Home Rule Buildings, thanks to Luke Fallon.

A few doors down from the Dublin City Library and Archive on Pearse Street is this aging sign for Home Rule Buildings.

The newspaper archives are throwing up nothing, and I’m curious to know the story behind it. A Dublin businessman or planner expressing his political aspirations through the naming of a block? Perhaps it was a response to the passing of the Third Home Rule Bill, though as we know it was put on ice with the outbreak of the European War in 1914.

The sign is over Conefrey’s Pharmacy at 136 Pearse Street.

No doubt someone else knows!

Home Rule Buildings

A historic image of Glasnevin Cemetery.

Prospect Cemetery, more commonly known now as Glasnevin Cemetery, is one of my favourite places to wander in Dublin. From ‘Anonymous to Zozimus'( to borrow a phrase) it is the final resting place of more than 1.5 million people. It holds a very special place in republican history too, having witnessed the funerals of figures like Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and Thomas Ashe, which were iconic moments in themselves.

While the most visited graves today are those of revolutionary icons, the story of the cemetery began with a young working class boy. The first burial happened on 22 February 1832, when young Michael Carey from Francis Street became the first ‘resident’ of Glasnevin Cemetery. He was a victim of TB, which was rife in Dublin’s tenements and devastated working class communities.

As the cemetery grew bigger in the generations that followed, so did its staff. Glasnevin’s gravediggers are of course renowned for bestowing an unofficial name upon one of Ireland’s most loved pubs, John Kavanagh’s of Prospect Avenue. As Shane MacThomáis noted in his history of the cemetery, it was common practice for diggers to knock with their shovels on the walls of the pub in the 1870s seeking a pint, but even earlier there had been a close connection between cemetery and pub – in 1836 the Cemetery caretaker, James Moore, complained of finding two unaccompanied coffins lying outside the cemetery, as mourners had crowded into Kavanagh’s.

An advertisement for Kavanagh’s, established in 1833.

This footage from 1974 shows the handing over of two pints through the railings of the cemetery. In reality, it would probably land you in severe hot water!

One interesting aspect of the Glasnevin grave diggers historically has been their grá for industrial action. Indeed, a quick dig into the archives of Irish newspapers shows that in 1907, 1916,  1919, 1920/ 1921, 1937, 1965 and 1971 the gravediggers took strike action, leading to the macabre sight of loved ones burying their own dead.

Why strike?  Normally, an industrial dispute is primarily motivated by the wage question, but there were other issues at play. In August 1919, an anonymous grave digger wrote to the Freeman’s Journal, highlighting the fact that “the poor, forlorn gravedigger with pick and shovel is daily risking his life cutting his way to a depth of 9 or 10 feet. Should the earth slip, were the men not always watchful, what would be the result?” The workers’ believed that a man digging graves alone was in danger, requiring an assistant at all times. In an act of sympathetic striking, a popular tactic of the revolutionary period and something Jim Larkin had introduced into Irish trade unionism in a major way six years earlier, the hearse drivers decided to strike in ‘sympathy’ with the gravediggers during their 1919 dispute.

Picketing grave diggers, 1919.

Gravediggers broke their own strike in 1921 for one day only, to bury Archbishop William Walsh, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Walsh hadn’t been a great friend to Irish trade unionists – in 1913 he was vocally opposed to plans to send the children of locked out Dublin workers to England, believing that it would put their faith in danger. The dispute had been particularly bitter, and when it ended in May 1921 one newspaper wrote:

It would serve no useful purpose now to discuss responsibilities for the dispute.The strike, after lasting since November, has closed, and we hope that recriminations will close with it and that no such dispute will again bring added pain to Dublin mourners.

Pádraig Yeates, one of the leading social historians of Dublin life, notes in A City in Turmoil: Dublin 1919-1921 that “so frequent were disputes at Glasnevin…that the Councillors asked their Law Agent to examine whether the Corporation would be legally empowered to open its own cemetery.”

In almost every year of the striking grave diggers, you find accounts of people digging the graves of their loved ones. During the 1971 strike, the media rushed to Glasnevin to get pictures of families in the act, making a pretty bad situation all the worse. Volunteers came forward in great numbers to assist families during that dispute, with the Irish Press writing that “so many volunteer gravediggers have visited Glasnevin Cemetery, to assist bereaved relatives and friends in the task of digging graves during the gravediggers strike, that there have been as many as seven men available to do a job which, in normal circumstances, would be performed by a full-time gravedigger.”

A 1971 newspaper image.

The city owes much to its gravediggers of course, something that becomes apparent in moments of hardship and tragedy.  The 1918-19 Flu Epidemic, which John Dorney has noted was a much greater killer than political violence of the time, put enormous strain on cemeteries. To quote Dorney:

…deaths soared  in Dublin with the arrival of the flu in July 1918. A total of 36.1 deaths per thousand were recorded in the city in last quarter of 1918, rising to 37.7 in the first quarter of 1919. At the Adelaide hospital  497 admissions with flu and 32 deaths were reported in October 1918 ‘often within 24 hours of onset’. In the city as a whole 250 deaths a  week were being recorded by November 1918.

At the height of this tragedy, Glasnevin witnessed 240 burials over a period of only 8 days.The flu epidemic even struck some those who had been lucky to survive the 1916 Rising. Richard Coleman, a veteran of the Battle of Ashbourne, lost the battle to the epidemic in December 1918, and 15,000 followed his coffin from Westland Row to Glasnevin Cemetery.

Today, the cemetery continues to grow. The gravediggers remain, and featured in the very moving documentary One Million Dubliners. Thankfully,their striking days appear to be over.

Glasnevin gravediggers, 1960s. (the men were named by Shane MacThomáis as Tommy Bonass, Tommy Byrne and Benny Gilbert)

This September 1882 print shows a mob attacking the statue of King William of Orange which stood on College Green, outside Ireland’s historic parliament. The monument predated the parliament building, and was ultimately bombed in the 1920s. There’s a lot going on in this image, but I particularly like the worried looking policemen at the ladder.

16 years after this attack on the monument, one publication would write that:

This equestrian statue of William III stands in College Green, and has stood there, more or less, since A.D 1701. We say “more or less” because no statue in the world, perhaps, has been subject to so many vicissitudes. 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.

The William monument was the work of the wonderfully named artist Grinling Gibbons. While the 1928 bombing failed to destroy the work, it was removed and placed in storage by the Corporation, before suffering the humiliation of being beheaded by persons unknown.

James Stritch and the Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa Funeral Committee, 1915.

In republican lore, the 18 September 1867 holds a special place. On that day, a police van carrying two prisoners was besieged by Fenians on the streets of Manchester, resulting in the release of the men but the killing of a police constable.  The event would become known as the ‘Smashing of the Van’, later finding its way into a ballad that even Chumbawumba had a pop at:

With courage bold those heroes went

And soon the van did stop,

They cleared the guards from back and front

And then smashed in the top,

But in blowing open of the lock,

They chanced to kill a man,

So three must die on the scaffold high

for smashing of the van.

While the Fenians succeeded in releasing their leaders from police custody, the day also led to the executions of three men shortly afterwards. William Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O’Brien would find their place in history as the Manchester Martyrs, hanged for their involvement in the affair.  Their defiant cry of ‘God Save Ireland!’ from the docks would inspire a ballad that was only eventually eclipsed in popularity by The Soldier’s Song after the 1916 Rising, serving as a sort of unofficial national anthem until that point. After the deaths of the three, there were enormous political demonstrations throughout Irish cities and towns, and tens of thousands paraded to Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery behind an empty hearse.Frederick Engels understood the enermoity of the hangings, writing to Karl Marx that “the execution of the three has made the liberation of Kelly and Deasy the heroic deed which will now be sung to every Irish babe in the cradle in Ireland, England and America.”

Panic on the streets of Manchester. The 1867 ‘Smashing of the Van’, in which James Stritch participated.

One of those who held up the police van on that eventful September day was James Stritch, a seventeen year old who had recently gone to Manchester in search of work. One account decades later claimed his role as being “to hold the horses drawing the prison van, while the attempt was made to force open the door behind.”

Remarkably, he would later play his part in the drama of the revolutionary period decades later, listed as part of the GPO Garrison and interned in Frongoch after the Rising. The following decades would see his devotion to the Fenian cause grow, and he was centrally involved in republican commemoration for decades, spanning causes from the O’Donovan Rossa Funeral Committee to the founding of the National Graves Association in 1926. To those in Frongoch, he was a living link to the Fenian past. Brendan Behan would later remember that “it was my privilege, at the age of ten years, to march behind the coffin of the veteran Fenian James Stritch”.

An old Fenian in a young Rising?

Stritch’s name appears on the 1916 Roll of Honour,formally presented to the government on the twentieth anniversary of the Rising, and within Jimmy Wren’s recent groundbreaking study of the GPO Garrison in 1916. At 66, Stritch was an older participant in the events around 1916 than Thomas J. Clarke, the eldest man to sign the Proclamation. Clarke was 58 years old at the time of his death, though weathered from years of imprisonment for his involvement in the Fenian dynamite campaign of the 1890s.

The 1916 Rising, at first glance, was arguably something of a young person’s rebellion. Fianna and Citizen Army Boy Scout members were in the ranks of the Volunteers, with young Seán Healy the youngest to give his life at only fourteen years of age, while Charles D’Arcy of the workers’ militia was fifteen at the time of his death. One of the most iconic images of the Rising was taken inside the GPO, and shows the fifteen year old Anthony Swan among the rebels, while of the executed leaders, Con Colbert and Seán Heuston were both born in the 1890s. The O’Connell School on North Richmond Street could later boast of having in excess of 120 students and graduates in the ranks of the rebels, and the youth of many of the participants was commented upon and sometimes ridiculed in the press in the aftermath of the Rising.

