{"id":1168,"date":"2013-11-01T10:09:58","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T10:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/54.229.91.100\/libraryandarts\/library\/ehistory\/?p=1168"},"modified":"2024-06-24T12:39:26","modified_gmt":"2024-06-24T11:39:26","slug":"dan-donnelly-v-george-cooper-follow-up-investigations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/dan-donnelly-v-george-cooper-follow-up-investigations\/","title":{"rendered":"DAN DONNELLY v GEORGE COOPER. FOLLOW UP INVESTIGATIONS"},"content":{"rendered":"

DAN DONNELLY v GEORGE COOPER \u2013 13th December 1815 \u2013 OR NOT?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Follow Up Investigations<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By Chris Holzgr\u00e4we<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In my recent article, published on e-history on 25 October 2013, I reported on my research into the actual date on which the famous fight between Dan Donnelly and George Cooper took place on the Curragh in 1815.
\nAs stated, prior to my research, all previously referenced sources specified that the date of the fight was the 13th December 1815. As I was able to show through my discovery of previously overlooked newspaper articles from the Freeman\u2019s Journal<\/em> of the time, the fight actually took place one whole month earlier, on 13th November 1815.
\nIn light of my findings, I proposed that the date in December had been \u201chanded down\u201d over the years, and had come from an original incorrect source. This source, I suggested, could well have come from the publications of Pierce Egan entitled \u201cBoxiana; or, Sketches of Modern Pugilism\u201d, which date from the first quarter of the 19th century.
\nIn all, Egan published four volumes of his collected articles on the sport of boxing. I have found in volume two, published in 1824 and sub-titled \u201cFrom the Championship of Cribb to the Present Time\u201d, the following lines, which appear in his section concerning \u201cDan Donnelly, The Champion of Ireland\u201d starting on page 388 \u2013 \u201cOn Monday, the 13th December, 1815, they met in the ring, on the Curragh of Kildare, at a few minutes after ten o\u2019clock in the morning.\u201d
\nAs if to point to the incorrect nature of this statement from Egan, and to reinforce the accuracy of the Freeman\u2019s Journal<\/em> reports which I had discovered, the 13th of December 1815 did not fall on a Monday, as he writes, it was a Wednesday. However, the 13th of November 1815 indeed fell on a Monday.
\nAs the \u201cBoxiana\u201d volumes are collections of Egan\u2019s previous writings, I am assuming that the section in volume two, about Donnelly and his fights, formed the basis of one of these earlier articles. Whether he wrote this particular article using accounts of Donnelly\u2019s fights written by others, or he was actually present at the events, which seems unlikely, is at present unknown, but it must be assumed that the incorrect date of 13th December stems from this article.
\nEgan\u2019s dedication at the start of volume two is dated April 5th 1818. Although the title page gives a printing date of 1824, it would appear the articles were written well before 1824, as Egan refers to \u201cthe present day\u201d as 1818, and in his section on Dan Donnelly he makes no reference to Donnelly\u2019s fight against Oliver which took place in July 1819.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Follow up investigations <\/strong>by Chris Holzgr\u00e4we confirm that the actual date for the Donnelly-Cooper fight was 13 November 1815<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Follow up investigations <\/strong>by Chris Holzgräwe confirm that the actual date for the Donnelly-Cooper fight was 13 November 1815<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kildare Local Studies","author_link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/author\/localstudies\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}