The clock in the Castle Tower struck 3.15 p.m. as two Army marksmen managed to get up there unseen. On the balcony circling the dome of the City Hall, Sean Connolly was hoisting the green flag that he had used in the play on Palm Sunday. At that range, they could hardly miss.
Sean fell with the flag falling and billowing around him. The first rebel to kill, he was the first to be killed. The bloody hole in the centre of his forehead gave him the look of a unicorn whose horn has been wrenched out. His premonition of dying in the first hour was wrong, but not by much.
Kathleen Lynn, a captain in the Volunteers and one of the few women doctors in Dublin, was sent for. The green flag was reddened with Sean’s blood. She had seen him perform in the play Under Which Flag? and remembered his final speech, ‘Under this flag only will I serve. Under this flag, if need be, I will die.’ It was a case of Death imitating Art.
For form’s sake, she whispered an act of contrition in his ear. Her glasses and black hair parted in the middle would have made her seem severe but for her kindly face. She straightened his body and covered him with the flag of Ireland reborn. Further along the roof, Sean’s fourteen-year-old brother Matthew was fighting back his tears.
The doctor went down and found John O’Reilly, a spindly giant of a man.
‘Sean’s dead,’ she whispered. ‘You’re in charge now.’
Inside the Castle, nurses were removing beds from the Throne Room and Picture Gallery to the safety of St Patrick’s Hall.
The hospital’s theatres were crammed with doctors and nurses waiting to operate.
Some old soldiers, their nerves in tatters, were screaming, others, blinded and spitting up chunks of lungs ruined by mustard gas, were being led to safety.
Two of the witnesses to the looting in O’Connell Street were socialists, but of a different stamp.
Sean O’Casey, once secretary of the Citizen Army, was a scarecrow, with shoes he could put his feet in from several directions. He was short-sighted, long-nosed and shaky on his long thin pins after surgery for a tubercular growth on his neck; the wound still oozed with pus.
A militant, he thought the Irish Citizen Army had gone soft in allying itself with the bourgeois Volunteers.
‘James Connolly,’ he muttered, ‘the finest Marxist ever, gone wrong.’ As to the looters, ‘These are the only true bloody socialists in Dublin today.’
Skeffy, now in the city centre, was no less a socialist than O’Casey. But he found the looters’ behaviour a blot on the city’s honour.
The rebels had set up barricades across Lower Abbey Street. Into them went a couple of trams on their sides, as well as hundreds of bicycles, tyres, wheels, motor cycles and side-cars, all wired together. In Talbot Street, the twelve-foot barricade was made up mostly of furniture and bedding taken from nearby houses. No sooner was a barricade in place than opportunists raided it, carrying bits and pieces home.
One rebel soldier was to spend hours chasing looters away with a woman’s umbrella and whacking them with it whenever they came within range. The wonder was, someone remarked, not that Ireland was at war but that the umbrella wasn’t broken.
At Stephen’s Green, under the Countess’s direction, barricades were more substantial.
Into one of them went two motor cars, a laundry van whose contents – shirts, dresses, underclothes – were strewn all over the road, and a big dray, with the horse that had pulled it lying dead on the cobbles.
One barricade was composed exclusively of cars. It was added to when a luxury model, driven along the east side, was stopped by Republicans who ordered the passengers out. Seeing one was a Roman Catholic bishop, the rebel leader opened the door for him, with a bow.
‘Sorry, me Lord, but out with ye,’ as he tried to kiss his ring.
When the driver of another car tried reversing to get away, they shot his tyres to shreds. An elderly gentleman on the pavement, in a fury, boasted, ‘If they had shot the driver I’d have shot them.’ He had a miniature revolver up his sleeve.
Guests in the Shelbourne watched through the dining-room windows, wondering aloud, ‘What in heaven’s name is the world coming to?’
After the troops from the Royal Barracks bypassed the Mendicity Institute, Heuston and his men were jubilant. They believed they had forced them back to Barracks.
Heuston sent Sean MacLoughlain to the GPO, to say that if they had extra men they could hold out not just for a few hours but indefinitely.
