Dr. Richard Faussett

Dr. Richard Faussett

                                                               

Knox Street and Ardnaree, Ballina

In Memoriam: “A great man has fallen in Ireland”

(By William Kearney, Ballina,

and additional research by P. J. Clarke, Ballina)

        

  Buried in St. Michael's Church graveyard, Ardnaree, Ballina.

“IF the virtues which adorn life be the truest characteristics of greatness, after reaching the medium point between the octogenarian and centenary stages of life, a truly great and good man has departed in the town of Ballina in the year of 1864. Richard Faussett Esq., M.D., died at his residence, in this town, on a Sunday morning last, in the full enjoyment of his mental faculties – the noble intellect, like a pillar of Palmyra, having retained its pristine grandeur after the long lapse of years which rolled onward since its first light dawned in the past.

  “On glancing over the great events of the long period of years which mark the Doctor’s span of life, the greatest epochs of history are therein engrained on the ineffaceable tablet of time. Born when the British colonies of America were heaving in the first throes of Washington, Franklin, Lafayette and Koeiusco, to shine like stars of the first magnitude, his soul wafted into spirit land while the same country lay plunged in the bloodiest civil war recorded in the annals of the world. He was a student in the Edinburgh University when the Bastille of Paris was razed to the ground. When Napoleon first crossed over the passes of Mount St. Gothard, he was finishing his medical studies; and when the Duke of Wellington won his first spurs at the battle of Assaye he was a practising physician in Ballina.

  “What have been the changes that have passed over his native land within the Doctor’s own memory? He saw his father mount his steed and pass on to the Volunteer review. He heard the jubilant songs of praise for the illustrious Irishmen who wrung the political independence of the country from a reluctant minister of the crown. He saw the Union carried, and lived to witness the decadence it brought down on the trade and manufactures of his country. He saw the population of Ireland double during the first half of his mortal career, and witnessed, in his closing years, its progressive decline, until it reached what it was in 1782. He saw the rise and fall of O’Connell’s great political organisation to repeal the Union; and he witnessed all the horrors of the famine!

  “Doctor Faussett was born in the family mansion, situate in that beautiful Glen, in Tyrawly, which opens into the wide Atlantic. His family were respectable, and destined his early in life for that noble profession which has the names of Harvey and Joyner among its great men; and the solemn obligations which it owes society, were never placed in more trustworthy hands than those of the Doctor. Amongst the singular formation of marine fossils down in the Glen, is a cave which was the parish school houses in the penal times. The doctor’s family were tolerant to the Catholic peasantry, banned by law from the exercise of their faith or the education of their children, and the cave was never without being full. It was in this natural crypt the boy learned the first rudiments of education. At the age of twelve he came to Ballina, and entered as a classical student with a Mr. Doyle, who taught in the old chapel of Ardnaree. Here the doctor was the fellow student of the late Right Rev. Dr. O’Finan, Catholic Bishop of this diocese, both having renewed an acquaintance in after life which began, at least, more than a half century before. The doctor witnessed the material progress of Ballina, from a mere village, with about a dozen of slated houses, to its advanced state on the banks of the Moy. He could tell anecdotes which he witnessed of prominent characters in Ballina – of the munificent generosity of the Hon. Mrs. King – the flight of George Robert Fitzgerald, when pursued by a troop of dragoons and king’s messengers through this town – the knighthood of Dr. Boyde, and reminiscences of the numerous families of the neighbouring gentry.

  “While Doctor Faussett was passing through his university in Edinburgh, Gregory and Monro filled the first chairs in medicine. The fame of these two great men won for the university the first place in Europe for the study of medicine. His remembrances of college life were vivid to the last. The writer of this obituary, on reading over the life of the eminent German, Sterateur, by Jean Paul Richter, discovered that he was a contemporary student with Dr. Faussett at the university; and on asking him a few days before his last illness, if he remembered him, “Why not”, said the doctor, “we called the fair-haired German”!