Young Anthony Swan (on the right) among comrades in the GPO.

In some Witness Statements, supportive sentiments from elderly people during the course of the Rising emerge. Likewise, W.J Brennan Whitmore remembered in his classic memoir (Dublin Burning: The Easter Rising from Behind the Barricades) that having entered one business premises, the owner was an elderly man who “with tears in his eyes, gave God thanks that he had lived to see that day.” He brought Brennan Whitmore to the roof of the premises, and:

Once on the roof he began pointing out all the vantage points and identified all the principal buildings in the near and far distance. Then he told me he was an old Fenian, and that they had gone over all this in his youth. It certainly was an instructive few minutes. To receive it from an elderly city publican was surely a unique experience.

Some of the 1916 participants, such as Tom Byrne, Major John MacBride and the Poole Brothers in the Citizen Army , had seen military combat before in the Boer War, yet many were mere children when those events were playing out.

Not all Volunteers were young; Matthew Stafford, described by Seán O’Casey as a “fine old skin and a brave, honest man” was born in 1853 and played a part in the Rising. Jimmy Wren’s research tell us that Stafford had joined the Fenian  movement in 1870, three years after the Smashing of the Van, and spent Easter week “engaged in sniping in the Drumcondra area.” Stafford was court-martialed following the Rising,but released owing to a lack of evidence. Two of his children were in the GPO. He later took a proactive part in the War of Independence and Civil War, and lived to the fine age of 98.  Still, men like Stritch, Stafford and even Clarke were certainly in the minority in a youthful movement.

Stritch and 41 Parnell Square.

Great insight into Stritch comes from the Bureau of Military History Witness Statement of Seán T. O’Kelly, a Sinn Féin Councillor and prominent Irish Volunteer at the time of the Rising who would later become President of Ireland.While some BMH statements are sketchy on details or disjointed, O’Kelly was one of those who provided very in-depth insights to the Bureau,  ultimately giving a number of Witness Statements.

O’Kelly remembered that Stritch was very prominently associated with the Irish National Foresters, a benevolent society (or ‘friendly society’), who called for “government for Ireland by the Irish people in accordance with Irish ideas and Irish aspirations.” No. 41 Parnell Square was the Foresters Hall, and it became closely associated with various radical movements who met there. The building was closely watched by the ‘G Men’, the intelligence division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and it was the location where many ‘Circles’ of the Irish Republican Brotherhood met, despite the unwanted prying eyes. Gaelic League activists and others also met in the hall,  and O’Kelly remembered Stritch as the men who essentially ran the building, as:

He was, I think, personally responsible for the success of the Foresters’ Organisation in running that house and he collected a considerable sum of money for the purpose of carrying out big extensions and improvements to the building. Among other things he built a large hall at the back of the house which was used for all sorts of purposes.

James Stritch 1911 Census for 41 Mountjoy Street, noting that he was a widower and born in Roscommon. (National Archives of Ireland)

O’Kelly claims that “every night of the week there were at least two members of the Detective Branch outside the door”,  but that the police were clueless as to who was attending language meetings, cultural meetings of other kinds, or IRB gatherings.Parnell  Square in general was something of a headache for the authorities in the revolutionary period, Vaughan’s Hotel was to become a popular rendezvous point with the network of Michael Collins during the War of Independence, while the Square was also home to the Fowler Hall, home of the Orange Order in Dublin, and cultural nationalist organisations.

O’Kelly remembered Stritch as “hard-working, strict and honest”. It was Stritch who swore a young Harry Boland into the Fenian movement, while his name also appears on the masthead of the Wolfe Tone and United Irishmen Memorial Committee, who gave their address of 41 Parnell Square.

That James Stritch was an employee of the Paving Department of Dublin Corporation shouldn’t be at all surprising,given that the local authority seems to have been something of a breathing ground for radicals in his time. Fred Allan, a veteran Fenian, would hold senior office in the Corporation, while Seán T. O’Kelly would admit using his influence as a Councillor to secure employment for radicals in the body. Major John MacBride became the Water Bailiff of the Corporation following his return from Paris after the breakdown of his marriage to Maud Gonne. Gary Holohan, a very active Fianna Éireann member, wondered if some men joined the Fenians “to use the organisation as a means for getting into the Corporation, as Fred Allan had good influence.”

A Belfast mural to The Manchester Martyrs, including a panel showing the Smashing of the Van.

Kilmainham and Frongoch:

In the aftermath of the Rising, Stritch was briefly imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol before being sent to the Frongoch camp in Wales. Fourteen executions took place at the Dublin prison in the immediate aftermath of the Rising, a deeply unnerving experience for the rebels held there. Batt O’Connor, later a TD, was held in the same cell as Stritch and remembered:

At dawn many of us had been awakened by the sound of three volleys of rifle fire, and though we knew nothing for certain, and no one spoke his fears…our hearts were heavy with anxious forebodings.At ten o’clock the Sergeant of the Guard unlocked the door and looked us over….he spoke to me, telling me that Pearse, MacDonagh and Tom Clarke had been shot that morning and the same fate awaited us all. He had heard an order for a trench to be dug large enough to hold a hundred, and he had seen a delivery of a ton of quicklime.

O’Connor remembered Stritch calming the young men in the cell, dismissing as “nonsense” what they had heard. O’Connor was moved by the fact “it was plain to me that it was not that he did not believe the news, but that, as a father might with his children, he was determined to make light of everything which might depress us still further. An old Fenian, it was as if he were putting himself between us younger men and whatever suffering was to come.”

Frongoch in Wales, sometimes described as the ‘University of Irish Freedom’, provided  a movement with the time to reorganise, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination. Brian O’Higgins remembered of it that:

There is no more deadly, more cruel punishment, than the ‘freedom’ of a prison camp. There is absolutely no privacy. Nerves become frayed, tempers out of control, and all the meannesses of man come to the surface. The mind becomes dull, the body enervated, the heart hopeless or hardened, and selfishness displays itself unashamedly in every direction and at all hours of the day.

Michael Collins was 26 at the time he was placed in this camp, forty years younger than Stritch. He withstood the conditions of the camp, returning to Dublin and the republican movement to the same triumphant welcome that greeted and surprised the other internees.  He was released earlier than many; the Fenian Joseph O’Rourke remembers his presence at reorganising meetings in the winter of ’16 in his Witness Statement. Seán Prendergast, who belonged to the same IRB Circle as Stritch, remembered that the Circle included Oscar Traynor, Tom ‘Boer’ Byrne, Dick McKee and ICA man Mick Doherty.

Stritch once again became synonymous with 41 Parnell Square, and under his watch the building would continue to host revolutionary meetings,  open and clandestine,  as well as cultural events, such as the St. Laurence O’Toole Dramatic Society of which Seán O’Casey was a leading light.

The death of James Stritch:

In the final years of his life, Stritch devoted much of his time to commemorating the republican dead of the struggles he himself had been involved in. He was an active and passionate member of the National Graves Association, established in 1926. Alongside Kathleen Clarke,  Seán O’Moore, Seán Fitzpatrick and other republican activists, this body sought to record and preserve the graves of dead republicans, while also erecting monuments such as the 1916 Plot at Glasnevin Cemetery and a series of wayside crosses to remember the victims of the ‘unofficial executions’ of the Civil War. They remain in existence today, and it is fair to say no other organisation has had such an impact on the landscape of commemoration and remembrance in Ireland.

At the time of his death in February 1933, Stritch’s funeral drew a crowd that represented the entire spectrum of Irish republicanism. Fianna Fáil TD’s stood by the graveside, but so did contingents of men, women and boys from the IRA, Cumann na mBan and Na Fianna Éireann. With Fianna Fáil coming to power in 1932 and repealing much of the repressive measures that had been introduced against these organisations, they felt confident appearing publicly and prominently. Newspapers even named members of ‘GHQ IRA’ who were in attendance at the graveside. His coffin was carried by IRA members, and wreaths were laid on behalf of various separatist bodies.

Stritch was buried in the ‘Fenian Plot’, alongside numerous men who like him were inspired by the radical movement of the nineteenth century. Stritch’s passing provided the imperative to finally place the beautiful memorial shown below over the plot; the monument had sat in the yard of a monumental works firm for almost four decades. Dedicated to the memory of “the members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood…outlaws and felons according to English law, but true soldiers of Irish Liberty”, political opposition had prevented its unveiling in the past. An estimated four thousand people gathered in late 1933 to see it revealed at last. It was a fitting tribute to the long life of James Stritch.

The Fenian Plot at Glasnevin Cemetery (Wiki Commons)

Thanks to our friend Conor McCabe for uploading this seven minute clip from The Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC2). It features presenter Andy Kershaw traveling to Dublin to report on the local live music scene in May 1985.

It opens with clips of the Ha’Penny Bridge and the Liffey. Followed by images of gig posters for:

– The Virgin Prunes, TV Club, Friday 17th May 1985
– Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, National Stadium, Saturday 11th May 1985
– The Alarm and the Faith Brothers, National Stadium, Sunday 19th May 1985
– Jason & the Scorchers, National Stadium, Thursday 16th May 1985

Cutting to the TV club venue on Harcourt Street, there is footage of live performances from local bands Blue In Heaven performing ‘Big Beat’, Cactus World News performing ‘The Other Extreme’ and Flo McSweeney performing ‘You Are’.

