[Note: Special thanks to Manus and Luke O’Riordan for their photographs, knowledge and continuing friendship]

Max Levitas celebrated his 100th birthday this year surrounded by family and friends in Whitechapel, East London. At the end of the festivities, he called for the crowd to offer up a collection for the Morning Star newspaper. This minor incident symbolises Max’s absolute generosity and unbroken commitment to progressive, left-wing politics going back over 80 years.

Max, 2011. Photo -Spitalfieldslife.com.

Born in Portobello, Dublin 8 over a century ago, Max visited his native city last weekend. This article looks at his family background, his long political life and brings together pictures and stories from his recent trip to Dublin.

Family background:

Max’s parents, Harry Levitas from the Lithuanian shtetl of Akmeyan and Leah Rick from the Latvian capital of Riga, fled the anti-Semitism of Tsarist Russia in 1913 to join relatives already residing in Dublin.

The couple met in Dublin and married in the Synagogue at 52 Lower Camden Street. Three of their Dublin-born children would later participate in the 1936 East End Battle of Cable Street: Max(1915-), Maurice (1917-2001) and Sol (1919-2015). Also born in Dublin were the late Celia and Isaac, the infant boy dying as a result of a tragic domestic accident in their Warren Street home. A sixth child, Toby, was born following the emigration of the family to Glasgow.

Max and his brothers attended St Peter’s Church of Ireland National School on New Bride Street beside the Meath Hospital. His father struggled to earn a living, sometimes dealing in scrap metal, but more often as a tailor’s presser.  He became an active member of the International Tailors’, Pressers’ and Machinists’ Trade Union, known to Dubliners as ‘the Jewish Union’.

The Levitas family lived in a series of houses in Portobello (known then as Little Jerusalem) from 1915 to 1927. They were as follows : 15 Longwood Avenue (1915), 8 Warren Street (1916-25) and 13 St. Kevins Parade (1925-27).

In an 2011 interview with Spitalfieldslife.com, Max told the author:

My father was a tailor and a trade unionist. He formed an Irish/Jewish trade union and then employers blacklisted him, making sure he could never get a job. The only option was to leave Dublin and we lived in Glasgow from 1927 until 1930, but my father had two sisters in London, so we came here to Durward Street in Whitechapel in 1931 and stayed ever since.

Arriving in London in the early 1930s, the teenage Max and brother Maurice soon became active in left-wing politics. In 1934, at the age of 19, Max was appointed secretary of the Mile End Young Communist League. That same year he “became an East End hero” when he was arrested for writing anti-Fascist slogans on Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square.

Talking to Spitalfieldslife.com, he recalled :

There were two of us, we did it at midnight and we wrote ‘All out on September 9th to fight Fascism,’ ‘Down with Fascism’ and ‘Fight Fascism,’ on Nelson’s Column in whitewash. And afterwards we went to Lyons Corner House to have something to eat and wash our hands, but when we had finished our tea we decided to go back to see how good it looked, and we got arrested – the police saw the paint on our shoes.

1934 report after his arrest. Newspaper unknown. Credit – Spitalfieldslife.com

He was name checked by Oswald Mosley around this time who sarcastically told a fascist audience:

Ragotski, Schaffer, Max Levitas, Fenebloom, Hyam Aarons, Sapasnick. Old English names : Thirty-two of them out of sixty-four convicted since last June for attacks on Fascists. Thirty- two names of that character. Spontaneous rising of the British people against fascism! [Ref.]

Two years later, he took part in the famous Battle of Cable Street when hundreds of thousands of anti-Fascists (including many Jews and Irish) prevented Mosely and his Blackshirts from marching through the East End.

Max remembers:

I was working as a tailor’s presser in a small workshop in Commercial St at the time. Mosley wanted to march through Whitechapel … and I knew the only way to stop him was to have unity of the people. I approached a number of unions, Jewish organisations and the Communist League to band together against the Fascists but although they agreed what I was doing was right, they wouldn’t support me.

But I give credit to the huge number of members of the Jewish and Irish communities and others who turned out that day … There were thousands that came together in Aldgate, and when we heard that Mosley’s intention was to march along Cable St from Tower Hill into Whitechapel, large numbers of people went to Cable St and barricades were set up. The police attempted to clear Cable St with horses, so that the march could go ahead, but the people of Cable St fought back and the police had to give in.

Barricades on Cable Street, 1936. “They Shall Not Pass! Remember Olympia!. Credit – libcom.org.

[In 1937, Max’s brother Maurice ‘Morry’ Levitas  joined the British battalion of the XV (International) Brigade to fight against Franco in Spain. He saw action at Teruel, Belchite and Aragon, was captured and spent 11 months in jail where he was subject to violent interrogations, arbitrary beatings, and mock executions. He was among sixty-seven republicans released in a prisoner exchange sought by Mussolini in 1939. He later served in India and Burma with the Royal Army Medical Corps and then worked as a plumber, teacher and lecturer. He died in 2001.]

In 1939, Max was the convenor of a successful twenty-one week rent strike while living in Brady Mansions in Whitechapel. He explained in a 1999 interview how such strikes “could also demonstrate another aspect of class unity”:

We were fighting the Jewish landlords the same way as we’d fight any landlord that increases rents, doesn’t care if he repairs flats, so forth and so on: these are the enemies of the people and must be fought – if they are a Jew, black or white. And this helped to develop a much more broader understanding and [to unite] the struggle against Mosley and the fascists.

Preventing the growth of fascism in Britain was a political as well as personal undertaking for Max and so many others.

Members of the extended Levitas family, who remained behind in eastern Europe, suffered the fate of many Jews during the Second World War. Max’s paternal aunt, Sara, and all her family were burned to death, along with fellow-villagers, in the synagogue of Akmeyan. Their maternal aunt, Rachel, and most of her family were massacred by the Nazis in Riga. A paternal uncle who thought he had emigrated far enough westwards to Paris was murdered on his own doorstep by a Gestapo officer.

First elected as a Communist Party Councillor for the Borough of Stepney in the East End in 1945, he retained his seat for a further 17 years.

Max on the campaign trail in 1940s/1950s. Credit – http://spitalfieldslife.com

Max continued to be politically active throughout the succeeding decades. He has outlived both his wife Sadie and his son Stephen (who passed away in 2014)

In 2011, he helped deliver leaflets promoting a march to oppose the English Defence League in his local Tower Hamlets area and spoke eloquently to the anti-Fascist crowd on the day.

Earlier this year, the council demanded he pay £25,000 for repairs to the ex-council flat in which he has lived for over five decades. Max, being Max, decided to fight back and Channel 4 news featured the campaign.

Weekend in Dublin:

On Friday 25th October 2015, Max was the guest of the Lord Mayor Críona Ní Dhálaigh (Sinn Féin) & Deputy Mayor Cieran Perry (Independent republican socialist councillor) in the Mansion House.

Max with Mayor Críona Ní Dhálaigh & Deputy Mayor Cieran Perry. Picture – Luke O’Riordan.

On Saturday, he attended the wonderful main concert of the Frank Harte Festival in the Teacher’s Club on Parnell Square where CHTM! friends and favourites Lynched headlined the show.

On Sunday 27 September, Max visited Portobello in Dublin 8 where he was born and spent his early years. The following pictures are a wonderful reminder from that trip.

Max pictured outside 15 Longwood Avenue, Portobello, the house he was born in on June 1, 1915.

Max, 15 Longwood Avenue. Photo – Luke O’Riordan

Max pictured outside 8 Warren Street, Portobello. This was the Levitas family home from 1916 to 1925 and where his brother Maurice was born on February 1, 1917.

Max, 8 Warren St. Photo – Luke O’Riordan.

Max, with his niece Ruth, outside 32 Lennox Street – location of the synagogue attended by the Levitas family. As Manus O’Riordan remarked on Facebook this building was almost accidentally burnt down in 1925 :

” a children’s Gang of Four who set a cloth alight on Sabbath, when they knocked over a candle while trying to access the synagogue wine. The accidental “arsonist” culprits were Max, his two brothers Maurice  and Sol , and a son of Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog – Chaim Herzog who became a future President of Israel (1983-1993).”

Max, 32 Lennox St. Photo – Luke O’Riordan

Max Levitas, outside the St Kevin’s Parade, Clanbrassil Street, home of the Levitas family from 1925 to 1927.

Max, St Kevin’s Parade. Photo – Luke O’Riordan.

The final picture shows Max, with niece Ruth, and Manus O’Riordan, with his son Luke, outside 37 Victoria Street, the  home of International Brigade veteran Micheal O’Riordan and his wife Kay from 1946 to 1999.

Max, 37 Victoria Street. Photo – Rob Hunter.

Myself and Ciaran were delighted to meet Max and talk politics and football over dinner on Monday evening in the O’Riordan family home. Unfortunately Donal could not make it but we passed on his well wishes as we gave Max a signed copy of our book Come Here To Me! as a small gesture.

Salud Max! L’Chayim!

Sam and Ciaran of the blog with Max holding copy of Come Here To Me! Photo – Luke O’Riordan.

More reading and references:

Jewish links to Irish Republican and Socialist politics (1901-1960s) by Sam McGrath.

Citizens of the Republic, Jewish History in Ireland by Manus O’Riordan.

Irish and Jewish Volunteers in the Spanish Anti-Fascist War by Manus O’Riordan.

Max Levitas, Anti-Fascist Campaigner by Spitalfieldslife.com

“Looted!” (From an unknown British publication, May 1916)

Where would you have been in 1916?

It’s a question many people will no doubt be asking each other in the year ahead, most likely in a pub. Would you be risking life and limb in a European trench to feed your family, or defending the newly proclaimed Irish Republic on the streets of Dublin? Maybe hiding under the bed? Perhaps though, you might have been somewhere entirely different. Clery’s, Elvery’s or even McDowell’s jewellers? Indeed, that is the choice many people made. In his classic study Dear, Dirty Dublin: A City in Distress, 1899-1916, Joseph O’Brien wrote that “according to police statistics for 1916, 425 persons were proceeded against for looting during the rebellion and 398 of these were either fined or imprisoned.”

The widespread looting that occurred during the Easter Rising is one aspect of the week that participants frequently spoke of in later years when interviewed by the Bureau of Military History. It is also an aspect of the week that filled plenty of column inches in the days and weeks that followed the end of the event, as looters found themselves on trial for their actions. Justifying what they had done, a mother and daughter on trial simply told a policeman that “we were looting, like the rest.”

In his entertaining memoir On Another Man’s Wound, Ernie O’Malley recalled arriving onto O’Connell Street, or Sackville Street as it was then known, as the insurrection was in its infancy:

Diamond rings and pocketsful of gold watches were selling for sixpence and a shilling, and one was cursed if one did not buy…. Ragged boys wearing old boots, brown and black, tramped up and down with air rifles on their shoulders or played cowboys and Indians, armed with black pistols supplied with long rows of paper caps. Little girls hugged teddy bears and dolls as if they could hardly believe their good fortune.

Where were the police in all of this? The decision of Colonel R. Johnstone to withdraw the 1,100 Dublin Metropolitan Police officers from the streets of the city no doubt facilitated the widespread looting, and as Brian Barton has noted “it soon reached endemic proportions, far beyond the capacity of either the troops or the insurgents to prevent or contain.”

An advertisement for Noblett’s, described as one of the first shops to be looted.

The looting on Sackville Street began in broad daylight, and not long after the declaration of the Republic. Among those who arrived on the street trying to stop the looting were Catholic clergy from the Pro Cathedral. Monsignor Curran, who was serving as Secretary to Archbishop Walsh in Dublin at the time of the Rising, told the Bureau of Military History that:

Before 2 pm the crowds had greatly increased in numbers. Already the first looting had begun; the first victim was Noblett’s sweetshop. It soon spread to the neighbouring shops. I was much disgusted and I did my best to try to stop the looting. Except for two or three minutes, it had no effect. I went over and informed the Volunteers about the G.P.O.

Five or six Volunteers did their best and cleared the looters for some five or ten minutes, but it began again. At first all the ringleaders were women; then the boys came along. Later, about 3.30 p.m. when the military were withdrawn from the Rotunda, young men arrived and the looting became systematic and general, so that Fr. John Flanagan of the Pro-Cathedral, who had joined me, gave up the attempt to repress it and I left too.

