th, 1916, on the rebellion in Dublin, he dismissed the insurgents as pro-German and their actions as a ruse to keep the US out of the war. He married Maria Emily, daughter of Maj Gen Sir Justin Sheil, on April 29th, 1880. They had a son, John Henry, and a daughter, Jane Mary. John Woulfe Flanagan died on November 16th, 1929, at his home at 31 Tedworth Square, Chelsea.

CJ Woods

From the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography, dib.ie