Charles Kickham

Charles Kickham was born at Mullinahone in 1828, the son of a respected local draper whose shop echoed with Repeal arguments. A powder flask explosion left him largely deaf and almost blind at thirteen, yet he absorbed the young Irelander ideals his father read aloud from The Nation. That sensory loss did not dim his fire; it sharpened the edge of the poems and revolutionary work he carried into the world.