One Volunteer described the scene at Noblett’s sweet shop after the windows came crashing in. He remembered the sight of “a gay shower of sweetstuffs,chocolate boxes and huge slabs of toffee” being tossed about by the young crowd.Desmond Ryan of the GPO Garrison also recalled that Seán MacDiarmada made his way across the street and protested “vehemently, his hands raised passionately above his head.”

Jeremiah Joseph O’Leary, later to serve as Sinn Féin Director of Elections in the Pembroke constituency in 1918, recalled attempts to stop the looting. He also remembered entering the General Post Office and being confronted by the sight of two of the rebel leaders enjoying a quick bite:

In the late afternoon (Monday) I observed big crowds in Earl Street and Abbey Street, breaking shop windows and beginning to loot the contents. I went into the General Post Office which, at that time, was apparently a quite easy thing to do, and saw Padraig Pearse and James Connolly sitting on high stools in a little enclosure in the middle of the main hall drinking tea and eating sandwiches.

I went out to the front of the G.P.O., stood up on one of the stones that front the pillars and made a short speech, denouncing the looting and calling for volunteers to help to suppress it. A number of men came forward whom I lined up in front of the G.P.O. And, taking one or two of them in, we collected the batons and distributed them to the men. I then instructed them to parade the main shops and thoroughfares opposite the G.P.O. to try to keep the crowds on the move, and prevent them doing damage. We moved over towards Earl Street, but there was such a dense, milling crowd there that we became broken up and submerged by the crowd immediately. I spent the rest of the night vainly trying to keep people on the move and prevent looting, but with very little success.

Clery’s was an unsurprising target for looters. (1915 advertisement)

Francis Sheehy Skeffington, the well-known pacifist and feminist campaigner in Dublin, made his way into the city of Dublin early in the uprising to attempt to restore law and order,seeking to establish a Citizen Patrol to keep the peace among the civilian population. Eileen Costello of the Gaelic League recalled that:

I saw a man speaking to a crowd of people from the top of an empty tram-car near the O’Connell Monument. It was Sheehy Skeffington appealing to the people to be quiet and orderly, to go home quietly, to stay in their homes and to keep the peace. I saw people from the slums breaking and looting a shop. It was Laurence’s toy shop. I saw the looters inside the shop throwing out toys and cameras to their friends outside. I felt very great disgust. Later on I saw people in the Gresham Hotel with jewellery they had bought from the looters. I saw a woman with a ring and another with a brooch.

Sheehy Skeffington had not come onto the streets to partake in the Rising, yet he would lose his life that week, murdered in Portobello Barracks having been arrested by the crazed Captain Bowen-Culthurst. He would later be arrested and charged with murder, though he would successfully plead insanity. By April of 1921, he was found to be cured, and even received a pension. Padraic Colum would write in the immediate aftermath of the Rising about his friend Skeffy that: “He was not a bearer of arms in the insurrection, he was a pacifist…..But Skeffington is dead now, and the spiritual life of Ireland has been depleted by as much of the highest courage, the highest sincerity and the highest devotion as a single man could embody.”

Francis Sheehy Skeffington (Image Credit: http://source.southdublinlibraries.ie/handle/10599/316)

The fires that spread throughout Sackville Street created problems for the Dublin Fire Brigade, and DFB historian Las Fallon has noted in his book Dublin Fire Brigade and the Irish Revolution that “apart from the Magazine fort [in the Phoenix Park], the first two major fires fought by the DFB on the first day of the Rising were in shoe shops, the Cable Shop Company and the True Form shoe shop, both in Sackville Street, which were looted and burned. Dublin’s barefoot poor were taking advantage of the rebellion.” In his book, Las reproduces the Annual Report for the Year 1916, submitted by Thomas Purcell, then Chief Officer of the Dublin Fire Brigade. Purcell’s account details the madness of the events perfectly. He noted that on the Tuesday of the Rising, as Lawrence’s was burning, “two persons trapped in an upper room by fire and taken down by fire escape proved to be looters.”

The General Post Office area as shown on a map issued by the Hibernian Fire and General Insurance Company shortly after the Rising. (O’Mahony
Collection) (Image Credit: National Library of Ireland, http://www.nli.ie/1916/pdf/7.2.pdf)

The language used to describe those looting by some participants in the Rising is interesting in itself. In the account of one Volunteer, it’s noted that “despite repeated efforts of the Republican forces the looting of shops by denizens of the slums became more general.” The language of the media was similar. The Illustrated Sunday Herald proclaimed that:

When the fighting started all the hooligans of the city were soon drawn to the spot in search of loot. Half the shops in Sackville Street were sacked. Children who have never possessed two pence of their own were imitating Charlie Chaplin with stolen silk hats in the middle of the turmoil and murder.

In five minutes the crowd emptied the windows of Noblett’s sweetshop. Then they went on to neighbouring shops. McDowell’s, the jewellers, was broken into and some thousands of pounds worth of jewellery taken. Taafe’s, the hosiers; Lewer’s, Dunn’s hat shop, the Cable shoe shop, all were gutted, and their contents, when not wanted, were thrown pell-mell into the street.

Members of the British forces pose with the captured ‘Irish Republic’ flag at the Parnell statue.

In a similar vein, Trinity College Dublin student Thomas Rentol Brown complained in the Dublin Evening Mail of 13 May of “the rabble…breaking plate-glass windows and seizing articles in the shops.” Yet, looting wasn’t only the preserve of the “rabble” or the “denizens of the slums.” The Irish Life ‘Record of the Rebellion’, published soon afterwards, claimed that “the looters were by no means confined to the submerged slum population. A remarkable proportion were well dressed and belonged to the wage-earning working class, or perhaps to classes still more respectable.” The same source claims that the volley of a rifle from the rooftop of Trinity College Dublin was enough to stop some looting at the bottom of Grafton Street.

It’s not surprising that toy shops and sweet shops were among the first raided. Eamon Bulfin, a Volunteer in the perilous enough position of the rooftop of the GPO, remembered fireworks exploding in the street, having been looted by children from Lawrence’s toy shop: “We had our bombs on top of the Post Office, and these fireworks were shooting up in the sky. We were very nervous. There were Catherine Wheels going up O’Connell Street and Catherine Wheels coming down O’Connell Street.” Still, the diversity of the items looted is surprising. Michael O’Flanagan, who had been active with the IRB in Glasgow before taking part in the rebellion, remembered the very unusual sight of a piano passing him by:

On Wednesday afternoon we noticed four or five men and women coming from the direction of Mary’s Lane. Between them they were carrying a piano which we concluded they had stolen from some business premises. We called on them to halt but they refused to do so. We fired a few shots over their heads as a warning and they dropped the piano and made off.

News of the Rising travelled quickly. Oklahoma City Times, 29 April 1916.

If toys were the order of the day for children during the week, for adults it was equally predictable. In a 1926 article for An t-Óglách, the magazine of the army, a story was recounted of alcohol being looted from a pub in Henry Street and offered to the rebels:

The looters had pillaged a public house opposite the GPO in Henry Street, and a woman offered the Volunteers some bottles of stout. These were refused by all except one man, who took a bottle and had it to his lips when an officer appeared on the scene and dashed it to pieces. Having referred to the order on the subject he announced that the next men found taking a drink without permission would be shot without warning. Such measures had their effect.

The looting wasn’t just a phenomenon of the early hours of the Rising. The Irish Life publication remembered that by the third day of the Rising, the enthusiasm of the looters remained:

In Sackville Street on Wednesday evening the scene was of the weirdest description. An immense crowd of sightseers was promenading up and down the centre of the street under a blaze of electric light. All along the east side of the street the looters were working with frenzied energy. Every now and then the shouts from the shops would be drowned by the crash of glass as another window was hammered.

By the Thursday of Easter Week, the ‘Provisional Government’ based in the General Post Office acknowledged the actions of the looters, noting that “the Provisional Government strongly condemns looting and the wanton destruction of property. The looting that has taken place has been done by the hangers-on of the British forces.” In reality, it was primarily being carried out by the very poor, in a city which was home to horrific tenement squalor, with some of the worst housing in the city only a short stroll from the GPO. The dilemma around what to do with the looters has found its way into fiction too, with Roddy Doyle including an episode in his A Star Called Henry where members of the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers debate the best course of action:

One of the Volunteer offices, a red-faced chap called Smith, came storming towards our section. He was unbuckling his holster as he went but his fury made his fingers hopeless. We’ll have to make an example of them, he shouts. Or we’ll be hanging our heads in shame among the nations of the world.

Newspaper reports in the aftermath of the Rising give an idea of how widespread the problem was, well beyond streets where fighting was intense. They also detail the rather severe sentences handed down to convicted looters. At Sir John Rogerson Quay, the British and Irish Steampacket Company premises was raided, with damage estimated at about £5,000. At the Police Court in Dublin Castle on 11 May, three men were charged with “stealing a valuable quantity of flour, etc, and with being the leaders of a disorderly crowd which attacked the company’s premises, and did wanton and malicious damage.” The manager of the premises stated that “telephones and electric fittings were broken, 400 sacks of flour were completely taken, as were 400 cases of tea and a quantity of sugar. Of thirty-five cargo trucks, all with the exception of two were completely destroyed.”

Bargains after the Rising.

The Irish Independent reported on 11 May 1916 of a mother and daughter, charged with being in illegal possession of “two mattresses, one pillow, eight window curtains, one lady’s corset.. one top coat, two ladies coats, five ladies hats and four chairs.” In the same news report, it was noted that two ladies from Camden Street had been prosecuted for being in possession of , among other things, “3lbs of tea, 12 boxes of sweet herbs…some lemonade and cornflower.” The constable told the court that the accused told him “we were looting, like the rest. We had a bit out of it, too!” They were sentenced to a month in prison each.

While a lot of looted goods were recovered, some looters were never prosecuted. A Sergeant Flethcher-Desborough of the Royal Irish Regiment remembered that “months after the end of the Rising, flower sellers and paper vendors round the pillar, sported fur coats and bejewelled fingers, which in the usual way, they could never have bought with the profits from their flower selling.”

Did the rebels partake in a bit of looting themselves? The Kerry Sentinel carried a report on May 3rd from an eyewitness who claimed that “it was a common sight to see womenfolk of the rebels trying on the latest thing in hats in public”, but it’s important to note all kinds of wild claims appeared in the press in the weeks after the Rising. More intriguingly, Bridget Foley remembered being sent into Clery’s to acquire anything that could be used for bandages by the Volunteers, and that:

First of all we went into Clery’s shop on the instructions of Captain Weafer. We got aprons, sheets and towels, soaps and dishcloth and anything that would be useful to tear up into bandages. We must have been very simple, because in the middle of our activities we started trying on fur coats.

As this August 1916 advertisement shows, Clery’s were open for business within weeks in a temporary premises.

The waxworks of Henry Street had some of its contents removed by young Volunteers, with one later remembering:

With the accessibility of all that the Waxworks had to offer, it was not long til’ a number of our troops were arrayed in various uniforms and costumes from the wax figures, and musical instruments were also acquired, such as mouth organs, melodeons and fiddles,the playing of which and the singing which accompanied them, made a good deal of the time pass very pleasantly.

So, what has survived of the loot? The wonderful blog ‘The Cricket Bat That Died For Ireland’ aims to highlight some of the more unusual items in the collection of the National Museum of Ireland, including a small toffee hammer from the week, which it notes was “more than likely taken from a confectioner’s shop”. How did it end up in the National Museum? It was kept as a souvenir by a Mr Daly “after it was thrown at him, hitting his hat, by a looter in Sackville Street during the week of the Rising. It was given to the National Museum in 1980.”

This is something of an on-going series on the blog, with our full thanks to photographer Luke Fallon. Luke is very much the fourth musketeer of CHTM and we always appreciate his willingness to share his images here. A highlight of the most recent CHTM night in The Sugar Club was the slideshow of Luke’s images, which worked a treat with John Flynn’s musical set.

The last image was taken at Dublin Songs and Stories:Part II. Thanks to BP Fallon for taking part and thanks to Luke Fallon for bringing the camera!

