A City in Wartime

by Pádraig Yeates

  At Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital over the same period the figures were 3,737 and 6,545, respectively, and a similar trend occurred at the Westmorland Lock Hospital. Altogether, attendances at outpatient clinics did not reach their maximum of 40,086 until 1934/5, when the number of inpatient days was 10,487. The number of inpatient days in 1922/3 had been 6,783.26

  An Interdepartmental Report on Venereal Disease in 1926 found that infection was widespread, not only among prostitutes and members of the new Free State army but the wider population as well. Salvation came in the form of Salvarsan (arsphenamine), an organo-arsenic compound developed in 1910 that treated syphilis without the damaging long-term side effects of the old mercury-based treatments. There was also final acceptance by the new regime that sexually transmitted disease was primarily a health problem and not a malign manifestation of British oppression. Indeed the government even considered adopting the Continental model of registering prostitutes and regulating their trade to contain the threat to public health; but the moral guardians of Irish society, the Catholic hierarchy, vetoed any such revolutionary measure.27

  The end of the war on 11 November 1918 no doubt provided countless occasions of sin, but it is unlikely that public health concerns were uppermost in anyone’s mind. The Irish Times reported:

  Dublin gave itself over to rejoicings. The feelings that had been pent up for years were suddenly let loose and the whole city seemed to go mad with joy.

  Flags of the Allies ‘were profusely displayed from the principal buildings … the Union Jack being, of course, in largest request.’ In the afternoon a dense crowd filled the area from College Green to St Stephen’s Green

  and cheered themselves hoarse. The windows of the houses were occupied by people waving flags; the tops of tramcars were packed with cheering passengers; motor cars were laden with jubilant occupiers; the jarveys had more ‘fares’ than their cars could carry; military wagons bedecked with flags and carrying scores of happy ‘WAACs’ [members of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps] pushed their way cautiously through the crowds,

  while overhead, ‘areoplanes’ could be seen ‘gracefully gambolling in a cloudless sky, their wings flashing in the sunlight.’

  The only reference to local political differences was a mock funeral for the Kaiser organised by students from the Royal College of Surgeons. They wheeled an effigy of Wilhelm II through the streets wrapped in ‘a Sinn Fein flag.’28

  Arthur Lynch, whose recruitment efforts had been booed a few weeks earlier, was cheered by the crowd and a speech demanded in College Green. He declared that ‘barbarism is killed, now and for ever,’ before being carried shoulder high to Trinity College by British soldiers. However, the college authorities had ordered the gates closed, and Lynch had to make a less dramatic entrance through a side door.29

  Sinn Féin was caught on the hop by news of the armistice. It had organised a meeting in the Mansion House that night, addressed by Alderman Tom Kelly and Harry Boland, where all the speakers could do was declare that the Allies’ victory would not deflect them from the campaign for independence. To raise morale, Boland predicted that the party would win ‘between seventy-five and eighty seats’ in the general election that must follow the ending of the war.

  The celebrations continued on Tuesday with a military display at Wellington Barracks for the children of the Liberties. It was also the day when spontaneous joy at the ending of the war gave way to events driven by conflicting political agendas and aspirations about what the peace should bring.

  For most soldiers it was a holiday, and they thronged the streets. The only incidents during the daylight hours were some stone-throwing by youths at a military band on St Patrick’s Hill and a few attacks on Union Jacks. The most prominent incident was at the head office of the National University in Merrion Square, where a group of students overpowered the staff and tore down a large Union Jack. A Sinn Féin supporter in Glasnevin hit on the simple expedient of mounting a lighted piece of turf on a pole and setting fire to flags on display.

