34. Tom Kettle, a former Irish Party MP and professor of national economics at University College, Dublin, had joined the British army in 1914 and was serving as a recruiting officer in 1915.
35. Freeman’s Journal, 10 September 1915.
36. Irish Independent, 9 August 1915.
37. O’Brien, Forth the Banners Go, p. 264.
38. Irish Worker, 8 August 1914.
39. Irish Independent, 16 and 17 September 1915.
40. Maume, The Long Gestation, p. 223.
41. Irish Worker, 17 January 1914.
42. See above.
43. Irish Independent, 30 September to 2 October 1915. The Pillar survived the 1916 Rising only to fall prey to the fast-food restaurant plague that engulfed Dublin’s premier street in more recent times. Bullet holes can still be seen below the McDonald’s sign.
44. Tynan, The Years of the Shadow, p. 178.
45. Irish Times, 4 September 1915.
46. Orr, Field of Bones, p. 22.
47. The Belfast recruitment area included Cos. Antrim and Down. The Dublin recruitment area consisted of the city and county.
48. Murray, Seán O’Casey, p. 93.
49. Dublin Corporation Reports, 1915, vol. 1, p. 351–2.
50. Dublin Corporation Reports, vol. 2, p. 115–18.
51. Dublin Corporation Reports, vol. 1, p. 319, 916.
52. Dublin Corporation Minutes, 1915, p. 287, 311.
53. Dublin Corporation Reports, 1915, vol. 1, p. 975. The amounts paid in allowances for employees who joined the British army are not given separately but cannot have been large. See chap. 2 above.
54. O’Flanagan, ‘Dublin City in an Age of War and Revolution,’ p. 23.
55. Irish Independent, 28 September 1915.
56. Irish Times and Irish Independent, 24 to 30 September 1915; O’Flanagan, ‘Dublin City in an Age of War and Revolution,’ p. 23.
57. Freeman’s Journal, 23 September 1915.
58. Evening Standard, 23 September 1915.
59. Irish Independent, 8 August 1915.
60. Irish Independent, 4 October 1915.
61. O’Flanagan, ‘Dublin City in an Age of War and Revolution,’ p. 125.
Chapter 4: ‘Without the shedding of Blood’
1. Novick, Conceiving Revolution, p. 36.
2. Novick, Conceiving Revolution, p. 48; Irish Independent circulation figures for 1913 to 1915.
3. Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, p. 297–8.
4. O’Riordan, ‘Michael O’Leary, Kuno Meyer and Peadar Ó Laoghaire.’ Ben Novick, in Conceiving Revolution, argues that the ability of anti-war propaganda to strike a deeper resonance with its audience than the more numerous and technically better-produced pro-British propaganda was an important factor in their success.
5. Irish Independent, 10 June 1915.
6. Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, p. 140–42. His father-in-law was David Sheehy. Tom Kettle was his brother-in-law; another brother-in-law, Francis Cruise O’Brien, was a prominent journalist in Dublin.
7. Irish Independent, 25 September 1914.
8. Valiulis, Portrait of a Revolutionary, p. 10–12.
9. Ó Lúing, I Die in a Good Cause, p. 35–6.
10. Valiulis, Portrait of a Revolutionary, p. 10–12.
11. Yeates, Lockout, p. 439. The fact that his father, Andrew Kettle, had been a leading figure in the Land League in the 1880s cut no ice with the Citizen Army men.
12. Newsinger, Rebel City, p. 120. Colonel Moore would adhere to the Redmondite Volunteers at the split but later joined the post-1916 independence movement. He would serve in the Free State Senate, become a founder-member of Fianna Fáil, and campaign against land annuities. He was a brother of the novelist George Moore.
13. Newsinger, Rebel City, p. 117–18. There was almost a social cachet to being in the Citizen Army. Its women members included Constance Markievicz, Dr Kathleen Lynn, her companion Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, the Abbey actor Helena Molony, and Nellie Gifford, whose sisters Grace and Muriel married the 1916 signatories Joseph Plunkett and Thomas MacDonagh, respectively. It also reflected the fact that, unlike the Volunteers, the Citizen Army admitted women to full membership.
14. Irish Worker, 3 October 1914.
15. Yeates, Lockout, chap. 41.
16. O Cathasaigh, The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, p. 52.
17. Irish Independent, 2 August 1915.
18. Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse, p. 235.