Image Credit: William Murphy, Flickr. (Creative Commons) (P.S Thanks as ever to William for sharing such a collection!)

Standing over The Bailey pub on Duke Street, and now between the windows of an upper-floor of Marks and Spencers,  this lonely sailor with a sextant in hand has been baffling me for years.

Writing in the Dublin Historical Record in 1939, A.M Fraser stated:

Let us pause a few moments in Duke Street and gaze at the trim little figure of Captain Cuttle in his three-cornered hat, gold-frogged blue tail-coat and cream breeches, as he stands shooting the sun with his old-fashioned brass quadrant…..When Dickens was driving to the rotunda to deliver one of his readings he climbed down from his car and came into the shop to inquire about the figure.

In recent years, there have been a number of blogs and publications dedicated to the celebration and chronicling of Dublin’s ghost signs, the reminders of the city in generations past.  In a review of Antonia Hart’s study of ghost signs, Dermot Bolger wrote in the Evening Herald that “This mariner first appeared above a shop in Capel Street in 1810, before he and his owner – the optician, Richard Spears, whose services the quadrant hinted at – moved to College Green”.

The Bailey, Duke Street, 1970. Before its modern expansion. Image from Dublin City Council Photographic Collection.

The name of Richard Spears pops up in Wilson’s Dublin Directory for 1801 on Capel Street, where he was listed as  a “mathematical instrument  maker”  at number 23. Spears,it seems, later took up premises at 27 and 35 College Green, before going into partnership with Edward Clarke from 1815-1817. Some of his handiwork, signed , “R.Spears, instrument  Maker to His Majesty’s Crown of Customs in Ireland”, can be seen here. These items are in the collection of the National Museum today.

Pat Liddy, expert on all things Dublin from the time of the Norse to the present day,  has written that “the venerable old sailor” kept watch over Murray McGrath’s for many years, writing that “John Murray…found the statue on a quay dump, retrieved it and brought the partly rotting plaster cast to a statue maker or restoration.”  Murray McGrath’s optician operated on Duke Street for a long time, and in the 1960s our friend Pól Ó Duibhir snapped the sailor there.

He writes of seeing the sailor years  later, and that “instead of my remembered sailor there was a mere gaudy shadow. My real sailor had been replaced by a modern piece of tack.”

His coat was pink and peeling. He was looking at the sextant in his hands as if he didn’t know whether to play it, eat it, or poke somebody’s eye out with it. He was reduced in stature and had clearly put on a bit of weight – puppy fat maybe. He had lost his bearing as well as his bearings. He knew not whence he came or where the hell he was going. And it didn’t really seem to matter. Nothing was expected of him.

1960s and the modern day. (Pól Ó Duibhir)

So, I’m curious – what’s the deal here? How long has the statue on Duke Street been there? It’d be great if someone can clear it up. Next time  you’re passing by, have a look up at him.

Admiral Horatio Nelson, unlikely Dubliner (1809-1966)

The Pillar, my study of the Nelson Pillar on O’Connell Street, is currently on sale from the publisher for €9.99, with free postage in the mix. Rather than just highlighting that,I want to draw attention to a great poem that sadly didn’t make the book – for the simple reason I stumbled across it too late!

Dublin Opinion remains one of the most important publications in the history of this city. Founded in 1922 by Arthur Booth and Charles E Kelly, it was home to biting satire, wonderful cartoons, and even a dash of poetry. As Felix Larkin has noted:

Dublin Opinion was published monthly, a miscellany of quips, short articles, poems and cartoons – all in a humorous vein, but with serious intent. Its masthead initially included a subtitle in Irish that translated as “Seriousness in humour”. The journal, without sacrificing its humour, always retained the capacity for conveying a serious message – and the message had greater impact because it was delivered in a humorous way.

We’ve looked at Dublin Opinion on the site before, with a cartoon that mocked the GAA Vigilance Committee. Another gem comes from Fifteen Years of Dublin Opinion, published in 1937. The poem makes an argument that the Nelson Pillar on O’Connell Street should be left exactly as is, at a time when some were demanding its removal.

Dauntless aloft he sails the skies
An admiral of stone,
Watching with doubtless quiet eyes
A country not his own
Whose memories of sailormen are Bantry Bay and Tone.

Only when winds are from the South
He sees Trafalgar Bay
And hears the belching cannon-mouth
Wreak wreck and disarray,
Giving, with empty sleeve close-hauled, the order of the day.

Long buried is that battle’s bane,
Still stands the column’s stone.
We took the Norman and the Dane
And made of them our own;
And that tall shaft of alien birth to one of us has grown.

I’m sure ’twas scarcely up a year,
As Davis would have said,
When it became a ‘Dubliner’
To Dubliners long dead.
The way the Geraldines once trod was plainly its to tread.

Our winds around its granite pate
A hundred years have blown,
I think if we could put it straight,
To Theobald Wolfe Tone,
His vote would be ‘Don’t spoil the street.
Let the old chap alone.’

While I missed the boat, John Wyse Jackson and Hector McDonnell were wise enough to include this one in their very entertaining Dublin’s Other Poetry: Rhymes and Songs of  the City. It was published by Lilliput Press.

Napoleon in exile on St. Helena.

Now Boney’s away from his warring and fighting
He has gone to a place where there’s nought can delight him
He may sit there and dwell of the glory’s he has seen
While forlorn he does mourn on the Isle of St. Helena

So ends ‘The Isle of St. Helena’, a song that was truly brought to life by singer Frank Harte, and one of many great songs popular in this country which include reference to Napoleon Bonaparte. His presence in the Irish oral tradition of songs isn’t all that surprising – Napoleon had once been a figure who loomed large over Irish political affairs, building important links here with the United Irish movement, meeting Theobald Wolfe Tone in Paris and even developing an Irish Legion within his French Forces in the years that followed the defeat of the United Irishmen. Frank Harte would record an entire CD of songs relating to Napoleon Bonaparte, in a great collaboration with Donal Lunny. ‘You Sons of Old Ireland’ is a particular favourite of mine:

This year of course witnessed the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, when the Duke of Wellington (born here among us) overcame Napoleon Bonaparte on the 18th of June 1815. Napoleon’s defeat marked the end of his political and military career, but not his time on earth. Napoleon lived out his days in exile on St. Helena, an island in the Atlantic Ocean,located over 1,160 miles from the west coast of Africa.

On the  island, Napoleon was cared for by Doctor Barry Edward O’Meara, a Dubliner who some claim had been educated at Trinity College Dublin and the Royal College of Surgeons. O’Meara could speak both Italian and France, enabling him to talk freely with the fallen leader. He had served as a surgeon with the British Army in Egypt and Sicily, before landing himself in hot water for partaking in a spot of pistol dueling. As David Murphy has written:

In 1807 he acted as second in a duel at Messina in Sicily, and his commanding officer, who was determined to suppress the practice of duelling, had him court-martialled. He was dismissed the service in 1808 but entered the RN as an assistant surgeon, initially serving on HMS Victorious in 1810.

Dr Barry Edward O’Meara. (Image Credit: http://www.geni.com)

O’Meara would later publish a memoir of his time in the company of Napoleon Bonaparte, entitled  Napoleon in Exile : or, A Voice from St. Helena. It was a huge commercial success when published in 1822, and provided some great insights into the closing chapter of Napoleon’s life. In a 1952 edition of The Bulletin of History of Medicine, it is claimed that “when the book was first published, police had to keep back the crowds around the publisher’s office”, such was the demand for copies.

In one episode, he recalled an unlikely conversation they had:

“What do you think,” said he, “of all things in the world would give me the greatest pleasure?” I was on the point of replying, removal from St. Helena, when he said, “To be able to go about incognito in London and other parts of England, to the restaurateurs, with a friend, to dine in public at the expense of half a guinea or a guinea, and listen to the conversation of the company; to go through them all, changing almost daily, and in this manner, with my own ears, to hear the people express their sentiments, in their unguarded moments, freely and without restraint; to hear their real opinion of myself, and of the surprising occurrences of the last twenty years.” I observed, that he would hear much evil and much good of himself. “Oh, as to the evil,” replied he, “I care not about that. I am well used to it.

An illustration showing Napoleon after his death of the Island of St. Helena.

Having little in his final years, Napoleon bestowed unlikely gifts upon close-confidants before his death in 1821 . In O’Meara’s case, a toothbrush and some other mementos. The toothbrush has the letter ‘N’ stamped upon its silver gilt handle,  indicating that even at the end there was some pomp and ceremony at least for Napoleon.  In time, the toothbrush would find a home in the Royal College of Physicians on Kildare Street,  with their excellent blog noting that:

O’Meara’s collection of Napoleon relics passed through the hands of several Irish surgeons, finally falling into the possession of Sir Frederic Conway Dwyer. Dwyer was a leading Surgeon in the early years of the twentieth century, and was both Professor of Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons and President of that College from 1914-1915 (…)  Sir Frederick Conway Dwyer died in October 1935. In his Will he left his considerable fortune to the daughter of a family friend, Mrs Tyrell, which caused some consternation at the time. In 1936 Mrs Tyrell presented Conway Dwyer’s collection of Napoleonic items to the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.

Image Credit: Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (http://rcpilibrary.blogspot.ie/2015/06/napoleons-toothbrush.html)

Today, it is surely one of the most unusual items on display in this city, and a reminder that  even Napoloeon Bonaparte was only human and had to brush his teeth twice a day!

With the Open House festival taking place across the city and county over the weekend, the doors of a few interesting buildings opened to the public. We decided to take in the tour of the Mansion House at 3pm on Saturday, and I photographed a few things that I thought might interest CHTM readers. Sadly, I was armed only with a camera phone but forgive me that.

The tour of the Mansion House began in the beautiful Oak Room, where a fine portrait of the nationalist political leader Charles Stewart Parnell greets visitors. The most striking feature of the room I thought was the presence of the personal coats-of-arms of many former Lord Mayors. Rather than heraldic family crests, these are designed to give some insight into the personalities of the individuals. A particular favourite was this one from former Lord Mayor Ben Briscoe. Ben’s father, Robert Briscoe, was an IRA veteran of the revolutionary period who twice served as Lord Mayor of Dublin, becoming the first Jewish Lord Mayor in the history of the city. The Briscoe family were examined in a CHTM article on the Jewish community during the Irish revolutionary period.

The personal coat of arms of Ben Briscoe, incorporating the Star of David.

In the hallway of the Mansion House,  a plaque commemorates the  financial assistance given by the Choctaw Native American people to the Irish during the years of the Great Hunger. A people who had themselves been displaced and dispossessed, it was a remarkable and unlikely act of solidarity. Gary White Deer, a representative of the Choctaw Nation, has visited Ireland and described this moment in history as a “sacred memory.”

Choctaw Nation plaque, Mansion House.

Lastly, this beautiful window on the staircase is the work of Joshua Clarke, the father of the influential artist Harry Clarke, and demonstrates the considerable talent that was no doubt passed on to Harry. The window shows the official coat-of-arms of the office of the Lord Mayor, as well as the four provincial shields of Ireland. The names around it are those of famous Home Rule supporters, though today it is known as the ‘Peace Window’.

Joshua Clarke window.

All welcome.

Click here for the PDF of the work ‘Authors Take Sides on the Spanish Civil War’ (1937)

Charlie Donnelly. Former UCD student, the Republican Congress veteran and poet died in the Spanish Civil War.

When we think of the Civil War that raged in Spain from 1936-1939, a generation of idealistic writers come to mind. We might think of George Orwell as he walked Las Ramblas, Ernest Hemingway who reported on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), or even the young Tyrone poet Charlie Donnelly. The later, a former student of University College Dublin, would lose his life at the bloody and brutal Battle of Jarama. A Canadian anti-fascist volunteer who fought alongside young Donnelly recalled being there, and that “I hear him say something quietly between a lull in machine gun fire: Even the olives are bleeding.” The words have become iconic.

Yet, did the Spanish Civil War unite an entire generation of writers and poets against Fascism? Things are never so straightforward. One remarkable document from the period of the war, which has interesting Dublin dimensions to it, is the 1937 survey of writers entitled Authors Take Sides of the Spanish Civil War. It can be downloaded by clicking on the title. The brainchild of Nancy Cunard, the survey asked writers and poets from across these islands to comment on what was occurring in Spain. There, a Nationalist uprising sought the overthrow of the Spanish Republic.

