William Duckett

Biography

William Duckett (1768–1841) was a radical journalist and a United Irishman active in Paris, who was suspected by some in the republican cause of being a British government spy. Born at Killarney, County Kerry, he was sent to the Irish College at Paris, and gained a scholarship at Sainte-Barbe, then conducted by the Abbé Badnel. He did not receive order and left the college a week after the Storming of the Bastille (14 July 1789) in which fellow Irish student James Bartholomew Blackwell is known to have participated. In 1794, when William Jackson, envoy of the Committee of Public Safety to the United Irishmen in Dublin, was under arrest, Duckett was the bearer of 14,000 livres to the Irish capital from the Committee for his defence. In Ireland, Duckett contributed to the Belfast paper of the United movement, the Northern Star, under the pen name "Junius Redivivus". These letters, according to his own account, made it prudent for him to quit Ireland, and in 1796 he was in Paris. Tone, who was also in Paris, regarded him as a spy, and complained that he forestalled him by submitting to the French government several memorandums on the state of Ireland, that he constantly crossed his path in the ministerial antechamber, tried to force his conversation on him, and by addressing him in English betrayed his incognito. When, moreover, Tone arrived with Hoche at Brest, Duckett was there, intending to accompany them, but was not allowed to embark. The historian Richard Hayes attributes Tone's suspicions to "a too impulsive activity on Duckett's part". In 1798 he was reported to Castlereagh as having been sent to Hamburg with money destined for a mutiny in the British fleet and for burning the dockyards. This, coupled with his outlawry by the Irish parliament, ought to have vouched for his sincerity, but he was suspected of betraying Tandy and Blackwell at Hamburg. The existence of traitors in the camp was so notorious that suspicion often fell on the innocent. He married a D

Bio from Wikipedia

Discography

Records they worked on — most-collected first.

Credited work

93 releases · 15 albums · active 1979–2020

  • Performance · 160
  • Other credits · 2

Studios: Mastersound Studios, Atlanta · The Sound Factory · Record One, Los Angeles · The Nest (2)

Frequent collaborators

Around the web