{{Short description|Australian engineer and writer (1861–1934)}} {{Use Australian English|date=May 2015}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2021}} {{Infobox officeholder | name = Arthur Lynch | image = Dr. Arthur Lynch, M.P (cropped).jpg | image_size = | alt = | caption = | birth_date = {{Birth date|1861|10|16|df=yes}} | death_date = {{Death date and age|1934|3|25|1861|10|16|df=yes}} | birth_place = Smythesdale near Ballarat, Victoria, Victoria, Australia | death_place = Haverstock Hill, London, England | placeofburial = | placeofburial_label = | nickname = | birth_name = | party = Irish Parliamentary Party | office1 = Member of Parliament | term_start1 = 1901 | term_end1 = 1903 | constituency1 = Galway Borough | term_start2 = 1909 | term_end2 = December 1918 | constituency2 = West Clare | allegiance = Boer Republics | branch = | service_years = | rank = | servicenumber = | unit = Second Irish Brigade | commands = | battles = {{ubl|Second Boer War}} | awards = | relations = | laterwork = }}
'''Arthur Alfred Lynch''' (16 October 1861 – 25 March 1934) was an Irish Australian civil engineer, physician, journalist, author, soldier, anti-imperialist and polymath. He served as MP in the UK House of Commons as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, representing Galway Borough from 1901 to 1902, and later West Clare from 1909 to 1918. Lynch fought on the Boer side during the Boer War in South Africa, for which he was sentenced to death but later pardoned. He supported the British war effort in the First World War, raising his own Irish battalion in Munster towards the end of the war.{{citation needed|date=April 2017}}
==Australian years== Lynch was born at Smythesdale near Ballarat, Victoria, the fourth of 14 children. His father, John Lynch, was an Irish Catholic surveyor and civil engineer and his mother Isabella (''née'' MacGregor) was Scottish.<ref name=adb>Geoffrey Serle, '[https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lynch-arthur-alfred-7270 Lynch, Arthur Alfred (1861–1934)] ', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, MUP, 1986, pp 176–177. Retrieved 23 September 2009</ref> John Lynch was a founder and first president of the Ballarat School of Mines, and a captain of Peter Lalor at the Eureka Stockade rebellion (1854) and John Lynch wrote a book, ''Austral Light'' (1893–94), about it – later republished as ''The Story of the Eureka Stockade''.<ref name=adb/>
==Europe and Ireland== Lynch left Australia and went to Berlin, where he studied physics, physiology and psychology at the University of Berlin in 1888–1889. He had a particular respect for Hermann von Helmholtz.
Lynch met Annie Powell (daughter of John D. Powell) in Berlin and they were married in 1895. They were to have no children. In Lynch's words, the marriage "never lost its happiness" (''My Life Story'', p. 85).
==Boer brigade== When the Second Boer War broke out, Lynch was sympathetic to the Boers and decided to go to South Africa as a war correspondent. In Pretoria, he met General Louis Botha, and decided to join the Boer side. Lynch raised the Second Irish Brigade, which consisted of peoples opposed to the British. He was given the rank of Colonel and saw limited active service.<ref name=adb/> In his comprehensive history on the ''Australia's Boer War'', Craig Wilcox said,<ref>Wilcox, Craig. (2002) Chapter 13, 'Interloper Arthur Lynch, Irish-Australian Boer', in ''Australia's Boer War: The War in South Africa, 1899-1902'' Oxford, pp. 262–268)</ref> it was misleading to call the 70 or so men in the Irish unit raised by Lynch "a brigade", rather he suggested that "the publicity that comes from spectacular gestures..." made Lynch appear "a romantic warrior" and that his actions "flattered many Irishmen and women...".<ref>Wilcox cited a source describing the Second Irish brigade's ''uitlanders'' as, " fifty or sixty soreheads, greasers, halfbreeds and dagos... the laughing stock and contempt of every commando in the neighbourhood".</ref> In contrast, Antony O'Brien's fictional ''Bye-Bye Dolly Gray'', is kinder to Lynch's showy South African exploits and his ''uitlanders''. Michael Davitt who travelled to South Africa has photos of Lynch with his brigade on the veldt in ''The Boer Fight for Freedom''.
==Conviction and pardon== thumb|left|200px|Lynch in 1915 After South Africa, Lynch travelled to the United States, and then returned to Paris, from where he again stood for Galway Borough in November 1901 and was elected in his absence as MP.<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=27382 |date=3 December 1901 |page=8559 }}</ref> On going to London, Lynch was arrested for his pro-Boer activities and on remand for eight months.
