Concept

Erskine Hamilton Childers

Résumé
Erskine Hamilton Childers (11 December 1905 – 17 November 1974) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician who served as the fourth president of Ireland from June 1973 to November 1974. He is the only Irish president to have died in office. He also served as Tánaiste and Minister for Health from 1969 to 1973, Minister for Transport and Power from 1959 to 1969, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1951 to 1954 and 1966 to 1969, Minister for Lands from 1957 to 1959 and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health from 1944 to 1948. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1938 to 1973. His father Robert Erskine Childers, an Irish republican and author of the espionage thriller The Riddle of the Sands, was executed during the Irish Civil War. Childers was born in the Embankment Gardens, Westminster, London, to a Protestant family, originally from Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland. Although also born in England, his father, Robert Erskine Childers, had an Irish mother and had been raised by an uncle in County Wicklow, and after World War I took his family to live there. His mother, Molly Childers, was a Bostonian whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower. Robert and Molly later emerged as prominent and outspoken Irish republican opponents of the political settlement with Britain which resulted in the establishment of the Irish Free State. Childers was educated at Gresham's School, Holt. In 1922, when Childers was sixteen, his father was executed by the new Irish Free State on politically-inspired charges of gun-possession. The pistol he had been found with had been given to him by Michael Collins. Before his execution, in a spirit of reconciliation, the elder Childers obtained a promise from his son to seek out and shake the hand of every man who had signed his death warrant. After attending his father's funeral, Childers returned to Gresham's, then two years later he attended Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied History. After finishing his education, Childers worked for a period for a tourism board in Paris.
À propos de ce résultat
Cette page est générée automatiquement et peut contenir des informations qui ne sont pas correctes, complètes, à jour ou pertinentes par rapport à votre recherche. Il en va de même pour toutes les autres pages de ce site. Veillez à vérifier les informations auprès des sources officielles de l'EPFL.