To the writers and poets of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales:

The equivocal attitude, the Ivory Tower, the paradoxical, the ironic detachment, will no longer do. Are you for, or against, the legal government and the people of Republican Spain? Are you for or against Franco and Fascism? For it is impossible any longer to take no side. Writers and poets…we wish the world to know what you, who are amongst the most sensitive instruments of a nation, feel.

IRA veteran Frank Ryan speaking in College Green following the release of republican prisoners in 1932. He would later lead Irishmen to the Spanish Civil War.

Cunard was not just a fashionable poor little rich girl and muse, patron or mistress to many of the writers and artists of the 20s and 30s – including Aldous Huxley, Ezra Pound, Louis Aragon, Samuel Beckett, Wyndham Lewis, Constantin Brâncusi and Oskar Kokoschka, but a published poet and a fierce campaigner against prejudice and injustice. She had style in more sense than one.

Cunard was a committed anti-fascist, something which sat poorly with some in her own family. As Lydia Syson has noted, “her mother – a close friend of Oswald Mosley – disinherited her fairly speedily in 1931.” As a publisher, she was responsible for the publication of Negro in 1934, a celebration of black writers, with poetry, fiction and non-fiction contributions. Of the Spanish Civil War, she rightly predicted that “events in Spain were a prelude to another world war.”

Nancy Cunard, who instigated the pamphlet ‘Authors Take Sides on the Spanish Civil War’.

In asking writers and poets to give their take on what was occurring in Spain, Cunard received replies that fell into three categories. 127 of the replies were ‘For the Government’, 16 were deemed ‘Neutral’ and only 5 were ‘Against the Government’, not entirely surprising given the wording of the question asked.

I was quite surprised that one of those who fell into the category of ‘Neutral’ was Sean Ó Faoláin, one of my own favourite writers. Responsible for The Bell journal and the classic The Irish: A Character Study, Ó Faoláin is today regarded as one of the great intellectuals of twentieth century Irish public life. He knew a little about Civil Wars himself, having played his part in the Irish Civil War as an Anti-Treatyite. “Don’t be a lot of saps.”, his reply began. “If X and Y want to cut one another’s throats over Z, why on earth must people who do not believe in the ideas propounded by either X, Y, or Z have to choose between them?”

From ‘Authors Take Sides on the Spanish Civil War’

For other Irish writers, it was much more straight forward. For Samuel Beckett, a simple “UP THE REPUBLIC!” did the trick. His fellow Dubliner, Sean O’Casey, likewise delivered stirring words: “I am with the determined faces firing at the steel-clad slug of Fascism, from the smoke and flames of the barricades.”

Tom Buchanan, in his history of Britain and the Civil War in Spain, believed that “the pamphlet was ostentatiously an exercise in propaganda”, and while I agree with that statement, it’s a very interesting little piece of history nonetheless. For Samuel Beckett, the following decade would bring some excitement with the French Resistance, proving that his opposition to Fascism was more than mere words on paper.

In Ireland, public opinion during the Civil War in Spain was very much against the government of the Republic. The Irish Independent constantly referred to the war as a conflict between “reds” and “patriots”, praising those who helped in “the fight for Faith”. Previously on the site we’ve looked at anti-communism in 1930s Ireland, for example in this piece on the Irish Christian Front. On the other side, check out our piece on the commemorative banner of the Irish men of the International Brigades.

The Department of Industry and Commerce, Kildare Street (Wiki,Creative Commons)

The Department of Industry and Commerce building on Kildare Street is one I’d walked by all the time, before something caught my eye recently. The building was designed by Cork architect J.R Boyd Barrett, and constructed between 1939 and 1942, “being greatly delayed by the difficulty of obtaining materials, particularly steel, owing to the outbreak of the Second World War.”

The Buildings of Ireland website describes the premises as “one of Dublin’s most interesting twentieth-century architectural gems.”  What caused me to stop recently passing by it were the bas-reliefs by Gabriel Hayes, depicting Irish industry through the ages. Described by Paula Murphy as being “carved in a vigorous socialist-realist style”,  they are a remarkable artistic achievement.

The work of Gabriel Hayes on the Department of Industry and Commerce (Creative Commons)

Gabriel Hayes, James Durney has noted, was the daughter of a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary, who later became an architect with the Board of Works. Born in Holles Street in August 1909, she was educated at the Dominican College on Eccles Street. Having studied art in Paris and Montpelier, she spent five years in the National School of Art,Dublin. Durney notes that:

In her second year at college she won the teachers-in-training scholarship, and in 1933 she had five works exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy. In her masters certificate Gabriel came first in Ireland. She began exhibiting at the RHA in 1932 and continued to exhibit there until 1947.

While initially she focused her artistic endeavors on painting,  she would later establish herself firmly as one of the leading sculptors of her time in Ireland. Married to Seán Ó Ríordáin, an academic and archaeologist based in University College Cork, she moved there in 1936.

Gabriel Hayes at work (Irish Press, 13 March 1942.)

That she carried out the works on Kildare Street at all is interesting, as she was not among the original group of sculptors invited to submit designs. This group included Laurence Campbell (responsible for the excellent Seán Heuston memorial in the Phoenix Park) and Oliver Sheppard (who gave us Cuchulain in the GPO in 1935). As Murphy has noted, “Hayes was subsequently approached and her designs and estimated cost of £930 met with approval. This is the work for which Gabriel Hayes is now best known.” Seán Lemass himself inspected the designs for the proposed works and gave them the go-ahead.

When she got down to the business at hand, journalists were impressed by the heights she was willing to scale.A journalist in the Irish Independent commented on 21 April 1942 that “when I arrived on a January day of snow and sleet,I was told that she was in the sort of built-up cage slung over the roof to work the ‘keystones over the two toweringly tall windows – 76 feet up. Being built by nature for comfort and not meant for high altitudes I promised to come back”

The excellent Built Dublin has photographed the bas-reliefs. See http://builtdublin.com/balcony-23-kildare-street-dublin-2/ (Image Credit: Lisa Cassidy, BuiltDublin.com)

That a woman was carrying out the work grabbed plenty of column inches too. “Mother of two infants, aged 1 and 4, this Dublin-born artist has interrupted her life in Cork for one of the most important sculpturing tasks in Dublin for a some time” the Irish Press proclaimed. David Dickson, in his groundbreaking study of Dublin through the ages, makes the point that “the prospect of a mother working outside the home was contrary to the whole drift of government thinking in the pre-war years. Opportunities for women to stay at work had been seriously impaired by legislation in 1936 that overturned statutory advances in 1919 and required all women to resign from the public service with no hope of re-employment, even on widowhood, and excluded all women from certain categories of work.”

Still, Hates was more than qualified, mother or not. The Press went on to state that:

Her work on the Kildare Street building is original in conception and strongly executed.Beside the head of Eire at the main entrance there is a head of St. Brendan, Ireland’s first navigator, at the side.Along a 30-foot gallery, Miss Hayes is to carve a further series of scenes in low relief depicting Irish industry and commerce. Her subjects include: The Shannon Scheme, the Cement Factories, the Wool Industry,Ship-Building.

Paula Murphy correctly points out that for the most part, journalists seemed to overlook the quality of her work on the building, instead fixating on trivial things, as “little was written about this significant work at the time. Journalists seemed more excited that a woman had received the commission and that she was brave enough to work on scaffolding hanging high outside the building.”

An article in a regional newspaper in 1957 stated that “for many years, sculpture was regarded as the Cinderella of the Arts in Ireland. A few small pieces – carvings, in wood or stone, modellings in clay or plaster, were scattered around the floor of the Hibernian Academy Exhibition as if for people to lean against while they admired the paintings.”The same piece however praised the work of Hayes, and noted that “modern Irish sculpture is closely linked with architecture.”

Hayes would later design the halfpenny,penny and two pence coins introduced here in 1971. She died in 1978, recognised in obituaries not as a “woman sculptor” or a working mother, but a brilliant talent by the definition of anyone.Next time you’re passing by, stop and have a look at her work on Kildare Street.

After the Kildare Street project, Hayes went on to produce ‘Three Graces’ in 1943 for the ST. Mary’s College of Domestic Science, now DIT Cathal Brugha Street. This image is from 1942.

Like a lot of people, I am very much looking forward to seeing The Queen of Ireland, Conor Horgan’s new documentary telling the story of Panti Bliss,or Rory O’Neill. It has been a few years in the making now, and little could they have known when they started out that Panti would become something of a household name in Ireland, thanks in no small-part to the recent marriage referendum, and a run-in with the Iona Institute.

Last winter, the Little Museum of Dublin hosted a great exhibition entitled Dublin Unpublished, made up of photos Conor has taken over the years of some remarkable people here in Dublin, including Morrissey, Mary Robinson, Christy Moore and… Panti. That Horgan and Panti have been working together on this for many years, long before recent events, has me particularly keen to check the documentary out.

Before Panti, there were drag acts in Irish society, and none as important to the story as Mr. Pussy, who drew in huge crowds in the 1970s, and who baffled some in the Irish media, who couldn’t quite get their heads around the idea of a drag queen in Dublin. “If this is what female impersonation is about, the sooner it’s buried the better!”, complained one writer in 1970. Others saw things differently. “If anybody has helped to lure Irish audience into a broad-minded era”, the Sunday Independent said a few short years later in 1974, it was Mr. Pussy.

In reality, Mr. Pussy was (and is) Alan Amsby,a Londoner by birth. In one of the earliest feature pieces on Mr. Pussy, Donall Corvin wrote in the June 1970 edition of the New Spotlight that “Pussy’s act is slick. He/she gets full marks for professionalism. But I’m surprised there hasn’t been an outcry from indignant bishops and moderators.” Amsby it was noted, had arrived in Belfast three months earlier, and “he was to do six shows.Now he has done more than 50 appearances and has become the most successful cabaret act ever to visit Ireland.”

Showcase Magazine, 1971 (With thanks to Brand New Retro)

Paul O’Grady, the popular broadcaster and a friend of Amsby’s, recounted in his memoirs that Mr Pussy became “Ireland’s foremost and, at the time, only drag queen. During the sixties he’d been working on the flourishing drag scene in London as part of an established act called Pussy and Bow.” While that act broke up, Amsby came to Ireland, where O’Grady noted “drag queens were rare as hen’s teeth in Holy Ireland. he caused a sensation and never came back.” Of the London days, he remembered in 1987 that “all the other acts were doing the glamour bit, but we were in the miniskirts and the modern look. Everyone came to see us – Judy Garland, Ringo Starr.”

Journalists rushed to interview Amsby, almost all commenting on his male appearance and youth. At the time of Donall Corvin’s feature in New Spotlight, Amsby was a mere 22 years old. Ginnie Kennealy informed Irish Press readers in January 1972 that he was a “slight figure, startlingly young… with shoulder-length fair hair.” To her, he was “neither effeminate nor pointedly masculine. Instead he has very much the unisex look of the seventies.”

A 1971 advertisement for Alan Amsby (Thanks to Brand New Retro http://brandnewretro.ie/)

No doubt, the Ireland of the 1970s was in many ways a socially conservative place. Yet beyond the very occasional condemnation in the press, it seemed drag was very much in fashion in the early 1970s. A glance at the entertainment page of one Irish newspaper from 1973 shows Mr. Pussy bringing in crowds, not only in Dublin but across the island. Looking over the page, it’s surreal to see the name alongside those of Planxty, the Wolfe Tones, the ‘Women’s Lib Carnival Dance’, Gerry Walsh and the Cowboys and more besides.

Being a drag artist in the Dublin of the 1970s could bring you to some interesting places. In her women’s interest section of the Irish Press in February 1971, Mary Kenny recounted sharing the floor with Mr. Pussy during a debate in the Historical Society,or the ‘Hist’. It was a time of great change in Trinity College; in fact the Hist had “only opened its historic portals to the female sex some two years ago.” In attendance for the discussion was “poor Father Heffernan, the Chairman, and incidentally the first Catholic chaplain to be appointed to TCD.” Kenny remembered that “Pussy certainly added a note of gaiety to the whole debate.”

