“Self portrait on my 70th birthday, in Borsolino hat and cashmere silk-scarf from Milan, and Dublin Thornproof-tweed suit, Oleg Cassini tie from Goodwill shirt from same source, kitchen window mid-day, I stayed home and worked on Selected Poems 1947-’95 after returning from Walker Arts Center reading – Beat exhibition weekend. Monday, June 3, 1996. N.Y – Allen Ginsberg (photo c. Allen Ginsberg Estate)]” (Image from Allen Ginsberg Project)

In 1993, the celebrated poet Allen Ginsberg arrived in Ireland for the first time. Always counter-cultural and sometimes controversial, Ginsberg was his own man throughout his entire life. The Irish Press noted before his visit that “Ginsberg is now in favour with a new generation who find the music their parents listened to more exciting that their contemporary soulless techno-pop”.

Ginsberg’s political activism often made headlines. An active opponent of the Vietnam War and American aggression in South America, he was deported from Cuba in 1965 for publicly condemning the treatment of homosexuals there. In terms of his own literary output, he is undoubtedly best remembered for Howl, a masterpiece which was dragged through the courts in a 1957 obscenity trial. Widely considered one of the great works of contemporary literature, it captured the madness and spirit of the Beat Generation to which Ginsberg was so central, alongside people like Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Herbert Huncke. In my youth, I stumbled on it after becoming obsessed with Kerouac’s On The Road (a teenage rite of passage for the angsty), which began a journey into the output of related writers.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz.

– From Howl.

Ginsberg performed in Dublin’s Liberty Hall before a packed crowd in October 1993. In interviews leading up to his visit, he noted what lured him to Ireland wasn’t money, but the promise that Theo Dorgan of Poetry Ireland would procure him a new tweed suit. One contemporary report noted that “after a little shopping around, Dorgan found that Kevin and Howlin tailors on Nassau Street did a variety of the ‘thornproof’ tweed and it was there that Ginsberg was outfitted. The irony of the company’s name wasn’t lost on him either.”

Ginsberg’s Liberty Hall appearance was the stuff of legend, leading one journalist to write that “there hasn’t been such a rare gathering of the tribes, the true heads of our time, since Dylan played Slane Castle.” The great, the good and Bono were among the attendees. The Irish Press noted:

He considered the choice of Liberty Hall as an ideal venue for his reading last night. He liked the labour connection. He still believes in all his original causes. When I left the show, he was still singing. Maybe he’d still there in Liberty Hall this morning, playing to the ghosts of Larkin, Connolly, O’Casey and God knows who else. An unforgettable fire.

Irish Press report on Ginsberg visit.

In a postcard, Ginsberg noted with delight that “Part of my Dublin fee was great grey tweed suit so now I look like an elder Irish gentleman crossing customs borders.”

The suit meant a lot to Ginsberg. Three years after his Dublin visit, he donned it for a self portrait,along with his “Borsolino hat and cashmere silk-scarf from Milan”. Some accounts suggest he was buried in it. Kevin and Howlin remain open for business today on Nassau Street, almost twenty-five years after dressing one of the greatest poets of his generation (or any other).

Evening Herald, 4 September 1978.

In a former life, one of my great areas of academic interest was the so-called ‘Animal Gangs’ of 1930s and 1940s Dublin, and some of that research was eventually published. I was fascinated more by the folk memory around the gangs than anything else I think, and enjoyed delving into the newspaper archives and Garda intelligence files.

Recently I’ve been reading a lot about Dublin in the 1970s (before my time, but by considerably less than the Animal Gangs). Just as the media panicked in the 1930s about the Animals, the so-called Bugsy Malone Gang of the north inner-city frightened the powers that be and the press. Taking their name from the hit 1976 gangster comedy film, the gang was comprised of very young teens who made a name for themselves primarily through a series of daring ‘jump overs’ in the city, that is leaping over bank counters before making off with their takings. In time, the name seems to have been applied more widely to all youth crime by some journalists. The gang have warranted passing mentions in studies as diverse as Diarmaid Ferriter’s Ambiguous Republic: Ireland in the 1970s, Garry O’Neill’s Where Were You? and several histories of Dublin crime gangs. The primary reason for their passing mentions in the later is the alleged involvement of Gerry Hutch, or ‘The Monk’, in the gang. A 2000 article in the Irish Examiner went as far as to claim that “in the 1970s, the Bugsy Malone gang was effectively led by Hutch. This gang of Dublin inner city youngsters were in to all kinds of crime, especially so called jump overs.”

The first most people would have heard of any such gang was a report in the Sunday Independent in late January 1978, which noted the presence of a young gang “being compared to the mini Chicago criminals in the box-office film hit, Bugsy Malone“. It detailed how the gangs 13-year-old “Godfather” had been arrested in the aftermath of a raid on the O’Connell Street Northern Bank, during which £1,400 was snatched after “the daring raid was carried out by hurling a bottle through a plate glass door.”

Sunday Independent, 23 January 1977.

Reports of the gang sometimes appeared only pages away from advertisements for the film of the same name. By the early months of 1978 the movie was out of the picture houses, but the gang remained, now being refereed to as “infamous”. The Minister for Defence bemoaned how an organised gang of juvenile criminals was “roaming the streets of Dublin, openly cocking their noses at the Gardaí and courts.”

It all took place against the backdrop of an explosion of cases in the Children’s Court, where the number of charges brought against juveniles had reportedly soared from some 5,000 to  25,000 in just a decade. While not excusing the actions of any gang, the Irish Democratic Youth Movement, aligned with Sinn Féin the Workers’ Party (SFWP), rightly pinpointed “appalling housing conditions, inadequate education and the total lack of recreational facilities” as issues which “create an environment which breeds crime and violence.”

The sheer volume of bank robberies in the city in the late 1970s was remarkable in itself – spanning everything from paramilitary organisations to organised crime groups. Some went unreported until court dates (if there were any) but the youth of this particular gang ensured their escapades were always covered in the press. It was even suggested that they’d established something of a headquarters on Lower Gardiner Street in a former trade union building, which the Independent christened the “Bugsy School.” The gang were sometimes pinpointed by the press for other criminal activity, such as arson:

Irish Independent, 1 June 1978.

Some Gardaí were eager to pour water on the stories about the gang, with one insisting in September 1978 that much of what was written about the so-called Bugsy Malone Gang was “a figment of someone’s fertile imagination.” Yet only two days later, a different Garda source gave the media a totally different view of the situation in Dublin, even insisting that “the black market is paying off so well for the Bugsy Malone offenders that 12 of them were recently seen by Gardaí boarding a plane at Dublin Airport bound for a Mediterranean holiday resort.” plus ça change.

Evening Herald, 16 October 1978

Just as happened in the 1930s – when the term ‘Animal Gang’ went from being applied to one specific gang to youth criminality in general – the term Bugsy Malones began to be applied to all youth criminal gangs. Take this Evening Herald report from October 1978, which was front page news, insisting that a controversial new detention centre for the “untouchable delinquents” would be the end of the gangs.

Reversing the wave of criminality in the city involved serious investment. By January 1979, newspapers were reporting of how positive initiatives in the north inner-city were having an impact, including “a craft shop in a flat in Summerhill run by Peter McVerry, which employs six young people.” It wasn’t only the opportunity of work or police pressure that cracked down on the gang, as there were reports of one member dying in a stolen car which crashed when returning from a series of robberies on the West coast of Ireland.

There has always been youth criminality in Dublin and in other cities, in particular in neglected working class districts. At times, be it 1937 or 1977, there have been moments when the press believe it to be truly out of hand, and when new gang names mystify the powers that be and come to dominate the headlines. While they may have lacked the sheer violence of the Liberty Boys or the Animals, the Bugsy Malones were still good for column inches.

Number 98 Parnell Street (previously Great Britain Street) is a “terraced two-bay four-storey house” built in circa 1810. It served as the Healy family grocers from the mid 1800s until the early 1960s.

Unusually the proprietor James Healy was a Dublin-born publican as can be seen here for the 1901 census for the family.

1901 Census Return form for James Healy and family, 98 Parnell Street.

It was taken over  by well-known Dublin hurler Mick Bermingham and was under his stewardship until around 1982.

An advertisement for Mick Bermingham’s, 98 Parnell Street. Credit – Munster Express, 3 September 1971.

The pub was known as The 98 in the late 1980s; The Thornbush in the 1990s and then operated as Zagloba for the growing Polish community in the mid 2000s.

Its most recent carnations – the Dublin Supporters Bar and The Dubliner- were known for its cheap drink offers and all-day karaoke.

Dublin Supporters Bar, 2011. Credit – Paolo Trabattoni.

Dublin Supporters Bar, 98 Parnell Street pictured in 2013. Credit – Broadsheet.ie

In the last couple of months, it has closed, revamped and re-opened as The Luggage Room Bar. Going for the budget hipster look, it offers ‘student nights’, ‘pitcher Wednesdays’ and ‘Brazilian parties’.

The Luggage Room Bar, Halloween 2017. via Facebook.

Evening Herald, 2 October 1920.

In the early twentieth century, some of the most interesting voices in Irish public life, including Socialist leader James Connolly, expressed their support for the idea of an international language.

A constructed international auxiliary language (differing from natural languages, which develop over time), Esperanto was the brainchild of Polish inventor L. L. Zamenhof. In 1887, under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto (Doctor Hopeful) he published Unua Libro, in which he introduced and described this new international language. Zamenhof did not believe that his constructed language would replace existing national tongues, but that it could exist alongside them and make human communication easier. The father of this ambitious project was twelve times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and there are streets named in his honour all over the world, including in Israel, Italy, Brazil, Catalonia, the UK and Poland. Zamenhof’s vision of international parity was certainly a romantic one, telling one gathering in 1905:

In our meeting there are no strong or weak nations, privileged or unfavoured ones, nobody is humiliated, nobody is harassed; we all support one another upon a neutral foundation, we all have the same rights, we all feel ourselves the members of the same nation, like the members of the same family, and for the first time in the history of human race, we -the members of different peoples- are one beside the other not as strangers, not like competitors, but like brothers who do not enforce their language, but who understand one another, trustfully, conceitedly, and we shake our hands with no hypocrisy like strangers, but sincerely, like people.