  “Doctor Faussett’s professional career began in Ballina in the memorable year of 1798. That noble generosity and indomitable courage in the discharge of his profession duties, from which few of his noble calling ever shrink, marked two of his earliest professional acts in that year. One insurgent leader named M’Donnell was condemned to die by Lord Portarlington, but had escaped from the guardroom with Farrell Filan, a native of Ballina, and another leader, through the cleverness of M’Donnell’s wife and a young woman from Garden Street, Ballina, named O’Dowd.

  “M’Donnell concealed himself in a sort of hut excavated from a large ditch at the outskirts of the demesne of Ardnaree, where he was consoled by the presence of his heroic wife. The lady got into the pains of child labour, and the woman who attended her said that the presence of a physician was necessary. The bridge at both ends was guarded, and M’Donnell could not pass over. He boldly took the resolution to cross the river in the dark, and swam through a winter torrent over to Barrack Hill, Ballina. He presented himself at the Doctor’s quarters wet and weary; the “good physician” was moved with his distress. The Doctor furnished him with a dry suit of his own clothes; and having found a rickety old boat on shore, they crossed the river and during the night he bold accoucheur presented the outlaw with a son. That old boat which bore the Doctor and the outlaw across the Moy, carried a nobler freight than the skiff which bore Caesar and fortunes over the Rubicon. The Doctor did more. The Colonel of the Northamptonshire militia lived in Ardnaree cottage, and that officer had a most humane and interesting daughter, who was let into the secret of the outlaw’s distress by Doctor Faussett. The young lady crossed the fields daily with comforts to the outlaw and wife and child. After the lady’s convalescence, the young lady and the Doctor procured a free pardon for the insurgent, on condition of joining the English army, then bound for Egypt. M’Donnell and his wife and child went out with the expedition, and owing to the valour in the field was promoted to a commission. A friend of the writer met the former outlaw in 1817 in Limerick, a drawing a lieutenant’s half-pay from the crown, and the first enquiry his wife and he made was for their old benefactor – Dr. Faussett. The other noble act of Dr. Faussett’s was this:-- A young gentleman named Doyle had fought at the bloody fray in Killala and Ross, on the return of the British army after the surrender of Ballinamuck, until he was covered with wounds. He was brought into Ballina on litter, and deposited in the house of Mr. James M’Carrick in Garden Street. Doctor Faussett attended him without fee or reward until he recovered, and he afterwards was a respectable and independent man in the town of Easkey. Had it been known that the Doctor would given assistance of comfort to those unfortunates it is most likely that he would be tried for high treason.

  “Dr. Faussett rose fast in public estimation. The retirement of Sir William Boyde, who amassed a large fortune by his profession and jobbing in the public funds during the Mutiny at the Nore, left the way clear for him, and he soon became the family physician of the gentry of this neighbourhood. He was peculiarly gifted to win the confidence of the public in his profession, by his unstinted moral life, and the noble generosity he evinced in attending on the poor and penniless when stricken with mortal disease. With manly courage he upheld the dignity of his profession, and whenever its rights were attacked in his person his motto was “No surrender!”.

  “In 1818 a fearful fever raged in this district. The Doctor’s usual walk was along the banks of our river. Beside a ditch, at the turn to Downhill, a poor woman with five of her children lay in the agonies of fever. One of her children was left who supplied the sufferers with water that gushed from the limestone quarry the other side of the road. Providence raised a friend for them in the person of Dr. Faussett He was in the act of administering to them, when a magistrate of rash temper and great power and influence came up with assistants to drag them from their lair. The Doctor, opposed reason to violence, and when that failed, he told the man of wealth and power, “that the woman and her children were his patients, and that he would resist with physical force any attempt to endanger their lives”. Authority cowed before the noble courage of the fearless physician, and under the canopy of high heaven they recovered in the Doctor’s hands. The magistrate took fever that day, and in week after his remains passed by the same way to the grave. Alas! The noble and athletic frame which, on that occasion, stood erect with outstretched arm to defend the helpless, lies now in the cold grave. The great intellect stored with the discoveries of medical science for human relief, is lost for ever to the poor, over, whose interests he was a guardian spirit!