19. Pearse, Political Writings and Speeches, p. 137.
20. McGarry, The Rising, p. 92.
21. Quoted by Newsinger, Rebel City, p. 125.
22. Workers‘ Republic, 5 February 1916.
23. Irish Independent, 14 August 1915.
24. Irish Independent, 18 September 1915.
25. Ireland’s Memorial Records. This compared with an average fatality rate for Ireland of 23 per cent. However, these figures are not directly comparable. For instance, they do not take account of reservists recalled on the outbreak of war, or recruits from Britain allocated to Irish regiments. Another factor affecting the figures is the lack of details on Irishmen who enlisted in the navy or air force.
26. Robbins, Under the Starry Plough, p. 45–53; Irwin, Betrayal in Ireland, p. 17–18; Valiulis, Portrait of a Revolutionary, p. 10–12.
27. Ben Novick, ‘Gun running and the Great War,’ in Gregory and Pašeta, Ireland and the Great War, p. 104–7. The Martini rifles would have been considered obsolescent but would have been at least as effective as the Mausers landed at Howth the previous year. The identification of E Company as the culprits is in Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising, p. 35. Henderson is generally regarded as extremely reliable. The company commander was Captain Patrick Weafer, a native of Enniscorthy who was killed in action in the Imperial Hotel during the rising. O’Farrell, Who’s Who in the Irish War of Independence.
28. Connolly to Peter Keeley, 25 February 1915, in Connolly, Between Comrades, p. 526; Woggon, ‘Not merely a labour organisation.’
29. Theresa Moriarty, ‘Work, warfare and wages: Industrial controls and Irish trade unionism in the First World War,’ in Gregory and Pašeta, Ireland and the Great War, p. 73; Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, p. 318. Former soldiers were liable for service for up to twelve years after their term of enlistment ended. Connolly’s almost pathological hatred of the British army is one of the unexplored mysteries of his life.
30. Woggon, ‘Not merely a labour organisation.’
31. Watson’s stockbroker brother George was a spokesman for the Unionist business interests in Dublin and a strong critic of home rule, which added to the political undertones in the dispute.
32. Woggon, ‘Not merely a labour organisation,’ p. 45–9.
33. Irish Independent, 30 June 1916. In June 1916 William O’Brien had been allowed to travel under guard from Fron Goch, where he was detained after the Easter Rising, to London to attend an earlier unsuccessful mediation hearing into the dispute. Morrissey, William O’Brien, p. 108. The company faced another major dispute with the National Seamen’s and Firemen’s Union and the ITGWU in November 1916 when seamen, firemen, waggoners and other non-dockers secured 40s for a 60-hour week from Sir George Askwith. Labour Gazette, December 1916.
34. Irish Independent, 3 April 1916.
35. Irish Independent, 31 May 1916.
36. Irish Times, 14 and 31 May and 10 June 1916.
37. Wolfe, Labour Supply and Regulation, p. 99–147.
38. Theresa Moriarty, ‘Work, warfare and wages: Industrial controls and Irish trade unionism in the First World War,’ in Gregory and Pašeta, Ireland and the Great War, p. 79.
39. Morrissey, William O’Brien, p. 94.
40. Novick, Conceiving Revolution, p. 176. Redmond had latched on to an apocryphal report of a German officer captured with a map of Ireland, so detailed that it showed ‘every farm in every parish.’ The Gael was quick to point out that a map with so much detail would have to be at least at the
scale of six inches to the mile and so would measure 150 feet by 80 feet, and it suggested that the Germans had disguised it as a groundsheet for two hundred men. That Redmond could be ridiculed so savagely showed that his stock was falling. Robbins, Under the Starry Plough, p. 62. Connolly was convinced that the real target of the raid was the union’s own printing press.
41. See Kevin Nowlan, ‘Tom Clarke, MacDermott and the IRB,’ in Martin, Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising, p. 113; Ó Broin, Revolutionary Underground, chap. 9; Morrissey, William O’Brien, p. 134–8; Cody, The Remarkable Patrick Daly.
42. Dublin Corporation Reports, 1916, vol. 1, p. 52–3.
43. Light labouring jobs, such as night watchman, were often given to ex-soldiers invalided out or to older workers no longer fit for heavier duties.
44. Dublin Corporation Minutes, 24 January 1916, p. 127–9.
45. Dublin Corporation Minutes, 6 and 14 March 1916, p. 138, 149–158; Dublin Corporation Reports, 1916, vol. 1, p. 243–4. For the first time the war bonus was secured for most, but not all, of the non-permanent corporation workers.
46. Like other major housing projects, the Sheriff Street slum clearance proved politically and financially impossible before the advent of the Irish Free State.