Writing to the Freeman’s Journal in 1902, E.E Fournier expressed a belief that “it is high time that the attention of the Irish people should be directed to a language which appears to have completely solved the problem of providing an international means of communication without prejudice to the use and study of an existing national language.”  Anyone curious about “a movement so full of possibilities for good” was encouraged to attend classes at the offices of the Celtic Association, 97 Stephen’s Green. Fournier, a distinguished intellectual and physicist, was at the very forefront of the Celtic Revival in Ireland and an early champion of Esperanto.

James Connolly

Even earlier that this in 1899, James Connolly used the pages of his weekly The Workers’ Republic to outline his own belief in the need for a universal language, though not one that stood in conflict with existing languages:

I believe the establishment of a universal language to facilitate communication between the peoples is highly to be desired. But I incline also to the belief that this desirable result would be attained sooner as the result of a free agreement which would accept one language to be taught in all primary schools, in addition to the national language, than by the attempt to crush out the existing national vehicles of expression.

Connolly was by no means alone in the global socialist movement in his support for a universal language, the very idea of a language not imposed by imperialism or colonialism but rather built by people themselves had great appeal to working class leaders. As Peter Glover Forster notes in his history of the language, the “democratising spirit” of the language appealed to the labour movement, and publications like Der Arberiter Esperantist (Germany, 1911) and Le Travailleur Esperantiste (France, 1912) reflected this. In the world’s first socialist state, the Soviet Esperanto Union (SEU) was founded in 1921, believing in the revolutionary capability of a world language.

As well as socialists, language academics were centrally important to the Esperanto movement across Europe, something that is reflected in contemporary newspaper reports on the meetings of the Dublin Esperanto Club which was driven by the prior mentioned E.E Fournier. He wrote keenly in the Irish press on international conferences and efforts to advance the language, heralding the first International Esperanto Conference in 1905. In 1907, La Irlanda Esperanto-Asocio was born, with 1916 proclamation signatory Joseph Mary Plunkett among its committee members.

Freeman’s Journal, 22 February 1906.

When the 1912 British Esperanto Conference was held in Belfast, its delegates enjoyed a brief sojourn in Dublin, visiting the National Museum, Trinity College Dublin and more besides, as well as meeting local politicians and even the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

The first Esperantist in the English speaking world had strong connections to Dublin, though born in Chesire in England. Richard H. Geoghegan’s (1866-1943) family were Irish, and had lived for many years at 41 Upper Rathmines Road before his father emigrated to England for work. Geoghegan was responsible for the first published translation of L. L. Zamenhof’s work.

Post-independence, there remained an active community of Esperanto speakers in Ireland, something well documented by the Esperanto Association of Ireland. Their history notes the 1930s to have been something of a golden age for the language, in a city where there were now “six shops selling Esperanto books. Browne & Nolan, Nassau Street, opened a special Esperanto Section in its shop.” If there was an E.E Fournier of these times, it was Lorcán Ó hUiginn,  a stenographer in the Dáil by trade who brought an incredible new spirit of life into the movement in Ireland. Ó hUiginn taught popular classes on the language in the city and distributed publications in the language. Today, the work of Fournier, Ó hUiginn and others like them is continued by Esperanto Association of Ireland. Worldwide, there are some 2 to 10 million speakers of the invented language today. It is thus much more than just a historical curiosity.

There are few things as magical about Dublin as a New Year announcing itself through the bells of Christchurch Cathedral. Ideally, you have a pint from the Lord Edward in your hand or someone in your arms as you take it in.

A visit to the belfry is possible, and is an experience we Dubliners shouldn’t leave entirely to visitors. The oldest of the bells in usage today dates from 1738, with a number coming from the time of the Roe whiskey distillery funded restoration of the cathedral in the nineteenth century.

One place you can hear the bells is The Chieftains remarkable Christmas album, The Bells of Dublin. Released in 1991, it both begins and ends with the sound of the church bells ringing. As John Glatt writes in his biography of the band, “intrepid sound engineer Brian Masterson crawled out on to the roof of Christchurch and set up various microphones to record the majestic peels of the bells. For the recording Moloney [Paddy Moloney of the band] joined the bell ringers in the belfry to play his part.”

The Bells of Dublin cover (RCA Victor)

Coming four years after The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl gifted the world Fairytale of New York, it once again demonstrated that Irish traditional music could hold its own when it came to Christmas magic. The Chieftains had been a mainstay of the Irish music scene since the 1960s, though unlike The Pogues who followed they were much more about the tradition. Paddy Moloney would recall:

I had great faith that one day what we did best– playing traditional Irish music– was going to soar, and I wasn’t going to be stepping down the ladder by changing the style. Our first concert in the Albert Hall was just music– no flashing lights or smoke screens, and we didn’t have dancers or singers– so to see the crowd dance around the theatre, coming back for encore after encore, was just magic. There were tears in our eyes that night. We didn’t realize that people from the rock world were listening to us, like The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull and Paul McCartney, so the whole social thing started to develop and word got out. We were taking our time and gradually creeping in. Then in ’75, we were on the front page of Melody Maker as Group of the Year. That was huge!

The album included guest appearances from Elvis Costello, Marianne Faithfull,  Kate and Anna McGarrigle and Jackson Browne among others. Browne’s contribution, which he wrote, is a rejection of the crass commercialisation of Christmas as he sees it, and a reminder of what he feels Jesus stood for:

Well we guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

The St. Stephen’s Day Murders, on which Elvis Costello appears, captures the cabin fever of the season with great wit:

I knew of two sisters whose name it was Christmas
And one was named Dawn, of course the other one was named Eve
I wonder if they grew up hating the season
Of the good will that lasts till the Feat of St. Stephen
For that is the time to eat, drink and be merry
Until the beer is all spilled and the whiskey has flowed
And the whole family tree you neglected to bury
Are feeding their faces until they explode.

The album was recorded primarily at the Windmill Lane Studios. Though primarily associated with U2, ,acts as diverse as David Bowie, New Order, Erasure and Sinead O’Connor have also recorded there.

The Chieftains output includes an acclaimed collaboration with Van Morrison, a tribute to the heroic fighting men of the San Patricio Battalion and the story of the 1798 rebellion. For me, The Bells of Dublin remains their finest hour, and it should be essential listening this week.

IRA men, including Tom Barry, pose with ‘The Mutineer’ at the Four Courts, 1922 (Image Credit)

There is a growing body  of excellent scholarship on the Civil War, including Gavin M. Foster’s masterful The Irish Civil War and Society: Politics, Class, and Conflict and John Dorney’s recent The Civil War in Dublin: The Fight for the Irish Capital 1922-1924. The floodgates of research may open now in the run up to the centenary of the disastrous event, but the bar has been set very high indeed by these and other works.

While the majority of the IRA’s General Headquarters staff supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 which gave birth to the Irish Free State, the opposition of the majority of IRA fighters across the country ensured an inevitable confrontation. Still, beyond men, there was a phenomenal disparity in weaponry between both sides. A tiring volunteer guerrilla army could never compete with the forces of a new state that was – quite literally – backed by Empire. Without the (often reluctant) military assistance of London, the forces of the new Free State would have faced a much sterner military struggle. As Dorney has noted:

Between January and June 1922, when the Pro-Treaty authorities were trying to build up an army, principally from their supporters in the IRA, the British supplied them with nearly 12,000 Lee Enfield rifles, 80 Lewis machine guns 4,000 revolvers and 3,500 grenades.

Correspondence between Dublin and London was often tense in the early stages of the Civil War. Winston Churchill questioned the need of the Free State for mills bombs and rifle grenades, on the basis that “these are the weapons far more of revolution than of Government. If they fall into bad hands they become a most terrible means of aggression on the civil population.” Tellingly, Churchill also alluded to how “we have already issued you one armoured car, which has unhappily fallen into bad hands.” That car, which sat defiantly in the grounds of the occupied Four Courts, became known as ‘The Mutineer’.

The term ‘Mutineer’ was, like ‘Irregular’ or ‘Trucileer’, leveled against those who opposed the Treaty. The later stemmed from a believe that the ranks of the IRA had been swollen by men who were absent during the 1919-21 fight, but joined amidst the relative calm of the Truce period for glory. Sometimes, these terms were utilised in Republican propaganda too:

Republican handbill from Civil War (Dublin City Library and Archive, Birth of the Republic Collection)

Acquiring ‘The Mutineer’:

Ernie O’Malley’s memoir of the Civil War, The Singing Flame, remains one of the definitive first-hand accounts of the conflict. O’Malley perfectly captures the confusion in the months leading up to the outbreak of Civil War,as both Republican forces and Pro-Treaty forces sought to seize upon the chaos of the British evacuation, taking control of abandoned barracks positions across the country.  On an inspection tour of Munster, he recalled visiting Templemore Barracks in Tipperary, finding men with divided loyalties who “courted the Beggar’s Bush Headquarters one minute, the Four Courts the next.”

O’Malley was informed of the arrival of an armoured car which had been sent by the Free State forces in Beggar’s Bush, but sensing the loyalties of the men he requested it for the Republicans in the Four Courts:

We inspected the car.  It was covered with heavy plates of bullet-roof steel. The engine was long, a Rolls Royce. On top was a revolving steel turret which contained a Vickers gun, capable of long sustained fire without overheating; the ammunition was in strips, side by side, in narrow belts.