  “After thirty years of successful practice, the Doctor removed to Dublin. Absence from the bracing air of our locality and the scenes he loved so well, undermined his health, and he returned to spend his last days amongst his many friends in Ballina. His abstemious habits, for he was as rigid a vegetarian as a Brahmin, prolonged his life to a most advanced aged. We will see him no more, seeking out the wretched hovels of the poor, and bending over the bed of sickness and sorrow. We will never hear the cheering word of hope fall from his lip, as he was wont to tell the wife and children, that husband and parent, suffering in bodily agony would be restored back in health again. The writer of this obituary owes him his life to him, and another good and kind physician, Dr. Devlin, and will long remember the boon, which is the more enhanced in his estimation, because both acted a gratuitous part.

  “Doctor Faussett could never be prevailed upon to exercise his privilege of voting at an election. He looked upon the system of parliamentary representation carried on in Ireland as a mere sham. He saw that Irish members neglected their solemn duties to promote the prosperity of the country, and his pure and unsullied conscience would not suffer him to succour the cheat by will or deed. He never took any part at public meetings except where temperance, science or religion was promoted. The doctor’s profession, as it is the most noble, is likewise the most unselfish of any other. There is no profession which acts so generously in relieving the bodily miseries of mankind. Dr. Faussett practised its noblest traits and never once deviated from the high duties it imposed. He rests now in the grave, and his life never sullied by evil, passed away full of years and having the blessings of the poor. Let us hope that the good he has done may live after him, and those he has left behind will take example from the deeds he has done in his time. His life was useful, his heart was generous, his mind was pure and unselfish, and his death was happy.

    “Take him all for all,
     We ne’er shall look upon his like again”.
                                                                             W. K.
Ballina, 20th January, 1868

 Dr. Faussett in buried in St. Michael’s Church graveyard on Plunkett Row, Ardnaree, in grave 216. On his headstone is the following inscription: “In memory of Richard Faussett, M.D., who departed this life, January 17th, 1864, in the 87th year of his age. Distinguished no less by his professional talents than the simplicity of his life, he did justly loved mercy and walked humbly with his God. Beneath lie interred the remains of Anne, his beloved wife, daughter of Revd. W. Garrett, Rector of Emblaghfad, and three of his children – John, Richard and James, who died in infancy”.
 His mother, Anne, died aged 82, in 1821; his daughters -- Anne, died in 1889; Jane (75) in 1885, and Maria (60) in 1878, while in occupation of Ardnaree House. His wife, also called Anne, died in Knox Street, aged 48, in 1833.  He was still in residence in Knox Street in 1857, according to Griffiths Valuation.
 In a Ballina newspaper of the time, 1864, possibly the Tyrawly Herald, the death of Dr. Faussett is recorded as having taken place on the 17th January, 1864, in his 87th year, while the Church of Ireland records state that he died on the 20th January, 1864, in his 86th year,
 W.K. are the initials of the well-known William Kearney, Ballina, noted historian, publisher and raconteur, who lived in Arran Street.
 Dr. Faussett lived and practised in Knox Street, Ballina, which house, in later years, was the home and practice of Dr. Keane.
 The well that the water gushed from that supplied the woman and her children is still active. It is on the turn for Downhill and is accessed by means of steps down to the water’s edge.
 The Dr. Devlin mentioned was a Dr. Charles Devlin who had a practice in King Street.  There was also another Dr. Devlin, possibly a son, who was known as Dr. Mark Henry, who had an apothecary in Knox Street. He was also the medical attendant in the Workhouse.
 Mutiny at the Nore: Discontent among sailors over unequal pay, poor rations, better leave, and removal of cruel or unpopular officers at the Royal Naval anchorage in the Thames Estuary, overflowed in riotous mutiny, led by a former officer, Richard Parker, in May, 1797. (P.J.C.)