Intertwined between these clips is an interview with DJ and music journalist Dave Fanning.

Finally, presenter Andy Kersahw talks to Paul Cleary of The Blades as he takes them for a walk in the shadow of the now-demolished gasometer. Cleary compares the scene in Dublin to Manchester and Liverpool and discusses their recent record management woes with Electra.

Check it out here. Thanks again Conor.

The Ballyfermot Co-Op of the 1950s, to quote one of its central activists, had the misfortune to fall”foul of reaction.”

From an earlier anti-communist poster, 'Keep The Red Off Our Flag' (Edited by Lookleft Magazine)

While grocery co-operatives formed an important part of many communities in the Ireland of the time, in West Dublin a red scare campaign succeeded in forcing the closure of an important local service. In Dublin’s newly built working class suburbia, the co-operatives offered more than just affordable goods, providing people with inclusive local organisations and a sense of community.

The controversies around the Ballyfermot Co-Op arouse from the belief it was a communist infiltration scheme, with a letter to the press denouncing its presence in the area signed by the secretaries of the local Fianna Fáil, Labour and Fine Gael branches. Much of the hysteria was whipped up by The Standard, a religious newspaper which didn’t hold back in attacking the Co-Op, and even managed to evoke the name of Joseph Stalin in the process.

In his autobiography Just Joe, Joe Duffy recalled the very real power of the church in the Ballyfermot of the 1960s, but pointed back to the story of the Co-Op a decade earlier, writing that:

Ballyfermot was run – in a very real sense of the word – by a big, gruff, silver-haired Kerryman, Canon Michael Charles Troy….He was a larger than life country parish priest transplanted into a sprawling, uncontrollable, volatile urban area with the population of a small city. One of his first acts was to savagely quash attempts by a group of locals to open a co-op shop to bring down prices. Troy smelt a whiff of communism in the ‘co-op’ notion and bullied people into turning against it.

If Troy got a whiff of communism off the Co-Op movement in the locale, it should be noted that leftists were central to its foundation, though it became a much broader movement. One central figure to this story is Joseph Deasy. Born in Dublin in 1922, Deasy was raised at ‘The Ranch’ in Ballyfermot and later Goldenbridge Gardens in Inchicore. He devoted much of his life to progressive politics, and was elected to Dublin Corporation as a Labour Party Councillor in 1945, an impressive achievement at a mere 22 years of age. It was a fellow Labour Party activist, Tim Graham, who initiated the co-operative movement in his area. The first meeting was held in the Workman’s Club on Emmet Road,which led to the opening of a grocery shop on Grattan Crescent in Inchicore, before  the opening of a larger presence on Decies Road in Ballyfermot, leased from the Corporation.

Members of the Co-Op,  including Deasy (back row second from right). Image from Irish Left Review article ‘Joe Deasy: Irish Marxist’

Writing in the Irish Workers’ Voice in November 1952, Joe Deasy remembered:

In September, Ballyfermot and Inchicore witnessed one of the most scandalous and unscrupulous campaigns ever waged against a people’s movement – the Inchicore-Ballyfermot Co-operative Society…

…This Society was founded in 1945 and was based on the democratic principles of all co-operative movements…After a short period in existence the Society purchased a small shop in Inchicore…In 1951, through hard work and initiative, the allocation of one of the rented shops in Ballyfermot was secured from the Housing Committee of the Dublin Corporation. The membership had in the mean time increased considerably and reached a figure approaching 400 paid -up members and 300 partially paid-up.

Deasy recalled that “the Ballyfermot shop was a splendid, first-class grocery and provision store.By careful and conscientious management it was well on the high road to success and promised to be a real asset to the people of the area.” While Deasy had been a member of the Labour Party at the time of the inauguration of the Co-Op, he had departed for the Irish Workers’ League, a forerunner to the Communist Party of Ireland which was frequently the subject of negative media attention from the Catholic newspaper The Standard. It was perhaps unsurprising when they mentioned him by name in a November 1952 edition alongside more famous names:

Everybody who knows the slightest thing about communist technique knows that its first objective is contacts. What better contact, than the unsuspecting members of a co-op?…It was Ballyfermot’s misfortune to be selected for infiltration. How appropriate are the names of Ballyfermot? Sarsfield, Decies and Cremona? They might have been changed to Lenin, Stalin and, perhaps, Deasy Road.

In addition to being denounced in the Catholic press, the Co-Op was also condemned from the pulpit. The presence of members of the Irish Workers’ League on the Committee of the Co-Op caused great concern, at a time of heightened anti-communism. Deasy recalled that:

Four of the Committee of twelve including myself were members of the Irish Workers’ League. Now it could be argued that having regard to the environment at the time we made ourselves rather vulnerable. The Cold War was hotting up and a very strong anti-Communist feeling prevailed. There were also several details about the nature of the attack which were personally upsetting. As a result of denunciations from the pulpit my parents couldn’t go to mass locally but had to go to Church in the next Parish

This publication includes Deasy's 1952 article on the Co-Op. Digitised by Irish Left Archive.

Rumours spread throughout Ballyfermot, some of them outlandish. Deasy remembered one rumour that  he”had gone into the Vestry and physically attacked Father Troy. This would have been rather unwise on my part considering the impressive physique of the man.” Troy, a former Kerry footballer, was not to be messed with. Plenty of column inches went on the Co-Op in the national press too.

In attempting to appease those who feared the communist influence of the Co-Op, the IWL members made it clear they were willing to resign from the Committee of the group, but not the Co-Op itself. This wasn’t enough for some however. The members of the Co-Op sought outside assistance; Secretary Tim Graham met with the Civil Liberties Association, though he found them less than helpful. Deasy sought advice from the veteran socialist Peadar O’Donnell, who advised him to write to Paddy ‘The Cope’ Gallagher in Donegal, as he had successfully established a Co-Op there. Fearful of communist association, Paddy refused to support the Ballyfermot activists. In the pages of the national press, opponents of the Co-Op wrote that “we would all like a genuine co-operative, but it is false to say that the movement arose in Ballyfermot by spontaneous desire.”

In the end, pressure on the Co-Op grew so great that it eventually closed, despite labouring on for a few difficult months after The Standard denunciation. Deasy would later wonder if there was more at play than anti-communism in the whole affair, recalling that:

Perhaps the whole campaign was sparked off by local shopkeepers who would have had a vested interest in preventing the progress of the Co-op. The clergy did promise the people that they would start a Christian co-op based on Christian principles. This idea never materialised.

Plaque on Lombard Street today.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood, which was formally born on Saint Patrick’s Day 1858, would have an enormous impact on the course of Irish history, and some curious impacts on international histories too. A secret society committed to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland, members of the IRB would raid the Canadian border in the 1870s and fund-raise for revolution in Ireland in the 1910s. Rising up in 1867, the Fenian Proclamation then would proclaim:

Republicans of the entire world, our cause is your cause. Our enemy is your enemy. Let your hearts be with us. As for you, workmen of England, it is not only your hearts we wish, but your arms. Remember the starvation and degradation brought to your firesides by the oppression of labour. Remember the past, look well to the future, and avenge yourselves by giving liberty to your children in the coming struggle for human liberty.

Herewith we proclaim the Irish Republic.

The story of the Fenians began in a timber yard just off Lombard Street, owned by a republican veteran named Peter Langan. The central figure to this new movement was James Stephens, an active participant in the ‘Young Ireland’ radical circles of the 1840s who had spent years in exile in Paris, learning from some of the “most profound masters of revolutionary science.” In a city where clandestine radical networks operated, Stephens would encounter political revolutionaries of all stripes. As Niall Whelehan has noted, “interest in and acquaintance with European revolutionaries reflected an eagerness to master theories of conspiracy and insurrection.” Lessons learned in Paris would be applied in Dublin.

Car Dock Car Service on Lombard Street,site of the Fenian founding meeting.

There were five men present at the meeting which gave birth to the Fenian movement on 17 March 1858; James Stephens, Thomas Clarke Luby , Garret O’Shaughnessy, Peter Langan and Joseph Denieffe.Veterans of earlier struggles, each took a pledge committing them to their cause:

I, _________, in the presence of the Almighty God, do solemnly swear allegiance to the Irish Republic, now virtually established, and that I will do my very utmost, at every risk, while life lasts, to defend its independence and integrity; and finally, that I will yield implicit obedience in all things, not contrary to the laws of God, to the commands of my superior officers. So help me God.

Walking down Lombard Street today, one could easily miss the plaque on the wall of the Car Dock premises, but perhaps that is how the five men present that day would want it to be. Their movement lived in the shadows, but occasionally burst onto the stage.

An eighteenth century illustration of bull-baiting (source)

Bull-baiting was stupid, and it was also undeniably dangerous. Given this, it is  perhaps not surprising it was hugely popular in Dublin and other urban centres once upon a time! It has been defined as consisting of:

a bull being tied to a stake with a rope between 10 and 15 feet long. It was then baited – bitten, scratched and savaged – by dogs, usually bulldogs or mastiff especially bred for the sport..It appeal lay not only in its violence but also in the opportunities it presented for gambling on the performance of both the bull and the dogs.