  Serious trouble erupted in the evening. Staff members in the Sinn Féin offices at 6 Harcourt Street received a last-minute warning that a group of Trinity students were planning an attack at 7 p.m. They barely had time to bar the doors before the building was bombarded with stones. The besieged workers retaliated with lumps of coal from the cellar but were finding it hard to hold out until two Irish Volunteer officers, Simon Donnelly and Harry Boland, arrived and dispersed the students by firing over their heads.30

  The appearance of Donnelly and Boland marked the beginning of a counter-mobilisation by the Volunteers. Joseph McDonagh, a member of the 1st Battalion of the Dublin Brigade, recalled: ‘At seven o’clock that Monday evening members of the Dublin Brigade, including my own unit, acting on orders from GHQ proceeded to clear the streets of the British Military and their supporters.’ The main confrontation came when a group of soldiers decided to hold an impromptu victory march from St Stephen’s Green to Sackville Street at about 7:30 p.m. There were no incidents until they were approaching the GPO, where a large number of Volunteers and Sinn Féin supporters had gathered with flags. The soldiers turned into Middle Abbey Street to avoid a confrontation, only to be set upon by a fresh crowd. They were driven back across the river, and a rush of young men and youths waving Tricolours pushed though a DMP cordon on O’Connell Bridge and reached Grafton Street before being dispersed by a baton charge. During the riot a window in Switzer’s drapery shop was smashed and a group of British officers set upon in Wicklow Street.

  Fresh trouble erupted north of the river when a group of women marched up Sackville Street carrying a Union Jack. After reaching the Parnell Monument they turned around and marched back to the GPO, taking up a position around Nelson’s Pillar. This was too much for the Volunteers and Sinn Féin supporters gathered nearby: they drove off the women, grabbed their Union Jack and burnt it to the accompaniment of rebel songs and shouts of ‘Up Dev!’ Undeterred, the women returned with a larger Union Jack and an escort of off-duty soldiers and sailors. Battle resumed at the corner of Henry Street, where the Sinn Féin supporters were once more victorious. However, on this occasion the flag was too large to burn easily and had to be torn into fragments first.

  Other fights flared in the area between local people and off-duty soldiers. The latter were often accompanied by women ‘friends’, as the Irish Independent called them, and it was this factor that seemed to spark the most violence. In one instance where a woman collapsed at the O’Connell Monument the hostile crowd let an ambulance through but blocked it again when a soldier tried to accompany her to hospital.

  The Independent stressed that most of the soldiers and sailors involved in the disturbances were from ‘England, Scotland and Wales,’ while the Irish Times played down the scale of the trouble and pointed out that ‘soldiers and civilians mingled in harmony’ in many parts of the city that night. But Volunteers claimed that they had control of the streets by 11 p.m., having defeated the ‘military, Dublin Metropolitan Police and loyalists.’31

  Lloyd George called a general election for 14 December. The British Parliament also enacted the long-promised Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act, enfranchising women over the age of thirty as voters and as candidates. By calling the election quickly and presenting voters with an opportunity to re-elect the war-winning coalition before the disillusionment of peace set in, Lloyd George ensured his own return to power with the loss of a few dissident Liberals. But it was a strategy that did the Irish Party no favours. It did not even attempt to contest twenty-five seats that were claimed by Sinn Féin, mainly in Munster. It would also have to secure a pan-nationalist electoral pact with Sinn Féin to ensure victory in some of its Ulster strongholds.

  Another difficulty it had to contend with was the hostility of William Martin Murphy and his newspapers. Like many home-rulers, Murphy had lost relatives in the war and had also been disgusted by Redmond’s acceptance of partition. While not openly supporting Sinn Féin,
Murphy’s papers subjected the Irish Party and Redmond’s successor, John Dillon, to relentless criticism. Most editions of the Irish Independent in the weeks before the election had front-page displays attacking the record of the Irish Party. On 5 December 1918 the display was printed under the heading ‘The Policy of Parnell.’ It used the lost leader’s famous statement that ‘no man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation’ and listed opposite this ‘What the Party Did.’ Among the climb-downs catalogued were:

  1905–18 Customs and Excise given up

  1905 Devolution accepted

  1910 Party declare for a Provincial, NOT a Dominion Parliament

  1914–1917 Partition of Ireland agreed to

  It also contained damaging quotations from John Dillon and concluded: ‘Whoever Represents Parnell Mr. Dillon Definitely DOES NOT!’

