Son of William M. Keogh (died 1865) and Mary Anne Ffrench, born on the 7th of December 1817 in St Mary's Street, Galway
Married Kate Rowney in 1841 (daughter of Thomas Rowney, surgeon)
Children
Son
Daughter, born c.1845, died 1875 aged 25
?Mary Josephine, who married Justice James Murphy (obit. 1901)
Died on the 30th of September 1878 in Bingen-on-Rhine in Bonn, buried Bonn 3
Lawyer and MP - became Solicitor General for Ireland.
1 Not believed to be related to John Keogh.
2 Law Times 1878
3 Biography from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Keogh, William Nicholas
(1817–1878), judge, belonged to a Roman
Catholic family formerly settled at Keoghville, co. Roscommon. He
was born at Galway on 7 December 1817. His father, William M. Keogh
(d. 1865), was a solicitor and sometime clerk of the crown
for the county of Kilkenny; his mother was Mary, daughter of Austin
Ffrench of Rahoon, co. Galway. He was educated at the Revd Dr
Huddard's school in Mountjoy Square, Dublin, and in 1832 entered
Trinity College, Dublin, where he obtained honours in science in his
first and second years. He left in his third year without having
taken a degree. While at Trinity he was a frequent speaker in the
debates of the Historical Society, and was awarded the first prize
for oratory at the age of nineteen. In 1835 he was admitted a
student of the King's Inns, Dublin, and in 1837 of Lincoln's Inn. In
1840 he was called to the Irish bar, and joined the Connaught
circuit, where his family connections lay. In the same year he
published, with Michael J. Barry, A Treatise on
the Practice of the High Court of Chancery in Ireland, but he
never obtained any considerable practice in that court. His natural
gifts were those of an advocate rather than of a lawyer; a powerful
voice, an impressive face, and an impassioned delivery were combined
with a ready flow of vigorous and ornate language.
Keogh soon acquired a fair practice, principally on circuit, where,
as a junior, he held leading briefs in the most important cases, and
his powers of advocacy were considered so formidable that special
counsel were sometimes brought down to oppose him. In 1841 he
married Kate, daughter of Thomas Roney, surgeon; they had a son and
a daughter. At the general election of 1847 he was returned for
Athlone as an independent Conservative, the only Roman Catholic
Conservative elected to that parliament. After a time he was
considered a Peelite. In 1849 he was made a QC. In 1851 he took an
active and prominent part in the obstructive parliamentary campaign
of the Irish brigade against the Ecclesiastical
Titles Bill. This greatly increased his reputation and
popularity in Ireland. He was the principal speaker at a mass
meeting of Roman Catholics held in Dublin in August 1851 to protest
against the measure, and was one of the founders of the Catholic
Defence Association established in consequence of it. In the same
month, together with the other members of the Irish brigade, he made
common cause with the tenant right movement led by Charles Gavan
Duffy, and in the session of 1852 seconded in the House of Commons
the Tenant Right Bill of William Sharman
Crawford. At the general election of 1852 he was again returned for
Athlone, and he was subsequently among those MPs who assembled in
Dublin and committed themselves to remain independent of, and in
opposition to, any and every government that did not concede to
their policy demands on land and religion. In December 1852 Keogh
and the bulk of the Irish party voted in the majority which
overturned Lord Derby's ministry. In the new ministry of Lord
Aberdeen (December 1852) Keogh accepted office as solicitor-general
for Ireland, while John Sadleir MP for Carlow, became a junior
Treasury minister. The two men's names were thenceforth linked in
obloquy by nationalist propagandists who accused them of betraying,
through personal ambition, a policy and a party to which they were
solemnly pledged. Subsequently their defection came to be depicted
as the cause of a generation of Irish youth rejecting constitutional
politics and embracing Fenianism. At the time Keogh was bitterly
assailed by Gavan Duffy in The Nation
and by Frederick Lucas in The Tablet,
and his re-election for Athlone was opposed. His appointment was
also distasteful to the Conservatives, and was attacked by Lord
Westmeath in the House of Lords. At Athlone he was supported by the
Catholic bishop (Dr Browne) and clergy, and was re-elected by a
large majority. In January 1855 the Aberdeen ministry resigned and
in Palmerston's ministry Keogh was appointed attorney-general for
Ireland and was sworn of the Irish privy council. He was re-elected
at Athlone without opposition. In April 1856, on the death of Mr
Justice Torrens, he was appointed a judge of the court of common
pleas in Ireland. Among the remarkable cases in which he was counsel
while at the bar were Birch v. Somerville (December 1851), an
action by the proprietor of The World
newspaper against the Irish chief secretary on an alleged agreement
to pay him for supporting law and order in his paper; Handcock v.
