Jump to content


Photo

Frank O'Boyle


  • Please log in to reply
6 replies to this topic

#1 8905

8905
  • New Member

  • 6 posts
  • Joined: December 14

Posted 22 December 2014 - 12:22

Does anyone have any info on Frank O'Boyle? - All I have been able to find is that he raced in 1937-38 in Cork and Dublin in a Alta 58s - I would love to find a photo of him as he was my great uncle - Thanks



Advertisement

#2 Rupertlt1

Rupertlt1
  • Member

  • 3,038 posts
  • Joined: October 10

Posted 22 December 2014 - 12:38

See:

 

http://www.motorspor...-reconstruction

 

Search here on O'Boyle:

 

http://www.motorspor...ne.com/archive/

 

RGDS RLT


Edited by Rupertlt1, 22 December 2014 - 12:41.


#3 Tim Murray

Tim Murray
  • Moderator

  • 24,581 posts
  • Joined: May 02

Posted 22 December 2014 - 12:45

He has quite a few mentions in the Alta Racers thread:

http://forums.autosp...62-alta-racers/

including this post:
 

Some research by our friend KJJ:



Back in the late 1930s Frank O’Boyle must have been the leading racing driver in the Irish Free State, his Alta Voiturette competing against the likes of Bira, Mays, de Graffenreid and Villoresi. O’Boyle’s car was maintained by the Evans family’s Bellevue Garage in London but Frank never once accompanied the machine when it was sent to and fro across the Irish sea; that task usually falling to Bellevue’s chief mechanic, the legendary Wilkie Wilkinson. The reasons for O’Boyle’s reluctance to leave Ireland have been hinted at, some trouble with the English authorities that may have occasioned a spell in jail. Here‘s some more detail. O’Boyle was born around the end of the 1890s but by the summer of 1920, it seems, he was already the owner of a garage in County Tyrone. In September of that year he took part in a payroll ambush in which a driver, William McDowell was shot dead. The raiders getting away with the not inconsiderable sum of £1300. O’Boyle and two companions were soon arrested and after a jury trial failed to reach a verdict they were sentenced to life imprisonment by a military court martial. One night in May 1927 O’Boyle, together with his companions from the payroll robbery, overpowered two prison guards at Belfast’s Crumlin Road jail, making their escape in a waiting motor car which was driven at great speed through the early morning Belfast streets. By 1929 Frank O’Boyle had been re-arrested by the authorities in the Free State for extradition back to the North. Dublin’s High Court disagreed and decided that it was unconstitutional to return a man who had been sentenced by a military tribunal, O’Boyle was free as long, of course, as he did not set foot on British soil. What became of O’Boyle I don't know, he must have been well respected by the Irish motor racing crowd, a Frank O’Boyle Trophy race was held at the Curragh after the war, Stirling Moss even won it in 1951. The Alta was at the Bellevue Garage when war was declared in 1939 and could not be returned to Ireland, it was eventually sold back to the company for £250. Was O’Boyle a member of the IRA? He certainly claimed he was a political prisoner, although the British courts insisted he was a common criminal.


http://tredelyn.blog...01_archive.html



#4 8905

8905
  • New Member

  • 6 posts
  • Joined: December 14

Posted 22 December 2014 - 14:27

Thank for replies - How would I find where this car is now Alta 58s Frank sold it to the Bellevue garage in about 1946



#5 Vitesse2

Vitesse2
  • Administrator

  • 41,742 posts
  • Joined: April 01

Posted 22 December 2014 - 16:20

Thank for replies - How would I find where this car is now Alta 58s Frank sold it to the Bellevue garage in about 1946

To a certain extent it was a 'forced sale'. According to Wilkie Wilkinson O'Boyle had ruined the engine by running it on ordinary petrol rather than 'dope', so it had been returned to Bellevue Motors for repairs. It was supposed to be back in Ireland in time for the Phoenix Park races on September 9th 1939, for which O'Boyle was entered. Because of the outbreak of war, the races went ahead in different form, but O'Boyle's car never arrived from London. Wilkinson later converted it from a supercharged 1500cc to an unsupercharged 2 litre and O'Boyle eventually sold it back to its builders. I assume that by 1946 O'Boyle had decided to give up racing.

 

In later years, the car became known as the Norris Special. Here it is at the Goodwood Revival in 2010:

 

22998.jpg

 

Note that there are two Norris Specials: the other one has a Frazer Nash engine!



#6 Allan Lupton

Allan Lupton
  • Member

  • 4,050 posts
  • Joined: March 06

Posted 22 December 2014 - 18:35

Note that there are two Norris Specials: the other one has a Frazer Nash engine!

Er, none has a Frazer Nash (aka Gough) engine but two are Frazer Nash specials.

The most familiar these days is the 3½ litre Alvis-engined Norris driven recently by James Baxter (who appears here!) and now by Julian Grimwade.

The other rather smaller one also has Alvis power, but in that case the 1½ litre engine from a FWD Alvis.



#7 raceannouncer2003

raceannouncer2003
  • Member

  • 2,944 posts
  • Joined: March 05

Posted 23 December 2014 - 07:35

A couple of results here:

 

http://www.racingspo...k-O'Boyle-.html

 

Vince H.