was needed to end imperial over-taxation, which was prolonging Irish poverty. Their opponents noted that the extra tax received had come from an unduly high consumption of tea, stout, whiskey and tobacco, and not from income tax. His younger cousin Erskine Childers wrote a book on the matter in 1911. Childers' 1894 report was still considered influential in 1925 in considering the mutual financial positions between the new Irish Free State and the United Kingdom. In 1926 an Irish Senate debate included claims by some Senators that, with compound interest, Ireland was owed as much as £1.2 billion by Britain. This, however, ignored the changed economic conditions since 1894, and at the eve of secession Southern Ireland was being heavily subsidised by the British taxpayer. This economic reality forced the initial Irish Free State government to cut the old age pension from five to four shillings. In 1932 on the start of the Anglo-Irish Trade War, the Irish government made a claim for £400 million in respect of past overtaxation, amongst others, but this was not mentioned when the dispute was settled in 1938. Family, later life and death Childers married Emily Walker in 1850. They had six sons and two daughters. One of their daughters, Emily "Milly" Childers, was a portrait and landscape painter. His first wife died in 1875 and Childers married Katherine Anne Gilbert in 1879. A cousin, Erskine Childers, was the author of the spy novel The Riddle of the Sands, an important figure in the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War (during which he was executed), and father of the fourth President of Ireland, Erskine Hamilton Childers. Towards the end of his ministerial career "HCE" Childers was known for his girth, and so acquired the nickname "Here Comes Everybody", which was later used as a motif in Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Childers died in January 1896, aged 68. He is buried on the south side of the central enclosed roundel in Brompton Cemetery, London. See also Childers, Queensland, town named after Childers HMAS Childers (ACPB 93), Australian ship named after the town Footnotes Further reading Childers Commission Biography Vol. I; Vol. II The Educational Activities in Victoria of the Right Hon. H. C. E. Childers, E. Sweetman, 1940 External links A Portrait from the New York Public Library Archives Childers and Cardwell Reforms 1827 births 1896 deaths Hugh Politicians from London People