Gabrielle Gore-Booth and The Lissadell Affair

This is the story of how the widow and daughters of Josslyn Gore Booth were reduced to near poverty and eviction amid allegations of mismanagement of the estate in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It generated considerable public indignation when it was first told by English journalist Anne Robinson (of the BBC’s Weakest Link) writing for the Sunday Times.

Gabrielle Gore Booth was a hardworking horticulturist, agriculturalist and estate manager who assumed the governance of the 3,000 acre Lissadell Estate in 1944, on the death of her father Josslyn, as her elder brother Michael (the heir) was judged mentally incapable and made a Ward of the High Court. The youngest of a family of eight, she was just 26. The tale of how she and her sister Aideen, and their mother were reduced to near poverty and eviction by the almost dissolution of the family estate in the 1960s is known as “The Lissadell Affair”. It is a tale of mutual incomprehension, distrust and increasing frustration with the legal process. Yet Gabrielle survived with dignity, and a touching innocence. She is remembered with great affection by her neighbours, and by the many visitors to her home, which had become a shrine to her aunt, Constance Gore-Booth, Countess Markievicz.

Her father’s last words to her were: ‘I know you are very tired, Gabrielle, but you must carry on’. It was March 1944, and his death blow was the news that his son Hugh, who had been groomed to take over the estate and manage it for Michael, and who had lectured in Estate Management at Oxford University, had been killed in action off Crete during WWII.  His younger son Brian had been killed in January 1940 when HMS Exmouth was torpedoed. Gabrielle managed the estate under the supervision of the then Solicitor General for the next seven years. In 1952 a new Solicitor General was appointed, and he took a more active role in managing the estate. He found that the family had run up a large overdraft as a result of death duty payments and the general agricultural economic depression. This clearly troubled him.

In September 1954 Gabrielle discovered that timber receipts of £5,750 were not recorded in the year-end accounts. A confrontation followed; the accounts were amended, but relations between them became strained. In February 1956 he sacked Gabrielle, and appointed a new manager. Gabrielle retaliated by locking all the gates of Lissadell (at 6am on Saint Valentine’s day).

The majority of estate workers demanded Gabrielle’s reinstatement, and were dismissed for their pains. The Lissadell nursery, and other horticultural enterprises closed. Gabrielle paid the workers herself out of the proceeds of estate timber. The Solicitor General countered with an injunction preventing her from disposing of estate property, and obtained an order permitting him to sell the estate to the Land Commission: he began by selling the Lissadell cattle. Gabrielle and her sister Aideen protested by standing on the ramp of the removal truck to prevent loading, and hit the headlines: “Judge refuses to jail sisters. Told of removal of Lissadell cattle”.

The sale order was rescinded following further court action because the trustees had not been consulted. The Solicitor General hit back by getting another injunction preventing them interfering with the estate management, and an eviction order suspended on condition that they did not interfere.

Gabrielle and her family watched helplessly as timber was felled and removed. Further court action led to years of delay before their claim for an inquiry into the management of the estate was dismissed as ‘reckless’, ‘absurd’ ‘fantastic’. During the hearing the timber sale figure was revised to £18,000. The Land Commission subsequently acquired over 2,600 acres of the estate.

Calls for a public inquiry were followed by an investigation by RTÉ’s current affairs programme ‘Seven Days’, re-examining the claim in respect of the timber, which had been dismissed as ‘absurd’. A firm of consultants were engaged to investigate a sample area (45 acres) of felled woodland, and estimated the value of the timber as closer to £32,000, a figure subsequently revised to £110,000 taking into account the loss to the estate from the failure to plant new trees to replace the felled timber. The controversy and public indignation generated by the programme is known as ‘The Lissadell Affair’.

An extract from Gabrielle’s diary

An extract from the judgment of Mr Justice Davitt

…on the application by Gabrielle and her mother for an inquiry into the management of the estate. Oral evidence was taken in October 1961. Judgment was not delivered until April 1965. Following the controversy generated by “The Lissadell affair” in 1971, Davitt P. made his judgment public:

“Professor Clear states that there was no easy way of valuing cleared woodland: and that even a careful check of areas cleared, and a count and measurement of stumps, would be liable to grave error. Stated baldly her case .. appears to be that all was well at Lissadell until a manager was appointed; that since then matters have gone seriously wrong; that some 32 acres of woodland have been denuded of trees by unlicensed felling; and that some £68,000.00 worth of timber has been sold without being accounted for. The inherent improbabilities in this case are obvious. Felling timber, even on a small scale, is not an operation which can be carried out silently or secretly; and illegally clearing 32 acres on an estate to which the attention, not merely of the Officers of the Forestry Division but also of the Garda Siochana have been directed, without attracting their unfavourable notice in any way would seem to me to be a task which would be quite impossible to achieve successfully.