  On 6 December it listed all twenty-five constituencies where Sinn Féin was standing uncontested:

  EXCELSIOR!

  474,778 Electors have now declared for an INDEPENDENT IRELAND!

  and urged other voters to do likewise. On 7 December the display included a ‘Message from the Poles Defence Committee, New York,’ declaring:

  The sympathy of the world is with Ireland. Will you help Sinn Fein to make Ireland worthy of it by VOTING FOR INDEPENDENCE?’

  On 10 December the paper published two quotations from Éamon de Valera in Lincoln Prison, ‘(As passed by the Censor).’ The next day the headline was ‘WHY DID THEY DIE?’ followed by a list of national martyrs from Brian Bórú to Thomas Ashe and Richard Coleman,32 who ‘died to secure the liberation of the oldest political prisoner in the world—IRELAND!’ Finally, on the day before the election, under the heading ‘TE DEUM!’ it quoted Cardinal William Henry O’Connell of Boston declaring that

  IRELAND must be allowed TO TELL the world freely what she wanted, how she wished to be governed, and IRELAND must make the world hear HER.

  The Independent added that ‘25,000,000 Irish-Americans back this demand AND 474,788 Irish Electors at home affirm it.’

  In Dublin every constituency would be contested by the Irish Party. Only three sitting MPs had survived since 1914: William Field in the St Patrick’s division, P. J. Brady in the St Stephen’s Green division and J. J. Clancy in North County Dublin. The number of constituencies in the city and county had also been increased, from six to ten, reflecting changes in population and, most significantly, the massive increase in the electorate resulting from women having a vote for the first time. Other sitting MPs were Alfie Byrne, who would be defending his seat in the Harbour division, and John Dillon Nugent of the AOH, who would be running in the new St Michan’s division.

  Suffrage groups were at first hopeful that many women would be nominated. There was certainly no lack of eligible candidates. Cissie Cahalan, one of the few working-class women to play a leading role in the suffrage movement and secretary of the Irish Women’s Franchise League, wrote to the newspapers urging Sinn Féin to nominate such figures as ‘Mrs. Sheehy Skeffington, Madam Markievicz, Mrs. Tom Clarke … Mrs. Wyse Power … Dr. Kathleen Lynn, Madam Gonne McBride, Countess Plunkett, Miss Gavan Duffy and Miss Nora Connolly.’ She also suggested Prof. Mary Hayden, Alice Stopford Green, Sarah Harrison, Mary Louisa Gwynn (wife of Stephen Gwynn) and Mary Kettle (widow of Tom Kettle) as candidates for the Irish Party. Only when it came to the Unionists were most of the candidates on her list from outside the capital, but even here she could propose Lady Dockrell, a Unionist member of Blackrock Town Council.33

  Constance Markievicz would be the sole candidate who had been on Cissie Cahalan’s list, although Hanna Sheehy Skeffington was nominated for the Harbour division. Why she did not stand is not clear.34 It may have been that she felt, like many members of Sinn Féin, that Alfie Byrne’s position was unassailable. Whatever the reason, it was the second time in four years that the most working-class constituency in Dublin was denied the opportunity to vote for one of the country’s leading republican socialists. Instead a local publican, Phil Shanahan, who had been ‘out’ in Easter Week, was nominated for Sinn Féin.

  The party’s campaign got off to a brisk start with a rally in the Liberties presided over by the long-standing local Sinn Féin councillor William T. Cosgrave. As he had been re-elected unopposed for Kilkenny, the party used the tried and tested tactic of nominating a prisoner for the seat. In this case it was the ITGWU finance officer and 1916 veteran Joseph McGrath, who was serving a sentence for sedition in Usk Prison in Monmouthshire. More than two thousand people attended the rally at the Fountain, including five hundred Volunteers in military formation.35

  It was a symptom of the bankruptcy of the Irish Party in Dublin that its candidate in the Liberties should be John Saturninus Kelly, a renegade Labour councillor widely reviled for his attacks on Larkin during the lock-out, his condemnation of Connolly as a ‘pro-German’ and his unstinting support for the British war effort. He was general secretary of the Irish Railway Workers’ Trade Union, whose members ‘scabbed’ in numerous disputes, and he was suspected of surviving on secret subsidies from employers.