Connolly promised to send help if and when it became available, possibly that night.
In the South Dublin Union, Kent’s men came under still heavier pressure. The machine-gun on top of the Royal Hospital covered British troops as they broke into the grounds and took over a few principal buildings. They ran through echoing corridors and dormitories firing as they went, causing patients to go into hysterics. Nurse Keogh turned a corner and was shot by British soldiers before they realized who it was.
In the grounds, the elderly were tottering in all directions, while nurses risked their lives trying to herd them to safety.
By 3.30 p.m., HQ was fortified enough for Connolly to bring the rest of his food and home-made bombs from Liberty Hall. For the next hour and a half the street was full of the rumbling of fifteen lorries and the cries of men unloading heavy crates.
The city buzzed with rumours. Two policemen shot dead by the rebels grew in the telling to fifty. Dubliners adored soldiers; they were their own, providing them with allowances and widows’ pensions and medals on mantle shelves. But the DMP and the RIC were baton-swinging swine, spies who would sell their own mothers for a pound. One passer-by expressed the popular wish that the rebels would ‘do the city a favour and shoot all the bastards’.
In the general chaos, from hovels behind majestic civic buildings, a ragged army poured into O’Connell Street.
Dublin led Europe in drunkenness and prostitution; in disease, it led the world. Dubliners rented rooms in once gorgeous Georgian houses turned into slum tenements. For them, this was a chance in a lifetime.
In full view of the Government of the new Republic founded on equal opportunity for all, a giant of a man grabbed a rifle from a rebel’s hand and tossed it through a store window. A few more bricks turned Dublin’s most fashionable street into an open-air market where everything was gratis.
The rich had their races at Fairyhouse; surely the destitute were entitled to their entertainments, too?
Urchins broke the huge plate-glass window of Noblett’s, the sweet shop on the corner of Earl Street, and gushed in, one on top of the other. The wonder was no one was killed.
Their next choice was Lemon’s, by the Liffey. They stuffed their mouths, pockets and every available bag with chocolates, bonbons, turkish delight, acid drops and toffees. For some of them, the only memory that would survive 1916 was having their fill of sweets for free.
Other chisellers broke into Dunne’s, the gentleman’s outfitter, to put on boaters and glossy bowler hats. Some black-faced kids, who had never had or hoped to have new clothes, built a pyramid of hats on their heads. Some flicked Donegal tweed caps through open windows to their pals like playing cards. A gang of toddlers put on silk top hats which reached down to their shoulders so they cut slits in them for eyes.
From other stores, people emerged with umbrellas and tambourines. One enterprising group, their mouths busied with toffees, wheeled out a gleaming upright piano. It was last seen disappearing down a side street, with a thin little boy, his head shaven and coated with iodine to cure his ringworm, sitting on top for the ride.
A two-year-old, his face black with dirt and lice, crouching on the kerb, was squalling at being abandoned amid glass fragments ankle-high. A big sister, her uplifted skirt crammed with pickings, tried a sharp, ‘Shurrup or I’ll brain yer’ and a thump and, when that failed, stuffed his mouth with liqueur chocolates till he threw up.
One lad appeared in Lower Abbey Street with a golf club and a pair of high-powered binoculars around his neck. He pu
t down a tennis ball and, after several swipes, managed to drive it down the street. He then put the binoculars to his eyes to try and trace it.
A man backed his donkey and cart up to a store and shovelled in whatever took his fancy.
Women, like flocks of spitting black geese, snatched and fought over fur coats, digging each other with elbows sharp as flint, tearing out each other’s hair. Layer after layer of silk undergarments were put on over outdoor clothes.
One, less puritanical, climbed into a tram near the Pillar that advertised ‘Brooks Sanitary Appliances’ and ‘Emu Laundry’ on its sides. She stripped to the skin so as to provide herself with an entirely new outfit.
‘Jasus,’ one woman croaked, laden down with stolen goods, ‘look at that whoor, naked as a broom stick, nothin’ on her but her mortal sins.’ Murder was bad enough but nudity was the sin against the Holy Ghost. She shook a balled fist. ‘Isn’t she a panic? God strike the hussy dead this instant. I’d call the fecking polis after her if they was about, so I would.’