The morale boost of such a vehicle arriving into the grounds of the occupied Four Courts must have been tremendous; O’Malley remembered how it “was a piece of luck. To think I would return in an armoured car, the only one our men possessed. The car was stuffy at first, but the day was cold. We were soon warm and cosy.” The day after its arrival, O’Malley watched as one of the garrison painted “a name below the turret with white enamel”, and ‘The Mutineer’ was born.

‘Three or four hundred young men’:

For some time, the men in the Four Courts were left to their own devices,though there was frequent denunciation of their actions in the House of Commons. Winston Churchill described the occupation as “a gross breach and defiance of the Treaty”, while Lloyd George condemned the “three or four hundred young men…running a sham Government in the name of the Republic.”

When patience grew thin (and after the IRA’s assassination of Sir Henry Wilson on the streets of London) the question of attacking the Four Courts themselves was raised in London,with General Nevil Macready (the last British military commander in Ireland) quizzed by Lloyd George on a possible British assault.

Inside the occupied Four Courts, morale ebbed and flowed. Seán MacBride, later winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, recalled years later how “we were never a large enough garrison to have held such a building, nor did we expect to have to hold it.” Some Republicans outside of the occupation questioned the wisdom of the seizure of the building; to C.S Andrews, it represented “the intransigence” of the leaders in the Four Courts, as a symbolic but ultimately doomed act.

The inevitable assault on the building came in the early hours of 28 June 1922, with Pro-Treaty forces opening fire on the building utilising borrowed British eighteen pounder guns. General Macready, dispatched to Dublin from London, remembered how it continued into the following day, drawing curious crowds:

The noise went on all day with very little impression on the Four Courts but which much amusement and interest to the inhabitants of Dublin, who lined up on either bank of the Liffey about a hundred yards east and west of the battle, being kept in their places by policemen in the same way as at a festival or a Lord Mayor’s Show.

The Vickers machine gun within ‘The Mutineer’ was used when fighting began, primarily against Free State forces who had taken up position in the tower of the nearby St Michan’s Church. Amidst the fighting, ‘The Mutineer’ was disabled by Pro-Treaty troops. Dorney describes how a Pro-Treaty “Lewis gun team commanded by Dermot McManus, a veteran of Gallipoli as well as of the IRA, which had penetrated into the courtyard of the Courts complex, shredded the tyres of ‘The Mutineer’ armoured car.”

Pro-Treaty soldier posing with armoured car following Republican defeat (W.D Hogan collection, NLI)

‘The Mutineer’ was quickly rechristened ‘The Ex-Mutineer’, and was deployed in Munster during the fighting there. Along with fighting men, she was deployed by sea, landing at Kerry. In Munster, local IRA men attempted to build their own alternatives, with Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc describing how:

Not to be outdone by the Free State army’s superior technology, the men of the IRA’s 1st Cork Brigade…had managed to create their own make shift armoured car by building steel plates and scrap metal onto the body of a lorry.  It was fitted with heavy iron wheels with solid rubber tyres and had two revolving turrets both equipped with Hotchkiss machine-guns. The IRA volunteers who built it christened it ‘The Hooded Terror’.

The use of borrowed and gifted British munitions was, of course, a source of great contention. One song written in the aftermath of the Four Courts defeat took the familiar tune of The Wearing of the Green:

Oh Churchill dear, did you hear, the news from Dublin town?

They’ve listened to your good advice and blown the Four Courts down.

And likewise with O’Connell Street, the worst we’ve ever seen

The guns the best (as per request) and the lorries painted green.

Studies like John Dorney’s recent work, A City in Civil War: Dublin, 1921-4 by Padraig Yeates and The Fall of Dublin by Liz Gillis are all helping us to understand the military and political course of the Civil War on the streets of the capital. Not all bullet holes in the pillars of Dublin buildings come from Easter Week, but some moments remain harder to discuss.

Poster for the 1922 film Nosferatu.

In December 1878, Bram Stoker married Florence Balcombe in St Anne’s Church on Dublin’s Dawson Street. Once pursued romantically by Oscar Wilde, the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel James Balcombe of Clontarf was instead smitten by the future author of Dracula. A bust of the author can be found in the church today, celebrating the connections between the historic church and one of the most celebrated writers this city has produced. During a memorial service to mark the centenary of Stoker’s death, a copy of Dracula was carried to the altar of the church. I doubt that’s happened anywhere else!

Florence would outlive her husband by some twenty-five years, and lived to see Dracula become something of a classic. She also became entangled in a very bitter legal battle in 1922 over Nosferatu, the ground-breaking German Expressionist horror film. An unauthorised adaptation of  Stoker’s work, Florence achieved a court ruling which ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. Thankfully, this didn’t quite happen.

Nosferatu is a pioneering work of cinema, described by screenprism as “a film historian’s dream movie. It is a foreboding and influential picture that helped define German Expressionism and set a precedent for a century of horror cinema.” The work was directed by F.W Murnau, who would be responsible for an impressive twenty-one films over his career. The production company, Prana Films, was established in 1921 by the Occultist Albin Grau, who intended to produce many films centered on themes of the supernatural and the occult.

Promotional material for Nosferatu openly admitted that the work was “freely adapted” from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It premiered in the beautiful Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Gardens, and a review in the Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger reported on how “the room darkened as the projectors began to whir and a title announced that a symphony of horror should roll across the screen.” The launch was lavish, a little too much so. As Nosferatu scholar Cristina Massaccesi has noted, “the launch of the film had cost Prana more than the feature itself”. Another problem was that nobody from Prana had sought any permissions from Florence and the Stoker Estate to utilise Dracula in the manner in which they had.

In April 1922, Florence received a programme and promotional material for Nosferatu in the post. Approaching the British Incorporated Society of Authors, they then commenced legal action against Prana. When Florence sued for copyright infringement, Prana believed the best course of action was to proclaim bankruptcy.  Rather than financial compensation, her legal team sought the handing over of all copies of the film, and in July 1925 a Berlin court ordered the very same. Florence had never actually seen the film, but that mattered little to her. As David J. Skal has noted:

…in the case of Nosferatu we have one of the few instances in film history, and perhaps the only one, in which an obliterating capital punishment is sought for a work of cinematic art, strictly on legalistic ground, by a person with no knowledge of the work’s specific contents or artistic merit.

Florence Balcombe (1858-1937)

Thankfully for cinema lovers, Florence’s demand that the film be destroyed was not carried out entirely. A print of the film had already made its way out of Germany, and Massaccesi notes that “the German court did not provide any concrete evidence of the film’s obliteration and, although the original negative never resurfaced, Nosferatu reappeared almost immediately in England.” Skal has asked an intriguing question, “did Florence Stoker ever actually see Nosferatu? After seven long years of doing battle, and finally capturing the enemy, it would be strange indeed if she didn’t insist on looking the thing in the face.” By 1929, the film was even being screened in New York City.

Florence believed that Dracula had a life away from the printed word. She would grant the right for a stage adaption to Hamilton Deane, a Dubliner and a neighbour once upon a time in Clontarf. Actor,playwright and director, Deane first brought Dracula to the stage in June 1924. Much of the popular image of Dracula today – down to cape and evening clothes – is owed to Deane’s interpretation.

Nosferatu refused to die. In time, it would even make its way to the big screen in Bram Stoker’s home city, playing to packed crowds at the Irish Film Institute’s Horrorthon. It thankfully escaped the dustbin of history, and a place among the ‘lost films’ of the past.

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of Dublin’s Millennium celebrations. The milk bottles remain, and so do the memories.

Among the most enduring images from 1988 are those of the giant Gulliver who was beached on Dollymount Strand, before floating on the River Liffey. An impressive “fibreglass, aluminium and plywood” tribute to the central character of Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver was the work of Macnas, the much-loved Galway street performance company. It was a fitting tribute to one of Dublin’s finest writers, the great satirist Jonathan Swift, in a year that celebrated all things Dublin.

Gulliver on the Liffey (Image Credit: Dublin City Photographic Collection, Dublin City Council)

In January 1988, it was reported that the relatively new Macnas (they were founded two years earlier) intended to “travel to Dublin in March and liaise with different communities to capture volunteers all willing to help build the massive Gulliver model.” In keeping with the spirit of the year, they hoped that “the different parts of his body will be assembled at workshops throughout the city, with the help of 35 young craftspeople on a Fás scheme.”

The primary funding for Gulliver came from the National Lottery, who put an impressive £50,000 towards the project. The giant made his way onto the front of almost every daily newspaper in the country when he finally arrived on Dollymount Strand in July, with journalists getting into the spirit of things. The Evening Herald reported that “chaos broke out on Dollymount Strand this afternoon when a giant was spotted floating in the sea off the north Dublin beach…Experts called to the scene finally revealed that the huge man was in fact Dr. Lemuel Gulliver, direct from Dean Swift’s masterpiece story.”

Evening Herald, 12 July 1988.

This RTÉ report likewise played along, asking the children of Dublin where they felt the giant had come from. One child believed ‘Heaven’ to be the answer, and all were transfixed by the model and the pageantry that surrounded it. The captured Gulliver was freed and given a civic reception by Lord Mayor Ben Briscoe, before being placed in the Liffey between the Ha’penny Bridge and O’Connell Bridge, drawing huge crowds of the bemused and curious for a look.

The episode is recalled in recent literature, thanks to Frankie Gaffney’s novel Dublin Seven:

It only seems like yesterday ye were born, said his ma, getting misty-eyes. 1988…Dublin was a kip back then.But the week you were born, they’d big celebrations on for Dublin’s Millennium. They made these…special 50p pieces, cause Dublin was a thousand years old or somethin’, and when we were bringing ye back from the Rotunda they had a big huge giant floatin in the Liffey! Something to do with yer man Gullible’s travels it was!

