Erskine Hamilton Childers

Erskine Hamilton Childers (11 December 1905 – 17 November 1974) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician who served as the fourth president of Ireland from June 1973 to November 1974.

He is the only Irish president to have died in office.

In 1922, when Childers was sixteen, his father was executed by the new Irish Free State on politically-inspired charges of gun-possession.

The pistol he had been found with had been given to him by Michael Collins.

Before his execution, in a spirit of reconciliation, the elder Childers obtained a promise from his son to seek out and shake the hand of every man who had signed his death warrant.

After attending his father's funeral, Childers returned to Gresham's, then two years later he attended Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied History.

After finishing his education, Childers worked for a period for a tourism board in Paris.

In 1931, Éamon de Valera invited him to work for de Valera's recently founded newspaper The Irish Press in Dublin, where Childers became advertising manager.

He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1938 to 1973.

His father Robert Erskine Childers, an Irish republican and author of the espionage thriller The Riddle of the Sands, was executed during the Irish Civil War.

Childers was born in the Embankment Gardens, Westminster, London, to a Protestant family, originally from Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland.

Although also born in England, his father, Robert Erskine Childers, had an Irish mother and had been raised by an uncle in County Wicklow, and after World War I took his family to live there.

His mother, Molly Childers, was a Bostonian whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.

Robert and Molly later emerged as prominent and outspoken Irish republican opponents of the political settlement with Britain which resulted in the establishment of the Irish Free State.

Childers was educated at Gresham's School, Holt.

He became a naturalised Irish citizen in 1938.

That same year, he was elected as a Fianna Fáil TD for the constituency of Athlone–Longford.

When former President of Ireland Douglas Hyde, who was a Protestant, died in 1949, most senior politicians did not attend the funeral service inside St. Patrick's Cathedral; rather, they remained outside.

The exceptions were Noël Browne, the Minister for Health, and Childers, a fellow Protestant.

Childers joined the cabinet in 1951, as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the de Valera government.

He then served as Minister for Lands in de Valera's 1957–59 cabinet.

In 1959, the new Taoiseach Seán Lemass initially appointed him as Minister for Lands, before appointing him to the newly created position of Minister for Transport and Power.

Fine Gael TD Tom O'Higgins had come within 11,000 votes (1%) of defeating de Valera in the 1966 presidential election; he was widely expected to win the 1973 election, when he was again the Fine Gael nominee.

Childers was nominated by Fianna Fáil at the behest of de Valera, who pressured Jack Lynch in the selection of the presidential candidate.

He was a controversial nominee, owing not only to his British birth and upbringing but to his Protestantism.

He also served as Tánaiste and Minister for Health from 1969 to 1973, Minister for Transport and Power from 1959 to 1969, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1951 to 1954 and 1966 to 1969, Minister for Lands from 1957 to 1959 and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health from 1944 to 1948.

He served in that position until 1969, in combination with his former position of Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1966 under Jack Lynch.

In 1969, he was appointed as Tánaiste and Minister for Health in 1969.

One commentator described his ministerial career as "spectacularly unsuccessful".

Others praised his willingness to make tough decisions.

He was outspoken in his opposition to Charles Haughey, in the aftermath of the Arms Crisis, when Haughey and Neil Blaney, having been both removed from the government, were sent for trial amid allegations of a plot to import arms for the Provisional IRA.

(Both were acquitted.)

He would remain a member of Dáil Éireann until 1973, when he resigned to become President of Ireland.

However, on the campaign trail his personal popularity proved enormous, and in a political upset, Childers was elected the fourth President of Ireland on 30 May 1973, defeating O'Higgins by 635,867 (52%) votes to 578,771 (48%).

Childers was inaugurated as President of Ireland.

He took the oath of office in the Irish language with some reluctance.

His very distinctive Oxbridge accent made pronouncing Irish difficult, so it was written down on a large board for him phonetically to help him with this.

Childers, though 67, quickly gained a reputation as a vibrant, extremely hard-working President, and became highly popular and respected.

However, he had a strained relationship with the incumbent government, led by Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave of Fine Gael.

Childers had campaigned on a platform of making the presidency more open and hands-on, which Cosgrave viewed as a threat to his own agenda as head of government.