Joseph Nunan
Irish patriot and builder (1842-1885)
Joseph Denis Nunan (some say Noonan) (February 1842 – 18 May 1885) was an Irish born patriot and builder transported to Fremantle for wounding a policeman. He became an architect and building contractor involved in significant buildings in Perth, Fremantle and York. He never gave up his Fenian beliefs and died before he could return to Ireland.
Life
Nunan was born in Rathcormac, a small town in north County Cork where he learnt the building trade from his father Denis Noonan. Joseph and his brother Frank established a building company that was able to successfully contract for the construction of buildings locally and in County Kerry.
Nunan became a member of the Fenian Brotherhood in 1864. This was an Irish patriot organisation who were trying to establish Ireland as a country that was not under the rule of Great Britain. Nunan was named as a suspect when Constable William Duggan, who was carrying messages, was shot near Glenbeigh in February 1867. Nunan fled to England, but he was identified and arrested in London by an Irish policeman. He escaped on the return railway trip to Dublin by jumping through the window of a train reputedly travelling 64 or 80 kilometres per hour (40 or 50 mph) leaving behind his two escorts.
“Joseph Nunan” enters the record as irish patriot and builder (1842-1885). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Joseph, Nunan and Irish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joseph Nunan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.