A PRESENTATION SILVER HANDLED RIDING WHIP/CROP GIVEN TO JOHN...

Estimate

€1,500 - €2,500

A PRESENTATION SILVER HANDLED RIDING WHIP/CROP GIVEN TO JOHN O’CONNELL FROM THE GENTLEMAN OF HIS HUNT IN 1845.
The silver handled rider’s whip/crop is engraved Sangsters Maker London. Sangsters a well-known cane, umbrella & stick maker in London in the late 18th through to the late 19th century and had addresses on Fleet Street & Royal Exchange in London.

The handle is a fantastic piece of craftsmanship displaying a large silver hare laying down along the crown of the handle, with an engraving just beneath the hare stating: To John O’Connell of Grena, Proprietor of the Laune Beagles, from the Gentlemen of his Hunt.

Beneath the engraving is a beautiful dynamic depiction of the hunt, with riders on horseback racing through wooded land & the beagles giving chase as well. Impressed with hallmarks for London & includes date letter & lions head.

John O’Connell was the younger brother of the famed Daniel O’Connell ‘The Liberator’. Daniel was & is to this day seen as a great Irishman as someone who pursued his political & social beliefs by constitutional means rather than through violence.

The O’Connell families of both Grena & Lakeview of Killarney were prominent members of the local society at that time. John O’Connell was the proprietor of the Laune Beagles – a pack of Kerry ‘Black & Tan’ Beagles and was known for stag, fox & hare hunts in the mid-19th century. Described in Farrelly’s 1837 Map of the Lakes of Killarney as ‘a famous pack of Buck Hounds for hunting the Stag on the Lakes (and) Mountains’. There was at this time an abundance of hares in the mountains of the Southwest of Ireland.

John O’Connell was a very highly thought of person in the Killarney district & in March of 1845 the Hunting Club held a dinner in his honour which was written about in The Kerry Examiner of March 28th, 1845, where it is described that a toast be raised for ‘Our Guest – John O’Connell, Esq’.
The chairman would go on to give a speech of ‘extreme beauty and classic elegance’. It goes on to say that at the conclusion of the speech the Chairman presented to O’Connell, ‘a Silver Whip, Silver Spurs, and a Silver Horn’. Lot 22 presents to you this presentation silver handled whip, which on the night O’Connell stated he would ‘cherish as memento of their kindness’.