John Spratt, Carmelite and Dubliner, (1796-1871) was one of the foremost campaigners in a host of social, religious and political causes in nineteenth century Ireland.
Above all else in his public life, he was a champion of the poor and dispossessed of Dublin and of Ireland. A member of the Catholic Association from 1824 and of the Repeal Association from its foundation in 1840, he led the efforts to achieve a reconciliation of the Repealers and Young Irelanders and was also a leading figure in the nineteenth-century temperance cause. He was the founder-member of the movement for the amnesty of Fenian prisoners.
His work for famine relief brought him to national eminence. The builder of Whitefriar Street Church and its associated schools for boys and girls, he was a leading figure in the revival of the fortunes of the Carmelite Order in Ireland in his age. Here is the first full-length modern biography of this outstanding campaigner for a better Dublin and a better Ireland.
Raising Dublin, Raising Ireland is available now at Dubray Books.