47. Dublin Corporation Minutes, 6 March 1916, p. 145–6.
48. Dublin Corporation Minutes, 14 March 1916, p. 154. Further evidence of the softening of the constitutional nationalists towards the Volunteers came on 30 March 1916 when Alderman Patrick Corrigan, a UIL stalwart and slum landlord indicted in the 1914 Housing Commission report, presided at a public meeting in the Mansion House to protest at the deportation of Irish Volunteer organisers to Britain for making seditious speeches. Carden, The Alderman, p. 97.
49. Irish Times and Irish Independent, 18 March 1916. No provision seems to have been made for meeting the religious obligations of non-Catholics.
50. Irish Times and Irish Independent, 18 March 1916; Henderson, Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising; Ó Lúing, I Die in a Good Cause, p. 75.
51. Irish Times, 18 March 1916.
52. Irish Independent, 18 March 1916; letter from Private Thomas Finn, C Company, 2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, to Monica Roberts, 23 March 1916, Roberts Collection, vol. 2.
53. Irish Times, 13 February 1918; Roberts Collection, introduction.
54. See, for instance, correspondence from Sergeant Brooks, Private Kirwin (or Kirwan) and Private J. O’Halloran to Monica Roberts, Roberts Collection, vol. 2.
55. Monica Roberts to Private J. May, 10 July 1915, Roberts Collection, vol. 2.
56. Sergeant Brooks to Monica Roberts, December 1915, Roberts Collection, vol. 2.
57. Sergeant Brooks to Monica Roberts, 29 October 1915, Roberts Collection, vol. 2.
58. Private Edward Mordaunt, B Company, 2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, to Monica Roberts, 18 July 1915, Roberts Collection, vol. 1.
59. Private Edward Mordaunt, B Company, 2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, to Monica Roberts, 28 August 1915, Roberts Collection, vol. 1.
60. Private Joseph Clarke, 7th Platoon, B Company, 2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, to Monica Roberts, 22 April 1916, Roberts Collection, vol. 1.
61. Private Edward Mordaunt, B Company, 2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, to Monica Roberts, 28 August 1915, Roberts Collection, vol. 1.
62. Private Edward Mordaunt, B Company, 2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, to Monica Roberts, 7 and 17 December 1915 and 25 January 1916, Roberts Collection, vol. 1.
63. Private Harry Loughlin, 20 August 1915, to Monica Roberts, Roberts Collection, vol. 1. By the end of the year he was in hospital at Alexandria with shrapnel wounds to his right hand and left leg.
64. Private Thomas Finn, 8 April 1916, and Sergeant Edward Heafey, 14 April 1916, to Monica Roberts, Roberts Collection, vol. 2.
65. Irish Times, 18 March 1916; Plunkett Dillon, All in the Blood, p. 169.
66. The Irish Times had begun publishing lists of past and present students of TCD and UCD who had served in the Crown forces. On St Patrick’s Day eighty-six names were published; many of those mentioned had died or been seriously wounded and invalided out.
67. Robinson, Memories, p. 232.
68. Novick, Conceiving Revolution, p. 66.
69. Foy and Barton, The Easter Rising, p. 20–23; Ó Lúing, I Die in a Good Cause, p. 75.
70. Richard Mulcahy, television interview, 2 February 1966, quoted by Valiulis, Portrait of a Revolutionary, p. 6.
71. Valiulis, Portrait of a Revolutionary, p. 8–12.
72. Bureau of Military History, Witness Statements, WS 819, Liam Archer.
73. Bureau of Military History, Witness Statements, WS 284, Michael Staines.
74. James Connolly, ‘Physical force in Irish politics,’ in Socialism and Nationalism, p. 53–7.
75. Plunkett Dillon, All in the Blood, p. 197–9; Robbins, Under the Starry Plough, p. 70–73.
76. Ó Lúing, I Die in a Good Cause, p. 77; Bureau of Military History, Witness Statements, WS 251, Richard Balfe.
77. Moran, Staging the Easter Rising, p. 15.
Chapter 5: ‘A scene of greater splendour … never before witnessed’
1. Smith passed the information to the IRB Military Council through the writer Liam O’Flaherty, a member of the Volunteers. It is generally accepted that the author of the forgery was Joseph Plunkett.
2. Carden, The Alderman, p. 97–9; Irish Independent, 20 April 1916. In contrast, the liberal unionist Irish Times omitted any reference to Kelly’s speech in its report of the corporation’s proceedings that day, as did the official minutes of the meeting.
