Sir, – Frank McNally’s article on the Irish engineer Michael Maurice O’Shaughnessy (An Irishman’s Diary, September 22nd) highlights his successful projects in California in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
He also alludes to another Limerick man, William Brook O’Shaughnessy, who was prominent in the development of the telegraph system in India.
The article reminded me of another Limerick man, Thomas Shaughnessy, who emigrated to Milwaukee and became chief of police there. His son Thomas, who was born in 1853, subsequently became president of the Canadian Pacific Railway and was ennobled as the first Lord Shaughnessy (of Montreal and Ashford). His grandson Alfred Shaughnessy is remembered as the principal writer of the Edwardian TV drama Upstairs Downstairs which was extremely popular in the 1970s. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN O’SULLIVAN,
Shooting the breeze with trailblazer chemists
Kamala Harris is a descendant of an Irish slave owner in Jamaica
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Letterkenny,
Co Donegal.