An Enigma no more... Code breaker Turing had Tipp links
HE may have saved the lives of millions of people by breaking the Nazi Enigma code during World War II – but few people know that Alan Turing’s grandfather was from a small village in Co. Tipperary.
Mr Turing was a code breaker and mathematical genius, whose story is told in the hit film, The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
Wartime British prime minister Winston Churchill once said that Mr Turing had made the single biggest contribution to the Allied victory in the war against Nazi Germany. And his lineage claims are much more than the old adage that everyone has an Irish relative somewhere – Mr Turing’s mother Sara had very strong connections to Borrisokane in north Tipperary.
Local Tipperary historian George Willoughby said: ‘Alan’s mother was a member of the same Stoney family who once resided at Tombrickane, Kyle Park, Borrisokane, North Co. Tipperary.’
The Stoney family were once prominent landlords in North Tipperary and Ethel Sara Stoney (1881–1976), was born in the city of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, India, the daughter of Edward Waller Stoney from Borrisokane in North Tipperary and Sarah Crawford of Longford.
They had come from Protestant, Anglo-Irish gentry.
Her father was chief engineer of the Madras Railways, which played a key role in developing railways in India, before being merged in 1908 with Southern Mahratta Railway.
Mr Willoughby said: ‘She was educated at Alexandra School in Dublin, and at Cheltenham Ladies College, before attending lectures at the Sorbonne in Paris. She then returned to join her parents in Madras, preferring to use her middle Christian name ‘Sara’.
‘In 1907, she married Julius Mathison Turing, son of Reverend John Robert Turing and Fanny Boyd, in Dublin. And in 1912, Alan Turing was born, the second and last child [after his brother John Ferrier Turing].
Mr Willoughby added: ‘Later he would be regarded as being one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century.’