DUNKIRK, a city and a port of entry of Chautauqua county, New York, U.S.A., on the S. shore of Lake Erie, 40 m. S.W. of Buffalo. Pop. (1890) 9416; (1900) 11,616, of whom 3338 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 17,221. The city is served by the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the New York, Chicago & St Louis, and the Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley & Pittsburg railways, by the electric line of the Buffalo & Lake Erie Traction Co., and by several lines of freight and passenger steamships. Dunkirk is attractively situated high above the lake, and has several parks, including Point Gratiot and Washington; in the city are the Dunkirk free library, the Brooks Memorial hospital (1891), and St Mary’s academy. The city lies in an agricultural and grape-growing region, and has a fine harbour and an extensive lake trade; the manufactures include locomotives, radiators, lumber, springs, shirts, axes, wagons, steel, silk gloves and concrete blocks. The value of factory products increased from $5,225,996 in 1900 to $9,909,260 in 1905, or 89.6%. Large numbers of food-fish are caught in the lake. The municipality owns and operates the water works and the electric lighting plant. Dunkirk was first settled about 1805. It was incorporated as a village in 1837, and was chartered as a city in 1880.
DUNLOP, JOHN COLIN (1785-1842), Scottish man of letters, was born on the 30th of December 1785. In 1816 he became sheriff of Renfrewshire, and retained this office until his death at Edinburgh, on the 26th of January (according to others, in February) 1842. The work by which he is best known, and which will always hold an honourable place in English literature, is his History of Fiction (1814; new edition, 1888, with notes by H. Wilson, in Bohn’s “Standard Library”). In spite of the somewhat contemptuous notices in Blackwood’s Magazine (September 1824) and the Quarterly Review (July 1815), it may be pronounced the best book on the subject in English. F. Liebrecht, by whom it was translated into German (1851) with valuable notes, describes it as the only work of its kind. Dunlop was also the author of A History of Roman Literature (1823-1828), and of Memoirs of Spain during the Reigns of Philip IV. and Charles II. (1834).
DUNMORE, a borough of Lackawanna county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., adjoining Scranton on the N.E. and about 20 m. N.E. of Wilkesbarre. Pop. (1890) 8315; (1900) 12,583, of whom 3103 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 17,615. It is served by the Erie, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, and the Lackawanna & Wyoming Valley (electric) railways. Its chief industry is the mining of anthracite coal; the principal establishments are railway repair shops, which in 1905 gave employment to 48.9% of all wage-earners engaged in manufacturing. Among the borough’s manufactures are stoves and furnaces, malt liquors and silk. Dunmore is the seat of the state oral school for the deaf. The town was first settled in 1783 and was incorporated in 1862. Its growth was accelerated by the establishment here, in 1863, of the shops of the railway from Pittston to Hawley built in 1849-1850 by the Pennsylvania Coal Company. Dunmore became a station of the Scranton post office in 1902.
DUNMOW (properly Great Dunmow), a market town in the Epping (W.) parliamentary division of Essex, England, on the river Chelmer, 40 m. N.E. by N. from London on a branch of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 2704. The church of St Mary is Decorated and Perpendicular. The town was corporate from the 16th century until 1886. Roman remains have been discovered. Two miles E. is the village of Little Dunmow, formerly the seat of a priory, remarkable for the custom of presenting a flitch of bacon to any couple who could give proof that they had spent the first year of married life in perfect harmony, and had never at any moment wished they had tarried. In place of the monastic judicature a jury of six bachelors and six maidens appear in the 16th century. A rhyming oath, quoted by Fuller, was taken. The institution of this strange matrimonial prize—which had its parallel at Whichanoure (or Wichnor) in Staffordshire, at St Moleine in Brittany, and apparently also at Vienna—appears to date from the reign of John. The first instance of its award recorded is in 1445, and there are a few others. But there are references which suggest its previous award in Piers Plowman and Chaucer. The Chaucerian couplet conveys the idea of an award to a patient husband, without reference to the wife. A revival of the custom was effected in 1855 by Harrison Ainsworth, author of the novel The Flitch of Bacon, but the scene of the ceremony was transferred to the town hall of Great Dunmow. It has since been maintained in altered form. (For details see Chambers’s Book of Days, ii. 748-751; and W. Andrews, History of the Dunmow Flitch of Bacon Customs, 1877.) Close to Little Dunmow is Felsted (q.v.) or Felstead; and Easton Lodge (with a railway station), a seat of the earl of Warwick, is in the vicinity.
DUNNE, FINLEY PETER (1867- ), American journalist and humorist, was born, of Irish descent, in Chicago, Illinois, on the 10th of July 1867. After a public school education he became a newspaper reporter (1885); he was city editor of the Chicago Times (1891-1892), a member of the editorial staff of the Chicago Evening Post and of the Chicago Times-Herald (1892-1897), and editor of the Chicago Journal (1897-1900). In 1900 he removed to New York city. Although for several years he had been contributing humorous sketches in Irish brogue to the daily papers, he did not come into prominence until he wrote for the Chicago Journal a series of satirical observations and reflections attributed to an honest Irish-American, Martin Dooley, the shrewd philosopher of Archey Road, on social and political topics of the day. These were widely copied by the press of America and England. The first published collection, Mr Dooley in Peace and in War (1898), was followed by several others, similar in subject-matter and method, including Mr Dooley in the Hearts of his Countrymen (1899), Mr Dooley’s Philosophy (1900), Mr Dooley’s Opinions (1901), Observations by Mr Dooley (1902), and Dissertations by Mr Dooley (1906). These books made their author widely known as the creator of a delightfully original character, and as a humorist of shrewd insight. In 1906 he became associate editor of the American Magazine.