The parallel lives of Joseph Allen Galbraith (1818—90) and Samuel Haughton (1821-97): religion, friendship, scholarship and politics in Victorian Ireland

Abstract

Joseph Allen Galbraith and Samuel Haughton were both Junior Fellows at Trinity College Dublin, who in the 1840s became popular lecturers of mathematics-based subjects as well as successful textbook authors. In the 1880s they were still working together as Senior Fellows at Council meetings in the College. For more than 20 years they shared undergraduate teaching while pursuing distinct individual interests. Galbraith was absorbed in the management of church property at the time of the church's disestablishment, in the politics of the Irish Home Rule Party and, as bursar, in the modernisation of Trinity College's accountancy methods. Haughton, while not neglecting his chair of Geology, was for many years secretary to the Council of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland, and registrar of the Medical School of the University of Dublin. This was during a time of great reforms in government and expanding budgetary allocations to health services. A close friendship joined the two scholars throughout their life, sealed by the marriage of one of Galbraith's daughters to one of Haughton's sons. Both men were profoundly religious without sentimentality. Their mutual support helped them to pursue lives of exacting service to their country, even if their cause made them unpopular among narrow-minded but influential members of their peers.