What they contained or what ailment they were intended to alleviate, we do not know, or if they were successful, or indeed if they are still available, but Mrs Cullen's Powders were regularly advertised in the national newspapers in the 1940s.
Writing from his home in Newry, Co Down, on June 14th, 1783, to his sister, Martha, on a visit to Bristol, Sam McTier informs her that her husband, William Drennan, "was dangerously ill of a fever" (The Drennan-McTier Letters 1776-1793).
"About ten o'clock, Doctor Haliday arrived and upon his first visit declared he thought (him) very dangerously ill. This day he got several doses of James's Powders. This resulted in Sam having to "lift him three times to the close stool".
Three days later, Sam wrote: "He purges greatly without being sensible of it. We have terrible work watching and cleaning him, not the smallest trifle can he do for himself, even when we lifted him to the close stool, George or I were obliged to wipe for him." Later, the powders were repeated three or four times, and when Dr John Law arrived the following morning from Lurgan, the doctors decided to give him more of James's Powders and wine. William Drennan, poet and United Irishman, survived his fever - and the cure. He settled in Dublin, returning to Belfast in 1807, where he died in 1820.
The English surname, Law, is a diminutive of Laurence and is now common in Antrim and Down. Thomas Law is listed in the 1659 "census" as one of a number of titulados for Kilcullen, Co Kildare. Taylor & Skinners' 1778 Maps of the Roads of Ireland shows Law Esq., near Leixlip, Co Kildare, and Dr Law at Millyfield, near Colebrook, Co Fermanagh. Three of the four listed in the 1814 Directory are in Co Down, the other in Co Donegal.
The Dublin-Mullingar turnpike was established in 1731 and only three volumes of the minutes books recording the meetings of the board of trustees exist, covering the years 1792 to 1833. The meetings in 1792 were held at Lynch's Tavern, Lucan, and a meeting there on September 25th, 1792 noted a letter from Robert Lawe in which he said a gravel pit of his near Leixlip had been used by the board for 40 years past for repairs of the adjacent road and no compensation had been paid.
Forty-five years earlier, in a letter dated June 6th, 1747, Mrs Mary Delany mentions she and her husband Patrick Delany, Dean of Down, dined with Mr and Mrs Lawe of Leixlip. Her letter of June 29th that year tells of having spent a very pleasant day in the country with Mr and Mrs Lawe at their bleach yard near the famous salmon leap of Leixlip (Letters from Georgian Ireland: Editor Angelique Day, The Friar's Bush Press, 1991).
Alexander Taylor's 1783 Map of the County of Kildare shows Bleachfield just north of Leixlip, though no such place-name survives. The Irish for Leixlip (Old Norse leax "salmon", and hlaup, "leap") is Leim an Bhradain, "the leap of the salmon". Owners of Land of One Acre and Upwards (1876) shows Law holdings in Donegal, Derry and Down; in Clare, Cork and Tipperary, and in Dublin, Kilkenny and Kildare.
One of the two holdings in Co Kildare was the 646 acres at Ballysan (Ballysax?). Ballyrashane is a parish divided between Antrim and Derry, and Families of Ballyrashane (T. H. Mullin 1969) includes Law of Maddybenny. Maddybenny is a townland in the Liberties of Ballyaghran, Co Derry.
Two of the names with Ulster connections were Down-born Hugh Law (18181883), lawyer and Liberal politician, and Andrew Bonar Law (1858-1923), Conservative politician of Ulster descent, who was to become English Prime Minister in 1911. Bonar Law denounced Home Rule, strongly supporting the Ulster Unionists. "I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go which I shall not be ready to support," he said in a 1912 speech.
He urged the extension of conscription to Ireland, and on the eve of the 1918 general election, he and Lloyd George, the new Prime Minister, issued a joint letter pointing out that Ireland could not leave the Empire nor would the six north-eastern counties be forced against their will into Home Rule.
And though Hugh Law prosecuted Charles Stewart Parnell and the leaders of the Land league in 1880 for alleged conspiracy (unsuccessfully), he was the one who drafted the bill for the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and assisted in drafting the Land Act of 1870.
Outside of the Dublin 01 area, the majority of the 27 Law entries in the telephone directories are in south Ulster and the province of Leinster. There are c. 150 Law entries in phone directory north of the Border.