A historic image of The Baggot Inn. (Image Credit: T.Daley, http://www.u2theearlydayz.com/)

In the early days in Dublin,Mr. Pussy primarily performed in the legendary Baggot Inn on Baggot Street, which will forever be remembered for witnessing some great gigs in the 1970s and 80s, as a popular venue across all kinds of genres.When we interviewed Christy Moore on the site, he remembered that “the Baggot hosted all sorts of gigs from Mr Pussy to Paddy Reilly.” Of his time in the venue, the Sunday Independent wrote that “at first, he was playing to just a handful of people”, but that within a short period “he was filling the Inn six nights a week and doing private parties before or after his show.”

Having seen Mr. Pussy there in July 1970, an Irish Press journalist wrote that:

It was absolutely packed. Frightfully hetero audience, as someone had warned me, but still they appreciated Mr. Pussy like mad. Mr. Pussy is a gorgeous looking dame, the spitting image of Sandie Shaw, he sings appallingly and has the bluest line of patter I have ever heard. He is screamingly funny but frankly I couldn’t reproduce a single one of his jokes here.

Sunday Independent, 11 August 1973.

Mr. Pussy quickly made the leap from pub stage to theatre stage, with Little Red Riding- Would at the Eblana Theatre early in 1972, which the Sunday Independent described as “off-beat, way out by traditional panto standards.” In many ways, Mr.Pussy paved the way for similar acts to perform in Dublin, though not all were as carefree about their identities. In January 1972 the Sunday Independent interviewed Freddie Davenport, “the latest arrival on the drag scene, and that’s not his real name.” Davenport joked that if the paper printed his real name, “I’ll lose my job in the morning.” Davenport and Mr. Pussy shared a manager, who insisted that “with the exception of a drag artist in Limerick, there are no other genuine performers of drag in Ireland.”

Sunday Independent, 30 January 1972.

When interviewed in  1994, Amsby stated that “the boy who came to Ireland 25 years ago with his act,Mr. Pussy, for one week’s booking only, is still here because I love it here.” His story continued into subsequent decades,  and part of that story is well told here, in the story of the Cafe de Luxe on Suffolk Street.

In the Dublin of the 1970s, Amsby was a trendsetter, known as Ireland’s “leading misleading lady”, and bringing something totally new to the nightlife of the city. He is still at it today. While Dublin may be home to a significant number of drag queens now, it all began in the Baggot Inn.

KRAM members at the Mansion House, May 1987.

In the history of association football in Dublin, Ringsend holds a special place. Shelbourne F.C were born there in 1895,  and in 1901 it was to prove the birthplace of Shamrock Rovers. The first meeting of the club took place at 4 Irishtown Road. Depsite beginning their football playing days in Ringsend Park, Shamrock Rovers will forever be synonymous with Glenmalure Park, which was commonly known as just ‘Milltown’.

Milltown was home to the club from 1926 until 1987, when it was put on the market by the Kilcoyne family, who had been the owners of the club since 1972. An obituary at the time of the death of Louis Kilcoyne in 2012 noted that:

The Kilcoynes were applauded for digging deep into their pockets and laying a superb pitch before embarking on the experiment of full-time professionalism under their brother-in-law John Giles in 1977. Giles arrived at Rovers from West Bromwich Albion, where he had been player-manager and led the club to promotion to the Football League’s first division (then the top tier of English football) in the 1975-76 season. He signed Eamon Dunphy, Paddy Mulligan, Ray Treacy and former Chelsea captain Bobby Tambling; his aim was to be a force in European football. Reflecting this ambition, Kilcoyne had plans to redevelop Glenmalure Park into a 50,000-seater stadium.

The Kilcoynes claimed that it was in the face of falling attendances that they lost faith in the Milltown project,  and developed ambitions of moving the club across the River Liffey to a groundshare scenario at Tolka Park with Home Farm. Magill magazine highlight the fact at the time that  the fact “the Kilcoyne family make their living from a property development company named Healy Homes  has led many of their detractors to believe that the decision to leave Milltown had more to do with their entrepreneurial streak than their passion for soccer.”

Out of fan frustration with the proposed move to Tolka Park, the Keep Rovers at Milltown (KRAM) campaign was born in 1987. Games at Tolka Park were picketed by Rovers supporters, while a sometimes vicious war of words broke out in the press, with Eamon Dunphy claiming in his Sunday Independent column that the KRAM campaign was “unconvincing, funny, sad and in some respects, outrageous.”

The last game Shamrock Rovers played at Milltown was an FAI Cup Semi-Final against Sligo Rovers on 12 April 1987, which brought in a crowd of six thousand spectators. The Irish Press called the occasion “a day of nostalgia and angry protests.” RTE asked Rovers fan entering the ground if they would follow the club across the river to Tolka Park. Some were adamant they wouldn’t, one man said he “probably would” but at that moment in time it was a no from him too. The game played out a one-all draw, but is best remembered today for the half-time pitch invasion of Shamrock Rovers fans, some of whom carried banners with slogans including Fuck Tolka and the question Will Greed Kill The Hoops?

The fan protest at half time.

The journalist Ken Curtin recounted the passionate scenes on the pitch:

Hundreds of fans converged on the pitch at half time and voiced their opposition to the proposed move to Tolka Park next season. The second half of the Cup semi-final against Sligo Rovers was delayed by 10 minutes. At one stage, the Rovers fans were joined by Sligo supporters in front of the grandstand. A large force of Gardaí present did not interfere with the protesters and it was left to Rovers player/manager Dermot Keely to persuade them to leave the pitch.

The half time protest was front page news the next day, with the Irish Independent describing what had just happened as the “end of an era.” Noel Dunne wrote that while the fans “were not amused”, they were well-behaved, though “admittedly one of the banners waved aloft carried a rather unprintable slogan, with that four-letter preceding ‘Tolka Park’, and some pretty uncomplimentary remarks were also directed at the directors’ box.”

Irish Independent, 13 April 1987.

It didn’t take long for the frustration of supporters to find an outlet. Magill magazine wrote that:

Within days of the announcement of the leaving of Milltown, Rovers fans and former players rallied to form KRAM. They included Brian Murphy, Chief Executive of the Diners Club in Ireland,Gerry Mackey, the former marketing manager of BP–who has subsequently become spokesman for KRAM, former Irish youths coach Liam Tuohy and Paddy Coad. The latter three all played for what most veteran Milltown fans regard as the best Rovers team of all time.

When Rovers moved to Tolka Park in the 1987/1988 season,  many supporters boycotted the games there, something that Paddy Kilcoyne admitted in an interview with the Sunday Press was “effective”,  before stating that “in real terms there isn’t any public interest in this issue and the behavior of these people had not really affected our determination to succeed at Tolka.” The Irish Times wrote too that the KRAM boycott had “undeniably been successful.” A meeting of fans in the Clarence Hall to discuss the boycott tactic received plenty of press attention. Fans ultimately decided only to boycott home fixtures, and to attend away fixtures. The boycott tactic was aimed at hurting the Kilcoyne owners financially. By attending away matches, fans could continue to voice and display their displeasure.

Picketing Tolka Park (From ‘Hoops Upside Your Head’ fanzine)

Boycotts, by their very nature, are divisive affairs. For the fans who chose not to pay in to Tolka Park however,  there was a real camaraderie in it all. Reflecting on the tactic, the Glenmalure Gazette fanzine recalled that:

The first match to be boycotted at Tolka Park was a League Cup match against Athlone where no more than 300 people went in. Louis (instead of giving the crowd as lower than it actually was, as he did when he was on the fiddle at Milltown), inflated the gate. But there was no disguising the fact that Rovers fans hadn’t fallen for the lies and the aroma of pretense which surrounded the move to ‘The Graveyard.’ We certainly had some good craic outside Tolka despite the hardship we had to endure in not going to see the team we loved.

The humour of the Glenmalure Gazette.

The KRAM campaign had its critics, none more vocal in the media than Eamon Dunphy, who had a history with Shamrock Rovers, having played there under Johnny Giles. Giles had told Vincent Browne in an interview with Magill that “Ultimately, I want to win the European Cup with Shamrock Rovers. This may sound fantastic, but if you consider the amount of football talent there is [in Ireland], it isn’t all that outrageous an ambition.” While the club won the FAI Cup with Giles at the helm, the project was ultimately a failure, and Dunphy came away from his time at Rovers embittered, claiming in his memoirs that:

It is the kind of people that are in the League of Ireland. There is a breed of person in it that is small town,county councillor, freebie, who contribute nothing and take as much as they can … Nothing is ever allowed to develop here because they don’t want anyone to do it. We tried … but they didn’t want it … no thanks, because it will interfere with our club.

In May 1987,  Dunphy used his column in the Sunday Independent  to claim that “it is because domestic football has died that Milltown is closing down.”  He attacked both Philip Green and Con Houlihan in the piece, claiming that “Green had wept his way across the airwaves giving sentimentality a bad name in the process”, while Con Houlihan’s pledge to donate £1,000 to save Milltown was dismissed too.  Unsurprisingly, Dunphy was in turn ridiculed in the pages of Shamrock Rovers fanzines.

Eamon Dunphy’s take on KRAM. (Sunday Independent, 10 May 1987.)

With Rovers out of it, Milltown was allowed fall into rack and ruin. A year on, Magill magazine reported that:

A year after Shamrock Rovers vacated it, Glenmalure Park is like a disused set from an old Hollywood movie, gloomy and silent, lacking only the ghostly tumbleweeds. The ground has deteriorated,the crowd barriers on the stone terracing have been sawn off and the pitch -once regarded as one of the finest playing surfaces in Europe– is no longer the hallowed turf that contributed to many memorable Rovers successes for half a century. The stands have fallen into disrepair and the changing pavilions are wrecked. Only the floodlights,purchased with the financial aid of Shamrock Rovers patrons, remain intact…

Tactically, it wasn’t all about boycotting. KRAM marked the first anniversary of the club’s decision to leave Milltown “with a march and an all-night vigil outside Glenmalure Park.” Support was sought from public personalities too, with The Housemartins responding to a letter from Rovers supporters. The iconic band, fronted by Paul Heaton,  noted that “it seems obvious that these people have no genuine interest in the club itself and it’s history and importance to the community.” A very impressive £2,000 was raised by football fans in Australia in support of the campaign, with the Irish Press saying it was the efforts of a young recently emigrated Hoop that made it happen. Probably the strangest bit of news coverage relating to it all was an article in the Irish Independent claiming that Donnybrook businessman Terry Byrne had “pledged to pick up the tab” for sending Rovers fans to the Vatican, in the hope that they could discuss the issue with the Pope. There was some support from the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Bertie Ahern, who claimed that “when Drums went, that broke part of Dublin city.If you take Rovers away from Milltown then you’re breaking away another part of the city.”

Letter of support from The Housemartins, 1988.

Some in KRAM were hopeful of raising the money to buy the ground from the Kilcoyne family, though as things became more and more bitter Kilcoyne made his feelings clear in the press, claiming that the fans were “flogging a dead horse” and that the campaign could not convince his family to change their minds:

May 1987 report.

In the end, the Kilcoyne family succeeded in selling Milltown, and the Irish Press predicated ‘war’ in November 1988. One newspaper reported that the stadium was sold for £950,000, above and beyond anything KRAM could have hoped to raise. KRAM responded immediately by saying “the fight goes on.” In the year of the Dublin Millennium, Rovers chairman John McNamara pointed out the irony in a part of Dublin’s history disappearing.

Despite legal challenges, the ground was leveled in 1990 for property development. As Rovers fan Macdara Ferris has noted, “at different stages after leaving Milltown, Rovers played games in Tolka Park, Dalymount Park, RDS, Morton Stadium, Richmond Park and even played one home game 200km from Milltown in Turners Cross in Cork.” A monument today marks the spot where the football stadium once stood. This 2008 feature from Monday Night Soccer is worth watching, as it includes great archive footage of Milltown and the pickets at Tolka Park.  In recent years, an original turnstile from Milltown found a home in Tallaght Stadium, a reminder of the days of old.

Milltown Monument (Creative Commons, Wiki)

Round Tower in College Green, 1932.

