AS audiences continue to flock to the hotly tipped Oscar contender, The King’s Speech, it emerges that there is a connection between the real live Lionel Logue, who taught King George V1 of England to largely overcome his stammer, and a Limerick woman named Mary Reddan,
who left Limerick for London before travelling on to Tasmania. Last week, the broadcaster, Gay Byrne, speaking on his radio show on Lyric FM said that a family named Logue, had emigrated from their home in Stillorgan, South Dublin to Adelaide, Australia, sometime in the 1880s and that it is from this family that Lionel Logue is descended.
This week, it emerges that though the actual date is not confirmed, it is believed that a young woman named Mary Reddan left Limerick between 1820 and 1830.
Niall Kelly of the University of Limerick, who is a teacher of the Alexander Technique and a personal change consultant, has learnt from a newspaper article sent to him from Australia that a reporter named Helen Trincas has reported on how Lionel Logue came to travel to London to learn from the “master,” Fredrick Mathias Alexander.
Alexander, who had lost his own voice, was left jobless and without a career when the medics of the day failed to help him.
“He later went on to create the eponymous Alexander Technique, which addresses body and mind, as well as the voice – he developed his own technique for voice and breathing.,” Mr Kelly told the Limerick Post.
The Alexander Technique is a practical method of learning to release patterns of chronic tension, habits that have slipped below the level of conscious awareness.
By adopting the principles of the Alexander technique, breathing and speaking become easier; movement becomes freer, lighter and more enjoyable. Learning the technique opens up a world of never ending possibilities to release the potential of mind and body to their best advantage.
Fredrick Mathias Alexander travelled to London where he established his practice.
Now for the Limerick connection.
The grandmother of Alexander was a Mary Reddan, who came from Limerick.
Having emigrated to London, it appears that Mary, who according to the writer Michael Bloch, “had an attraction to frocks, dresses and silverware that the retailers, householders and courts of the time did not appreciate,” found herself in Tasmania, where in time, she met the grandfather of Fredrick Mathias Alexander, whose groundbreaking work so greatly impressed the Australian-born Lionel Logue that he too, travelled to London to learn more about the Alexander Technique
Lionel Logue established his practice in Harley Street, London, and it was here that the then Duke of York (soon to become King George V1, when his brother, King Edward V111 abdicated to marry the American divorcee, Wallis Simpson) came to put himself under the professional guidance and instruction of Logue
Speaking to the Limerick Post, Mr Kelly, who teaches on two programmes at UL – the MA in Chant and Ritual Song and the BA in Voice and Dance (both courses in the Irish World Academy), said he has been trying unsuccessfully to get more details of Mary Reddan.
“So far I’ve failed to unearth anything of much use but perhaps some reader of the Limerick Post may have some worthwhile information on Mary,” he said
The Alexander technique has been taught for over one 100 years.
In 1958, the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT) was founded in the UK to ensure high standards of teaching training and practice, and to promote public awareness of the technique.