In minutes, the underdressed became the overdressed. Till then, the only new clothes they had were the old ones turned inside-out. ‘Amn’t I the most gargeous in the world, bar none?’ one demanded.
The more prescient filled baby’s prams and handcarts with whatever they could lay hands on. Only book shops were left untouched.
A drunken old woman sat, more comfortably than on a sofa, on the broad brown flank of a dead horse. With bullets whistling around her, she lustily sang,
Boys in Khaki, Boys in Blue,
Here’s the best of Jolly Good Luck to You.
One very pregnant lady, with breasts that would fill a pail, accompanied by a large progeny, went into shop after shop like a duck with ducklings. Occasionally, she administered a hefty clout to stop them squabbling. ‘No need fer that, me darlin’s. There’s lashings an’ leavings for all of yez.’
An old crone was offering diamond rings and gold watches for sixpence. Another, hunchbacked, vulture-shaped, emerged with a sackful of shoes, none of which matched. She left them by the Pillar to look for a complete pair. When she returned in a squeaky pair of new boots, she found her precious pile was gone.
‘Glory be to God, could y’ever believe there was such fecking thievery in Oirland?’
Sean McDermott came down from the second floor of the GPO, where he and Clarke had taken over Norway’s office. He went out, his blue eyes blazing, and waved his stick at the looters, ‘Get off, yez blackguards!’ In his fury, he almost tripped on rolls of ribbons and silks.
One woman had heaved a big box of tea out of a store, only to have it taken from her when she wasn’t looking. She complained to McDermott, ‘Didn’t someone steal me last pinch of tay, mister?’
Another with a top hat on was covering herself from head to heel with chains and watches. Gold and diamond-set rings disappeared down her bloomers and stockings, after which she strode up and down defiantly, yelling, ‘Fire away, ye divils, fire away!’
Outside the GPO, young starry-eyed Volunteers with Lee-Enfield rifles were telling the crowd, ‘The whole country is rising with us. Kerry and Cork and Limerick and Galway. They’re all set to march on Dublin.’
It only made the looters anxious to clean up before they arrived.
‘The Germans are coming,’ a young rebel said, to which the response was, ‘Them fecking thieves, is it?’
Sean T. O’Kelly, a small man in civilian clothes, walked to the Pillar, where he tried to explain what a glorious thing the new Republic was.
‘Isn’t Clery’s broken into yet?’ one elderly woman demanded. ‘Hivins, ’tis a great pity Clery’s isn’t smashed.’
Inside a less prestigious store, men were trying on caps, shirts, shoes, and one very peculiar item: pyjamas. Who would get dolled up to go to bed? One old fellow, too impatient to remove his boots before trying on a pair of pants, was tottering this way and that, complaining noisily, ‘Jasus, Mary and Joseph, haven’t I gone an’ handcuffed me own legs.’
A bare-footed boy, with an armful of very fashionable shoes, was met by a priest in Parnell Square.
‘Where’d you get those lad?’
‘Earl Street, Father,’ the lad called back over his shoulder, ‘but be quick or they’ll be all gone.’
To the south, a woman was wheeling a pram full of stolen goods along the quays when she saw a priest approaching. She immediately tipped all the contents into the Liffey.
‘Afternoon, Fairther,’ she grinned, ‘noice day.’
In the Green, the Countess, now formally appointed by Mallin as his second in charge, was deciding what to do with prisoners.
One British officer had given his ‘parole’ that he would not try and escape but, after noting where their defences were, he climbed the fence and disappeared. The next prisoner so obviously lied, the Countess had him put in custody. A third was taken.
‘What do you do for a living?’ she asked him.
‘I’m a clerk in Guinness’s brewery.’
‘Tell me, please, your religion and politics.’
‘Protestant and Unionist,’ he said, ‘and proud of it.’
‘Let him go,’ she told her men. ‘Had he lied to me I would have locked the bounder up.’