As Joan FitzPatrick Dean has written in the entertaining All Dressed Up: Modern Irish Historical Pageantry:

The largest and most memorable public spectacle in twentieth century Ireland was the Eucharistic Congress held in Dublin in 1932. In good weather over five days, June 22-26 1932, “the congress demonstrated that the Irish Free State was, to all intents and purposes, a Catholic state. There was a definite air of Catholic triumphalism about the Congress.”

Dermot Keogh describes the event in his history of Irish and Vatican relations as a “showpiece of Global Catholicism”, and quotes one contemporary French newspaper, amazed by the reception afforded to the Vatican offificals:

From Dun Laoghaire Harbour to the Pro-Cathedral, a distance of ten kilometers, there was an unbroken mass of people, compact, deep, on both sides of the route. In the city the pavements and the squares were completely covered by the multitude. Nor are to be forgotten the bouquets of heads in all the windows, and the daring spectators seated on the roofs of the houses.

One participant in it all wrote joyously to the Irish Independent of how events in Dublin were the an thesis of the menace of the “Bolshies”, and that “the Soviet Government’s aim is to wipe clean out everything we in Ireland hold dear…those of us who took part in the glorious Eucharistic Congress may feel secure from the curse of the Soviet.”

One of the remarkable things about the Congress was the lavish decoration of the city. Tenement slums were decorated in Papal colours, while a temporary round tower found a home on College Green. Standing in the footprint of the recently-departed King William of Orange statue, it left a real impression on visitors:

Round Tower in College Green, 1932.

The Irish Times wrote that “Messrs. Watson of Killiney” produced the round tower, and that “no visitor, let alone a Dubliner, can readily miss this, as it stands some 45 feet high, on the site formerly occupied by the King William statue.” William’s statue had been subject to many attacks, in fact one publication went as far as to say “It has been insulted, mutilated and blown up so many times, that the original figure, never particularly graceful, is now a battered wreck, pieced and patched together, like an old, worn out garment.” An explosion in November 1929 led to its removal from College Green, where it had stood since 1701.

Under construction (Irish Press)

The structure was only ever intended as a temporary one. As Norman Vance has written, “Post-independence Catholic triumphalism encouraged the identification of ancient Ireland with Catholic Ireland.”   So, was it “vulgar tourist kitsch” or something of artistic merit? Regardless,  it is certainly difficult to picture it today, sitting halfway between the waxworks on one side and Abercrombie and Fitch on the other!

Advertisement for an anti-Poppy Day demonstration, November 1933.

In the Dublin of the 1920s and 30s, the selling of the Flanders poppy was commonplace. Every year the British Legion would open ‘Poppy Depots’ in the city, and beyond it in places like Rathmines, and every year without fail the presence of the symbol on the streets of Dublin was enough to instigate violence. Hand-to-hand fighting, flag burning and even attempted arson on poppy depots pop up in the newspaper archives from the period.

The poppy was formally launched in Ireland by the British Legion in October 1925, though it had been sold on the streets for years before that. The selling of the poppy brought in huge revenue to the body. In March 1930, at the annual conference of the British Legion in Dublin, it was claimed that Poppy Day had raised £487,272 in the year gone, against £469,215 the year previous. These were very significant figures, but the organisation existed for a variety of reasons beyond commemoration. At that same conference, A.P Connolly of the Legion bemoaned the fact that tens of thousands of WWI veterans were in dire need of housing assistance.

The Irish Times wrote in October 1925 that:

The sale of poppies benefits disabled ex Service men who are engaged throughout the year in making them, and also a large number of deserving ex-Service men who are assisted out of the profits. The men employed in manufacturing the emblems are badly disabled men who would stand small chance in the ordinary labour market.

‘City Centre in Turmoil’ – The Irish Press reports on Armistice Day, 1932.

Much of the opposition to Armistice Day, or ‘Poppy Day’, was instigated by republican activists, many with an IRA background. Indeed, during the revolutionary period itself,Armistice Day had been opposed by the IRA, who had considered taking very drastic action against it. George Joseph Dwyer, a member of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA, remembered in his statement to the Bureau of Military History that:

An Armistice parade was held in Dublin in the year 1919 to commemorate the entry of the Allies into the Great War. We paraded under arms and took up positions in Dame Street and George’s Street. We were to open fire on the parade but at the last moment this instruction was cancelled. On our way home we observed a camera man who had taken pictures of the parade. We took the camera off him and destroyed it.

Organisations in the late 1920s and early 1930s like the ‘League Against Imperialism’ drew heavily from the ranks of the IRA, while Eamon de Valera also addressed an anti-Armistice Day rally in 1930, in the capacity of Fianna Fáil leader. On that occasion, Dev shared a platform with IRA radicals Peadar O’Donnell and Frank Ryan, as well as Sean Murray of the Communist Party of Ireland and Sean MacBride. On the eve of Remembrance Sunday, he claimed that if Ireland were free “there would be no such a thing as the demonstration we will see tomorrow.” He went on to state that those opposed to the day “were not unmindful of the comrades who were anxious to honour the memory of their dead companions. But objection was being – and properly – taken to those who on each Armistice Day took the opportunity of indulging in a flagrant display of British Imperialism.” Two Union flags were burnt at the conclusion of the meeting. It is not surprising that after coming to power in 1932, Fianna Fáil representatives largely stayed away from such gatherings.

The statue of King William of Orange,College Green. It was bombed on Armistice Day, 1928.

‘Poppy-snatching’ became something of a sport in Dublin. In 1926, it was reported that as ex-Servicemen were passing the junction of D’Olier and Westmoreland Street as they paraded through the city, “a crowd of between 200 and 300 men and boys, also marching in military formation, came from the direction of Westmoreland Street and headed as if to cut straight across the process ion, their leaders shouting ‘Here we are again’ and ‘Up the Republic!'” Poppies were grabbed from lapels and trampled. The Irish Times reported that “there were many motor cars in the city..decorated with poppies and Union Jacks. When some of these cars came to a stand-still the decorations were torn off the bonnets.”

In 1932, Gardaí “drew revolvers and fired about half-a-dozen shots” over the heads of crowd who threw stones at poppy depots and snatched poppies. Windows were smashed at businesses who sold the emblems. The poppy depot on Dawson Street was often targeted, once even for arson. Kathleen Kavanagh, a 27-year-old from Dorset Street, was sentenced to six months imprisonment in 1926 for “conspiring to set fire to the premises 2 Dawson Street; with having poured petrol on a flag and table, and set them on fire; and with endangering the lives of a number of persons who were on the premises in connection with the sale of poppies.” Beyond arson, there were some other notable interventions. Todd Andrews, a republican veteran of the Civil War who was then a student in UCD at Earlsfort Terrace, remembered that on one year the 11 November commemorations occurred beside the University, and that “when the order was given for the traditional two minutes’ silence smoke and stink bombs exploded in all directions. Mutual abuse and poppy snatching led to scuffles and fistfights until eventually the students withdrew inside the college.”

1930s advertisement for Dublin poppy depots.

The numbers participating in the ‘anti-imperialist’ events could grow to thousands, but there were also tens of thousands partaking in the British Legion events. In laying out the workload of the Legion, A.P Connolly stated in November 1930 that “there were still 142,000 war widows, 35,000 officers and men who had lost a leg or an arm in the war, 6,450 officers and men who are insane and have been detained in lunatic asylums.” Giving the sheer scale of recruitment in Ireland during the war, not least from working class areas, the numbers taking part in remembering that war two decades later isn’t all that surprising. On the other side, the Irish Independent claimed in 1932 that “a procession of about 2,000 young men” caused trouble in the city, and that “all wore green, white and yellow favours; inscribed with the legend ‘Boycott British Goods.'” The paper claimed that the boys sang and chanted that “we’ll crown de Valera King of Ireland” and shouted “no poppies in this city.” At Trinity College, they sang The Soldier’s Song, but the reply from within the gates was Rule Britannia! The annual singing of God Save The King by Trinity College Dublin at College Green was seen by republicans as a provocative act, but Trinity students were more than willing to stand their ground and it took huge numbers of police to separate the two sides. League Against Imperialism demonstrations could mobilise crowds of 10,000 to 15,000 at College Green.

Marching to the Pro Cathedral, November 1930. Remembrance services occurred in both St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Catholic Pro Cathedral.

Poppy Day didn’t only annoy republicans, it also troubled the authorities. Writing to the Garda Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy, Colonel Neligan outlined a belief in 1928 that the commemorations were becoming “the excuse for a regular military field day for these persons…if the irregulars (a reference to the IRA) adopted these tactics they would be arrested under the Treasonable Offences Act.” The presence of uniformed British Fascisti members was also highlighted in the press, and troubled Gardaí. Attempts were made by the authorities to introduce restrictions on the emblems and flags on display on Poppy Day, in the hope it would reduce some of the tensions.

‘The Anti-Imperialist’, which appeared on the streets of Dublin on the eve of Armistice Day in 1926 (National Library of Ireland, http://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000511068)

The cycle of poppy snatchers and British Legion marchers beating each other over the head could have continued indefinitely, but in 1934 there came a new approach to the day, thanks to the Republican Congress. A short-lived attempt at establishing a broad left-wing front in Irish politics which could challenge both partition and capitalism, the Congress had emerged from the disillusioned left-wing of the IRA. In its ranks were men like Frank Ryan and Peadar O’Donnell. Ryan had once been instrumental in attacking Legion marchers on the streets, but in 1934 he aligned himself and the Congress with a new initiative. Of Ryan in earlier years, Brian Hanley has noted:

He was seen as a man of action, looked up to by young republicans but also an able and belligerent public speaker. At one anti-imperialist rally he warned the British Legion that “they had put them from Leeson Street to College Green, and from there to the Park, and the next place they would put them would be the bogs. Argument will be met with argument and blow with blow.”

Ryan wasn’t alone in the Republican Congress as a veteran of the ‘Poppy Day riots’. Another activist, George Gilmore, had been in court in 1926 for assaulting a man on Grafton Street, and for stealing a Union flag during Armistice Day riots. Anthony Coughlan, who knew Gilmore, has penned a fitting tribute to him here. Anthony Coughlan, who knew Gilmore in later years, has penned a fitting tribute to him here. An anti-war demonstration, including wounded veterans of the First World War, denouncing war, imperialism and the mistreatment of the war wounded, was certainly a new and exciting endeavor on the part of the left. An appeal to Irish ex-servicemen was issued, claiming that “the Armistice Day parades under the British Legion have been proved for the last ten years to be an insult to the dead and a mockery to the living.” Ryan shared a platform with Irish veterans of the war. Patrick Byrne of the Republican Congress remembered years later that “I had urged this new approach because of the disgust I felt when I saw some ex-servicemen being set upon for wearing their medals and poppies on their ragged coats.”

Frank Ryan himself wrote in the aftermath of the 1934 alternative Armistice Day that:

Did you ever believe you would see me, on an Armistice Day in Dublin, marching beside an ex-British soldier, who wore his Great War medals? For ten years or so, I have shoved my way into the front of the anti-Imperial demonstration. I’ve taken and given blows in clashes with ex-servicemen and police. I claim the record for capturing Union Jacks. Armistice Day was our day for demonstrating against imperialism, and imperialism to us was typified by Union Jacks and bemedaled ex-soldiers, and last Sunday – I walked with bemedaled ex-soldiers.

Frank Ryan and George Gilmore, both veterans of Poppy Day riots who later organised left-wing anti-war alternative ceremonies, appear in this picture of IRA prisoners released in 1932 (NLI, but brought to our attention by Village, see above linked article)

In 1936, there were similar sentiments from Ryan, when he asked a crowd at an anti-imperialist rally not to attack those wearing poppies, stating that “I ask you to give the benefit of the doubt to those who wear poppies tomorrow. Many will wear them in memory of dear friends who were deluded into dying for fine ideals in a horrible capitalist war. Respect them for the love of their dead people.”

The parading of the injured and maimed veterans of the war was a much greater political demonstration than the snatching of poppies. In a similar anti-war spirit, the 1930s in Britain saw the emergence of a white poppy, created by the Women’s Co-Operative Guild, as a symbol of remembrance that was explicitly anti-war, and which had (and has) the word ‘PEACE’ upon it. It was never really worn in Ireland in the 1930s, and only appears in the Irish media in reports dealing with its controversial nature in England.

