David Jameson

Cork University Press, 2023. 280 pages.

ISBN: 9781782055600

In 1941 Mary Barnes, a Catholic, married Ernest Tilson, a Protestant. As was required under the Irish interpretation of Ne Temere, Tilson promised to bring up the children as Catholic. In 1950, the marriage got into difficulties. Tilson left the family home and took three of his children to a Protestant children’s home, claiming that he had been coerced in agreeing to raise them as Catholics. There followed an extended legal battle which went up to the High Court and thence to the Supreme Court, which delivered its judgement in favour of Mary Tilson.

These are the bare facts of a case which not only gripped the Irish nation, but also encapsulated the deep religious divisions in southern Ireland between Catholic and Protestant, and aroused fierce passions in the popular press. It is now almost three quarters a century since the affair hit the headlines, and, as with all such causes célèbres, the claims and counter-claims can now be explored more dispassionately as we can gain access to the sources, oral and written, relating to the case. This is the task which David Jameson has tackled, and tackled with skill and, as befits the son of a Presbyterian father and a Catholic mother, with cool judgement. The result is an impressive book, which brings the debate about the case to a new level.

He is particularly good on the legal aspects, helped here by Gerald Hogan’s research on the case, seeking to explode the myths that judgements incorporated Ne Temere into Irish law, or were based on the recognition in Article 44 of the Constitution of the special position of the Catholic Church. While the courts found in favour of the mother, the reasoning behind the two judgements was markedly different, involving important issues in Irish law relating to the position of the Catholic Church, the legacy of the common law in independent Ireland, and the interpretation of contract law and the parental responsibility for raising children. What is interesting, though, is the extent to which the two verdicts were shaped by the strongly Catholic ethos of Irish society at the time. Of course, as any barrister will tell you, the law’s reliance upon logical argument and reasoned judgement is sometimes helped, sometimes hindered by the attitudes of the judge making the decision. In mid-century Ireland the Catholic social and legal ethos was strong, and Jameson skilfully delineates the extent to which the High and Supreme Court judges were shaped by their Catholicism and, in the case of one of the judges, Gavan Duffy, was deeply committed to enshrining Catholic values in Irish law.

Particularly interesting is the light Jameson throws on the involvement of that Protestant bête noir, Archbishop John Charles McQuaid. Given his propensity to intervene in issues of religious importance, it is hard to believe that he was not intimately involved in the Tilson Case which was so central to Catholic social and religious teaching. But the files in Drumcondra are strangely empty. Clearly some weeding has taken place. But a stray document discovered by chance does suggest that McQuaid was heavily involved behind the scenes, in this case lobbying the Attorney General, Charles Casey (who, strangely, appeared for Mary Tilson in the Supreme court case), and also, in his own words, “consulting for long with two members of the judiciary” (134).

The Tilson case fits naturally with the Fethard-on-Sea boycott and the furore around the (non-)appointment of the Sligo Librarian Letitia Dunbar-Harrison as headline examples of the disadvantages and discrimination faced by southern Irish Protestants, all grist to the mill of northern unionist fears about the ‘priest-ridden’ southern state. But the recent work of Ian d’Alton and Ida Milne has questioned whether these cases were typical of the southern Protestant experience, or exceptions. Jameson is excellent in exploring the particular religious mores of Catholic Ireland, and the way in which both sides of the religious divide raised considerable sums of money in order to take the case through the courts. What the book perhaps lacks is a rounded assessment of whether this case was typical or exceptional.

What Jameson is good at is telling the human story behind the headlines. Tilson’s drinking, his oppressive mother-in-law, their difficult living conditions and, above all, what happened once the public furore calmed down. Here he did the blindingly obvious thing which no historian had done before, searched the telephone book for Tilsons and found two of the surviving children, who were able to provide not just the “inside story” but also the “after story”, which provides a poignant, maybe even happy ending to a traumatic story, as Ernest and Mary reunited and lived out their lives together in London.