As Paul Rouse has noted in his history of sport in Ireland, not all regarded this as a form of sporting entertainment; a letter-writer to the Freeman’s Journal in 1764 complained of the practices of bull-baiting and cock-fighting as being “inhumane entertainments”,  while “in the early years of the nineteenth century, such views gained much greater currency”, as reformers sought to ban such ‘blood sports’.Still, for a moment in time it packed in the crowds to sometimes makeshift arenas in Dublin and other Irish cities. One source tells us that”the place for bull-baiting in Dublin was in the Cornmarket, where there was an iron ring, to which the butchers fastened the animals they baited”, but it appears to have happened in other areas too. Rouse points towards Smithfield as a popular location for those gathering to bet on the spectacle, noting that “not even the threat of-public whipping and imprisonment of its devotees could deter those who engaged in it.”

References to the stealing of bulls can be found in the oral history of the city, in songs and poetry. These words come from the popular Lord Altham’s Bull, written in the 1770s, telling the story of stealing a bull (or a ‘mosey’) for the purposes of bull-baiting:

We drove de bull tro many a gap,

And kep him going many a mile,

But when we came to Kilmainham lands,

We let de mosey rest a while

A writer named John Edward Walsh wrote a very entertaining and colourful book entitled Ireland Sixty Years Ago in the mid nineteenth century, which cast an eye back on some of the problems of Irish cities in decades gone by, including”bucks, bullies, rapparees, dueling, drunkenness, bull-baiting, idleness, abduction clubs and a thousand other degrading peculiarities which marked the higher as well as the lower classes.” Walsh took a particularly dim view of those who engaged in the sport, writing that:

The custom of seizing bulls on their way to market, for the purpose of baiting, became so grievous an evil in Dublin in 1779, that it was the subject of a special enactment, making it a peculiar offence to take a bull from the drivers for such a purpose, on its way to or from market.

On more than one occasion, violence erupted among crowds who had gathered to observe bull-baiting.  On one occasion, dead bodies were left on the street when soldiers opened fire on a crowd who had gathered for a bull-bait in 1789 on Saint Stephen’s Day:

…a day devoted by the lower classes to relaxation and amusement, some of the tradesmen had purchased a bull, and brought him into a field, in the vicinity of the city, which was enclosed with a very high stone wall, and a gate which was kept shut. Some human persons, who considered bull-baiting as a cruel amusement, went to the Sheriff and required him to call out a military guard to put a stop to the proceeding. Vance, the Sheriff, complied.

His interference produced a riot. Oyster shells and pebbles were thrown by the mob, the soldiers retaliated by firing on the people. Many were wounded, four were killed. (source)

James Mahassey, Patrick Keegan, Ferral Reddy and an unnamed man lost their lives that day. In the aftermath of this sad affair, the families of those killed found an unlikely champion in the form of Archibold Hamilton Rowan, who was destined to become an influential member of the United Irishmen. The subject of a recent excellent biography by historian Fergus Whelan, Rowan was something of a champion of the poor and marginalised in Dublin, and he regarded the killings as an abuse of power on the part of the Sheriff and the authorities against the poor of the city. The Sheriff Vance was tried for the killing of Ferral Reddy, and in court Rowan made it clear he was personally “confirmed in the opinion of its being a most diabolical exercise of power.”  The case was dismissed.

Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who sought justice for those killed in 

Sometimes it wasn’t the bull-baiting itself that was condemned, but the drunkenness and violence surrounding the events. The Freeman’s Journal bemoaned a “terrible riot” in December 1787, when men converged on Finglas  for the purpose of bull-baiting, but unable to locate a bull for proceedings they “proceeded, after having drunk to intoxication, to insult the town of people and quarrel among themselves, and in the course of their rioting, it is reported, three were killed.”

As in Ireland, there was a perception elsewhere this was a sport for the so-called lower orders of society. Douglas A. Reid notes in his study of bull-baiting in England that aficionados of the sport were described as being “our labouring classes”, the “operative classes” and of the “working population” in English newspapers.

The eventual decline of bull-baiting was driven by many things, including political factors but also changing moral attitudes to blood sports. Rouse points towards ‘cruelty to animal’ reformers as playing an important part in the story, but also legislative changes which made such sports illegal. In the House of Commons in 1825, the question was raised of “why were the sports of the poor to be put down, and those of the rich to be left unmolested?” While we certainly can’t picture it happening on the streets today, bull-baiting was undeniably a “sport of the poor” once upon a time.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Arthur O’Connor lived a remarkable life.

Born near Bandon in Cork, he would serve as a member of the Irish Parliament in Dublin’s College Green from 1790 to 1795, while he later joined the Society of United Irishmen and even became a General in Napoleon’s army. In the College Green Parliament that excluded both Catholics and Presbyterians, O’Connor argued boldly for “civil,political and religious liberty”,reminding his fellow parliamentarians that “you are no longer legislating for the barbarous ignorant ages which are gone by, but that you must now legislate for the more enlightened and more intelligent age in which you live, and for the still more enlightened ages which are to come.”

A leading member of the Society of United Irishmen in Dublin from 1796,he was arrested while traveling to France to secure assistance for the movement in Ireland. O’Connor was acquitted, but his companion Father James Coigly was sentenced to death, hanged on 7 June 1798. O’Connor was rearrested following his acquittal, and sent to Fort George in Scotland. It was in light of this that O’Connor penned the following poem. On first glance, it appeared a total abandonment of his political convictions, and a particular condemnation of the radical Thomas Paine, author of the hugely influential The Rights of Man:

The pomp of courts, and pride of kings,
I prize above all earthly things;
I love my country, but my king,
Above all men his praise I’ll sing.
The royal banners are display’d,
And may success the standard aid:
I fain would banish far from hence
The Rights of Man and Common Sense.
Destruction to that odious name,
The plague of princes, Thomas Paine,
Defeat and ruin seize the cause
Of France, her liberty, and laws

And yet, with a little reworking, a totally different sentiment emerges. Taking the first line of the poem and following it with the first line of the second stanza ,and continuing onwards in the same fashion, the poem shows that O’Connor had not abandoned his principles, but was reaffirming them:

The pomp of courts, and pride of kings,
I fain would banish far from hence
I prize above all earthly things;
The Rights of Man and Common Sense.

I love my country, but my king,

Destruction to that odious name

Above all men his praise I’ll sing
The plague of princes, Thomas Paine
The royal banners are display’d
Defeat and ruin seize the cause
And may success the standard raise:
Of France, her liberty, and laws.

 O’Connor’s affection for Thomas Paine should not be surprising. Paine had lodged with Lord Edward Fitzgerald in Paris, and evidently made a strong impression upon the Irishman, with Fitzgerald writing of him as “my friend Paine…the more I see of his interior, the more I like and respect him. I cannot express how kind he is to me; there is a simplicity of manner, a goodness of heart, and a strength of mind in him, that I never a man before possess.” As Tom Hayden has noted, Paine “lobbied the French Foreign Minister to send an expeditionary force to Ireland…After the election of Jefferson, Paine called for the USA to liberate Ireland by force.” In 1792, Paine had been made an Honorary Member of the Society of United Irishmen, and his influence on the organisation (and others like it internationally) was immeasurable.

The Parliament to which Arthur O’Connor had once belonged famously passed an Act of Union in 1800 which doomed it to abolition, with its privileged parliamentarians becoming the turkeys that voted for Christmas. Today, a statue of Paine’s great foe, the statesmen Edmund Burke, stares at the building from the grounds of Trinity College Dublin. With bricked-up windows and the flag of the Bank of Ireland flying from it, it looks somewhat different to how it appeared in O’Connor’s time.

Famously, Burke condemned the terror of the “swinish multitude” on the streets of Paris during the revolution there. If Burke regarded the revolution in France as a disturbing event, Paine would passionately defend it, seeing in it the same hope for the future that encouraged men like Theobald Wolfe Tone and Arthur O’Connor in Ireland. To O’Connor, Paine was the “plague of princes”, and a guiding light. Perhaps it’s time for some small monument to Paine in Dublin too.

Edmund Burke, Trinity College Dublin.

Peter O’Toole as Jim Larkin (Image Credit: RTE Stills Library, source)

James Plunkett, author of the classic Strumpet City, often recalled Jim Larkin. In his essay ‘The Mission of Discontent’, he wrote that:

When Jim Larkin came to Dublin in 1908 he was thirty-two years of age – a handsome young man, tall and broad-shouldered, with a commanding presence. His hat was dark and wide-brimmed, and my mother remembers it being rumored in those early days that he never removed it because he was the anti-Christ and was obliged to hide a third eye that was set in the centre of his forehead.

Yet if some denounced him as evil embodied, Larkin would endear himself to the working class of the capital, leading his newly established trade union into strikes of newspaper boys, tram workers and more besides. Another trade unionist remembered that Larkin “crashed upon the public with the devastating roar of a volcano exploding without even a preliminary wisp of smoke.” Undoubtedly, Larkin could be difficult, and even destructive. In a recent biography, historian Emmet O’Connor notes that “Larkin deserves to be remembered as a hero for his titanic achievements between 1907 and 1913….It is unfortunate for his reputation that the story cannot be frozen in time.” O’Connor’s book is entitled Big Jim Larkin: Hero or Wrecker? Reading it, it seems evidently clear Larkin could be both.

If 1907 (when Larkin arrived in Belfast as a trade union organiser) to 1913 represent the years of glory for Larkin and ‘Larkinism’, it was the Lockout that captivated James Plunkett, and led to the inspiration for 1969’s Strumpet City, a triumph of a novel later retold as a television series in 1980 by RTE.  David Kelly, Bryan Murray, Cyril Cusack and Donal McCann were among those to appear in the series, but the star performance for me was Peter O’Toole playing the role of Jim Larkin. In a particularly powerful scene, Larkin speaks to the workers on the docks of Dublin, encouraging men to desist from work while others are entangled in industrial dispute. The tactic of the sympathetic strike was a pillar of Larkin’s ideology. This scene captures the tension between Dublin workers and the Dublin Metropolitan Police perfectly among other things:

O’Toole delivers his lines with all the passion one imagines a Larkin oration entailed. It’s all about the waving arms, booming voice and nothing but contempt towards the ruling order and the”paid henchmen” of it.

