Author: Hudson, Edward
Biography:
HUDSON, Edward (1772-1833: DIB)
He was born in Co. Wexford to Jane (de Tracy) and her husband Capt. Henry Edward Hudson. Orphaned at an early age, he lived with a cousin (or uncle), Edward Hudson (c. 1742-1821) on Grafton Street, Dublin. The older Edward Hudson was a dentist and bursar to the “Monks of the Screw,” a patriot political society. (His country house, "The Hermitage" in Rathfarnham, later housed Patrick Pearse's St Enda's School.) The younger Edward Hudson trained as a dentist, was keenly interested in Irish traditional music, and was a friend of Thomas Moore (q.v). That he held radical political beliefs is evident from the dedication to his book: it includes the names of Irish politicians but gives pride of place to George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. A member of the United Irishmen, he was one of a group arrested on 12 Mar. 1798 and imprisoned in Kilmainham jail on charges of plotting insurrection. Moore is said to have visited him there and was inspired to write his “The Origin of the Harp” on seeing a charcoal drawing of Hudson’s. (The drawing was likely of the same image which serves as frontispiece to Ode with a caption from Hudson’s poem.) In 1799 Hudson was transferred to a prison in Fort George, Scotland. On his release he went to Philadelphia where in Nov. 1802 he set up a dental surgery. In Apr. 1804 he married Mary Bridget (“Biddy”) Byrne, daughter of bookseller Patrick Byrne who was also a United Irishman in exile. He took Hudson into his business, trading as Byrne and Hudson. This was short-lived: in Nov. the men fell out when Byrne publicly accused his son-in-law of unauthorised financial dealings. Hudson relocated to North Fifth Street in Philadelphia and resumed working as a dentist. His wife died on 15 Mar. 1807. In 1809 Hudson purchased a brewery; when it failed to make a profit, he declared bankruptcy in July 1812. On 4 June 1811 he had married Maria Elizabeth Bicker but she died, aged twenty, “of an abscess on the lung” on 14 Aug. 1812. He married for a third time on 4 Sept. 1813; he and his wife, Marie Mackie, had eight children (DIB). Hudson flourished in his dental practice and obituaries credit him with innovations in preventative and reconstructive dentistry. The University of Pennsylvania awarded him an honorary DM in July 1826 and he was a member of the Association of Friends of Ireland from 1828. He died at Philadelphia on 3 Jan. 1833. (DIB 22 Mar. 2021; Philadelphia Gazette 8 Nov. 1802; Philadelphia Repository 7 Apr. 1804; Aurora 7 Nov. 1804; American Citizen 16 Mar. 1807; Democratic Press 29 July 1812; National Gazette 27 July 1826, 12 Jan. 1833; Una Hunt, Sources and Style in Moore’s Irish Melodies [2017]; M. Pollard, A Dictionary of Members of the Dublin Book Trade 1500-1800 [2000]; To Thomas Jefferson from William Adamson, 30 Jan. 1803 Founders Online)