3. The great majority of members of the IRB and of the Irish Volunteers knew nothing about the rising, and some leading members of both who did know were opposed to the project. Like MacNeill, they believed that armed resistance was justified, or likely to succeed, only if it was in response to attempts to introduce conscription.
4. Lynch had only been informed shortly beforehand, by Seán Mac Diarmada, a member of the Military Council and one of the prime movers in the rising.
5. Estimates of the number vary. Ó Lúing, I Die in a Good Cause, p. 76–9, says twenty to thirty; McGarry, The Rising, p. 235, says sixty. Ó Lúing spoke to participants, while McGarry uses witness statements from the Bureau of Military History.
6. Ó Lúing, I Die in a Good Cause, p. 91.
7. Robbins, Under the Starry Plough, p. 78; Bureau of Military History, Witness Statements, WS 1043, Joseph V. Lawless.
8. Henderson, Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising, p. 33–5.
9. Robbins, Under the Starry Plough, p. 63–73; Bureau of Military History, Witness Statements, WS 819, Liam Archer.
10. When the British captured Liberty Hall they were puzzled to find that only the type for the second half of the Proclamation could be found. The reason was that lack of type meant that the top half had to be printed first and then the same type used again for the bottom half, though Brady’s skill as a compositor made the document appear seamless. Devine and O’Riordan, James Connolly, Liberty Hall and the 1916 Rising, p. 43–7.
11. Murray, Seán O’Casey, p. 88. There was apparently one signatory of the Proclamation who was most reluctant to sign a document giving equality to women, but his identity remains a secret. It was not, however, Clarke himself: the old Fenian seems to have been infected by the general social radicalism of the city during his sojourn there. Clarke, Revolutionary Woman, p. 69.
12. Caulfield, The Easter Rebellion, p. 113–15.
13. Irish Times, 25 April 1916.
14. Irish Times, 25 April 1916.
15. Irwin, Betrayal in Ireland, p. 20–22.
16. She was the first of twenty-eight children (aged between two and sixteen) to be shot dead during the rising. Matthews, Renegades, p. 145–6.
17. Orr, Field of Bones, p. 195; 1916 Rebellion Handbook, p. 56. The obituary of Browning in the Irish Times of 2 May 1916 devotes most space to his prowess as a cricketer: ‘n
o more brilliant exponent of the game has ever done duty for Dublin University, of which he was a graduate.’
18. Bureau of Military History, Witness Statements, WS 251, Richard Balfe.
19. Caulfield, The Easter Rebellion, p. 85–8.
20. Morrissey, William O’Brien, p. 99.
21. O’Casey, Drums Under the Windows, p. 272.
22. McGarry, The Rising, p. 146.
23. O’Brien, Dear, Dirty Dublin, p. 260; Irish Times, 7 August 1916; DMP Statistical Returns, 1919.
24. Stephens, The Insurrection in Dublin, p. 19–21; Foy and Barton, The Easter Rising, p. 59; DMP Report for 1916, 1919.
25. The headquarters of de Valera’s battalion is usually given as Boland’s Mills, which dominated the Grand Canal Docks and Ringsend Bridge; in fact it was the less imposing Boland’s Bakery in Grand Canal Street.
26. Irwin, Betrayal in Ireland, p. 25–6.
27. Cottrell, The War for Ireland, p. 57, 62.
28. Townshend, Easter 1916, p. 189; Bureau of Military History, Witness Statements, WS 198, James Walsh.
29. Catholic Bulletin, December 1917, quoted by Foy and Barton, The Easter Rising, p. 80–81.
30. O’Brien, Blood on the Streets, p. 64–5.
31. 1916 Rebellion Handbook, p. 280–81.
32. O’Brien, Blood on the Streets, p. 57–8; Foy and Barton, The Easter Rising, p. 78–9. Medical personnel from Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital continued to treat wounded soldiers, as well as circumstances permitted, throughout the rest of the fighting.
33. Townshend, Easter 1916, p. 181–4. Marlborough Barracks is now McKee Barracks; Richmond Barracks, Inchicore (later Keogh Barracks, later Keogh Square), was demolished in 1969 to make way for St Michael’s Estate; the Royal Barracks became Collins Barracks (now part of the National Museum); Portobello Barracks is now Cathal Brugha Barracks.
34. Irish Railway Record Society Archive, GSWR, Sinn Féin Rebellion, file 2659.
35. Townshend, Easter 1916, p. 184.
36. Foy and Barton, The Easter Rising, p. 97–103; Caulfield, The Easter Rebellion, p. 76–9, 287–90.
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