‘A journal stupid, vapid and wicked’

By Danny Grace

The Nenagh Guardian is now one of the oldest surviving local newspapers in Ireland. It was launched in July 1838 by John Kempston and his sons and appeared twice weekly, Wednesdays and Saturdays. It was a four-page broadsheet costing 4½ pence per copy - a considerable sum at the time, more than a half day’s pay of a labourer. The front page of the early editions was devoted exclusively to paid advertisements, while the following three pages contained a mixture of local, national, and international news. As was common with most local newspapers of the period, many of the two latter items were filched from other publications.

John Kempston - founder of the Nenagh Guardian - was descended from a Protestant Cromwellian officer, Colonel Nicholas Kempston, who settled in Ireland and died in 1676. John Kempston’s early life is obscure, although he seems to have been involved in journalism and the book trade in Dublin prior to his arrival in Tipperary. In December 1832 he purchased the Clonmel Advertiser newspaper from Mrs Margaret Carson, widow of William Carson, the founder of the paper in 1811. Mrs Carson was facing financial ruin at the time as she was being sued for libel by Catholic barrister and O’Connellite MP Dominic Ronayne for a scurrilous article about him in the Advertiser. It had been penned by an arch-Tory, Rev Dr Robert Bell of the Clonmel Grammar School. Ronayne was awarded £1,200 damages against Mrs Carson and £100 damages against Dr Bell.

SMART-ALECK

Another libel case four years later brought Kempston and the Clonmel Advertiser crashing down. In November 1836 he published a smart-alecky article in legalese language purporting to explain why a prominent lawyer named Kellett of Johnston St Clonmel had suddenly quit the town. He claimed Kellett’s departure had resulted from “a bill of discovery filed by his sleeping partner” (his wife) when she found out that he had “joined issue with a fair relative of whose name and residence are alike”.

In plain language, the article insinuated that Kellet’s wife had kicked him out because she discovered he had been sleeping with her 22-year-old niece Anna Louisa Johnston, who lived with them. Miss Johnston protested her innocence and sued Kempston for libel. At the Clonmel spring assizes of 1837 the jury awarded her £500 in damages, a sum equivalent to approximately €85,500 in today’s money. Kempston mounted no defence, abjectly admitting that the article was “a libel of a very unjust and gross nature”. The Advertiser went into liquidation and Kempston left Clonmel under a cloud.

‘CONTEMPTIBLE AND NOISOME RAG’

He came to Nenagh to revive his journalistic fortunes, launching his new newspaper in July 1838 at 19 Summerhill. It was a shrewd move because there was no newspaper in Nenagh - nor indeed in any North Tipperary town - unlike in Clonmel where four newspapers vied for advertising and readership. While John Kempston was the guiding hand of the Guardian, it was his son John Junior, not he, who was its registered owner and publisher up to May 1849. Another son Charles filled that role for the remaining years of Kempston ownership. The fact that Kempston Senior was never the registered owner was no doubt connected to his earlier financial difficulties.

Kempston’s targeted readership was the comfortable Protestant middle class and landed gentry of the three baronies of Lower Ormond, Upper Ormond and Owney & Arra. His newspaper was aggressively Tory and Protestant in tone and displayed a strong and enduring antipathy towards the Whig Party, the Catholic Church and O’Connell and the Repeal Movement. It was particularly strong on law and order; indeed, rival nationalist newspapers frequently accused it of manufacturing outrages where none had occurred. Several like-minded journals welcomed the Guardian’s appearance as “a valuable auxiliary to the cause of Conservatism” in North Tipperary, a place, they claimed, that “for so long a period had been a sink of iniquity and sedition”.

Kempston’s political stance drew the ire and fire of the Catholic nationalist press and the supporters of O’Connell. The Guardian was denounced as “that contemptible and noisome rag”, “that fabricator of outrages” and “a journal stupid, vapid and wicked”. Verbal abuse was heaped on Kempston, not least from one of O’Connell’s right-hand men, Tom Steele, who publicly ridiculed him as “an unsanctified vagabond” and “an antiquated bostoon”. (Kempston was well able to reply in kind). He received several threatening letters, and his son Robert was horsewhipped by Robert French of Carneycastle for a derogatory article about him in the Guardian of April 1840.

FAMILY OF TRAGEDY

John Kempston had a family of five sons and at least two daughters. Little is known of his wife Ellen except that she died at their Nenagh home in 1856. Her death is not recorded on the family vault in Nenagh’s Kenyon St graveyard, although no doubt she was buried there. Her husband had predeceased her, dying at 19 Summerhill, Nenagh, on 12th August 1851 at the age of 62. His death notice in the Limerick Chronicle described him as “the kindest of husbands, the most affectionate of parents, the sincerest of friends”.

Three of the Kempston sons died at comparatively young ages, while a fourth was killed tragically in New York. The first to die was youngest son James in December 1845 at the age of 24 from consumption. The eldest son Robert - who had worked for a time at the Guardian - moved to Islington, London, and died aged 36 years in January 1848, leaving a wife and five young children to lament his loss. The longest living son was Rev William A Kempston, who was ordained a Church of Ireland clergyman in 1845. After serving in several parishes, he died as rector of Ballyburley in Co Offaly in January 1886.

John Kempston Junior - although nominal owner of the Guardian - seems to have had little involvement with the actual running of the newspaper. He ran the job-printing works, offering to print “neatly, expeditiously and on reasonable terms”, “circular letters, cards, shop bills, window labels, auction and posting bills, rentals, leases, ejectments and summonses”. In 1842 he changed careers with his appointment as a lieutenant in Her Majesty’s Revenue Police in Ireland. But he abandoned that post after a few years and moved to London. Here he became secretary to several speculative companies, including the National Brazilian Mining Company and another set up to extend the railway from Templemore to Nenagh and on to Lough Derg. The latter project never came to fruition.

In 1847 John Kempston married Mary Adelaide, daughter of the London-based but Dublin-born journalist and historian William Bernard McCabe, best known for his three-volume ‘Catholic History of England’. In August 1849 the couple emigrated to New York where John worked as a law reporter for the New York Herald and later as a clerk of the New York Supreme Court. His wife Mary Adelaide died in 1861 at the young age of 33 years. John Kempston was tragically killed on December 21, 1867, run down while hurrying to board the ferry to return to his home at 56 Tillary Street, Brooklyn.

CHANGING OF THE GUARDIAN

Charles W Kempston became proprietor and editor of the Nenagh Guardian in mid-1849. His father was probably in ill-health and wished to be relieved of the burden. It is unclear what Charles had been doing up to that point but there is no evidence he had been living in Nenagh. He threw himself fully into Nenagh affairs on his return, serving as a churchwarden of the Protestant church and as a member of Nenagh Town Commissioners. In July 1852 he married Frances (Fanny) Kittson, sister of the Nenagh physician, Dr Edward Kittson.

Charles, like his brothers, was also destined for a short life. He dropped dead at 19 Summerhill on March 21, 1857 at the age of 36. The Nenagh Guardian reported that there was widespread regret in both town and countryside at the passing of one it described as “a more than ordinary man”.

His funeral to Kenyon Street graveyard “was most numerously attended by all classes and creeds, without distinction, from the town and surrounding country”. His widow, Fanny, survived him just a little over a year, dying in April 1858 at the young age of 31 years.

Within weeks of Charles W Kempston’s death, his executors sold the Guardian newspaper to George Prior, bringing almost 20 years of Kempston ownership to an end. The new owner promised in his first editorial that the paper would continue to advocate “the same principles as of yore”.