Recently, I stumbled on a copy of Arthur Flynn’s book Echoes.  While primarily consisting of 1980s  interviews from the author with figures as diverse as Cathal Goulding and Hector Grey,  it also includes a great account of the filming of the above scene. Flynn writes:

When I arrived at the location at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning I found a large area of the docks on both sides of the Liffey had been cordoned off by a heavy Garda presence. The area had been transformed by outside broadcasting trucks, caravans, drays and horses, arc lamps and cameras. The three hundred extras, required from Actor’s Equity and clad as cloth capped strikers and old Dublin Metropolitan Police constables lazed about in the sun awaiting their cue to work.

‘There he is!’ called a hushed voice from somewhere.

All eyes turned in the direction of the tall, navy blue suited figure standing alone in the centre of the dusty street.It was Peter O’Toole, grey haired, moustached and looking somewhat haggard.Then pacing with long strides, like a leopard stalking its prey, he glided past the drays and cables, his brow creased in concentration. This was his big scene with  a lengthy speech and he silently rehearsed his lines.

…Following a few words with the director, Tony Barry, he descended the steps to take his place in a rowing boat, manned by five members of the Garda Rowing Club, disguised as boatmen. they moved into camera range some twenty yards from the quay.

…O’Toole began his speech in a strong North English accent to the strikers, with a combination of Larkinesque Lawrencesque arm waving gestures. Just to watch this superb actor perform was worth the trip.’Cut’ called the director at the end of the take and the quayside erupted with spontaneous applause as the extras, crew  and onlookers acknowledged his flawless performance. O’Toole made no response and merely slumped onto the seat and took a swig from a bottle of Perrier water.

An amusing incident occurred when he began his speech for another take calling ‘Comrades’ and a voice from a boat moored at the opposite quay retorted ‘will you shut up! Everybody, including O’Toole, responded with a volley of uncontrolled laughter.

Today, Strumpet City is rightly recognised as one of the finest television productions in Irish history. It seems that the extras on the quays knew they were watching something very special, and the series and novel remain classics.

Pantibar, Capel Street (the building was formerly home to Baxendale & Co)

With some honourable exceptions, shopfronts and signage in the capital have been in decline for a long time now. The city is awash with ‘Temporary Signs’, plastic and corry-board signage which remains in place for months if not years over certain businesses, a way of dancing around regulations. Before anyone suggests that is an elitist attitude, it should be noted that the worst offenders are often not small struggling businesses, but frequently large chains, in particular convenience shops.

In recent times, there has been an enormous growth of interest in historic signage in Dublin, popularly known as ‘Ghost Signs’. Sometimes these are painted shopfronts, other times physical signage. Some examples of this which we’ve looked at include John Purcell’s (the Lafayette building), Kapp and Peterson (Starbucks) and that mysterious little sailor on Duke Street. Similarly, there has been a growth in interest in the artists who painted signage in the city, such as Kevin Freeney. The excellent short documentary ‘Gentlemen of Letters’ looked at Freeney in particular:

This interest in the history of the build landscape in Dublin is wonderful to see. Still, it can be difficult to think  just what signage in Dublin today might excite the historians and photographers of the future. In 2011, An Táisce complained that “cheap, garish shopfronts and signage” were becoming commonplace,  and one of the best pieces  examine the rot came in 2013 from Kevin Duff in Village magazine, highlighting areas were particular problems were evident:

The look of shopfronts in Dublin City Centre is in freefall, owing to an absence of effective planning enforcement for shopfront planning permissions and unauthorised shopfronts, signage and uses. While Grafron St and environs and oft-maligned O’Connell St have developed some shopfront pride over the last decade, the streets nearest the Liffey – Capel St, Westmoreland Street, Dame Street, Parliament Street, Temple Bar generally and the Quays – are becoming black spots of lower-order shops and fast-food restaurants with cheap, garish shopfronts and signage.

Detail of Pantibar sign (source).

With time, there are fewer and fewer people making signage in the city, or engaged in the act of signwriting. While Capel Street has consistently been highlighted as a street where ugly signage reigns supreme, the 3.5 meter LED Pantibar sign was a welcome addition and landmark to the street when it went up in March 2015, becoming a frequently photographed resident. Still, the sign has been in the news recently for the wrong reasons, following complaints and a City Council refusal of an application for the retention of the sign.

Niall Sweeney, the designer of the sign, has rightly pointed towards signs like the ‘The Happy Ring House’ and ‘Why Go Bald?’ in the city, pointing out that:

Any current “old favourite” was once a contemporary upstart. They speak of their time (they never looked back). They cause the working faces of their buildings to come alive in the present. Their considered crafting, quality and vision transcends the ages, approaching the sublime — no matter how simple or how complex their construction or message. They are part of the cultural, social and economic fabric of the city we live in.

The ‘Why Go Bald’ sign is now a true Dublin landmark, celebrated by the great dublinposter.com tribute shown here.

The sign, Pantibar have argued, is “a perfect example of 21st-century Irish signage and craftsmanship.” Indeed, the sign was physically made right here in Dublin, by a firm with more than four decades of experience in the field, something to celebrate in itself.

Do signs like this one add to the city, or take away from it? If one stands right under the sign, and looks across the street, the hoardings around the site of the Nirvana headshop, set ablaze in 2010, are surely more unsightly than the sign above their head?  Strolling up Capel Street, there are evidently much more problematic shopfronts than a bar that has brought nothing but custom and community to the street. Capel Street has great history, character and potential.

Good quality signage and shopfronts in the city are something we’re losing rapidly. Surely then preserving the old, and adding interesting and well-crafted additions like this sign, should be the aim. When Kevin Kearns wrote his classic study Dublin Street Life and Lore, one of those he interviewed was an aging Kevin Freeney, who told him that:

For along time handwritten signwriting on pubs and shops went out of fashion and plastic signs came in very popular. The authorities should never have allowed plastic to creep in the way i did in the fifties and later on.Oh, you’ve only to look around St.Stephen’s Green now, that’s destroyed with plastic. I’ve often seen an old building maybe being demolished and they take down the plastic sign and ‘lo and behold’ there’s a lovely job underneath!

The arrival of the Pantibar sign, March 2015 (Source: Pantibar)

Thanks to our friend Daniel Lambert (of the wonderful Bang Bang cafe in Phibsboro) for letting us share this wonderful historical letter which was has been in his family’s possession for eighty years.

It is an invitation (dated 15 September 1936) from the Republican Congress to its Dublin members calling on them to attend an important Emergency General Meeting at the Engineers’ Hall at 8 Gardiners Row off Parnell Square. Signed by legendary Irish republican figures George Gilmore (1898–1985) and Frank Ryan (1902-1944), the letter uses emotive language declaring that extreme-right “terrorist squads” in Ireland are breaking up left-wing meetings backed by the “Fascist organ” the Irish Independent. The Congress calls on all sections of the Republican and Labour movements to “act together” and “combat and defeat the Fascist offensive”.

Less than three months after the meeting, Frank Ryan and about 80 men left Ireland for Spain to fight with the International Brigades against the Franco and his Fascist forces. A total of around 300 Irish anti-Fascists fought in Spain. They “fought bravely on several fronts between 1936 and 1938, notably Jarama, Brunete, Teruel and the Ebro. Close to a third of their number died in Spain and many more were injured” summed up Fearghal McGarry in an 2001 article in History Ireland.

The Republican Congress, a fleeting but momentous attempt to establish a broad left-wing front in Irish politics, failed to unify disparate internal voices and faded from public activity by November 1936.

Letter

Republican Congress letter (15 September 1936). Owned by the Lambert family.

 
Transcript:

Republican Congress

Extraordinary General Meeting of Dublin Members on Tuesday September 15, 1936.

A chara,

The Republican Congress call all its members and sympathisers to an Extraordinary General Meeting on Tuesday next, Sept. 15 at 8 p.m. in the Engineers’ Hall, 6 Gardiner’s Row.

The meeting will consider the present situation in Ireland with particular reference to the strenuous efforts now being made – with a certain degree of success – by the Fascists, organised in bodies such as O’Duffy’s Foreign Legion and the so-called Irish Christian Front, to pose as “defenders of Faith and Fatherland”.

The Fascists are taking advantage of the divisions in the national ranks to organise terrorist squads to break up Republican and working-class meetings and to stifle free speech. They are taking advantage, too, of events in Spain to pose as the “defenders of Christianity” here. And abroad, they misinterpret Ireland as a country that would the strangle the liberties of her ancient allies the Spanish, Catalan and Basque people. The Fascist organ, the “Irish Independent”, is conducting on their behalf, a campaign of calumny and intimidation in an endeavour to isolate the several sections of the Republican and working-class movements in order to destroy each individually.

The campaign must be halted. The different, and differing, sections of the Independence movement must act together against Fascism and for the Irish Republic.
The forthcoming Extraordinary General Meeting of the Republican Congress will discuss fully the problems arising out of this latest Fascist ramp. The Honorary Secretaries will preset a comprehensive report on the situation and will suggest the methods by which we can combat and defeat the Fascist offensive.

