Sir Andrew Horne

Sir Andrew Horne I Clongowes 1868-1873

Sir Andrew Horne (1856-1924), obstetrician and founder of the National Maternity Hospital, was a native of Ballinasloe, County Galway, who attended Clongowes in 1868-73. He qualified as a doctor in 1877 and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in 1881. After a period as assistant master of the Rotunda Hospital, he studied for a year in Vienna before establishing a private practice in Dublin. In 1894 he became a founder member, first joint master and ex-officio governor of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, Dublin. He was largely responsible for the hospital’s management over the next thirty years, presiding over its expansion into the largest maternity hospital in Europe. He was recognised as one of the leading obstetric and gynaecological physicians in Ireland, performing the hospital’s first caeserean section in 1901 and publishing a number of papers in medical journals. Knighted in 1913, he was also president of RCPI and vice-president of the obstetrics section of the British Medical Association. He was involved in a number of philanthropic societies, chiefly relating to women’s health and children’s welfare. He was an accomplished pianist, taking part with his fellow physician and Clongownian, Sir Francis Cruise, in musical recitals, popularly referred to as ‘Cruising round the Horne’. James Joyce, whom he is said to have once ejected from the hospital, mentions him in Ulysses: ‘Of that house A. Horne is lord’, and in Finnegans Wake: ‘Ho, he that hath hornhide’.