Ambassador’s wife comes home to the west

 

Patricia Dubois Zanini, wife of Italian Ambassador Maurizio Zanini, will visit her ancestral home on Sunday for the National Famine Commemoration in Kilrush.

Approximately 43 ambassadors are expected in the West Clare town for the commemoration, which will also be attended by President Michael D Higgins.

Patricia Dubois Zanini visited Kilrush twice in 2012. Along with her sister she visited their ancestral Bulger and Scanlan family graves.

They paid their respects at the family plot where those buried include three children of Daniel Scanlan Bulger, who died in infancy in 1867, 1872 and 1874; John Bulger (died 1836) and Mary Bulger née Scanlan (died 1864), probably Daniel’s parents; and Daniel Scanlan and Ellen Scanlan née Kelly (both died 1830), probably Mary’s parents and thus the great-great-great-great-great-grandparents of the younger visitors.

Patricia Zanini’s great-grandmother, Anne Bulger, was born in 1875 in Kilrush, where her father, Daniel Scanlan Bulger, ran a loan office and other businesses in Moore Street. The Bulger family moved from Moore Street to Dublin about a decade later. In 1896, in University Church in Dublin, Anne married Jules Tinchant, a Mexican whose family had a cigar business in Belgium, where they settled down.

When Daniel Scanlan Bulger fell ill and died in Dublin in 1904, his wife, also Anne (née Delany), applied to be admitted as a member of the Dublin Stock Exchange in his place but her request was turned down, apparently on account of her gender. Instead, she moved to Lisdoonvarna and set up the Thomond House Hotel and golf links, now the Hydro.

Daniel Delany Bulger, Laurence Quinlivan Bulger and Michael Joseph Bulger, the three surviving sons of Daniel Scanlan Bulger and Anne Delany, were all noted sportsmen.

In 1894, Daniel Bulger assisted Pierre de Coubertin of France in establishing an international sporting festival.
Without Bulger, athletics historian Cyril White has suggested that the International Olympic Committee would not have formed when it did. Furthermore, Daniel’s Kilrush-born brothers, Laurence and Michael, both played on the Irish rugby team.