Patrick E. Cleburne was born in Ovens, nears Queenstown, County of Cork on March 17th 1828. In 1847 after three years service in the British Army as a private, Cleburne left to study medicine in London. He was known for his warm bedside manner, but was outspoken on the need to deal with the Irish famine. Cleburne helped organise his fellow students to raise funds and food for Ireland, esp his home county. His ability to organise, motivate, and his valour in the face of those who argued against Relief became well known.
In 1848 he was walking down Moorgate late at night when a well dressed man came out of a house, the unknown man walked for a while before falling over. Cleburne applied his medical knowledge and dislodged a blockage in the man's windpipe. The man Cleburne saved was Lord Bingham, infamous landlord in Ireland. Bingham was willing to reward to Cleburne for his act, in answer Cleburne asked Bingham to help him ship relief to Ireland.
Bingham was at first aghast at the idea, but since it would not interfere with his tenant evictions, and indeed might play well in the press, he set up a charity organisation and encouraged his fellow aristocrats to pay into it for Irish Relief. Bingham had not counted on Cleburne through who used the money and press attention to turn the Irish Relief Organisation into a true force shipping medicine and food to Ireland- some of it Irish grown food brought right off the docks and shipped straight back to Ireland for distribution. Cleburne kept his organisation strictly non-political in all dealings and thus managed to step in circles that included an audience with Queen Victoria.
The Irish Relief Organisation did not disband when the famine 'ended' in 1850 instead it managed to keep working until 1857 distributing aid, helping orphans, and encouraging landlords and farmers not to be dependent on one crop. It is not known how many lives where saved by Cleburne's medicine road to Ireland, but it is believed his action reduced the effects of the famine and the numbers emigrating mostly in the south of Ireland. Queen Victoria knighted him in 1860 for his charity work.
Cleburne would start a Doctors practice in Dublin in 1858, and work for many years before becoming a travelling Doctor visiting remote farms in his later years, before being to persuaded to run as an MP in 1878. Cleburne would champion Irish Home Rule and was instrumental in persuading PM William Gladstone to open up the drafting of the Government of Ireland Bill which led to a balanced Bill than Gladstone had planned with Irish MP's retained at Westminster, an Assembly in Dublin, guaranteed rights of religion (including Jews by not saying otherwise), a Lord Lieutenant who would be responsible to the Assembly and Westminster and other such provisions. Cleburne helped whip up support for the Bill among wavering Liberals which allowed the passage of the Government of Ireland Bill by twenty votes in the House of Commons. With help from his friend Lord Bingham the Bill was pushed through the Lords by just three votes.
After the 1890 election Gladstone made Cleburne Chief Secretary for Ireland a position he served in for the next two Liberal governments before the 1901 election saw the Conservatives returned to government. Cleburne served in the same position in Oppoistion until 1910 when he was made Lord of Cork and retired to the House of Lords when he continued to press for more federalism in the British Empire, championing Dominion Status for Canada, South Africa, India, Egypt, Newfoundland, and development in Britain's African holdings - positions he was long associated with.
Lord Cork died in Queenstown in 1922. He was buried in his home town alongside his wife. A statue of him was erected in Cork a few years after his death, naming him as the architect of Irish Relief, and of Home Rule.
King Arthur's Son - the Tudor Dynasty under King Edmund III from 1546
