Justice Thomas Teevan: Attorney General from 1953 to 1954
Jonathan Smyth's latest Times Past column looks at Thomas Teevan who was Attorney General of Ireland from 1953 to 1954.
In the 1900s, Dr Francis James Teevan (1865-1936) and his family lived at Woodville House, Bawnboy, Co Cavan. Francis Teevan’s wife, Annie Teresa Teevan nee O’Brien, was from Co Tyrone and their marriage took place around 1896. Originally from Willowfield, Ballinamore, Teevan was a qualified surgeon working as a medical doctor. His father was a country doctor in Ballinamore in the 19th century.
Francis and Annie Teevan had eight children, seven of whom lived to adulthood and those listed in the 1901 and 1911 census are Ellen, Thomas, Mary Ellen, Francis Aiden, James, Henry Patrick and Nora Johanna. Ellen Pollak (nee Teevan) later became a doctor and her brother James became a bank manager. The Teevan’s second son Thomas was born in Bawnboy on November 29, 1902, and it was he who ventured forth to enjoy a successful legal career. The Rev Dominic McBreen, P.P. of Ballinamore, and Owen McBreen of Kilnacreeny, Co Leitrim, were uncles of Thomas. In the mid-1900s, young Teevan was sent to Currin national school, Bawnboy.
Move to Dundalk
However, the doctor and his family decided on a move to Dundalk, County Louth, where Thomas attended the local Christian Brothers School and afterwards entered UCD where he qualified as a solicitor in 1925; was called to the bar in 1936; and took silk in 1946, on his appointment to senior counsel.
During his early days as a solicitor, Teevan opened a law practice in Dundalk, and at Lower Ormond Quay, Dublin; in the 1930s he relocated from Lower Ormond Quay to Eustace Street. The Dundalk produced Tempest’s Annual from 1920, listed his father, Dr F.J. Teevan, as living at Baronstown, Dundalk, Co Louth.
Following a successful career as a barrister, Thomas was appointed the Attorney General of Ireland under Eamon De Valera’s government, a position he held from July 11, 1953 to January 30, 1954, and afterwards served as a High Court Judge from 1954 to 1971. Thomas Teevan was a member of the Fianna Fáil party and stood unsuccessfully for election as a candidate for the Dublin South-West constituency in 1948.
Literary daggers
The first case handled by Thomas Teevan as a High Court Judge, had what you might call a literary touch to it, in what was to be an unsuccessful libel action taken by the Monaghan poet Patrick Kavanagh against the Leader Magazine. The case created great curiosity among the general public who queued long hours for a seat in the courtroom.
The Law Society Gazette reported on the offending piece in the Leader magazine, which consisted of a caricature of Kavanagh in McDaid’s ‘hunkering over a bar stool’ in the presence of an audience of younger literary folk from whom he cutely sponged drinks, coughed over and gambled with; not only did they insult him, but the magazine suggested that his masterpiece ‘The Great Hunger’ had actually been banned in Ireland. Teevan directed that there was no real evidence to suggest that the commentary by the Leader bore any innuendo towards Kavanagh. A new trial was set to take place, but it did not go ahead due to a shortage of funds.
In 1931, Thomas married Gertrude McCaul from Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan. They had two sons - Diarmaid, who became a solicitor and Richard (M.R.C.V.S.), a veterinary surgeon. The Teevan family home, named Kildonan, was situated at 3 Eglington Road, Donnybrook, Dublin City; the house and its contents was later put up for sale by the family in 2011. At the time, the auctioneer Damian Matthews, noted in the Irish Times, that the house was filled with ‘a gathering of antiques one would expect a family of such standing to have and this auction is most definitely worth viewing as it opens a window onto Dublin of the 1950s.’
Amongst the items on offer to a lucky bidder, were an Irish Regency mahogany serving table, 6ft wide (€2,500-€3,500); French 19th century ormolu mounted tulipwood bureau-de-dame, on cabriole legs headed by scallop-shell clasps running to paw sabots, made in Paris circa 1880 and attributed to Maison Mille (€2,000-€3,000); a William IV mahogany dining room table (€2,000-€3,000); and a brass-bound military campaign chest- of-drawers (€700-€1,200).
Thomas Teevan’s well-known nephew is Kevin Myers, the English born Irish journalist and writer, whose fearless pen often has opened up many an interesting debate. In an entry for An Irishman’s Diary on March 9, 2001 in The Irish Times, Myers called his uncle, ‘a gentleman, scholarly and kind’. In another column, Myers said of Thomas’s son Richard… ‘But Richard the city man (born in Dublin) in time was turned into a true countryman, a hearty vet in his trench coat amid the bucketing rain, or with his arm immersed in a cow, or attentively feeling a horse’s withers.’
In 1971, Thomas Teevan retired from the High Court for health reasons. Five years later, he died in St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, on February 19, 1976, having been ill for some time: he was 73 years old. Justice Teevan was laid to rest in Deans Grange Cemetery, Dublin.
The Leitrim Observer’s obituary for Thomas A. Teevan, stated his death had removed ‘a figure of a well-known family in West Cavan and South Leitrim’. His wife, Mrs Gertrude Teevan died on March 4, 2001. She was 97 years old.
For more on Thomas Teevan S.C., see ‘Thomas Teevan’ by Joseph McNabb, in the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
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