Fittingly, Macnas also displayed Gulliver in their home city, where he drew big crowds on Grattan Beach. It was one of the first acts by a street performance company who have been captivating audiences ever since.

Gulliver in Galway (Image Credit: Macnas)

See the forthcoming Dublin Inquirer for an article examining the Millennium in more detail.

Irish Independent, 12 February 1958.

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Munich Air Disaster which claimed the lives of twenty-three people. On 6 February 1958, British European Airways Flight 609 crashed while attempting to take off in poor conditions at Munich-Riem Airport. Among the dead were eight of the Busby Babes, the remarkable young football side built by manager Matt Busby. It was a team that commentator Eamon Dunphy has recalled as being “proud, young and fearless.” The heartbreak in Manchester led to thousands taking to the streets there when bodies returned, with the Irish Examiner noting how “more than 100,000 people – men, women and children – lined the streets of the route from the airport to the ground in the biggest ever tribute paid by the people of Manchester.” The grief was not restricted to the red side of that city either, as Manchester City legend Frank Swift was also killed in the disaster.

One of the lives lost that day was Liam Whelan, a twenty-two year old from Cabra who had previously played with Home Farm in Whitehall. The return of his body to Ireland and subsequent funeral was a phenomenal spectacle, bringing Dublin’s northside to a halt. Bertie Ahern recalls the event in his autobiography:

Manchester United meant nothing to me as a six-year-old, but we were all brought out on the day of the funeral when it was on its way back in from the Christ the King in Cabra. We’re all very proud round here that he played for Home Farm longer than he played for United. He’s very much a local hero.It was a few years later before Manchester United started to reckon with me. At that stage, I was more interested in Drumcondra in the League of Ireland because they were the local side.

In signing for Manchester United in 1953, Whelan had followed in a long Irish tradition that began with Dubliner Patrick O’Connell in 1914. In a more contemporary sense, he followed the great Johnny Carey, who amassed more than 400 appearances for the club between 1936 and 1953, and whose escapades were closely followed in the Irish press.

Liam Whelan (Image Credit: Manchester United Football Club Archive)

The success of Busby’s United side – and the wonderful football they played – excited many in Ireland. More than forty thousand fans crammed into Dalymount Park in September 1957 to watch the side take on Shamrock Rovers in a competitive European clash. A hopeful sports reporter noted that “though a Dublin man and a Six-County man are in the visiting party, a good display will mean a lot to the prestige of Irish football.” Matt Busby – treating Rovers with a respect some in the English press felt they didn’t deserve – traveled to Dublin the week before the clash to watch the side, telling readers of his Evening Chronicle column in Manchester that “the Shamrock boys played some really grand football – no kick and rush and no unfair tactics. They showed good team work and a confidence born of a long run of success.” In the end, United ran out clear winners, with Whelan scoring twice in a six-nil victory. Rovers player Gerry Mackey remembered that there wasn’t much of a contest in the end, as “we ran ourselves into the ground. They scored three of their goals when we just couldn’t stand up anymore.” Mackey’s fellow Hoop Jimmy McCann recalled:

I can remember the crowds trying to get up the lane at Dalymount to get into the changing rooms. You had to almost beat your way up.

‘The whole country went bananas when Shamrock Rovers were drawn to play Manchester United. They had lots of great players such as David Pegg, Johnny Berry, and, of course, Duncan Edwards and Liam.

There was no shame in the defeat against such a superior side. United’s strikers just couldn’t stop scoring, leading the Sunday Independent to quip that “next to petrol, the most valuable commodity in England today is probably the Manchester United forward line.”

Evening Herald front page following the disaster,

When news of the tragedy reached Dublin, people began to gather at the Whelan family home in Cabra. The Irish Press reported that:

The tragic news of Liam Whelan’s death reached his family home at St.Attracta Road, Cabra,late last night, after hours of agonised waiting by his family… From the time the first reports of the disaster reached Dublin, crowds gathered at the Whelan home and phone calls for news of Liam were put through to Manchester at regular intervals on a phone in a neighbour’s house. Schoolboy friends waited silently, hoping against hope for the word that he survived.

Thousands lined the route as Whelan’s body arrived home on 10 February, taken from Dublin Airport to the Christ the King Church in Cabra. At the airport,a guard of honour from the Aer Lingus Association Football Club honoured the dead footballer. A larger guard of honour, made up of more than 250 players and volunteers from Home Farm awaited the body at Whitehall. Johnny Giles, then a young Manchester United player who would come to prominence in the aftermath of the tragedy, remembered that “Dublin, like Manchester, was under a pall of gloom. It couldn’t be any other way in a city with such a football tradition, a city full of kids like me, dreaming of playing for Manchester United.”

Liam’s funeral mass was delivered by Rev C. Mulholland,an RAF chaplain from England and a personal friend who was scheduled to have married the young footballer to his finance Ruby McCullough only a few short months later. The church, packed to capacity, included FAI President and Minister for Justice Oscar Traynor in its congregation, as well as representatives from right across the English and Irish footballing leagues. Sympathies came from GAA clubs too, with one spokesperson emphasising that “the players killed in the crash might have differed from us in their ideals, but they were sportsmen.”Liam’s body made the short journey from Cabra to Glasnevin Cemetery. To this very day, fans continue to leave United scarves and jerseys upon it.

The strong local pride in Liam Whelan is today reflected in the naming of  Cabra’s Liam Whelan Bridge, which includes a commemorative plaque unveiled by fellow Busby Babe Bobby Charlton in 2006. The Busby Babes would be remembered in poem and song, with Dubliner Dominic Behan penning ‘Manchester Mourns’ in the aftermath of the tragedy, while decades later Morrissey would sing of how “We love them, we mourn for them, unlucky boys of red.”

The outpouring of grief around Liam’s passing in Ireland – coupled with the spectacle of a packed Dalymount Park when the Busby Babes had played here just prior to the tragedy – no doubt contributed enormously to the support base Manchester United succeeded in building in this city, at a time when televised football (or even televisions!) remained a distant dream for many here.

Liam Whelan Bridge commemorative plaque, unveiled in 2006.

In Dublin 12, the John F. Kennedy Industrial Estate street signs remind southsiders of the June 1963 visit of JFK to this island. Across the River Liffey, and a different series of Americans are remembered in Coolock, where street names like Aldrin Walk, Armstrong Walk, Apollo Way and even Tranquility Grove honour (most of) the heroes of the 1969 Moon landing. This was total news to me until today, when I found it mentioned in both the print edition of the Dublin Inquirer and a lovely piece on thejournal.ie, complete with photos of street signs.

Digging into the archives, it’s easy to see how the street names came to be. Dublin, like the rest of the world, was fascinated by the journey of man into space. On the day after the great event, the Irish Press went out onto the streets to get the views of the ‘Plain People of Ireland’. All Patricia of Donnybrook could say was “We didn’t watch it on television because we don’t have a television”, and Susannah “couldn’t see any point in the whole exercise.” Thank God for Ballymun taxi man Gerard, who believed “a person would have to be very dense not to be interested in this fantastic achievement.”

When a tiny fragment of moon rock was put on display in the city in February 1970, more than 4,000 people showed up in just a few hours at the United States embassy building in Ballsbridge for a gawk. The tiny fragment was described by one journalist as being “about an-inch-and-a-half in diameter, or roughly the size of a walnut”. Still, it all had the feel of a great occasion about it, always enough for Dubliners.

When the Moon came to Ballsbridge, Irish Independent.

When Captain Eugene Cernan, Commander of Apollo 17, arrived in Ireland in 1973, he brought with him a fragment of moon rock for President Childers, which he presented in Aras an Uachtarain. As pieces made appearances north and south in universities and at conferences, they continued to draw impressive crowds throughout the 1970s.

The street names in the Woodville Estate of Coolock were controversial from the beginning, leading the Evening Herald in the summer of 1977 to report that some residents at Woodville Estate were “slightly moon-sick”, calling for more “down-to-earth” names like Woodville Way and Woodville Avenue. Armstrong Walk, Aldrin Walk, and Collins Rendezvous honoured the men of the moon landing, while there was even a Tranquility Grove, in honour of the Statio Tranquillitatis where Apollo 11 landed.

Voting in a plebiscite on changing the names, residents rejected Collins Rendezvous for Woodville Court, but held onto the others. Thus, one member of the team was destined to be forgotten, in Coolock at least.

We eagerly await a Yuri Gagarin Avenue.

Google Maps showing Apollo Way, Tranquility Grove, Armstrong Walk and Aldrin Walk.

(In terms of crime and Dublin, we’ve previously looked at 18th century gang violence; Joy-riding in Dublin from 1918-39; War of Independence bank-robberies; the 1920s ‘Sons of Dawn‘ who were rounded up by the IRA; Animal Gang violence in 1942; vigilante violence in Dublin (1970 – 1984)  Bugsy Malone gangs of the 1970s and Triad gang violence in 1979) 

Introduction

The 1950s and 1960s are interesting decades in relation to crime in Dublin. They are the bridgeway between the Animal Gang street violence and bookmaking rackets of the 1940s and the emergence of modern organised crime from the late 1960s onwards.

One individual who was active through both eras was Charles ‘Charlie’ Ainscough. He was better known by his nickname ‘Henchico’. A relation of his explained to me via email that the name ‘Henchico’ derived “from the mispronunciation of Liberties people of the name Ainscough”. It is pronounced ‘Ainscow’ in its correct form.

