INTRODUCTION
IDENTITY STATEMENT
Reference:
IE 627/PR81/1
Title:
Diarmaid L. Fawsitt Archive, Section 1: Public Life
Level of description: sub-fonds Date: 1904-1966 Extent: 19 boxes
CONTEXT CREATOR Fawsitt, Diarmaid (Jeremiah / JL) | 1884-1967 | nationalist, civil servant, judge BIOGRAPHICAL/ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY FAWSITT, DIARMAID (Jeremiah) (1884–1967), nationalist, civil servant, and judge, was born Jeremiah Fawsitt 7 May 1884 at Ballymacthomas, in the Blarney Street area of Cork City, second son of Boyle Fawsitt, labourer/hide and skin valuer of Ballymacthomas, and Hannah Fawsitt (née Lucey). Following his mother’s death from typhoid fever in 1886, his father remarried in 1888 and the couple emigrated to Boston, Mass., U.S.A. where Boyle established a mercantile business. Jeremiah and brother Edward were raised by their maternal grandmother Julia Lucey (nee Twomey) in Cork and educated at the CBS, Blarney Street, and at the North Monastery. Jeremiah was attracted to economics, industrial development and nationalism in early adulthood, and in his late teens, briefly emigrated to Melbourne, Australia. Motivated by the Cork International Exhibition of 1903, he became a founder member in that year of the Cork Industrial Development Association and was its secretary (1911– 19), helping to bring the Ford motor plant to the city in 1917. An active member of the Gaelic League, he was also a founder of Ring College, Co. Waterford. Although he became known as Diarmaid rather than Jeremiah, the initials J. L. remained with him in later years. Already a member of Sinn Féin, Fawsitt enrolled in the Irish Volunteers at that movement’s inauguration (25 November 1913) in the Rotunda Rink, Dublin. He
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