As the 1930s progressed, ‘Poppy Day’  lost much of its violent edge in Dublin, but the wearing of the symbol also became less commonplace in subsequent decades. In recent years, the wearing of the poppy in British public life has become a great debate however. Brian Hanley’s 2013 article for The Irish Times is well worth reading:

One of the reasons the flower is so omnipresent at this time of year is because it is practically compulsory for those in the public eye in the UK. What one historian has called “poppyganda” is part of a renewed militarisation of British public life. As a group of British veterans of the Iraq war complained two years ago, the build-up to Armistice Day now amounts to “a month-long drum roll of support for current wars”.

On 26 June 1983, about 1,500 people gathered in Merrion Square to see the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Dan Browne, unveil the bronze artwork ‘Tribute Head’ in honour of Nelson Mandela,then the imprisoned leader of the African National Congress. Seamus Heaney read fitting poetry, and The Chieftains performed before the crowd which included Kadar Asmal of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and Sean MacBride, a founding member of Amnesty International. The Chief Representative of the ANC in Britain and Ireland,Ruth Mompati, outlined her belief that “this gesture would give the South African people courage to carry on for the liberation of their country.”

‘Tribute Head’, The Irish Times.

The bust in Merrion Square was the work of Elisabeth Frink, who had donated the piece inspired by Nelson Mandela to ‘Artists for Amnesty’, who sought a home for it in Dublin. Frink, born in Suffolk in 1930, became a highly respected sculptor in her lifetime, and as an obituary in the Independent noted at the time of her passing:

In 1975, she made a monumental group of four male heads, with closed eyes and clearly modelled, serene features. These were the Tribute heads…’In a sense, these sculptures are a tribute to Amnesty International,’ the sculptor said. ‘The heads represent the inhumanity of man – they are the heads of victims.’ A more recent pair of monumental heads is called In Memoriam, with eyes open, and are an extension of the same theme: people who have been tortured for their beliefs.

Frink beside two of her ‘Tribute Heads’. (Image Credit: http://www.artcornwall.org/features/Elizabeth_Frink_archive_at_Sherborne_House.htm )

The artist Fiona Robinson has praised the Tribute Heads, stating that “these heads are majestic. They epitomise Elisabeth Frink at her best, the visual realisation of profound emotion.” At the time of the unveiling of the Tribute Head in Dublin,Mandela was in his twenty-fourth year of imprisonment. The following year, while he was still a prisoner, the decision was made to award the Freedom of the City to the ANC activist and leader. In 1990, Mandela did come to Ireland to accept the honour.

The arrival of Frink’s work in Merrion Square (Dublin City Public Libraries, http://www.dublincity.ie/main-menu-services-recreation-culture/dublin-city-public-libraries-and-archive )

When Mandela was released from prison, the Tribute Head became the location for a gathering of hundreds in celebration. Gary Kilgallen of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement told the crowd that “Nelson Mandela is already a freeman of Dublin – now he is a freeman of the world.”The trade unionist Donal Nevin called Mandela “the noblest felon of our time”, while tribute was also paid to the brave Dunne Stories workers who had refused to handle goods from Apartheid South Africa. When Nelson Mandela came to Dublin only months after his release from prison, he made time to meet with the Dunnes strikers. He was presented with a picture of the Birmingham Six by artist Robert Ballagh.

Today, Frink’s piece remains in Merrion Square, though time hasn’t been kind and its inscription is near impossible to read.It could do with a little TLC, but it remains standing, a reminder of a small act of solidarity with Nelson Mandela and the ANC during their long struggle.

‘Tribute Head’ – Merrion Square today.

‘The Famous Boer Hat’.

Thomas Fallon, a “tailor, outfitter & equipment manufacturer”, operated out of Mary Street in the early twentieth century. His business could boast of being the “first maker in Ireland of Sam Brown belts for officers”, and when the Irish Volunteer movement was born, Fallon was one of the men who dressed its ranks. These advertisements for his business premises, published in the Irish Independent a century ago, are an interesting little insight into a sometimes overlooked aspect of the period, the manufacturing of uniforms for bodies like the Irish Volunteers.

Advertisement for Thomas Fallon.

Writing in August 1914 to the Irish Independent, Fallon stated that “I do a good trade with the Irish Volunteers….I have always been a Home Ruler and supporter of Mr. John Redmond…” While Fallon was a great admirer of Redmond, the later would ultimately split the Volunteer movement by encouraging Irishmen to enlist in the war effort of WWI. At a famous speech at Woodenbridge in Wicklow in September 1914, Redmond stated that:

The interests of Ireland, of the whole of Ireland, are at stake in this war. This war is undertaken in defence of the highest interests of religion and morality and right, and it would be a disgrace forever to our country, a reproach to her manhood, and a denial of the lessons of her history if young Ireland confined their efforts to remaining at home to defend the shores of Ireland from an unlikely invasion, and shrinking from the duty of proving on the field of battle the gallantry and courage which have distinguished their race all through its history.

This split the Volunteers into two opposing camps. One became known as the Irish National Volunteers, a body that followed Redmond and which consisted of the majority of the organisation, while a smaller body of men continued to operate under the title of Irish Volunteers, rejecting Redmond’s call to support the war effort. Fallon appears to have focused on providing for the Redmond-aligned wing of the movement from this point onwards:

‘National Volunteer Review’

Items produced by Fallon’s have come up for auction in recent years, for example this leather Officers Belt and Holster, stamped ‘T.Fallon, Mary St. Dublin’. For men of certain social classes in armed organisations, uniforms remained a distant dream.

James O’ Shea, a Citizen Army man who fought around Stephen’s Green in 1916, remembered bringing young Charles D’Arcy to the shop in the days before the Rising. D’Arcy would give his life at only fifteen years of age during the insurrection, the youngest member of the ICA to die in the fighting:

He was great although only a lad. His father and mother came to Liberty Hall one night and his father asked him after long persuasion to choose Liberty Hall or home. He immediately, and without hesitation, chose the Hall. I was present and I admired him with all my heart. I said to him while chatting that night “God knows what you have chosen”. He was killed on Henry & James’ roof, a bullet between the eyes. I had brought him to Confession on Saturday evening to Father Augustine in Church Street and we then went along and bought some equipment in Fallon’s of Mary Street. We then went along to Liberty Hall. This was on Easter Saturday.

The original uniforms of the ICA, to which D’Arcy belonged, had been procured from Arnott’s by Captain Jack White D.S.O, a veteran of the British Army in the Boer War and a founding member of the workers’ militia in Dublin. Sean O’Casey remembered that:

Captain White gave an order to Messrs. Arnott for fifty uniforms of dark green serge, and the men eagerly awaited their arrival. For the time being the rank and file wore on their left arms broad bands of Irish linen of a light blue colour, and the officers a band of crimson on the right arm. In a short time a consignment of haversacks, belts and bayonets arrived, and for a few nights following there was a terrible scene of polishing, oiling and cleaning, in which work Jim Larkin showed an enthusiasm worthy of a young boy with a new toy.

A noticeable feature of nationalist uniforms and dress at the time was the ever-present slouch hat, modeled on that of the Boers, whose fight in the Second Boer War had captivated nationalist Ireland. The first advertisement at the top of this post references “the famous Boer hat.” In Ireland, the slouch hat of the Boers became popularly known as the ‘Cronje’, a nod towards Piet Cronjé, a Boer General of the conflict.

A slouch hat on display. ” John Kelly of the Irish Citizen Army (back centre), and what appears to be young ICA scouts at the front.” (Image via the excellent: https://fiannaeireannhistory.wordpress.com/)

Thanks to Martin on The Atrix Facebook page for taking a high-quality photograph of his original poster for the Carnsore Point anti-Nuclear festival in August 1978.

Caransore Point poster, 1978.

The free festival was attended by thousands of people who wanted to express their opposition to the proposed first nuclear power plant in Ireland. Entrance to the three day festival in the South West corner of County Wexford was free and entertainment on offer also included exhibitions, workshops and theatre productions.

The cream of the crop of the Irish musical scene provided their services. They included traditional legends like Christy Moore, Clannad, Andy Irvine, Liam Weldon, Donal Lunny, Paddy Glackin who were backed up by soulful rock group Stagalee and Dublin New Wave bands Sacre Bleu, The Atrix and The Sinners.

Christy covered the event in his 2000 autobiography ‘One Voice’:

It was my first time to become directly involved in a political campaign, and I was to meet many  people who became lifelong friends and a few who became somewhat less than that. The festival was  a huge success and opened my eyes to the potential of people power. It was a wonderful collective and  to this day I still try to carry the message of Carnsore Point in my everyday life.

Political speakers at the 1978 festival included Petra Kelly (1947-1992; German Green Party), John Carroll (vice-president of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union) and Dr. Robert Blackith (1923-2000; Trinity College lecturer).

Not everyone on the radical Left was onside though. The pro-Unionist Marxist-Leninist group British and Irish Communist Organisation (BICO) picketed the festival as they believed nuclear power was was necessary to achieve socialism in Ireland!

There were further festivals in 1979, 1980 (with U2 on the bill) and 1981. The campaign was ultimately successful and a number of wind generating stations were opened on the headland in 2003.

Joseph E.A Connell Jr.’s recent book, Dublin Rising 1916, is a remarkable resource that we’re going to be dipping into for a long time to come. Listing addresses in Dublin by postcode, it gives us an idea of the secret lives and histories of buildings that in many cases are very familiar to us. The buildings featured range from the iconic, such as the General Post Office, to the totally forgotten, like safe-houses in places like Cabra and Phibsborough.

Having dived into the secret histories of  known places in the context of 1916, it got me thinking about the period that later followed, with the War of Independence (1919-1921), and the Civil War (1922-1923). The Bureau of Military History Witness Statements are one way of unearthing the hidden histories of  places, and one that popped up a few times in various statements caught my attention; a bomb factory in the very heart of modern-day Temple Bar, active during the later stages of the War of Independence and into the early phase of the Civil War.

Crown Alley today. (Image Credit: http://www.geograph.ie/photo/2266860, Eric Jones. Creative Commons)

For the republican movement, carrying on the fight in the aftermath of 1916 involved great logistical difficulty. A defeated army lacks weaponry, not to mention the fact the Easter Rising had clearly demonstrated the need for better weaponry. Arms were procured in the period that followed the Rising in a number of ways. Sometimes, they were purchased abroad and smuggled into Ireland. On other occasions, they were seized during raids on police stations and barracks premises. In Dublin, they were even removed from visiting ships, like the American ship Defiance in 1918. The movement also depended on secret munitions factories, often hidden deep within legitimate places of business. The unenviable task of overseeing all of this fell on the shoulders of the IRA Director of Munitions.

Seán Russell, a Dubliner born in Fairview in 1893, was a veteran of the Easter Rising who had been active with the Irish Volunteers from the time of their inception in 1913, and he is central to this story. By the time of the War of Independence he was a respected member of the IRA General Headquarters Staff (GHQ), and in 1920 he became the Director of Munitions for the body. He would later prove an important figure in the IRA of the 1920s and 1930s, serving as quartermaster general of the organisation from 1926 to 1937 and playing an active role in reorganising the body after its Civil War defeat.  A deeply controversial figure today, he is primarily remembered for his later time as Chief of Staff of the IRA in the late 1930s, during which he orchestrated a disastrous and short-sighted bombing campaign of British cities. He also attempted to procure support for the organisation from both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in the 1920s and the 1930s, something that has led to repeated vandalism of his Fairview statue.

Seán Russell in the 1930s. He died in August 1940 on board a German U-Boat, having attempted to secure German assistance for the IRA.

Seán Russell became IRA Director of Munitions in the aftermath of the death of Peadar Clancy, a 1916 veteran who had become second-in-command of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA, and who was shot in Dublin Castle on Bloody Sunday, November 1920.

As Director of Munitions, Russell would have been acutely aware of the need for munition and bomb factories. What he didn’t have, according to fellow 1916 veteran Thomas Young, was the required technical or engineering knowledge. Young recalled that “I can’t say that this appointment had the approval of any member of the munitions staff, as Seán Russell had no engineering ability but considered himself, by virtue of his appointment, to be in a position to instruct and direct all munition workers.” Patrick McHugh, another member of the IRA’s munitions team, felt differently towards the appointment, remembering that “Sean and I got on well together. Our ideals were identical and although he had little technical knowledge of work in hand he left the production entirely to my discretion and always introduced me as his assistant and appointed as his deputy whenever he was absent.”

