Page 7 - O Mahony Society Newsletter December 2024_Neat

“At 11 years old, Eoin suffered with bronchial trouble and became a patient of an eminent physician, Dr.
George Sigerson, who had been a roommate of the O Keeffe grandfather at Queen’s in the 1850s. Sigerson,
a scientist and man of letters, made his home at 3 Clare Street, Dublin, a meeting-place for devotees of Irish
literature and music. He was founder member of the Feis Ceoil and one of the first members of the Irish Free
State Senate until his death in 1925.

Eoin was placed in his care, and was brought to Dublin for periods of three months during 1915-1916. The
doctor had a profound influence on the boy and undoubtedly sparked a real and abiding interest in the study
of family history. Years later Eoin said of Sigerson: ‘At 13 he made me read Mrs. Morgan John O Connell’s Last
Colonel of the Irish Brigade, the memoir and papers of Count O Connell, uncle of the Liberator. That book
had a profound affect on me; I have never ceased being influenced by it during the past 55 years.’

His first secondary schooling was at Christians in Cork. In 1918 he entered
Clongowes Wood College and there, an aspiring 14-year-old orator, he spoke in
debate for the first time. A distaste for practical things like mathematics marred his
efforts to secure a first-class exhibition in English and modern languages. He got a
prize in the middle grade, but not in the senior grade.
At Clongowes he became known as the ‘Pope’ O’Mahony. During a desultory
game of tennis, he had been asked by his opponent what he wanted to be in life.
Eoin muttered back ‘a priest, possibly a bishop but unlikely a pope.’ The word
‘pope’ got back across the net and remained a life-long soubriquet.”
In his university studies, Eoin initially followed in the family tradition of medicine.
Within a couple of years, he changed his focus to law and arts at Trinity College,
where he excelled in his studies and further developed his considerable skills as an
orator, winning triple gold medals in oratory and history.

Eoin was a man of many talents and interests, as evidenced by his many
accomplishments. As a young man, he served as the auditor of several
organizations, even inviting Eamon de Valera to address the College Gaelic
Society, the first time the Fianna Fail leader “publicly set foot inside Trinity.” Before
being called to the bar in November 1930, he co-founded and edited a short-
lived magazine, College Pen.
As a barrister, he practiced on the Munster Circuit, and was appointed State counsel for Cork City and
County before being appointed State prosecutor from 1936-1947. He was made a Knight of the Sovereign
Military Order of Malta in 1934, two years after his father was conferred with the same honor. In the early years
of the 30s, he entered the political arena, serving as a Fianna Fail
member in multiple positions in Cork City and County, but broke with
the party over the internment of Irish republicans at the outbreak of
World War II in 1939.
Twice seeking a seat in the Dail, he narrowly lost election to
the legislature. Per Charles Lysaght’s excerpted article originally
published in History Ireland (2004), Eoin made an unsuccessful bid to
be nominated as a candidate for the Presidency of Ireland in 1966.
(In the 1980 Journal, P. T. O’Mahony refers to two unsuccessful runs
for the Presidency of Ireland, but without specificity.)

As his cousin wrote, Eoin’s experience in the political scene was
disenchanting. It was written that Eoin was “a colourful bachelor with
an itinerant lifestyle, who harnessed an encyclopaedic knowledge
of people and their ancestry…[he] devoted much of his energy to
the commemoration of those from different Irish traditions who did
not deserve to be forgotten.”
What is clear from multiple sources is that before he was fifty Eoin
had grown a full white beard, as Lysaght writes, making him seem more
“venerable.” Although unable to secure a position in a (proposed) genealogy commission, his overwhelming
interests in genealogy and commemoration ultimately led him to another facet in his career: broadcasting.

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