Delacour, in the court of chancery (February 1855), a case
involving the title to a large estate in Galway, in which Keogh's
reply for the plaintiff was so touching and eloquent as to draw
tears from the chancellor; and R. v. Petcherine (December
1855), the trial of a Redemptorist monk on a charge of profanely and
contemptuously burning a copy of the Authorized Version of the
Bible; Keogh conducted the prosecution as
attorney-general.
On the bench Keogh soon acquired the reputation of a judge of
ability and discernment. Though not a profound lawyer, he never
failed to appreciate a legal argument, and his judgments were clear
and to the point. He excelled in the trial of nisi prius
cases; his perception was quick, he grasped the facts of the case
rapidly, and presented them to the jury with clearness and
precision. In 1865 he was appointed, with Mr Justice Fitzgerald, to
the special commission for the trial of the Fenian prisoners at
Dublin and Cork, and before them Luby, O'Leary, O'Donovan Rossa, and
the other principal conspirators were tried. Luby, in his speech
after conviction, acknowledged the fairness of Keogh's summing-up to
the jury. In 1867 the University of Dublin conferred upon him the
honorary degree of LLD. In 1872 the celebrated Galway county
election petition was tried before him. The candidates at the
election were Captain J. P. Nolan (home-ruler) and Captain Le Poer
Trench (Conservative); the former was returned by a large majority.
His return was petitioned against mainly on the ground of undue
influence exercised on his behalf by the Roman Catholic clergy. The
trial lasted from 1 April to 27 May, and resulted in Captain Nolan
being unseated, and three Roman Catholic bishops and thirty-one
priests were reported to the house as guilty of undue influence and
intimidation. That Captain Nolan was properly unseated on the
evidence could hardly be contested, but in the course of his
judgment Keogh commented on the action of the Roman Catholic bishops
and priests in terms of unusual severity. His remarks were deeply
resented, and aroused much popular feeling. Meetings were held at
which he was denounced, he was burnt in effigy in numerous places,
and the excitement became so great that special precautions had to
be taken by the government for his protection. In the House of
Commons Isaac Butt, the home-rule leader, brought forward a motion
impugning the conduct of the judge; it was defeated by a large
majority, only twenty-three voting in its favour (9 August 1872).
For the remainder of his life Keogh was the subject of constant
attack by the Home Rule Party. In 1878 his health began to fail, and
he died at Bingen-on-the-Rhine on 30 September that year, some weeks
after suffering a wound which may have been self-inflicted. He was
buried on 3 October in the Catholic cemetery at Bonn.
During the greater part of his tenure of office, Keogh had been one
of the most conspicuous figures on the Irish bench. Genial and
good-natured, he was popular in private life, where his ready wit
and conversational powers made him an agreeable companion; he
possessed an unusually retentive memory, and his fund of anecdotes
was varied and entertaining. Although his attitudes had come to be
strongly anti-clerical, Keogh's closest friend in the last decade of
his life was James Healy, parish priest of Little Bray, co. Dublin,
and a celebrated wit, and Keogh is believed to have received the
last rites devoutly on his deathbed.
J. D. FitzGerald, rev. R. V. Comerford
3 Correction of record - Brian Keogh, Esq., writes (The Irish Times, 5 Aug. 2002): ‘[...] In 1878, Keogh was a sick man. That autumn he travelled to London to consult a specialist, who informed him that his liver was hard, his heart was enlarged, and he was in a stressful state, and advised him to take a holiday cure on the continent of Europe. Judge Keogh took the consultant’s advice and went to Germany, where he had friends. He died there on September 30th, 1878 at 17.00 hours. Here in Ireland, the newspaper owners, who were against Judge Keogh, reported that he had committed suicide by cutting his throat at Bingen on the Rhine. This piece of political history surrounding the place and cause of Keogh’s death has been perpetuated until this day. Having teased out the facts, the writer has discovered that the judge actually died receiving the last rites at Bonn, where he is buried. No mention of suicide. Judge Keogh and his wife purchased a vault at Glasnevin when their daughter died in 1871, aged 25 years, and intended that they would be laid to rest there in turn - indeed Keogh made it known in his will that he wanted to be interred in the vault. But because of the hatred that some in Ireland stored for Keogh, his family feared that if his remains were returned to Ireland his coffin would be tipped into the Liffey! Judge Keogh’s widow, with his family’s agreement, purchased a plot at Bonn and a landmark monument is placed at his resting place. It is unusual for Bonn because it is of a Celtic design and bears the inscription: “To the Honourable William Keogh. His friends and all who admire him.” I have received an official death certificate from Bonn verifying the fact that he died there.