| Notes |
- Fro m “Memoirs of Hugh Keenleyside” Vol I, Toronto, McLelland & Stewart, 1981.
Every family should have at least one good scandal, and in the case of the dawsons of Farnavane one occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century as a result of the determination and initiative of their eldest daughter, Mary, who eloped, God help us, with the village constable: in this case the policeman’s lot was a happy one. A son of Mary and her handsome copper was Benjamin Kidd, who is sometimes referred to as the father of sociology. As the author of Social Psychology, The Science of Power, and other scholarly books, he disclosed one of the most stimulating and scholarly minds of his day. Their grandson in turn is Dr. Franklin Kidd who has had a similarly distinguished career as a scientist in government service, a Cambridge don, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
The marriage of Mary Dawson below her station to the handsome, but impecuruous, Constable Kidd was disapproved by her family. If the documents are correct, there was a further reason for the rift which developed between the young couple and the Dawson family, namely, that Mary Dawson was pregnant before marriage. The date of marriage of Benjamin Kidd and Mary Dawson is given as 1 August 1858 in the Dublin Customs House Register. According to the baptismal registry of the Bandon Circuit of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, a son, Benjamin, was born to the couple on 9 September 1858. A conflicting date of 12. May 1858 for the marriage appears in the RIC personal file on Benjamin Kidd (PRO), but even if that date is accepted only four months elapsed between marriage and birth. If Benjamin Kidd was conceived out of wedlock, this could explain not only the estrangement between Mary and her family, depriving her own children of a sense of family security and respectability that connection with the Dawsons may have supplied, but also the sense of secrecy and mystery, even scandal, concerning family origins that was conveyed to the Kidd children, and had its psychological effects. Whether Benjamin Kidd knew of the circumstances of his birth is not known. His eldest son, Franklin, averred many years later: 'I feel certain that he did not know of the marriage records' and this opinion requires respect in view of Franklin's close relation with his father, his acuteness and open-mindedness. At the same rime, complete frankness between father and son was not necessarily to be expected on such a sensitive topic, particularly in the late Victorian and Edwardian years. It seems not unreasonable to assume the possibility that young Benjamin came to know, or suspect, the secret of his birth from gossip circulating within the large Dawson family, their servants, and friends. This could explain his extreme reluctance throughout his life to
offer even the barest details about his early life, when every temptation existed to portray his success as a Smilesean selfhelp saga, a 'rags to riches' story so beloved of Victorian audiences. One could postulate a psychological trauma and guilt-complex induced in Benjamin that required resolution through sublimation, issuing in demonstrable success achieved by markedly individual, even unorthodox, effort. His abstinent life-style might also be interpreted as a subconscious rebellion against the perceived parental hedonism that led to his conception. [1, 2]
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1833 - 1918 (85 years)
d. 21 Jul 1885, Bandon, Co. Cork, Ireland