James Carlile McCoan

James Carlile McCoan (14 July 1829 – 13 January 1904)[1] was an Irish Home Rule League, Liberal and independent politician, author and journalist.[2]

James Carlile McCoan
MP
Member of Parliament
for Wicklow
In office
10 April 1880 – 24 November 1885
Preceded byWilliam Richard O'Byrne
William Wentworth FitzWilliam Dick
Succeeded byConstituency abolished
Personal details
Born14 July 1829
Dunlow, Tyrone, Ireland
Died13 January 1904(1904-01-13) (aged 74)
Kensington, London
Resting placeKensal Green, London
Political partyLiberal (from 1885)
Other political
affiliations		Independent (1881–1885)
Home Rule (until 1881)
Spouse
Augusta Janet Jenkyns
​
​
(m. 1857)​
Parent(s)Clement McCoan
Sarah Carlile
Alma materLondon University

Early education and career

McCoan was educated at The Royal School in Dungannon in the south-east of County Tyrone in Ulster and at Homerton College, then located in Hackney and at the time affiliated with the University of London, before graduating from London University in 1848.[2]

He then entered Middle Temple in at age 22 in 1851, before being called to the bar in 1856, where he joined the south-eastern circuit. He did not however seek practice in England, instead pursuing a journalism career and being appointed war correspondent at Charles Dickens' The Daily News during the Crimean War.[2]

Towards the end of the war, McCoan travelled in Georgia and Circassia, before settling in Constantinople where he worked in the supreme consular court until 1864. In 1856 he founded the first English newspaper in the Ottoman Empire, The Levant Herald, which was for some time subsidised by the UK government.[3] However, in 1870, he disposed of the paper and returned to England, where he began writing history publications.[2][4]

Political career

McCoan was elected MP for Wicklow as a Protestant Home Ruler in 1880. He was renowned for attacking the government's 'coercive' legislation, and being among the Home Rulers suspended for defying the Speaker of the House of Commons' authority in 1881.[2][5]

After this, he rebuked illegal activity and methods of the Home Rule League and supported William Ewart Gladstone's land bill, although he also tried to amend it. In doing so, he was renounced by the Home Rule League and then sat as an independent MP from 1881.[2]

When the seat was split in 1885, McCoan sought re-election as a liberal candidate in Lancaster, for Southampton in 1886, and for Macclesfield in 1892.[2][6]

Family

McCoan was the only son of Clement McCoan of Charlemont, a village in the north-west of County Armagh in Ulster, and Sarah Carlile, daughter of James Carlile of Culresoch. In 1857, he married Augusta Janet Jenkyns, daughter of William Jenkyns of Elgin, and together they had one son and one daughter.[2]

Works

McCoan's works included:[2]

  • Protestant endurance under Popish Cruelty: A narrative of the Reformation of Spain (1853)
  • Consular Jurisdiction in Turkey and Egypt (1873)
  • Egypt as it is (1877)
  • Our New Protectorate: Turkey in Asia, its Geography, Races, Resources and Government, with Map showing existing and projected Public Works (1879)
  • Egypt under Ismail: A Romance of History (1889)

References
  1. Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "W" (part 3)
  2. Norgate, Gerald le Grys (1912). "McCoan, James Carlile" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  3. Sibel Zandi Sayek (2013). "Ambiguities of Sovereignty: Property Rights and Spectacles of Statehood in Tanzimat Izmir". In Sahar Bazzaz; Yota Batsaki; Dimiter Angelov (eds.). Imperial Geographies in Byzantine and Ottoman Space. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-674-06662-5.
  4. Burhan Çağlar. "Anglophone Press in Constantinople: The Levant Herald & Eastern Express (1859-1878)". Libra Kitap. Retrieved 20 November 2021.
  5. Walker, B.M., ed. (1978). Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801-1922. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. ISBN 0901714127.
  6. Craig, F. W. S., ed. (1974). British Parliamentary Election Results: 1885-1918. London: Macmillan Press. ISBN 9781349022984.
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