Life
1785-1875; b. Tregelo, Italy; worked as printseller in Dublin, 1802; opened
shop at Carrick-on-Suir, 1807; moved to Waterford, and learned English
from Edmund Rice, 1808; bought horse and jaunting car for £10 in post-Napoleonic
depression; ran first Bianconi coach from Clonmel to Cahir, working out
of Hearn’s Hotel; pop. known as Brian Cooney; fleet amounted to 900
horses and 67 cars; naturalised Irish citizen in 1831; provided feeders
to railways; purchased rail stock; dir. Waterford and Limerick Railway
Co, 1834, and National Bank, 1835; Mayor of Clonmel, 1844; friend of Daniel
O’Connell and later of Trollope when in Clonmel; Dep.-Lieut. Tipperary,
1863; there is a life by his dg. daughter Mrs. Morgan John O’Connell.
DIB DIH
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Criticism
Morgan John O’Connell, Charles Bianconi: A Biography, 1786-1875
London: Chapman & Hall 1878), vi327pp., ill. Angela Hayes [“Autobiography”,
pp.1-23]; Constantia Maxwell, ‘Bianconi and his Irish Cars’,
in Country Life (April 16, 1948) [q.pp.]; M.O’C[onnell]. Bianconi
& S. J. Watson, Bianconi: King of the Irish Roads (Dublin:
Allen Figgis 1962), 190pp., ill. pls.; and Do. [trans. as] Bianconi,
re delle strade irlandesi (Amministrazione Provinciale di Como 1993),
171pp.
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Notes
Library of Herbert Bell (Belfast) holds M. O’C. Bianconi, Bianconi:
King of the Irish Roads (Dublin 1962).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)