Justin Huntly McCarthy

Justin Huntley [sic] McCarthy’s birth was registered at Liverpool in October-December 1856 and he died on 20 March 1936 according to the National Probate Calendar. He was therefore 79 when he died, not 75 as mentioned in obituaries in the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, the Leeds Mercury, the Western Daily Press and the Daily Mirror (all 23 March 1936) and The Stage (26 March 1936). Like his father (also Justin McCarthy) he was for a time an Irish nationalist M.P. He wrote novels, verse, translations of “Omar Khayyam” and other works, and histories of England, Ireland, the French Revolution and the United States. Allardyce Nicoll lists a number of plays that McCarthy wrote from ‘The Candidate’ (1884) to ‘Stand and Deliver’ (1916). His play ‘If I Were King’ (1901) was turned by Rudolf Friml into the better-known operetta ‘The Vagabond King’.