Author: Downes, George
Biography:
DOWNES, George (1790-1846: DIB)
He was born in South King Street, Dublin. His father, John Downes, was probably a shop-keeper; his mother’s name is not known. He apprenticed as a draper’s assistant but was befriended by one of the Shackleton family (see Abraham Shackleton and Mary Leadbeater, qq.v.) who sponsored his education at Trinity College Dublin where he became a scholar in 1812 and earned his BA (1814) and MA (1823). He entered Trinity in the same year as Charles Wolfe (q.v.); they were close friends and Downes later attested to Wolfe’s authorship of “The Burial of Sir John Moore.” In 1827 he became principal at Fallowlee Seminary near Londonderry. A year later the school became known as the North-East of Ireland Society’s Literary and Agricultural Seminary but it must have been short-lived: in 1832 Downes was offering board and tuition at his home in Ballitore, Co. Kildare. The title page of his 1832 Letters from Continental Countries describes him as the Foreign Honorary Secretary of the Minerological Society of Jena; he was also a corresponding member of the Danish Society of Northern Antiquaries. In 1838 he became a member of the Royal Irish Academy which published his essay on the Norse geography of ancient Ireland. He died “of a lingering illness” at Dalkey, County Dublin, on 23 Aug. 1846 and was buried at Ballitore. No records of a marriage or children have been found and his library and other effects were auctioned after his death. Other publications include A Guide to the Lakes of Killarney (1824) and Guide Through Switzerland and Savoy (1830). (DIB 2 Feb. 2022; Catalogue of Graduates; Belfast Commercial Chronicle 7 July 1827, 26 Apr. 1828; Saunders’s Newsletter 17 Apr. 1843, 8 Dec. 1846; Newry Telegraph 22 Apr. 1841; Dublin Evening Packet 27 Aug. 1846) SR