His nom-de-guerre ‘Henchicho’ has been variously spelled as ‘Henseco’, ‘Henshcough’ and ‘Hinchito’ in contemporary newspapers. As well as ‘Henchicoe’, ‘Henchekow’, ‘Henchecote’ and ‘Henchcoat’ on different online platforms by reminiscing Dubliners. ‘The Hench’ is another nickname remembered by others on Facebook

Throughout his 25+ year criminal career, Henchico was involved in street-fights, shootings, stabbings, hatchet-attacks, house-robberies, larceny, pimping and various other illegal enterprises. He was in and out of prison his whole life. A feared figure, Henchico’s life of crime only came to end with a sudden fatal heart attack in 1968.

Family Background

The surname Ainscough is of “Old Norse, Scandinavian origin” and is a “locational surname deriving from a now ‘lost’ place in Lancashire, England.”

The ancestors of Henchico moved from England to Dublin in the 1860s to take up employment as coopers in the Guinness Brewery, St. James’s Gate, Dublin 8. At its height, Guinness employed up to 300 coopers who made a thousand new wooden casks a week and repaired thousands more. It took a seven-year apprentice to become a qualified cooper and they were the most highly skilled tradesmen in the brewery.

Cooper in the Guinness brewery, late 19th century. Credit – http://3.bp.blogspot.com/.

Henchico’s father, Charles Ainscough Sr., was born on 29 November 1892 at 3 Wyle’s Cottages to James Ainscough and Mary-Ellen Ainscough (neé Deane). Wylie’s Cottages, later known as Behan’s Cottages, were situated off Lower Basin Street and James Street in the shadows of the Guinness brewery. 

In 1901, the Ainscough family living in Dublin 8 were the only Ainscough family on the whole of the island. The head of the family James Ainscough (38), a London-born Cooper, lived with his Liverpool-born wife Mary-Ellen Ainscough (36) and four sons and four daughters including Charles Sr.

1901 Census Return. Ainscough family, 3 Behan’s Cottages.

James Ainscough died on 1 February 1904 according to the online Guinness archive. The same resource reveals that his son Charles Ainscough Sr. joined Guinness as a ‘Tariff Cooper’ on 16 August 1909 aged 17.

At the time of the 1911 census, the Ainscough family were still living at 3 Behan’s Cottages. Widow Mary-Ellen (46) lived in the home with three daughters, one daughter-in-law and three sons including Charles Sr.

1911 Census Returns. Ainscough family, 3 Behan’s Cottages.

Henchico’s uncle Henry Ainscough was listed as the main inhabitant householder the 1913 Electoral Register:

1913 Electoral Roll. Henry Ainscough, 3 Wylie’s Cottages (aka Behan’s Cottages).

Henchico’s parents Charles Ainscough Sr., of 3 Behan’s Cottages, and Christina Ainscough (neé McCann), of 32 Usher’s Quay, married on 7 November 1915 at St.f Audoen’s Church, Dublin 8.

1915 marriage cert of Henchico’s parents

Their son Henchico (Charles Jr.) was born around September 1925.

Here is a Google Map illustrating the various addresses in the city connected to Henchico throughout his life.

• Purple – Friends/Family/Hang-out spots
• Green – Enemies/Rival Gang Members
• Black – Sites of robberies and incidents

1940s

By the 1940s, the Ainscough family had moved from Behan’s Cottages around the corner to 2 Newport Street. This is the sole address associated with Henchico for the rest of his life.

Derelict Cottage, Newport Street (1980s). Credit – Dublin City Council Photographic Collection

At the age of only 16, Henchico took part in the infamous Tolka Park battle on 23 March 1942 between members of the southside Ash Street ‘Animal Gang’ and the rival northside Stafford Street (now Wolfe Tone Street) ‘Animal Gang’. The brawl took place during the semi-final football game between Mountain View and St. Stephen’s United in the Junior Combination Cup. Knives, crowbars, flagpoles, rusty swords, iron bars and chair-legs were used in the trouble, according to historian Kevin C. Kearns.

Henchico and many others were arrested and found guilty of “conspiring, assault and malicious wounding”. He was the youngest person to be charged and was sentenced to eight months hard labour. His co-accused, as revealed in the Irish Press (26 March 1942), were:

Southside (Ash Street gang)

• Laurence McCabe (26), Ash Street
• James Walsh (21), 4 Ash Street
• John Weldon (19), 68 Meath Street
• Patrick Walsh (18), 4 Ash Street
• Charles Ainscough (16), 2 Newport Street

Northside (Stafford Street gang)

• Joseph Gahon (23), 15 Lower Dominick Street
• John Early (22), 38 Stafford Street (now Wolfe Tone Street)
• John Kelly (22), Strafford Street (now Wolfe Tone Street)
• Thomas Grant (20); 7 Ormond Square
• John Manley (18), 15 Stafford Street (now Wolfe Tone Street)
• John Leonard (17), 17 Little Mary Street

Following his release from jail, Henchico moved to England and joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the height of World War II. The young Dubliner made the newspapers, not for daring Spitfire bravery, but for a drunken argument that resulted in the shooting of an officer. In 1944, Henchico was charged in a court in Brackley, Northamptonshire with attempted murder following the shooting of a New Zealand-born Flying Officer named Jack Bryan Small at a RAF base in the Midlands. Newspapers reported that Henchico was known to his comrades as the ‘Singing Irishman’. As recorded in the Banbury Advertiser (24 May 1944), he was sentenced to five-years penal servitude.

The Northampton Mercury, 17 March 1944.

Henchico was only around 20 years old when his father Charles Sr. died in 1946. Needless to say this would have not helped the mindset of an already troubled youngster.

It is unclear how much jail time Henchico served but he was back in Dublin by 1948. That year Henchico was sentenced to 12 months in jail with hard labour for breaking into a number of shops on Lower Abbey Street. As reported in The Irish Times (3 July 1948), his conspirator was Patrick Carr (22), a tailor, from Tonguefield, Kimmage.

A year later, an interesting detail was given away in The Irish Times (28 Nov 1949). An article about a car/van collision in Crumlin revealed that one of the injured parties was “Charles Henseco” aged 23, a “cart driver”, of 2 Newport Street. This confirmed in print for the first time that this very unusual nickname was directly connected to Charles Ainscough of that address.

1950s

In 1950, Henchico was fined £20 for interference with the mechanism of a motorcar in Sutton. The Irish Times (5 July 1950) revealed that he had been previously sentenced to five years imprisonment for armed robbery in England but this is likely to have been mixed up with the RAF officer shooting incident.

In 1951, Henchico and three other men were arrested and charged with breaking into the home of Roy and Maureen Black at 19 The Rise, Mount Merrion and stealing goods worth over £2,000. The gang also robbed clothing from 3 Wilfield Park, Ballsbridge. The Irish Times (25 Jan 1951) listed the other individuals involved as:

• Thomas Dowling (21),no occupation, of 23 St Enda’s Road, Terenure
• William Kelly (19), no occupation, of 64 Bridgefoot Street
• Joseph Enright (23), labourer, of 27 Island Street

Later that same year, Henchico was found guilty of breaking into the premises of Resnick’s clothing factory, Upper Dominick Street and stealing £116 in cash. He was sentenced to 20 months hard labour. The Irish Press (12 May 1951) noted that Henchico, aged about 25, had already seven previous criminal convictions.

In July 1951, Henchico was convicted of housebreaking offences “involving property valued at several thousand pounds” and sentenced to threeyears penal servitude. His companion Cyril Francis Laverty (20), no business or fixed address, received 20 months hard labour while Thomas Dowling (21), no occupation, of 23 St Enda’s Road, Terenure received 18 months hard labour. According to the Irish Press (17 July 1951), Henchico was already serving a 20 month sentence which would run concurrently with the three years imposed on him for this latest offence.

The Irish Press, 14 July 1951.

Henchico’s mother Christina Ainscough died in March 1952, leaving him parentless.

In May 1956, Henchico was charged with breaking into two jewellery shops – Patrick D. Leamy, 3 South Anne Street, stealing goods worth £1,369 and Gerald Campbell, 32 Lower Ormond Street, robbing £83 worth of stock. Henchico was sentenced in October to two years imprisonment for these offences.

Brendan Raynor (19), of 229 St. Attracta Road, Cabra admitted that he was involved in the robbery and was sentenced to 11 months. Following his arrest in Birmingham, he told the local police that : “I won’t say anything until I get back to Dublin and see ‘Hinchito’”–  The Irish Times, 2 July 1956. The other members of the gang: James Corrigan (20), of no fixed address, received 10 months and Michael Jones (20), of no fixed address, was sentenced to 10 months.

Evening Herald, 30 June 1956.

The Irish Independent (6 Oct 1956) reported that Philip Wyatt (19), of Cashel Road, Crumlin was found ‘not guilty’ of having £400 worth of jewellery, knowing it to be stolen from Patrick D. Leamy’s shop. He told police that he had been asked to deliver the jewellery wrapped in a sock and handkerchief to a man in a pub on St. Augustine Street named “Charles Ainscough or Henshcough”. The Evening Herald spelt it ‘Hinchito’.

Irish Press, 5 October 1956

In May 1958, Henchico and two other men broke into Margaret Gregory’s shop in Newtownkennedy, County Wicklow and stole goods worth £106. Henchico was sentenced to three years in jail. James Wilson (26), of 51 Queen Street, received two years while William McLoughlin (24), of Paul Street, got one year. The Irish Times (13 Nov 1958) noted that James Wilson had been sentenced to 14 years imprisonment in 1952 for the shooting of  a man during an armed bank robbery in Cornmarket, Dublin and was released in late 1957.

On 17 February 1959, The Irish Times reported that Henchico was sentenced to a further 12 months imprisonment after pleading guilty to a another 11 charges of housebreaking.