  The early display of support by the Volunteers for Sinn Féin candidates was ominous for the Irish Party. The DMP estimated that there were twenty-three Sinn Féin ‘clubs’ in Dublin on the eve of the election, with a membership of 4,640. It warned that these activists would be supplemented by the efforts of the Irish Volunteers, which contained ‘all the younger members … and most fanatical Sinn Feiners.’36 Irish Citizen Army members would also canvass for Sinn Féin, especially for Constance Markievicz in the St Patrick’s division.

  Markievicz benefited even more from the support of many Dublin women activists, angry as well as disappointed at the party’s failure to nominate more women. Some even suspected that Markievicz would be left without support by the organisation’s national office. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington described St Patrick’s as ‘the worst managed constituency in Dublin’ and said that women had a duty to go there to campaign for Markievicz.37

  Her opponent was the old Parnellite and friend of ‘craft’ labour, William Field. Field’s problem was his voting record, which was exemplary for a Redmondite. His only policy initiative was the advocacy of a ‘dead meat’ plant for Dublin. It evoked an appropriate electoral image for the party.

  Councillor Coghlan Briscoe, executive officer of the Town Tenants’ League, former sheriff and a pillar of the old political order in the city, ran as an independent against the long-established Sinn Féin councillor Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh in College Green. Rather than make any attempt to defend the Irish Party’s record, Briscoe urged electors to vote for him because of his expertise on rent legislation. As with Field, his programme did not inspire voters.

  John Dillon Nugent faced another 1916 veteran, Michael Staines, in the St Michan’s constituency. Dillon ran the weakest of all campaigns in the city, pleading ill health as the reason for his absence from the hustings. Staines was a senior member of the IRB and the Irish Volunteers and had served as a very effective quartermaster of the Dublin Brigade in the period before the Easter Rising. However, his main claim to fame with the wider public at this point in his career was that he had been one of Connolly’s stretcher-bearers at the GPO.38

  In Clontarf East the Irish Party candidate was Sir Patrick Shortall, whose anti-union record as an employer in 1913 would not be as damaging to his prospects as it would have been in one of the main city divisions, and he could hope for tactical support from the substantial Protestant electorate in the absence of a Unionist candidate. However, he faced a strong Sinn Féin opponent in Richard Mulcahy, Thomas Ashe’s lieutenant at Ashbourne.

  The Unionists contested five seats. One of the most interesting contests was in Rathmines, where Sir Maurice Dockrell was the candidate. Dockrell was a pillar of the Unionist Party in Dublin. Since the outbreak of the war he had served on the Dublin Recruitment Committee and in 1918 had been appointed to the Recruiting Council of Ireland. He was chairman of the British Red Cro
ss Society and of the St John Ambulance Brigade in Co. Dublin and was Deputy Lieutenant of the city. Although he had been involved in the 1913 Lock-out and had even issued revolvers to strike-breakers in his capacity as a justice of the peace, he had not initiated any lock-out at his own builders’ supply business. Rather he had to close when employees engaged in sympathetic strike action. As a consequence he was widely regarded as a ‘good employer.’

  His own campaign was directed at the new women voters. He presented himself as a champion of women’s rights, especially those of soldiers’ wives and widows. He accused Sinn Féin, not without justification, of abandoning this group who had suffered so much in the war. Lady Dockrell campaigned actively for her husband, as did Lady Arnott, president of the Dublin Women’s Unionist Club. A coup for Dockrell was the endorsement of the veteran suffrage campaigner Anna Haslam, who had pioneered the women’s patrols. She and her late husband, Thomas, had been campaigning for women’s rights since the 1860s. She told women that their long-term interests were best served by being united with a large urban liberal democracy such as Britain rather than being tolerated in a small peasant society as a subordinate sex.