Oscar Traynor, later a Fianna Fáil Minister and Football Association of Ireland President, remembered that Russell stepped into the role quickly, as “a tremendously keen Volunteer”, who “had an extraordinary bent for organising and establishing matters of this kind.”

Before Russell, the movement was utilising a munitions factory at 198 Parnell Street “underneath the bicycle shop of Heron & Lawless”, but the eyes of the law came onto this site, and it became very clear that the work needed to be spread across the city after it was raided. Seán O’Sullivan, a munitions worker who had first joined the republican movement in Manchester in 1916, remembered that raids upon the Parnell Street factory made it redundant:

The munitions factory in Parnell Street was again raided in November, 1920, at night. The whole area was cordoned off. The military and auxiliaries remained on the premises the whole night apparently with the intention of capturing the staff when they arrived in the morning. A young fellow who had left his bicycle there for repairs, called that morning to collect it. When he saw the auxiliaries inside, he made an effort to run away from them. They opened fire on him and wounded him. That gave us the warning as Parnell Street was crowded when we arrived near the premises. None of us knew who was inside as a few of us had our own keys. We kept outside until we collected all the staff and got rid of our bicycles, mixing in the crowds. They seized everything, took away the plant and the premises were closed down. It was our idea at the time that they had only stumbled on to this through an area raid.

The IRA ‘big gun’, produced at the Parnell Street munitions factory. See ‘The Cricket Bat that Died for Ireland’: http://thecricketbatthatdiedforireland.com/2015/05/17/the-ira-big-gun-and-the-death-of-matt-furlong-1920/

Munitions worker Patrick McHugh recalled that “I informed him [Russell] of our requirements regarding a foundry etc., and expressed the view that we should, as far as possible, scatter our work and duplicate premises so that we should not have a recurrence of Parnell Street.” McHugh claimed that within a week, Russell had sourced a new facility for the making of weapons at Crown Alley. This was the Baker family ironworks.

Today home to a Starbucks, the Bad Ass Cafe and The Old Storehouse among other businesses, Crown Alley is a bustling street in the heart of tourist-centric Temple Bar. In 1920 it was a very different place, located in what was still primarily an industrial district. Directly opposite the Telephone Exchange, a large imposing building still there today, was Baker’s Iron Works. It stood where Temple Bar Square is today, beside the Bad Ass Cafe. McHugh recalled inspecting it with Russell:

With Seán I inspected premises owned by Mrs. Baker facing Telephone Exchange which was under military guard. Mrs. Baker was running a small engineering and blacksmith business with her son, Paddy, in charge and a younger son in office. The premises suited our needs and she agreed to allow us more space in the general machine shop which we could partition off for machining grenades…. None of Mrs. Baker’s staff were in I.R.A. and it is a great credit to them that the presence of foundry and work done there was never disclosed to anyone.

The imposing Telephone Exchange, opposite the Baker family ironworks (Image Credit: Paul Reynolds, Rabble: http://www.rabble.ie/2012/11/14/look-up3-rebel-without-a-call/)

There were a number of other such factories established across the city at this time, ensuring that a repeat of the disaster on Parnell Street would be avoided. Yet while dividing the workload between various munitions factories was a good idea, situating one right  across from the Telephone Exchange at Crown Alley would have raised some eyebrows.

The Telephone Exchange was under British military occupation, owing to an eagerness that it not fall into rebel hands. in 1916, the rebels had planned for the occupation of the important communications centre, but in the chaos of the week it had gone unoccupied. It was too important a facility to be left unguarded now. Still, as munitions worker James Foran remembered:

They had sentries marching up and down on the roof of their building as we were going in and out, and we were never caught. I got paid while I was in Crown Alley. It was a full-time job and we were there for a couple of months. I was paid £1 a week, or maybe it was £1 a day. I think it was £1 a day. I was there for two or three months and finished up at the Truce.

RTE Stills image of Crown Alley before the modern development of Temple Bar, 1970s. The carpark on the right, opposite the Telephone Exchange, is  where Baker’s ironworks once stood. (Image ownership: RTE)

McHugh’s entertaining Witness Statement details how a furnace was acquired for use in the Baker premises, as “try as we might we were unable to produce sufficient heat to melt iron” without acquiring a new one. These issues were resolved, and by March 1921 the munitions factory was well and truly in operation.

This particular munitions factory specialised in the part-production of grenades and landmines, with one munitions worker recalling that “we made there casings for hand grenades and fittings for mines.” Foran recalled that the grenades would be taken away in sacks, and that:

I never noticed how many grenades we turned out. They used to come twice a week and take three or four sacks of them in the car – not full bags. Seán Russell was in charge of us… It was marvellous the way we got away with it, we were very lucky. We were never raided. All the other fellows working there in the usual way at the usual foundry work never gave us away.

An idea of quantity comes from Frank Gaskin, who claimed that when the pieces moved on from Crown Alley to another munitions factory, “we were able to turn out two or three hundred grenades per day.” The product was constantly moving, from one factory to the next:

Finished grenades were brought direct to O’Rourke’s Bakery, Store Street, where all filling was done. Firing set castings were delivered to 1 and 2 Luke Street where machining and screwing was done. Strikers were taken to Percy Place for pointing ,safety levers were taken to Mountjoy Square where assembling of firing set was done.

Oscar Traynor, who provided an in-depth statement to the Bureau of Military History (National Library of Ireland)

Not alone were the IRA capable of producing huge numbers of grenades at this time – they were producing grenades of a much greater quality to what they had earlier relied on. According to Oscar Traynor:

In the course of time very great improvements were made in this particular type of weapon. Apart from the fact that the grenades were made larger, the explosive material was also greatly improved. The old complaint from which Volunteers suffered previously, that of throwing a grenade and having the experience of not seeing it explode, was almost eliminated. This aspect of the Volunteers’ armament developed a greater confidence in the fighting men of the various units.

The work of making grenades at Crown Alley continued right up to the Truce, and for those who took the Republican side in the Civil War, it was resumed. With the Civil War, the IRA found itself with a serious problem on its hands: former comrades in the Free State Army knew its modus operandi, and in many cases knew the location of such factories. McHugh remembered that the making of grenades and landmine parts “continued in these premises until taken possession of by Free State forces in March 1922.”

Mrs. Baker, who provided Seán Russell and his men with the use of her family ironworks at Crown Alley, was not a soldier, nor did she receive a pension or a medal. Yet, in her own small way, she was a vital part of the republican movement in the Dublin of her time, as were many others. As Patrick McHugh recalled:

Mrs. Baker, too, deserves great credit for the risk she took. She was not a young woman but had a great national spirit. Ireland’s soldiers needed help and she did not count the risk or cost, and was always in the best of spirit. Few women with a military guard facing their premises would take such a risk.

Thanks to Walter Wouk for sending this interesting little 1960s tidbit through to our Facebook page in recent times. I like it for a couple of reasons, including the fact it not only features the Nelson Pillar (gone fifty years next year of course), but also uses the monument in the menu, with Horatio Nelson recommending Madigans “for a topping cocktail.” Madigans on North Earl Street is still going strong today of course.

There has been a trend of cocktail bars opening in Dublin in recent years, and you’ll find some of these drinks on menus across the city today. We previously looked at denunciation of alcohol cocktails in 1930s Dublin before. The Irish Times denounced the cocktail in 1932, warning readers that the cocktail “fulfils no useful function. It is supposed by the many to induce an appetite and to stimulate intelligent conversation; in fact, it absorbs the pancreatic juices and encourages cheap wit.” This menu shows there was plenty on offer in Dublin fifty years ago.

Madigans cocktail menu (1/2)

Madigans cocktail menu (2/2)

The menu also directs customers towards another Madigans on Moore Street, which is now no more – in fact, there isn’t a single pub on Moore Street today.

These are times of great change on Moore Street, with potential new developments that could drastically alter the appearance and character of the street, not to mention the focus on the street with the centenary of the Easter Rising approaching.

A Madigans Lounge sign can be seen in this image of Dublin street traders from the 1970s, and the below:

Madigans Bar & Lounge (Unsure of date of image)

Twenty years later, there was still a pub trading under the Madigan name on the street, though on the other side of it, were these premises related?This image is found in the excellent Dublin City Council Photographic Collection, from 1992:

This photograph is from the Dublin City Council Photographic Collection.

James Connolly (From  C. Desmond Greaves biography cover)

Media coverage of the 1916 Rising is a favourite subject here, and in the past we’ve looked at how American newspapers reported on the events in Dublin. I recently found this report from the Daily Chronicle and thought it worth posting. It deals with James Connolly, who is contrasted with Jim Larkin. By the time of the Rising, Larkin was in the United States. Despite that, as you’ll see in the above link, some American newspapers managed to blame him for events, even printing images of Larkin in their reports.

There’s lots of food for thought in a recent contribution by Brian Hanley to a panel discussion of the Irish Labour History Society on the theme on Connolly, which is posted in full over on Cedar Lounge Revolution.

Here is the piece from the Daily Chronicle, published in May 1916:

Jim Connolly hardly belongs to any recognised type of Irish agitator. To hear him speak one would have thought of the most pronounced type among the strong Glasgow accent. He measured his words and spoke with a reticence that was wholly un-Irish. In the substance of his talk, apart from  his fervent Irish Nationalism, he would have seemed to be neither Irish not Scottish, but Western American, with strong notions of industrial unionism, as practised by the IWW and the Federation of Labour, and in these characteristics were summed up the history of the man. Born in Scotland, of Irish parents, he became an advanced Socialist of the self-educated type, traveled to America, where he absorbed the new ideas of labour agitation, drifted back to this country, and eventually became Larkin’s right hand man in Dublin and his chief organiser.

Connolly’s greatest achievement was to have succeeded in planting Syndicalist theory and practice – industrial anarchist of the most pronounced type – among the unskilled workers of Dublin. When Larkin descended on the Irish capital in 1907, to lead a dock strike, Connolly became his right-hand man. The one, a hysterical, half-insane enthusiast, supplied the rhetoric and the emotion; the other supplied the wonderful semi-political organisation that had its headquarters at Liberty Hall.

Of the two chiefs of the movement it might be said that the moment it began to assume the character of political revolt Connolly, as the man of strong will and almost unique organising ability, was the more dangerous. During the labour troubles of 1913-14, he preached and taught his followers to practice pure Syndicalist doctrines, as have been practiced in Los Angeles and other cities of the American West – no trust with employers, violence if necessary, cynical repudiation of contracts, unceasing war, by any and every means. He was sentenced for conspiracy, but was set free after a seven days’ hunger strike.

On the subject of James Connolly, his political ideas and his involvement in the Rising, this Witness Statement from Mortimer O’Connell, an Irish Republican Brotherhood member and Volunteer,  is interesting reading. He recalled that:

I attended many of the strike meetings of 1911, 1912 and 1913, coming in from Blackrock with other students from The Castle to hear Larkin and Connolly, amongst others, speak. My impression was that he was an extreme international Socialist or what we would now term a Communist.

O’Connell believed that Connolly’s political views were shaken by the outbreak of the World War and the manner in which many Socialist Parties threw themselves behind their national war efforts, supporting recruitment and the like, rather than opposing the brutal conflict. He recalled that:

Between January 1916 and Easter Week Connolly gave lectures to selected groups of Volunteers. These lectures were held in the offices of some accountant in Nassau St., whose name I cannot recall. I was on occasion one of the Volunteers sent to stand guard, and I was present at some of these lectures. I remember Frank Fahy, later Ceann Comhairle, and others discuss with Connolly’s his views of a National Policy and asking him how it happened that he was taking this National stand in view of his past pronouncements.

Connolly’s explanation was that he got a shock when the Labour Leaders of England, France, Germany, Austria and Russia all had declared in 1914 for their respective countries. In other words they had become national. He felt that he himself should take stock, and he came to the conclusion that his first duty in the crisis was to be an Irishman.