1960s

The Irish Times (16 Feb 1960) reported that Henchico had pleaded not guilty to breaking and entering a shop at 43 Pimlico in the Coombe during the previous November and stealing cigarettes and goods worth £15.

In June 1962, Henchico was involved in the larceny of 18 cases of whiskey worth £303 from the British and Irish Steam Packet Co. Ltd., North Wall and £688 worth of clothing from Alpha Bargains, 67 Aungier Street. The Irish Press (4 Dec 1962) reported that he was sentenced to 15 months in jail.

A series of violent incidents in 1962 broke the cycle of robberies and break-ins that had been occurring since the late 1940s.

On 2 June 1962, Henchico was assaulted by three men outside 23 Nicholas Street between Patrick Street and Christchurch. The Northside culprits were:

• James Martin (34), of 25F St. Michan’s House, Greek Street – three months imprisonment
• Joseph Larkin (29), of St. Jarlath’s Road, Cabra – 1 month suspended sentence
• John Davis (28), of Alfred Byrne House, Greenville Street – 1 month suspended sentence

The Irish Times (19 Sep 1962) reported that two Gardaí  had witnessed Henchico “talking to a number of youths” on the path on Nicholas Street when a van pulled up. Three men emerged and attacked Henchico who was brought to Adelaide Hospital where he received seven stitches.

On 8 July 1962, William Moore, of 106 Kylemore Road, Ballyfermot, was attacked with a hatchet by Henchico on the Ballyfermot Road. Moore received four stitches to a cut above his eye. The Irish Times (25 Oct 1962) reported that Henchico was convicted and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment. The judge told him that he was lucky, due to the seriousness of the incident, that he was not standing in the dock charged with manslaughter or murder.

On 16 September 1962, Leo Tougher, of Glenealy Road, Crumlin, was stabbed by Henchico “from his hair to the opening of his lip” outside the Rob Roy café, Harrington Street in Portobello, Dublin 8. He had to undergo an operation to remove his left eye.

Evening Herald, 16 October 1962.

The Irish Press (18 Sep 1962) reported that five young men were arrested in relation to the vicious assault:

• Charles Ainscough (38), 2 Newport Street
• Edward Simpson (22), Clogher Road, Crumlin
• Terence Lynch (22), 2 St Audeon’s Terrace, Christchurch, Dublin 8
• Thomas Quinn (22), Usher’s Island
• Nicholas Muldoon (18), Rosary Road, Maryland, Dublin 8

The group was charged with maliciously wounding with intent to “disfigure and disable” Leo Togher, amongst other charges. Garda Lugs Branigan described it as a case of “gang warfare” in the Dublin District Court. It was brought up in Court that Henchico had 24 previous convictions dating back to 1941. It is also worth noting that how much older Henchico was compared to his gang of four juveniles, the youngest of whom was 20 years younger than him.

Later in the same year, The Irish Times (17 Nov 1962) reported that Henchico was found not guilty by a jury of receiving 5,000 cigarettes knowing them to be stolen. The article noted that Henchico was a patron of the Last Post café, 12 Ellis Quay.

Last Post, 12 Ellis Quay, Dublin, 1988. Credit – David Jazay / Slate.com

In folk memory, this late-night café was a popular rendezvous spot for Henchico and his gang. On a side note, the restaurant was owned by Polish Holocaust survivor Jan Kaminski who also ran The Baggot Mews restaurant.

The Evening Herald reported on 15 February 1965 that Henchico pleaded guilty to receiving 18 men’s suits and other clothing that had been stolen from a Ballyfermot cleaning firm.

Life of crime comes to an end

Throughout the 20th century, Benburb Street in Dublin 7 was one of the centres for street prostitution on the northside of the city. Kevin C. Kearns, in his 2014 biography of famed policeman Lugs Branigan, described Henchico as a “runty small-time kingpin” who used to hang around Benburb Street with his cronies “like a fly circling a rubbish heap”. Henchico was apparently “cunning and convincing enough to be rarely caught” for his crimes but this is somewhat contradicted by the sheer amount of court-cases reported in the newspapers. Former policeman John Collins called him a “small, little guy, in his thirties or forties … who knew everyone, all the scumbags in Dublin”.

Many of the policeman who talked to Kevin C. Kearns admitted that Henchico was “unique – an impressively ‘shadowy’ figure” who was “involved in all sorts of illicit dealings”. They described him as a “pimp” who the women on the street “feared … terribly”. He was called an “underworld figure”  byBernard Neary in his 1985 biography of Lugs Branigan.

Charles ‘Henchico’ Ainscough collapsed and died of a heart attack on 13 February 1968 near Benburb Street, Dublin 7. He was only 42 and it’s unclear whether there were any underlying health issues.

Death notice for Charles Ainscough (aka Henchico). Evening Herald, 14 February 1968.

Historian Bernard Neary noted that ‘Lugs’ Branigan was the one to discover his body. He brought it to hospital and then:

… reported the matter to the appropriate Garda authorities and before leaving the hospital removed all possessions including £700 in cash from the dead man and gave them to the night nurse, telling her to give them to nobody and put them in safe keeping for the investigating Gardaí.

The next day Jim called into Jervis Street and the nurse told him that after he left the dead man’s wife called and asked for the money, as her husband had forgotten to leave any money in the house and she had to put food on the table. “Did you give her any money?” asked Jim. “No, Sergeant, I did just as you told me”. “Good, for he has no wife, he never married”. “

Henchico’s removal Mass took place in St. Catherine’s Church, Meath Street and he was afterwards buried in Mount Jerome cemetery, Harold’s Cross.

Conclusion

Lugs Branigan’s comment that Henchico “never married” is of interest as there are strong rumours amongst people I’ve talked to online and offline that he was gay. He certainly wouldn’t have been the first gay or bi-sexual gangster. For example, Ronnie Kray in 1950s/60s London or Dominic Noonan in 1980/90s Manchester.  Historian John Gibney makes reference in a 2012 Irish Independent article to Henchico’s “soft, feminine voice”. A number of Dubliners online have spoken about the fact that the older Henchico wholeheartedly enjoyed the company of the younger boys who hung at his coat-tails and did his bidding.

It is no surprise that someone who was involved in crime for over 25 years is remembered in the folk memory of the city. I spoke online to Ken Donohue from the northside who many decades ago went out with a girl from Dolphin House, Dublin 8. That’s how he first heard of Henchico and his gang. Donohue told me that he would have to have his:

wits about (him) walking from Rialto [Dublin 8] to Bolton Street [Dublin 7] three times a week in case (he) came across them as you could get a hiding just for the sake of it, especially if it was known that you were a northsider .. he was a psycho – no question about that. His reputation would have been known around the north city but he seldom ventured over”

Declan Mulligan recalled on Facebook:

Growing up on Faussagh Road, Cabra in the late sixties early seventies, we knew all about Henchico and the Animal Gang. Around the block on St. Jarlath Road, where my granny lived, there was the famous Joseph Messey Larkin who had apparently battered Henchico in Nichols Street. And at about the age of 9 my Da decided that I needed to toughen up so he brought me over to Arbour Hill Boxing Club for lessons, where I was introduced to Mister James Brannigan, also referred to by those less respectful as ‘Lugs’ ! He gave me plenty of tips at the time.

While musician Brendan Bonass wrote:

When I was in a group called ‘Rockhouse with Fran Byrne, Paul Brady, we played in a place called ‘The Cavalier Club’ off Harcourt Street. Charlie Henchico’s name often came up. There was a suggestion that he was involved in the club somehow … There was always a hush when his name came up…

Henchico was somewhat unique in that he was feared underworld figure in an era that is associated with poverty, unemployment and emigration, but not necessarily criminality. ‘Dublin in the Rare Old Times’ is remembered as an age when doors were unlocked and the streets were safe for children and older people to roam freely.

If Henchico had lived, there is a strong possibility that he could have emerged as a serious player in organised crime in the 1970s. He certainly would have had the experience, the contacts and the reputation. I would argue that he should be seen as one of the major career criminals in Dublin of the immediate generation before the likes of Tony ‘King Scum’ Felloni and Christy ‘Bronco’ Dunne. Felloni started off with small-time blackmailing in the early 1960s to house-breaking and robberies in the late 1960s and finally to large-scale drug-dealing in the 1970s and 1980s.

Older Dubliners on Facebook, since this article was first published, have commented that they’ve heard the syaing “he’s some Henchio” being used as derogatory term for a “gurrier-wannabee hard man”.

Legendary guitarist and lyricist Pete Holidai, formerly of The Radiators from Space, released a 2014 single with The Trouble Pilgrims titled ‘Animal Gang Blues’. He references Henchico, his hatchet and policeman Lugs ‘Branno’ Branigan. I will leave you with those great lyrics:

Emerging from the shadows
With a high-pitched serenade
Henchico concealing
A sharpened hatchet blade
Smell the piss and poverty
Driving the despair
When Branno watches over them
No weapons to declare

Wendy Wood (1892 -1981) was a remarkable woman. A committed Scottish nationalist and separatist, she was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland in 1928, which later became the Scottish National Party. Fond of a political stunt, she seized upon Bannockburn Day (the celebration of a Scottish military victory) in 1932 to lead a gang of protesting Scottish nationalists into Stirling Castle, tearing down its Union flag and raising a Scottish flag in its place. She later recalled how “I held the wad of red, white and blue in my hand….I thought of Gandhi facing death, of Connolly, of young Pearse, or Burmese driven to wander, of frightened Arabs, or broken faith with Egypt.”

Scottish nationalism, much like its Irish equivalent, produced a wide variety of ideologies. Even the SNP, today a social democratic party, produced a pamphlet in the 1930s which warned of the ‘Green Terror’ of Irish migration. Still, Wood was firmly of the left, and was arrested for protesting against Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirt movement in the 1930s. She remained politically active into subsequent decades, even going on hungerstrike in 1972 to demand Home Rule for Scotland.