We ask each member to help to make the meeting fully representative of Republican and Labour forces in Dublin, so that our decisions may have the fullest possible numerical endorsement. We assure you that the information at our disposal proves the time opportune to expose and defeat the Fascist plans. Accordingly, we urge on you the necessity for as full as punctual attendance as possible on Tuesday.

Sinne,

George Gilmore

Frank Ryan, Honorary Secretaries.

N.B. THIS LETTER IS YOUR ADMISSION CARD TO THE MEETING> PLEASE SHOW IT TO THE STEWARDS AT THE HALL.

Muhammed Ali at Steward’s Hospital, Palmerstown (1972)

Muhammad Ali arrived in Dublin on 11 July 1972, eight days before his fight with Al Lewis in Croke Park.

Ever the showman,he gave the people the performances they wanted and expected inside and outside of the ring, but there were also some unusual moments in his stay. A wonderful interview from Cathal O’Shannon allowed Ali to share his own political poetry, and a few eyebrows were raised when a visiting sports journalist made the point that “it will make a big impact on world news when people look at their papers and see Muhammad Ali walking about Dublin in perfect safety. A lot of people who don’t know much about Ireland think you get shot on the streets down here. This will show them that that’s not the way it is.”

The (paying) attendance at Croke Park, for the organisers of the fight, was more than a little disappointing. Expensive tickets kept the masses away, with The Irish Times writing that the organisers needed “a live audience of 32,000 to break even…the promoters had to settle for a figure in the region of 17,000, a biting indictment of the apathy of the Irish sporting public in the matter of international sport.” Whatever about apathy, there was ingenuity in how some managed to see the fight. In Dave Hannigan’s history of the fight, an account from one of Ali’s entourage suggests the crowd did improve in the minutes before the fight began:

Then they played the Irish anthem and everybody was standing to attention and halfway through that song, I swear to you, it was like the scene in a western movie when the Indians appear over the horizon. Thousands of Irishmen came in over the walls and fences and nobody made a move to stop them. It seemed to happen on cue; sing the Irish anthem and everyone gets in free. Wherever the holes were, they found them, so the place filled up a bit. It seemed as though far more people came in free than paid.

1972 advertisement for Ali’s Croke Park fight.

Ali Mania extended into the suburbs of West Dublin, with a visit to Steward’s Hospital in Palmerstown.  A hospital for those with special needs, it was hosting its annual sporting fete on 15 July 1972. Steve Brennan of the Sunday Independent accompanied Ali, writing that:

When he arrived at the hospital he was immediately swamped by a back-slapping crowd of people. Ali mania had struck. He was surrounded everywhere he went. It seemed that what Angelo Dundee said about Ali loving people was true. Because even though the big man must have been almost crushed by the crowd, he still kept a cheerful smile. Speaking to the crowd, Ali said he had never had such a welcome anywhere else in the world. I could well believe it. He was shouting from a platform out over the crowd, “I am gonna lick that ugly Frazier.”

The crowd pushed in, climbing over the platform from all angles. At one stage, it looked as though the stage would collapse, but the stewards managed to get things in hand. Throughout the day, Ali was the showman, the champ and truly The Greatest.

Following the Croke Park fight, the media proclaimed a “financial flop”, unfortunate for Steward’s Hospital and other special needs facilities who were to benefit from profits made. While Ali, Lewis and the GAA were paid their cuts in advance, even the bookers lost out. Still, showman and events promoter Butty Sugrue would insist that “getting him over to Dublin for the fight is the crowning achievement of my life. Of course, there were lots of other stunts, but this is the biggest of all.” For some Dubliners, shaking the hand of Muhammad Ali at a West Dublin sports day would provide the prized memories of that week in July, and not an undersold Croke Park.

The Bank of Ireland on College Green today occupies the building that was once home to the Parliament of Ireland. Over what is now a financial institution, the Lion and the Unicorn still gaze over the city. The Royal Coat of Arms, it has become a less frequent sight in the city since independence, and in 1938 authorities even sought to remove it from buildings for fear it could be targeted by those keen to erase any trace of imperial history from the streetscape.

The Royal Coat of Arms on College Green (Wiki Commons)

Staring at the Royal Coat of Arms across the street is an easily missed carved representation of Erin, representing Ireland. Above the premises of Abercrombie and Fitch, she sits there alongside a harp, an Irish wolfhound and the immortal words ‘Éire Go Bragh’.  Brendan McKeon’s image on Flickr, available to view here, does more justice to this fine piece of work than my image from the traffic island below, and is more than worth viewing.

Abercrombie and Fitch, College Green (D Fallon)

The Royal Coat of Arms and Erin staring at each other across the busy College Green  is a wonderful sight in itself, representing the tug of war of Irish history perhaps. Erin finds herself above a shop selling t-shirts and perfume today (ever walked by it?), but it wasn’t always that way. This was once the home of the National Bank, an institution that was founded by Daniel O’Connell in the 1830s. The same iconography would appear on the printed currency of the bank, indicative of a nationalist spirit.

The depiction of Ireland over the building dates from 1889, and is the work of James Pearse and Edmund Sharp. James Pearse (1839 – 1900) was the father of Patrick and William Pearse, both sentenced to execution for their role in the insurrection of Easter 1916. James was perhaps an unlikely father for the man who would read the Proclamation;  he had been born in London but raised in Birmingham in a Unitarian environment, though some who knew him described him as something of an Atheist. He was open-minded and widely read, and took a keen interest in politics and philosophical questions. In his own brief autobiographical sketch, Patrick would write of his parents:

For the present I have said enough to indicate that when my father and mother married there came together two very widely remote traditions—English and Puritan and mechanic on the one hand, Gaelic and Catholic and peasant on the other: freedom loving both, and neither without its strain of poetry and its experience of spiritual and other adventure. And these two traditions worked in me and fused together by a certain fire proper to myself . . . made me the strange thing I am.

Pearse and Sons, restored shopfront at 27 Pearse Street, now home to the Ireland Institute (D Fallon)

Róisín Ní Ghairbhí, biographer of Willie Pearse, notes that it was from his education in a Birmingham art school that the journey began for James as a sculptor. He was influenced and attracted to Gothic decoration still common in church decorating, and decided to become a stone carver. As Róisín writes, “the boom in church building in both Ireland and England at the time meant that there was ample work for someone skilled in making ecclesiastical images.” Pearse came to Dublin in the 1860s to work as a foreman for the firm of Charles Harrison at 178 Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street), though he later established his own firm at 27 Great Brunswick Street. In recent times, the name ‘Pearse and Sons’ has been restored over the building, along with the works ‘ecclesiastical and architectural sculptors’. Pearse did well in his industry, and Brian Crowley of the Pearse Museum has noted that “James Pearse’s business success excited jealousy amongst some of the Irish stone-carvers. A rival began a campaign against him on religious and racial grounds.”  Patrick took enormous pride in the work of his father, joking in his autobiographical sketch that “if ever in an Irish church you find, amid a wilderness of bad sculpture, something good and true and lovingly finished you may be sure that it was carved by my father or by one of his pupils.”

James Pearse with his family. (Image Credit: Pearse Museum)

Willie Pearse would follow his father into the family business, and his work can be seen in the city today too, for example in Westland Row Church. Pearse and Sons was wound-up in 1910, with the capital utilised to help establish Pearse’s St. Enda’s school near Rathfarnham. A radical new departure in Irish education, it was as much an experiment in education as it was a school. For Pearse, Crowley has noted, it was important that “boys would develop independent minds and a genuine love of learning. He completely rejected the exam-focused rote learning that characterised his own educational experience, despite the fact that he himself was a successful product of that system.”

Many of those who participated in the revolutionary period were the children of remarkable men and women; parents who encouraged their children to question the world and to be independent in their ways. Arthur Shields, the Abbey actor who fought on O’Connell Street in 1916, remembered that his father, the social-campaigner Adolphus Shields, had “a beautiful vision of society” which shaped his own view of the world. Certainly, James Pearse helped shape his children too.

It has come to light in the last week that deceased, convicted paedophile and former pirate radio personality Eamon Cooke (1936 – 2016) may have been involved in the disappearance and death of 13-year-old schoolboy Philip Cairns who went missing from Rathfarnham in October 1986.

After reading an excellent Broadsheet.ie post, I thought it would be useful to elaborate on Cooke’s brushes with the law in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s. It is likely that he had some connections with the republican movement during this time period.

In the book Playing in the Dark (2011) by Rosie Dunn and Siobhan Kennedy-McGuinness (a victim of Cooke’s),  they cited an article (pp. 253-54) that Cooke wrote in which he claimed that his mother was a member of Cumann na mBhan during the Civil War and that he was in an “active service unit” during the 1950s. It also mentioned the following two incidents that occurred in 1952 and 1957.

In 1952, the O’Connell Monument in Glasnevin Cemetery was damaged by a homemade bomb. Three boys were quickly arrested, one of whom was brought before the courts. Aged 15, this ringleader was sentenced to 12 months probation. As Donal related in a 2012 article :

In a statement to police the boy said that “about two years ago I learned from other boys at school how to make explosions with potassium chlorate, charcoal and sulfur.” He was alleged to have told Gardaí he had set off some small trial bombs in the area, and had “purchased the ingredients for the bomb in small quantities in chemists’ shops for only a few pence.” On the afternoon before attempting his bombing at O’Connell’s tomb, the young 15-year-old used an old bicycle frame to pack in the required ingredients.

At 8.30pm on June 6th, the youngster climbed the O’Connell Tower, planting his crude explosion on the top storey with a lighted candle. When asked why he had done it, the lad remarked that “because it was so high”, he expected “a lot of noise and a big flash.”