In July 1907, Lynch was pardoned, and in 1909 he was again elected Member of Parliament, this time for West Clare, in Ireland.<ref>{{Rayment-hc|date=May 2021}}</ref>
==Munster battalion== During World War I, Lynch volunteered for the New British Army. He raised a private 10th Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers and was given the rank of colonel, although he and his unit never saw active front service. At the end of the war, Lynch chose to stand as a Labour candidate in newly created Battersea South for the 1918 General election. He finished second to the Conservative candidate.
==Publications== Lynch wrote many publications including: {{div col|colwidth=27em}} *''Modern Authors'' (1891) *''Approaches the Poor Scholar's Quest of a Mecca'' (1892) *''A Koran of Love'' (1894) *''Our Poets'' (1894) *''Religio Athletae'' (1895)<ref>This is considered one of the sources for the ideology of modern Olympism, see Arnd Krüger: The Origins of Pierre de Coubertin's Religio Athletae. ''Olympika'' 2(1993), pp. 91–102; http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/Olympika/Olympika_1993/olympika0201g.pdf</ref> *''Human Documents'' (1896) *''Prince Azreel'' (1911) *''Psychology; A New System'' (two vol.; 1912) *''Purpose and Evolution'' (1913) *''Sonnets of the Banner and the Star'' (1914) *''Ireland: Vital Hour'' (1915) *''Poppy Meadows, Roman Philosophique'' (1915) *''La Nouvelle Ethique'' (1917) *''L'Evolution dons ses Rapports avec l'ethique'' (1917) *''Moments of Genius'' (1919) *''The Immortal Caravel'' (1920) *''Moods of Life'' (1921) *''O'Rourke the Great'' (1921) *''Ethics, an Exposition of Principles'' (1922) *''Principles of Psychology'' (1923) *''Seraph Wings'' (1923) *''My Life Story'' (1924) *''Science, Leading and Misleading'' (1927) *''The Rosy Fingers'' (1929) *''The Case Against Einstein'' (1932) {{div col end}}
==Notes== {{reflist}}
==References== {{refbegin}} *{{Dictionary of Australian Biography |First=Arthur Alfred |Last=Lynch |shortlink=0-dict-biogL.html#lynch1}} *John Lynch, ''The Story of the Eureka Stockade: Epic Days of the Early Fifties at Ballarat'', (1895). Republished 1947(?) and later by Ballarat Heritage Services, Ballarat, 1999. {{refend}}
==Popular culture== *Antony O'Brien, ''Bye-Bye Dolly Gray'', Artillery Publishing, Hartwell, 2006. (a novel includes several sympathetic scenes involving Lynch's exploits on the Colenso, Johannesburg and Transvaal front during 1899 and 1900)
==At the Boer War== *Craig Wilcox. (2002), ''Australia's Boer War: The War in South Africa, 1899-1902'', Oxford. A blunt appraisal of A.A's action in the war *Michael Davitt. (1902) ''The Boer Fight For Freedom: From the Beginning of Hostilities to the Peace of Pretoria'', Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 3rd ed.
==External links== *{{Internet Archive author |sname=Arthur Lynch |birth=1861 |death=1934 |sopt=t}} *{{Hansard-contribs | mr-arthur-lynch | Arthur Alfred Lynch}}
{{s-start}} {{s-par|uk}} {{succession box | title = Member of Parliament for Galway Borough | years = 1901–1903 | before = Martin Morris | after = Charles Ramsay Devlin }} {{succession box | title = Member of Parliament for West Clare | years = 1909–1918 | before = James Halpin | after = Brian O'Higgins }} {{s-end}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lynch, Arthur Alfred}} Category:1861 births Category:1934 deaths Category:University of Melbourne alumni Category:Australian male non-fiction writers Category:Australian male poets Category:Royal Munster Fusiliers officers Category:Irish Parliamentary Party MPs Category:UK MPs 1900–1906 Category:UK MPs 1906–1910 Category:UK MPs 1910 Category:UK MPs 1910–1918 Category:Australian prisoners sentenced to death Category:People convicted of treason against the United Kingdom Category:Prisoners sentenced to death by the United Kingdom Category:Australian civil engineers Category:Recipients of British royal pardons Category:Relativity critics Category:People from Smythesdale, Victoria Category:Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for County Galway constituencies (1801–1922) Category:Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for County Clare constituencies (1801–1922) Category:Labour Party (UK) parliamentary candidates Category:19th-century Australian male writers Category:19th-century Australian poets Category:19th-century Australian non-fiction writers Category:Politicians from the Colony of Victoria Category:Foreign volunteers in the Second Boer War