Having settled that, she pointed out to Mallin that, without control of the Shelbourne Hotel, they were sitting ducks. She suggested seizing the College of Surgeons, a kind of three-storeyed limestone fort on the west side of the Green.
Mallin ordered a few men under Frank Robbins to take it. The Countess went, too. At the front door, the caretaker, a Carsonite, was seeing off a beggar with too much drink on board. Seeing the rebel uniforms, he tried to shut them out, firing his gun and missing Robbins by inches.
Frank, his big boot in the door, his revolver round it, persuaded the caretaker to open up. His men were so angry, they wanted to shoot him on the spot.
‘Waste of a bally bullet,’ the Countess said. ‘Now, you, there’s an Officers’ Training Corps here. Where’s their armoury?’
‘First I’ve heard of it,’ replied the caretaker.
On the wall above his head was his signed and framed copy of the Ulster Covenant. ‘Mind telling me what this is?’
‘Never seen it before,’ he said, in a palsied voice.
She ordered him to his bedroom where a rebel noticed an orange sash of the Orange Order. ‘Can’t think who that belongs to,’ he mimicked. The caretaker was relieved when the Countess locked him in with his wife and family.
The rebels went on to the roof, raised the tricolour and took up sniping positions. For the rest of the day, they fortified and stocked the College. MacDonagh’s men in Jacob’s provided them with ammunition, gelignite and lethal quantities of biscuits.
As in all their strongholds, they filled every container with water in case supplies were turned off. That done, they used seven-pound hammers to break through into neighbouring buildings. They might need to leave in a hurry.
*
Nathan was talking with Hamilton Norway, when a copy of the Proclamation of the Republic was brought in.
Norway relished reading aloud the opening section, ‘Having organized and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organization, the Irish Republican Brotherhood’. He could not resist adding, ‘So, sir, the IRB was not so dormant, after all.’
Nathan smiled rawly. They were not the only words of his that would be pointed at him like a loaded gun in days to come.
Major Price entered, an apologetic look on his face. ‘Would you mind us taking over this office, sir?’
‘Of course. Where would you like to put me?’
‘We’ve made nice arrangements for you in the stables.’
Norway was thinking, What a pity Birrell can’t join him so the ox and the ass can be together.
In O’Connell Street, looters were into pubs and liquor stores. Some smashed the necks of bottles on walls in their hurry to submerge their back teeth. One sly old chap with a face like a red ca
bbage emerged from a pub, holding a jar of whiskey as reverently as a priest would a monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament, when a bullet smashed it in his hand.
‘Jasus,’ he shrieked, indifferent to danger, ‘the wasteful bastards.’
A crony sympathized with him. ‘Why can’t them bleddy bullets mind where they’re going?’
Women in black, built like galleons, moving like mice, burst upon the scene, rolling their sleeves up to reveal red arms, trailing concentrated odours of carbolic soap. They even stripped the dead horses of their stirrups and saddles.
Sean O’Casey, watching out of weak, watery eyes from a doorway, saw this as pure theatre. He pushed his cap even further sideways and upwards in the Dublin fashion as he saw small bare-footed girls become Cinderellas for a day. How he relished Connolly’s description of the poor as ‘the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.’ As for himself, he knew these ragged illiterates were walking encyclopaedias of want, their faces prematurely old, their ferrety bodies undernourished and tubercular, their souls starved of light. They worked for five shillings a week, enough to rent slummy rooms mostly owned by City Aldermen who received tax rebates on houses unfit for human habitation.
The splendid fanlights over the front doors had no glass in them, walls were buttressed by wormy wooden beams and so thin a nail knocked in one side sometimes went in someone’s head on the other, drains were permanently blocked. In most houses, the only means of cooking was an open fire. Few had running water. The outdoor toilets were shared by from twenty to forty people. One toilet served eighty.
In such conditions lived 23,000 families, some of them very ‘long’, that is, with over eighteen children. They slept, made love and died in one dark and dingy room with water dripping all year round, except when the pipes froze in winter, and with perennial mushrooms on the ceiling. Even prostitutes had no room of their own and had to entertain behind a curtain.
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