Maurice Healy (writer)

Maurice F. Healy, MC (1887–1943) was an Irish lawyer and author, who is best remembered for his legal memoir The Old Munster Circuit.

He was born in Cork, son of the well-known solicitor Maurice Healy and nephew of Timothy Michael Healy, the first Governor-General of the Irish Free State. His mother was a sister of A.M. Sullivan, the last barrister to have the title Serjeant, and who was noted for his unsuccessful defence of Roger Casement; Timothy Sullivan, the second Chief Justice of Ireland, was a cousin of Maurice, as was Kevin O'Higgins, a leading figure in the early Irish Free State Government.

Maurice was educated at Clongowes Wood College and University College Dublin. He was called to Irish Bar in 1910, and to the English Bar in 1914 and saw action in the First World War on the Western Front and at Gallipoli. He received the MC in 1919 after serving in France and also in Germany during the immediate post-war occupation.

Maurice at one point stood for Parliament as candidate for West Waterford. After the Irish War of Independence, while several of his close relatives became prominent political figures in the Free State, he chose to practice at the English Bar. While he would probably have been happy enough to see Ireland gain Home Rule by peaceful means, he had a horror of revolutionary violence (although he also denounced the crimes committed by the Black and Tans) and he seems to have found life in the new State uncongenial. He was made King's Counsel in 1931. He became Recorder of Coventry in 1941; it was suggested this might be the prelude to a High Court judgeship, but any such hope was cut short by his premature death.

...
Wikipedia