Wendy Wood, by Florence St John Cadell, National Galleries of Scotland.

Not long after her escapades at Stirling Castle, Wood arrived in Dublin, something she details in her autobiography I Like Life. Boarding a ship in Glasgow, she was captivated by Dublin from the very beginning, though she viewed the island through rose-tinted glasses:

The names of the streets, the public notices and the advertisements in Gaelic thrilled me and I never read the bracketed translations any more than I would spoil a visit to France by searching for English. The indefinable feeling of a ‘capital’ centre of direction, the core of a genuine working culture as reflected in Dublin,  made the memory of Edinburgh, even with its beauty, seem insipid in comparison.

On a brief visit to the capital, Wood appears to have visited the Dáil, the St. Enda’s School of Pearse and attended a meeting of Cumann na mBan. The beautiful St. Enda’s school remained as a model to the ideas of Patrick Pearse, though it struggled financially to sustain itself and would not make it to the end of the decade. Wood recounted an encounter with a sister of Pearse, who murmured that “one must try to forgive.” She was struck by the artifacts on display, including “the block on which a patriot had been executed by the Saxon”, this being the block on which Robert Emmet’s head was reputed to have been severed from his body, and at which Michael Collins sold ‘Dáil Bonds’ to prominent republicans during the War of Independence.

Of the Dáil, Wood writes of the body as if it was still the revolutionary gathering of the Mansion House and not the considerably more timid Leinster House assembly. She found it to be “a dignified but simple and business-like gathering which even with its limited powers, made the London House of Commons appear like a mad hatters’ tea party.” She was struck by how “the artistry and skill of the Celt showed in all printed matter, in decoration and in fabrics, and in the patterned carpets in the Dáil.” The monument of Queen Victoria outside the parliament (today sitting outside a shopping centre in Australia) was a surprise,though she joked of how “an Irishman explained that it was such an insult to the Queen that it seemed a pity to blow it up.”

If the Dáil was a great symbol of Irishness to Wood, there were others who rejected its very being. She attended “a meeting of the Irish Women” and was struck by the intensity of feeling. The Dublin of the early 1930s seemed to her an exciting place, if not slightly dangerous:

That night I was at a friend’s house where a few had gathered that we might exchange views. coffee was being handed round when a revolver shot was heard down the street. Had it been in Scotland everyone would have left to their feet with exclamations. In Dublin, no one moved…

As the late Bob Purdie rightly noted, there was a certain irony in Wood being so moved both by the Dáil and the meeting of Cumann na mBan:

She seems not to have thought it significant that she was the guest of an organisation which aimed to overthrow the political institution she had just been admiring from the gallery. She was like an amnesiac, wandering around not understanding the history of what she was seeing, but judging only on the basis of immediate impressions.

To Wood, Dublin was a city where she saw her vision of a future Scotland, with its native language being spoken in formalities, where she could rejoice “in the good designs of the Irish coins” and where there was “a determined spirit of self-sacrifice amongst all ranks.” While to many in Irish public life (like Seán Ó Faoláin and Peadar O’Donnell, both veterans of the revolution) the Ireland of the 1930s was a failure of a revolutionary vision, to her it was its realisation.

Not all Scottish nationalists would be so welcomed in the Dublin of the 1930s. In 1939, the curious separatist Ronald MacDonald Douglas arrived in Ireland on board his yacht the Ron Bhan and with his family.  MacDonald Douglas, who had previously sought Nazi assistance for the cause of Scottish separatism, attracted the attention of military intelligence, who noted that “he is clearly an adventurer, an intriguer and potentially dangerous, and his deportation is recommended.”

Wendy Wood embodied a different political tradition however. To her, James Connolly resonated as clearly as Robert Burns or William Wallace.

(In a 2014 article, I looked at more generally Dublin’s historic drinking dens, early houses, kips, shebeens and bona-fide pubs.)

In the 1980s and 1990s, three self-proclaimed Irish republican and socialist political parties operated drinking clubs in Dublin city centre.

Official Sinn Féin (later The Workers Party) operated ‘Club Uí Chadhain’ in the basement of 28 Gardiner Place. Originally set up as a “cultural club” for Irish language enthusiasts, the venue was just a couple doors away from the party headquarters at no. 30.

The club was named after the Irish Language writer and 1940s IRA Volunteer Máirtín Ó Cadhain who died in 1970. The space hosted film-showings, trad music nights and social evenings. It was raided by the police in January 1975 with leading Official SF member Frank Ross (aka Proinsias De Rossa), the occupier of the premises, being fined £50 for keeping unlicensed alcohol for sale.

I’ve been told that it was very popular with non-political GAA fans when it opened on match days at Croke Park. In the early 70s,  they used have a stall outside it on match days selling Irish rebel LP’s and republican badges.

On 18 November 1984, career criminal Eamon Kelly stabbed and almost killed prominent WP member and (future general secretary) Patrick Quearney on the street outside. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail which was later reduced to 3 years following an appeal. Kelly was shot dead by the RIRA in 2012.

As far as I know, the basement club is still owned by the Workers Party but has not been open since around 2006.

Irish Independent, 5 June 1975

Irish Independent, 13 April 1990

Irish Press, 15 April 1993

Any stories, memories or insight? As always, please leave a comment.

Jackie Carey, Liam Whelan, Johnny Giles, Tony Dunne, Paul McGrath.

What binds all of these men? They are all great Irish footballers who played for Manchester United, yes, but they were also all spotted by Billy Behan. As the primary talent scout for United in Ireland over several decades, Behan made no small contribution to the success of the Mancunian football giants, and no small contribution to youth football in Dublin. From a family steeped in association football, remarkably little has been written about a man who perhaps knew the game better than anyone else in the Irish capital.

Billy Behan as goalkeeper, Evening Herald.

Born in Dublin in 1911, Billy Behan was the son of William Behan, a founding member of Shamrock Rovers. Unsurprisingly, he and his siblings developed a love of the beautiful game, with Billy playing as goalkeeper for Westland Rovers, Shamrock Rovers and Shelbourne during his career in the domestic game. At 22 years of age, he signed for Manchester United in 1933, beginning an affiliation with the club which would last several decades.

A young Behan spent only one season at Manchester as a goalkeeper, though he met his wife Vera in the northern English city,  remembering that “although my star in Manchester was a brief one, it fashioned my future.” Returning to the familiar green and white hoops of Shamrock Rovers, Behan maintained strong contacts with United, and began informing the club scouts of players in the domestic Irish game he believed warranted a chance. When United scout Louis Rocca agreed to accompany Behan to watch St. James’s Gate and Cork in the Iveagh Grounds, Behan’s worth could not be doubted. Playing that day was a young Jackie Carey, destined to become a famed Manchester United player. There was a degree of luck in it all, as Rocca had actually come to Dublin to see Benny Gaughran, who had been snatched instead by Celtic. Still, Carey dominated the game and caught the eye of the visitor, and Behan recalled:

Through the co-operation of the Gate Secretary, Mr. Byrne, Louis Rocca was introduced to Jackie Carry that evening and after discussions agreed to join United for what was then regarded as a record fee for a Free State League player. That fee, believe it or not, was only three figures and Carey, who was to make for himself such an illustrious career with United, must be regarded as the greatest bargain of all time to come out of Ireland.

Jackie Carey (Image Credit: Manchester United Archive)

To English footballing fans, Jackie Carey became the great Johnny Carey. He was an integral part of the club from 1936 until 1953, captaining the team from 1946. The first Irishman to captain a winning side in an FA Cup Final and the English First Division, Carey became a household name both in England and at home, coming a long way from the youngster who had lined up in the blue and navy jersey of Dublin’s  Gaelic footballers at minor level. In the words of Eamon Dunphy, “to the Irish soccer community of the forties and fifties, Johnny Carey was more than a sporting hero. He was an iconic figure for reasons that had as much to do with national identity as sport.” During the Second World War, Carey lined-up in Dublin for a League of Ireland XI and made a guest appearance for Shamrock Rovers, drawing huge crowds eager to see the famed Dubliner.

Behan’s great love was junior football, where he nurtured and encouraged talent. In 1946 he managed Saint Patrick’s CYMS, who succeeded in winning the FAI Junior Cup in Dalymount Park, and several players from his side attracted the attention of British sides. Across the sea, things were about to change forever at Manchester United with the appointment of Matt Busby, a manager who, like Behan, believed firmly in the importance of a solid youth system in football. To Behan:

Matt Busby’s inheritance at Old Trafford in 1945 was bleak – the club had a bank overdraft of £15,000, and a crater in the middle of the ground from the Blitz which had also left the stands a shambles, forcing them to play their home games at Maine Road. Yet Matt, from the start, built up a network of contacts, throughout the home countries, which kept him briefed on available talent.

The incredible team that Matt Busby built became the ‘Busby Babes’, a name bestowed upon them by the Manchester Evening News but quickly adopted on the terraces. The team would dominate British football.  Giles Oakley, author of Red Matters: Fifty Years Supporting Manchester United, captures the essence of the Busby philosophy:

Youthful talent was supported, nurtured, trusted and encouraged at Old Trafford in a way that was strikingly unique and distinctive. Over 75 players from the youth ranks got their chance in the first team in the 25 years Sir Matt was manger. Even those who didn’t ultimately make the grade at United often had good careers elsewhere.

Cabra’s Liam Whelan, who perished in the Munich air disaster.

