tation of a judge of ability and discernment. Though not a profound lawyer, he never failed to appreciate a legal argument, and his judgments were clear and to the point. He excelled in the trial of nisi prius cases; his perception was quick, he grasped the facts of the case rapidly, and presented them to the jury with clearness and precision. In 1865 he was appointed, with Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, on the special commission for the trial of the Fenian prisoners at Dublin and Cork, and before them Luby, O'Leary, O'Donovan Rossa, and the other principal conspirators were tried. Luby, in his speech after conviction, acknowledged the fairness of Keogh's summing-up to the jury. In 1872 the celebrated Galway county election petition was tried before him. The candidates at the election were Captain J. P. Nolan (home ruler) and Captain Le Poer Trench (conservative); the former was returned by a large majority. His return was petitioned against mainly on the ground of undue influence exercised on his behalf by the Roman catholic clergy. The trial lasted from 1 April to 27 May, and resulted in Captain Nolan being unseated, and three Roman catholic bishops and thirty-one priests were reported to the house as guilty of undue influence and intimidation. That Captain Nolan was properly unseated on the evidence could hardly be contested, but the judge in the course of his judgment commented on the action of the Roman catholic bishops and priests in terms of unusual severity. His remarks were deeply resented, and aroused much popular feeling. Meetings were held at which he was denounced, he was burnt in effigy in numerous places, and the excitement became so great that special precautions had to be taken by the government for his protection. In the House of Commons Isaac Butt [q. v.], the home-rule leader, brought forward a motion impugning the conduct of the judge; it was defeated by a large majority, only twenty-three voting in its favour (9 Aug. 1872). For the remainder of his life Keogh was the subject of constant attack by the home-rule party. In 1878 his health began to fail, and he died at Bingen-on-the-Rhine on 30 Sept. of that year. During the greater part of his tenure of office he had been one of the most conspicuous figures on the Irish bench. Genial and good-natured, he was popular in private life, where his ready wit and conversational powers made him a most agreeable companion; he possessed an unusually retentive memory, and his fund of anecdote was varied and entertaining.
In 1867 the university of Dublin conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D. He married, in 1841, Kate, daughter of Mr. Thomas Roney, surgeon, by whom he had a son (called to the Irish bar in 1871) and a daughter (married to the Hon. Mr. Justice Murphy). Both survived him. In addition to the ‘Chancery Practice’ already mentioned, he was author of two pamphlets, ‘Ireland under Lord de Grey,’ 1844, and ‘Ireland Imperialised,’ and of ‘An Essay on Milton's Prose Writings,’ 1863.
[Law Magazine and Review, November 1878; Ann. Reg. 1878; Times, 2 Oct. 1878; Hansard, 1848–55 and 1872; New Ireland, 1877; Life of Frederick Lucas, M.P., 1886; Galway County Election Petition Judgment, and Minutes of Evidence, Parliamentary Papers (241) of 1872, vol. xlviii.; information from family.]
KEON, MILES GERALD (1821–1875), novelist and colonial secretary, last male descendant of an old Irish family, the Keons of Keonbrooke, co. Leitrim, was born on 20 Feb. 1821 in the paternal castle on the banks of the Shannon, which was built entirely of white marble quarried on the estate, and still known as Keon's Folly. Miles was the only son of Myles Gerald Keon, barrister-at-law, by his second wife, Mary Jane, fifth daughter of Patrick, count Magawly, and of Jane, daughter of Christopher Fallon of Runnymede, co. Roscommon. His father having died at Keonbrooke in 1824, and his mother in 1825 at Temora, he and his younger sister, Ellen Benedicta, were left to the care of their maternal grandmother, Countess Magawly, and upon her death to the care of their uncle, Francis Philip, count Magawly, sometime prime minister of Marie Louise in the duchies of Parma, Placentia, and Guastalla. On 27 March 1832 Keon was entered as a student at the jesuit college of Stonyhurst, then under the presidency of Father Parker. He won many prizes, including one for a poem on Queen Victoria's accession, reprinted in the jubilee year, in the thirty-second number of the ‘Stonyhurst Magazine.’ On quitting Stonyhurst he made a pedestrian tour through France and crossed to Algeria, where he served for a short time in the French army under Bugeaud. He afterwards became a law student at Gray's Inn, but soon abandoned law for literature. In 1843 he published at Dublin an octavo pamphlet entitled (see the Tablet, iv. 532) ‘The Irish Revolution, or What can the Repealers do? And what shall be the New Constitution?’ His earliest success as a writer was a vindication of the jesuits, published in the third number of the ‘Oxford and Cambridge Review,’ September 1845. Appearing in the nominal organ of both universities it provoked a smart controversy.
