Gerald Fitzgibbon (author)

Gerald Fitzgibbon (1 January 1793 – 1882), was an Irish lawyer and author. He founded a notable Irish legal dynasty: his son and grandson, both also named Gerald FitzGibbon, were judges of great eminence.

Fitzgibbon, the fourth son of Gerald Fitzgibbon, an Irish tenant farmer, and his wife, a Miss Wyndham, was born at Glin, County Limerick. After receiving such education as was to be had at home and in the vicinity of his father's farm, he obtained employment as a clerk in a mercantile house in Dublin in 1814. His leisure hours he devoted to the study of the classics, and in 1817 entered Trinity College, Dublin where he graduated B.A. in 1825, and proceeded M.A. in 1832, having in 1830 been called to the Irish Bar. During his college course and preparation for the bar he had maintained himself by teaching.

In his choice of the law as a profession he was guided by the advice of his tutor, Dr Stephen Sandes, afterwards Bishop of Cashel, and by the future High Court judge Charles Burton. His rise at the Irish Bar was rapid, his mercantile experience standing him in good stead, and in 1841 he became Queen's Counsel.

In 1844 he unsuccessfully defended Sir John Grey, one of the traversers in the celebrated state prosecution of that year, by which Daniel O'Connell's influence with the Irish masses was destroyed. In the course of the trial Fitzgibbon used language concerning Sir Thomas Cusack-Smith, the Irish Attorney-General, which was construed by the latter as an imputation of dishonourable motives, and was so keenly resented by him that he sent Fitzgibbon a challenge to a duel. Fitzgibbon returned the challenge, and on the Attorney-General declining to take it back, drew the attention of the court to the occurrence. Thereupon the Lord Chief Justice, Edward Pennefather, suspended the proceedings, in order to afford the parties time for reflection, observing that "the Attorney-General is the last man in his profession who ought to have allowed himself to be betrayed into such an expression of feeling as has been stated to have taken place." The Attorney-General thereupon expressed his willingness to withdraw the note, in the hope that Fitzgibbon would withdraw the words which had elicited it, and Fitzgibbon disclaiming any intention to impute conduct unworthy of a gentleman to the Attorney-General, the matter dropped, and the trial proceeded

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