A number of leads point to Eamon Cooke being the unnamed 15-year-old charged.

The first comes from the late great Shane MacThomais, Glasnevin Cemetery historian, who commented on Donal’s 2012 article:

did you know that the youth in question went on to become a famous Dublin Dj of the 1970s and a convicted rapist in 2007. He paid the cemetery 30 shillings for the glass broke in the tower.”

Cooke was born in 1936 so would have been 15/16 in 1952 and he lived just two minutes walk from the Cemetery. It’s also mentioned in a recent HotPress article (though they say 1960s) and the Broadsheet.ie piece (though they incorrectly say 1950).

In 1957, Eamonn Cooke (21) or Edward Joseph Patrick Cooke, a clerk, of 18 St. Theresa’s Place, Glasnevin, was sentenced to five years imprisonment at Wicklow Circuit Court. On the night of 18th February, he had shot six times at Gardai at Hollybrook Garage near Wingfield, Bray, Co. Wicklow.

Escaping the scene but later arrested at his home, he was charged with:

1) Attempted murder of four members of the Garda Siochana
2) Having a revolver in his possession with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property
3) Breaking and entering the lock-up garage of Patrick Farrell
4) Having in his possession a revolver without a firearm certificate
5) Causing malicious damage

Cooke replied to the first charge : “At the time I fired the shots, I did not know that they were police and I did not fire directly at the police”. To the second charge, he said : “I had no intention to endanger life”. He pleaded guilty to the third and fourth charges and in reply to the fifth : “I admit some damages”.

The prosecution later withdrew the first charge changing it to “shooting at four Gardai with intent to to resist or prevent lawful apprehension”.

In a statement, Cooke said that he noticed the garage after being in the Dublin Mountains with friends shooting and decided he would raid it for petrol. He broke the locks on two petrol pumps with an iron bar at the garage but the pumps were empty. Cooke stated that that he bought the gun six months ago to shoot at birds.

For the defence, Dr. Mary P. Mulvany, said the accused “suffered from meningitis, was of superior intelligence, was impulsive, and fond of approbation, and though not suffering from mental disease, was not completely stable and should receive prolonged psychological treatment.”

Eamonn Cooke newspaper report. (Irish Times, 19 Feb 1957)

In 1965, Sean Colley (20), a plumber, of 80 Decies Road, Ballyfermot was sentenced to six months imprisonment after being convicted of having a Lee Enfield rifle and eight rounds of ammunition on September 8th of that year. He was also charged for on that day assaulting Eamon Cooke, of 3 Sarsfield Road, Balyfemrot by pointing the rifle at him after an argument. When charged, Colley replied : “When I pointed the gun … it was not loaded. The magazine was taken out and in my pocket. I have no licence for the rifle”.

Colley stated in evidence that he “was not a member of an illegal organisation” and did not know if the gun was “the property of the I.R.A.”. He said the gun came into his possession after a written note was put in his door asking him to call to a cafe in Sandymount to collect the gun which he did. Cooke and Colley fired it at least once in the Dublin Mountains.

(A man by the name of Sean Colley, aged 30, was one of three Irishmen in Lancashire sentenced in 1973 to up to four years imprisonment for conspiring to blow up public buildings. The Sean Colley from Ballyfermot would have been 28 in 1973).

Eamonn Cooke newspaper report. (Irish Press, 05 Nov 1965)

In 1973, a letter to the Sunday Independent accused Cooke of being a police informer. It was published with a picture of Cooke. As Bodger summed in up in his excellent piece on Broadsheet.ie, it has recently come to light that Cooke in the 1960s and 1970s would involve himself:

in live Garda operations and patrols in the Kilmainham area of the city on a nightly basis, installing a CB radio and a blue flashing light in his Jaguar car and uses the call-sign “Alpha 7” to report the movements of stolen vehicles in Dublin ‘A’ District, pursuing and ramming them himself.

Eamonn Cooke newspaper report (Sunday Independent, 25 March 1973).

In April, staff at Radio Dublin ‘mutiny’ after Cooke’s sexual abuse of a local girl is discovered. The Irish Press report that it was due to “allegations” made about his “personal conduct”.

Eamon Cooke newspaper report. (Irish Press, 10 April 1973). via Broadsheet.ie

A 1978 issue of Magill magazine described him as the ““Godfather” of pirate radio in Dublin … an innocuous, quietly spoken IRA man.”

Eamonn Cooke (Sunday Independent, 05 February 1978)

In the late 1970s, Jimmy Saville visited Cooke at Radio Dublin a number of times.

In November 1984, Cooke organised the petrol-bombing of the home of John Paul O’Toole on South Circular Road. O’Toole had worked for Cooke at Radio Dublin but had been sacked. He was “seen” with Cooke’s former girlfriend who was the mother of his three-year-old son. Cooke wanted revenge and so approached a number of men to carry out the attack.

In 1986, four men were charged in connection with the firebomb attack. They were Gerard McMullan (40), of Ballyfermot Drive; Eugene Geoghegan (40) of Donard Avenue, Blackhorse Avenue; Alan Callopy (33), Ballyfermot Drive and George Sneddon (33) of Glentow Road, Whitehall.

Cooke (49), of 58 Inchicore Road, pleaded guilty to conspiring to assault O’Toole and was given a four-year suspended sentence and . It was stated at the time that Cooke had five previous convictions with the last one dating back to 1957.

Eamon Cooke newspaper report. (Irish Press, 04 Nov 1986).

In 2003, Cooke was convicted for attempted rape, attempted unlawful carnal knowledge and sexual and indecent assault of four girls but the conviction was later quashed on a legal technicality. He was released in May 2006 but was brought again to court and convicted, in 2007, on 42 counts of sexual abuse of children. In early June 2016, Cooke died at at the age of 79 in a Dublin hospice to which he had been transferred from prison

Sources. 1957: Irish Independent (19 Feb 1957), Irish Press (13 April 1957) Irish Examiner (13 April 1957). 1965 : Irish Independent (20 Sep 1955), Irish Press (05 Nov 1965). 1984 : Irish Times (22 Oct 1986),  Irish Times (23 Oct 1986),

From Footprints of Emmet,published in 1903 (Digitised by South Dublin County Libraries)

The ghost of Emmet and Easter Week:

There are many reminders of Robert Emmet’s 1803 insurrection in Dublin today, not least the monument at Saint Catherine’s Church, marking the place where Emmet met his end at the age of only twenty-five. P.H Pearse recalled in a 1914 speech that “a friend of mine knew an old lady who told him how the blood flowed down upon the pavement, and how she sickened with horror as she saw the dogs on the street lap up that noble blood.”

For Pearse and others of the 1916 generation, Emmet was an enormous influence. His rebellion had been planned as an urban insurrection, designed to seize the historic Dublin Castle, viewed by nationalists as a symbol of foreign occupation. It wasn’t only Emmet’s words that influenced later rebels, but his planning. In one Bureau of Military History statrement, Pearse is remembered as stating that “Dublin has one great shame to wipe out and that is that no man risked his life to save Robert Emmet.”

Pearse was not alone in looking to 1803 for inspiration; in the pages of The Workers’ Republic only weeks before the Rising, James Connolly wrote that “we now know beyond all doubt that had Robert Emmet pushed on to the Castle on the day of his rising he would have captured that edifice of evil omen, and roused all Ireland by the blow.” A few short weeks after he penned those words, Connolly’s own Citizen Army would storm the gates of the Castle, as Emmet had envisioned his men doing.

Marshalsea Lane and the Emmet depot:

Yet while there are reminders of Emmet in the city today, the landscape of Dublin has also changed. Some places, like Marshalsea Lane discussed in this post, are now unrecognisable.

This 1750s map shows the location of Marshalsea Lane (above the ‘M’ in Thomas Street, its sometimes appeared under this name)

In the run-up to Emmet’s abortive rebellion, secret munitions factories and depots were established on his orders,producing and hiding the weapons of war Emmet felt his movement would require. One of these was located in Marshalsea Lane, located just off  Thomas Street, between Bridgefoot Street and Watling Street.

Emmet, in the aftermath of the failure of the 1798 United Irish rebellion, had quite wisely left the country for a period. His presence in Dublin in 1803 was, he hoped at least, unknown. Even the funeral of his own father in January of that year could not be attended for fear of apprehension.

Emmet’s Marshalsea Lane depot was located behind a pub, The White Bull Inn, described as being “on the right hand side of a court off Thomas Street, between the numbers 138 and 139.” From the pub, there was a secret entrance to the depot. Seamus Cullen, author of an excellent study of 1803 in Kildare, has suggested that this premises had a number of advantages to the movement, including the fact the proprietor of The White Bull, Mary Dillon, was sympathetic to the movement. Emmet’s men took the lease of the building on 24 March 1803,  and the running of it was taken up by Michael Quigley, a Kildare-born veteran of the 1798 rebellion. Of the depot,  Cullen has noted:

Quigley moved into the building and from then on went by the alias of Captain Graham. Barney Doogan who had served with Quigley during the ‘98 rising in north Kildare, joined the conspiracy at this time. Both Doogan and Condon also moved in to the depot and together with Quigley and Howley began working on the manufacture of pikes. In order to conceal the weapons in the depot Quigley built false walls in the building with Howley assisting with the carpentry work. Other assistants were recruited, mainly carpenters who planed timbers for pike handles. Some of the assistants worked for only their keep and others, particularly the carpenters, were paid. Emmet supplied Quigley with the money to pay their wages. At first, Quigley and Doogan were the only two from the depot who would have contact with Emmet or the people in the other depots.

