RTÉ Archives uncover Examiner founder’s memories of Parnell

A 1950 interview with the founding editor of the Westmeath Examiner, John P. Hayden, has been published online by RTÉ Archives as part of an ongoing digitisation of acetate disc collection.

The interview with Hayden (pictured above), who founded the Examiner at the age of 19 in 1882 and remained at the helm of the paper until shortly before his death in 1954, features the Roscommon native’s memories of the Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell.

Hayden was an active supporter of the Land War during the early 1880s, and recalled first encountering Parnell at a meeting in Co. Roscommon in 1878, when Hayden was just 15.

“He made a wonderful impression on me as a clear speaker with a voice far reaching,” Hayden stated in a Radio Éireann feature on Parnell, ‘Parnell and the Parnellites’, in September 1950.

Hayden, who went on to serve as an MP for South Roscommon in the British House of Commons from 1897 to 1918, supported Parnell when the Irish nationalist movement split over Parnell’s leadership in 1890.

While Parnell fell from grace amid much acrimony, Hayden said that his achievements were extensive given the system under which Ireland was ruled in his day.

The digitisation of RTÉ Archives’ acetate disc collection is supported by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) Archiving Scheme.