It was not with any concern for animals, one supposes, that the supporters of Mr Tom Sloan MP were distressed by his wearing an overcoat with a fur collar, but that he might be getting above himself and them.
They were reassured as he constantly voted in parliament for bills to improve factory conditions, working-class housing and the legal position of trade unions. This shipyard worker had been expelled from the Orange Order for refusing to give a written apology to Col Saunderson, Orange grand master in Belfast and leader of the Irish unionist MPs. He was accused at a Twelfth demonstration of preventing the inspection of convent laundries, and being soft towards Roman Catholics.
On his expulsion, Mr Sloan set up the Independent Orange Order in 1902. He founded the Belfast Protestant Association in 1901 and became part of the loose alliance between nationalist labour and independent candidates in Belfast for the 1906 general election. He held his seat until 1910.
Interestingly it was a Mr James Sloan who founded the Orange Society, later to be renamed the Orange Order, in his inn in Loughgall in 1795.
Giving Sloyan, Sloyne and Sloane as variant spellings, Mac Lysaght's More Irish Families says that the name in Ulster would suggest that it was "one of those Gaelic families which originated in Ireland and migrated to Scotland before the era of authentic history".
He gives the Irish origin as O Sluaghain, an abbreviated form of O Sluaghadhain , "which is derived primarily from the Irish word sluagh (now slua, and the surname O Sluain), meaning "a host, an army".
The Northern Ireland telephone directory contains 520 Sloan entries, with Sloane 34 times, while the directories south of the Border list 66 Sloan entries. Of these 57 are in the 01 and 04 areas, stretching from Monaghan to Wicklow. Sloyan is found 30 times, of which 22 are in the 09 area, Cos Donegal, Sligo and Mayo. The name is also common in the Galloway region of Scotland.
The Census of Ireland 1965 gives Allexander Sloane as titulado in Lissnagh, Co Down, and Slowan among the principal Irish names in Newry.
Indexes to Irish Wills list 24 Sloan(e) wills between 1708 and 1852, all but one (Cork in 1734) being in the Ulster dioceses of Dromore, Newry and Mourne and Derry. The greatest number was in Co Down.
ALTHOUGH the Sloan(e)s owned land in six of Ulster's nine counties, in 1876, according to Owners of Land of One Acre and Upwards, the holdings were modest. There were seven holdings in Co Down, five in Co Tyrone, and two in Co Antrim. The largest was the 194 acres of James Sloan, Moy, Co Armagh.
Modest also was the mere eight acres of Edward Slowan in 1626, as shown on Thomas Raven's maps of the Hamilton estate. The Most Unpretending of Places: A History of Dundonald, Co Down also shows Sloane's 1739 map of Dundonald.
Hans Sloane, who was born in Killyleagh, Co Down, in 1660, travelled widely between 1685 and 1689 collecting the materials for his great works The Natural History of Jamaica and A Voyage to the Islands of Madeira, both of which came out in several models in 1707-25.
The first is regarded as his masterpiece. In 1732 he was one of the promoters of the colony of Georgia. His museum and library of 50,000 printed books and more than 3,500 manuscripts, the Sloane Collection, formed the nucleus of the British Museum Library, his family receiving £20,000 in return.
The parish of Ballyrashane is half in Co Antrim and half in Co Derry, and in his Families of Ballyrashane the author T.H. Millin calls it "a district of Northern Ireland". Among the 19th-century and early-20th-century families listed here are Sloans of Kirkistown, Sloans of Ballyrock and Sloans of Ballynagg.
This surname is commemorated in the townland of Sloanstown in the Co Down parish of Donaghadee. The earliest form is in 1659, when it was rendered Slewanstowne. Place Names of Northern Ireland: Volume Two, County Down 11 says: "The name Slowan is cited as one of the most common surnames in the 1659 census for Newry and Mourne. Woulfe informs us that the Sloans of Antrim and Down are of Scottish origin. We have found no forms for Sloanstown earlier than 1659 and, while it may well be the case that there was an Irish form for this place name such as Baile Ui Shluain, we have no evidence of it."