Emmet maintained contact with other United Irish forces, such as the well-organised and disciplined United Irishmen in Kildare, and the forces of Michael Dwyer in the Wicklow mountains. Dwyer,a 1798 veteran, was maintaining a guerilla campaign since the failure of the 1798 rebellion.

An illustration of Emmet’s Marshalsea Lane depot (The Shamrock)

The weapons of Emmet:

In secret, Emmet was moving forward with planned urban warfare, and the weapons his men were developing were often innovative in design. One source tells us of “a species of explosive machines, consisting of beams of wood bored by a pump augur, and filled with powder and small stones, intended to be exploded in the face of advancing troops at the moment of action.” Essentially, Emmet’s men sought to barricade the streets with hidden explosives, causing nightmares for any advancing troops on foot or horse. Large quantities of pikes were forged, and “carried from their places of manufacture to the depots in hollow logs prepared for their reception, and which were drawn through the streets like ordinary lumber.”

In addition to the Marshalsea Lane depot, another functioned in the district at Patrick Street, where the authorities would discover hundreds of pikes of a peculiar design. The rebels of 1798 have entered folklore as the ‘pikemen’, and in 1803 Emmet’s men developed pikes described as “having an iron hinge at about half their length, by which they doubled up, and though when extended they were six feet long, by this contrivance it was possible to carry one of them undiscovered under a man’s coat.”  Along with these pikes and explosive devices, Emmet’s men also development war rockets. It was recalled that on testing one of these black-powder rockets in a secluded area, it “went off like a thunderbolt, throwing flames and fire behind it as it advanced.”

“But he left behind, for all his efforts, a drunken, pillaging riot.” The 1803 rebellion in action:

The tragedy of this period of sedition and planning is that it delivered so little. When Emmet’s rebellion took place on 28 July 1803, it emerged with a whimper and not a bang. When one of Emmet’s munition factories witnessed a fatal explosion on 16 July 1803, it forced his hand, largely out of a fear that the conspiracy would unravel before the authorities. In the days before the insurrection, Emmet was living at the Marshalsea Lane depot.  It was likely there that he penned the Proclamation of his rebellion. While Emmet’s rebellion is now remembered as a brief riot, this document is deserving of more study. It noted that “From the date and promulgation hereof, tithes are for ever abolished, and church lands are the property of the nation.” It was at Marshalsea Lane that Emmet’s uniform was produced, described as being “a green coat, laced on the sleeves and skirts..and gold epaulets, like a general’s dress.”

Marching into action: In this popular illustration, Emmet’s men take to the streets in 1803.

Plagued by a culture of informing which had hampered the rebellion of five years previous, and in the face of great challenges, Emmet led a small band of men from the Marshalsea Lane depot on 28 July. R.R Madden, the great historian of the United Irish movement, has written that Emmet and his men were found “not of one mind; there was division in their counsels, confusion in the depots, consternation among the citizens who were cognizant of what was going on, and treachery tracking Emmet’s footsteps, dogging him from place to place unseen.”

Remembered primarily as a riot on Thomas Street, Emmet was horrified by the sight of a British dragoon pulled from his horse and killed, while Lord Kilwarden, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, was similarly dragged from his carriage and hacked to death. Amidst scenes of chaos, Robert Emmet fled, having attempted to call an end to a revolt. Those who dismiss the events entirely as little more than a riot ignore the large scale planning that preceded it however,or the impression vision of Emmet’s proclamation.  As Ruan O’Donnell has noted, what actually occurred “was by no means an index of the revolutionary potential of the conspiracy”.

The death of Robert Emmet on Thomas Street, 20 September 1803.

Following Emmet’s rebellion, an account of the Marshalsea Lane depot was penned by the Chief Secretary, who reported that  “until a week before the insurrection not more than a dozen persons on the whole were admitted to the depot, and no more than seven or eight were there at any one time. These persons, though chiefly of a humble class in life,were entirely confidential, and of known attachment to the cause.” It went on to note:

They brought in from time to time, in small bundles or baskets, or under their great-coats, pike heads, pistols, blunderbusses, and ammunition. Boards were brought there of a length and thickness to be cut into pike handles, and a few beams which were afterwards hollowed in different ways – some to contain pikes, some to be charged with combustibles and laid in the streets to impede or destroy the military.

Only a short distance from the Marshalsea depot his followers had done well to conceal, Emmet was executed on 20 September 1803.  The Castle had withstood his plans, but his place in history was secure.

Hogan Stand Shield, from the 1965 Capuchin Annual.

I recently picked up the 1965 Capuchin Annual, which included a very fine tribute to Pádraig Ó Caoimh (1898-1964). A Roscommon man who moved to Cork at a young age, he served in the ranks of the Irish Volunteers throughout the War of Independence and was imprisoned in Britain for his activities. In 1929, Ó Caoimh became General Secretary of the GAA, a position he would hold for more than three decades. At the time of his passing, an obituary noted that “under his administrative genius the GAA became by far the strongest sports organisation in the country and reputedly the biggest amateur association of its kind in the world.”

One of the images in the piece shows Ó Caoimh beside the historic shield of the Hogan Stand. Entirely As Gaeilge, the translation provided states:

This Stand was erected by the Gaels of Ireland in fond memory of Michael Hogan from Tipperary and thirteen others whom the British Army foully killed here on Sunday, 21st November, 1920.

The Hogan Stand was dedicated to the memory of the slain athlete on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1926.  The Fintan Lalor Pipe Band and James Connolly Pipers performed, and the President of the Association told a large gathering that “the invasion of Croke Park on November 21st 1929 was an attack on an organisation whose membership was closed against the invader. The sister organisations – the Gaelic League and the GAA – had helped to save the spirit of the nation – its greatest asset.”

Where South Great George’s Street meets Dame Lane.

Just behind Rick’s Burgers and in front of the ‘Why Go Bald?’ sign, there is a small space of land that nobody seems entirely sure what to do with.

In recent months, a brilliant addition was made by the Mercantile bar and venue who erected vivid images of the 1916 leaders alongside the Proclamation in a wide variety of languages spoken in the city today. I’ve often passed by and spotted people reading the document in different languages to the one it was written in. Thankfully, it has survived past the centenary celebrations, though no doubt it is temporary.

Now, another addition to the area  has also caught the imagination of people.  Colourful seating and bicycles spaces have made this a space where people stop and sit.  It’s not unlike some of the clever interventions by Dublin City Council’s Beta Project in recent times, nor is it the first time something good has been done in this space, reminding us of the temporary garden placed in the same location during Bloom last year.

All in all, these things have come together nicely we think. It shows what can be done relatively easily in the city centre, transforming grey spaces into something different entirely. More of it!

Con Martin’s Soccer Annual appeared for the first time in 1961. Primarily focused on Irish domestic sides, it also included some coverage of the international team and Irish footballers making their way in Britain.

It was the later interest that led to the inclusion of a brief ‘Spotlight’ feature on Johnny Giles in the 1961 edition, when he was then a mere 21 year old. Giles, now senior analyst for RTÉ’s football coverage, was living “with team-mate Nobby Stiles, whose parents treat him like one of the family.”

In his autobiography, Giles talks of how Stiles became part of his own family:

Nobby Stiles joined [Manchester] United a year later than me, in 1957, and we hit it off immediately. He may have ferocious presence on the pitch but off duty he looked more like a professor than a warrior, with his thick glasses…

He is also my brother-in-law, a process that started in the summer of 1958 when he spent some time with us in Dublin. I introduced him to my sister Kay. Nobby says he loved her the first time he saw her,but she was going with someone else at the time, so he would have to wait. He was only sixteen.

Nobby came over for several summers, during which time he settled in and became part of our family. Those summers would also be notable for the fact that at some point, probably in 1960, Anne and I brought Eamon Dunphy to his first dance. He was a bit younger than us, and I think he was a bit lost. Certainly, he never asked to come out with us again.We were probably too dull for him!

Giles was destined for great things in the years that followed, though he is undoubtedly best remembered across the Irish Sea for the time he spent at Leeds United,appearing for the club on more than 380 occasions.  A great plaque to Giles, previously photographed by Sam for the blog, appears in his native Ormond Square:

‘Heroes Come From Here’ – Ormond Square (Image by Sam for CHTM)

Recently, I visited the Irish Whiskey Museum on College Green. Irish whiskey has a long (and sometimes dangerous!) history, and the story is well told in the Museum. One of the things that really caught my attention wasn’t from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries but much more recent. Introducing, the Jameson ‘Nightender’:

The Jameson ‘Nightender’ in the Irish Whiskey Museum. With thanks to the excellent Potstilled blog for the image.

A clever invention of the 1970s, the ‘Nightender’ was only  ever two ten pence coins away from giving you a drink, even after the (human) bartender had decided it was time to close up. Unsurprisingly, the authorities took a dim view of the machines,  and they were quickly outlawed. A few seem to have popped up internationally, such as in McKinney, Texas.

Around the same time as the ‘Nightender’, the Sunday Independent reported in 1974 that the Sandyford House had installed “a drinking man’s dream”, with machines on the premises where you “insert your money and out splashes a vodka, gin or whiskey.”  The Irish Barmen’s Union weren’t keen on the machines, arguing that:

This machine can break down. You cannot talk to it over a drink….People prefer to sit and be served, especially if they are not too steady on their feet…barmen would fight any moves to introduce the do-it-yourself machines into union pubs.

The Sandyford House, 1974 (Sunday Independent)