Tuskar Light, Bianconi Car
The year’s most dramatic Irish political episode occurred on 1 February, when Daniel O’Connell met John Norcott D’Esterre in a pistol duel at Bishopscourt, near Naas, County Kildare. The immediate quarrel grew from O’Connell’s condemnation of Dublin Corporation as “beggarly”, language that offended members of the city’s Protestant municipal establishment. D’Esterre, a former Royal Marine officer and Dublin merchant, issued the challenge. Both men fired; O’Connell wounded D’Esterre in the hip, and D’Esterre died two days later.