Central to the Busby force was Cabra lad Liam Whelan, who Bill Behan observed while playing for Home Farm. Behan had arrived at a Home Farm game seeking out Vinny Ryan, normally a wing half who had recently moved to centre forward and was scoring to beat the band, but it was Whelan instead who impressed (United did make an unsuccessful bid for Ryan).  Only nine days after the scoop of the Cabra youngster, he played a star role in a United Youths convincing 7-1  victory over Wolves. Behan later acknowledged the magnitude of Home Farm’s importance to junior football:

Hereabout I would like to make reference to Home Farm, the club described by Sir Matt Busby as the best organised amateur sports team in the world.  Home Farm is undoubtedly the finest club of its kind. …As they say in racing, class will always tell.

Like many in the Irish and British football communities, Behan was stunned by the horror of the Munich air disaster, which ripped the heart of an incredible team. The scout attended the funeral of Whelan in Cabra, but also the remembrance services in Manchester, finding the city to be in deep mourning, but also witnessing the great spirit of resilience that makes Mancunians the people they are:

I found a city shocked and numbed. I just cannot describe the pall that hung over Manchester then, for at the time I don’t think anyone was thinking clearly…. Bobby Charlton reported back a short while afterwards and was a great asset. If anyone became a man overnight it was Bobby, whose mother spent some time helping out at Old Trafford after Munich. She’s a grand person and I think she makes the best cup of tea in England.

One of the finest accounts of Billy Behan and the manner in which he operated, seeing talent like Whelan and Carey early on, comes from Johnny Giles. Behan had enormous respect for Johnny Giles, noting that “Dicky Giles (Johnny’s father), knew the game inside out, and Johnny understood what is was all about at a very early age.” Giles described Behan in his entertaining autobiography as:

…having a kind of sixth sense for identifying the players who would make it, a bit like the way they say Vincent O’Brien could look at a yearling and in his minds eye see a Derby winner. At United, they valued their Irish links, not least because of the caliber of player that Billy Behan had found for them….Billy would be moseying around the junior football matches of Dublin, either standing on the sidelines of referring matches, a football man to the core. And he was not just a talent spotter, he was an amiable man who was good at fostering relationships with a young players family.

Crucially, and if time allowed it, Behan tried to establish direct contact between the upper-echelons of Manchester United and the players families. Jimmy Holmes recounts in his autobiography being taken to meet Matt Busby in the Gresham Hotel. Other clubs learned the lessons of this approach; right before Holmes departed Dublin for Manchester, he opened his front door to see Noel Cantwell, the manager of Coventry City and former Manchester United and Ireland defender. He told him, rightly or wrongly, that busloads of kids went to United on a regular basis and never get invited back. Holmes went with Coventry instead.

A young Johnny Giles at Manchester United. Evening Herald.

Behan could look back with pride on his contribution to Manchester United. In a reflective piece published in 1968, he stated that “I take pride in the fact that emigrant Irish soccer players by their character, sportsmanship and general behaviour in England have done so much towards raising the prestige and standing of Irishmen generally in England.”

Billy Behan died in 1991. In the decades that followed his above penned reflections, he had remained steadfastly involved in Irish football at junior level, and involving himself with the Leinster Senior League. He scouted, he was a sometime referee, he did literally anything and everything he could for the game. He continued to identify young talent, including the Black Pearl of Inchicore, Paul McGrath. Johnny Giles noted in the Evening Herald  at the time of his passing that “the sad loss of Billy Behan will leave a void in football that will be felt by many people who love the game in these islands and more keenly in Manchester, the great man’s adopted city.” His friend Tommy Cullen remembered how “I don’t think he ever had an enemy. He can never be replaced, he was the gentleman of football.”

George Desmond Hodnett (Image Credit)

Next Sunday marks the centenary of the birth of George Desmond Hodnett, a man who lived a colourful life on several fronts. A guest on the first ever edition of The Late Late Show, he was part of the Bohemian set of 1950s Dublin, primarily known as a pianist and composer at the popular Pike Theatre.  He was also a distinguished music critic with The Irish Times, with an unrivaled knowledge of jazz music. Known to many as Hoddy, a review of his appearance on The Late Late Show noted:

Hoddy brought to the show a splendid touch of almost baroque eccentricity. Now  living in London, he was snaffled for the Late Late Show at a few hours notice. He entertained both studio audience and the viewer at home with a delightful line of talk about everything from the proceeding vulgarisation of O’Connell Street  to his own view on copy-writing, a job he is currently doing in London.

A Dubliner by birth, he enjoyed a decidedly middle class youth, educated at the private Catholic University School on Leeson Street and Trinity College Dublin. He never finished his studies at Trinity, instead falling into the Dublin set of the day, frequently to be found in McDaid’s or the so-called Catacombs where drinking could continue into all hours.

Irish Times journalist Deaglan De Breadun remembered of him:

A talented composer and musician, he played jazz piano, trumpet and, of all things, zither. Perhaps he learnt to play it from his Swiss-born mother, Lauré. The instrument became briefly fashionable thanks to the Orson Welles movie, The Third Man and, at the time, George was probably the only zither-player in the country.

He cut a most unusual shape, and Frank Kilfeather recalled that “from his dress, to his conversation, to his peculiar habits, Hoddy was a character. If he hadn’t existed, the most brilliant fiction writer couldn’t invent him. He always wore two overcoats and two jumpers, even in the middle of summer.”

In the 1950s, Hoddy was a loved part of the repertoire of the Pike Theatre, penning and performing satirical tunes for revues at the venue, where he worked as resident pianist. I won’t say much about the Pike Theatre, because it will be returned to again on the blog, but it was a necessary institution in the Ireland of its day that pushed boundaries and offered a platform to sometimes sidelined voices. In the words of Brian Fallon, writing about the 1950s (a decade that is  often wrongly considered a grey one in Irish culture), “most of the laurels for the decade belong to the gallant little Pike: for its staging of Behan’s masterpiece, for mounting Beckett’s Waiting for Godot the following year and for its 1957 performance of Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo which led to its actors appearing in court under a police prosecution for indecency.” Located in Herbert Lane, the theatre was the great vision of Alan Simpson and Carolyn Swift. It was making an impact at a time when the mainstream theatre world was offering little. In Spiked: Church-State Intrigue and The Rose Tattoo, it’s noted wryly that “when the Abbey burned down in 1951, it was popularly joked that the fire was the first flame of any kind to light the place up for many years.”

One great Hoddy original was Monto, popularly known now as ‘Take Her Up To Monto’. In his own words, it was a satire of many folk songs of its day, though he noted in one interview that its popularity reached a point “when it has become the folk song it originally aimed at satirising.”

If you somehow haven’t heard it here it is in all of its glory:

Popularised by The Dubliners, the song takes it title from Montgomery Street, located in the heart of what was Dublin’s thriving red light district of the Victorian age.  Immortalised as ‘Nighttown’ in Ulysses, the district became notorious enough to warrant a mention in the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1903:

Dublin furnishes an exception to the usual practice in the UK. In that city the police permit ‘open houses’ confined to one street; but carried on more publicly than even in the south of Europe or in Algeria.

By the time Hoddy penned Monto, the district was no more, relegated to folk memory thanks to a high profile Garda raid in 1925 and the efforts of the Legion of Mary. In Monto, Hoddy managed to squeeze in not only Monto itself but plenty of stories from the Victorian age, including the distant war in South Africa and the Phoenix Park murders. It is the Second Boer War in particular that leaps out from the song, with Victoria’s visit to Ireland during the conflict mentioned, along with the rather unfortunate Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who had a horrid time in South Africa, as Fusiliers’ Arch recalls. 

In an entertaining (they always are) Irishman’s Diary on the song, Frank McNally quoted Hoddy himself explaining that:

The verses were constructed to include the pre-possessions that would appeal to the Dublin proletarian taste….Hence the ingredients of hurler-on-the-fence; support for persons regarded as patriots (Invincibles verse); anti-police attitudes (‘the buggers in the depot’); anti-‘toff’ attitudes (Buckshot Forster); anti-Englishness (same); local allusions; and, of course, smut. This construction probably accounts for the song’s success, if that is the word.

Well, if you’ve got a wing-o,
Take her up to Ring-o
Where the waxies sing-o all the day;
If you’ve had your fill of porter, And you can’t go any further
Give your man the order: “Back to the Quay!”
And take her up to Monto, Monto, Monto
Take her up to Monto, lan-ge-roo,
To you!

Have you heard of Buckshot Forster,
The dirty old impostor
Took a mot and lost her, up the Furry Glen.
He first put on his bowler
And buttoned up his trousers,
Then whistled for a growler and he said, “My man!”
Take me up to Monto, Monto, Monto
Take me up to Monto, lan-ge-roo,
To you!

You’ve seen the Dublin Fusiliers,
The dirty old bamboozeleers,
De Wet’ll kill them chiselers, one, two, three.
Marching from the Linen Hall
There’s one for every cannonball,
And Vicky’s going to send them all, o’er the sea.
But first go up to Monto, Monto, Monto
March them up to Monto, lan-ge-roo,
To you!

When Carey told on Skin-the-goat,
O’Donnell caught him on the boat
He wished he’d never been afloat, the dirty skite.
It wasn’t very sensible
To tell on the Invincibles
They stand up for their principles, day and night.
And you’ll find them all in Monto, Monto, Monto
Standing up in Monto, lan-ge-roo,
To you!

Now when the Tsar of Russia
And the King of Prussia
Landed in the Phoenix in a big balloon,
They asked the police band
To play “The Wearin’ of the Green”
But the buggers from the depot didn’t know the tune.
So they both went up to Monto, Monto, Monto
Scarpered up to Monto, lan-ge-roo,
To you!

The Queen she came to call on us,
She wanted to see all of us
I’m glad she didn’t fall on us, she’s eighteen stone.
“Mister Me Lord Mayor,” says she,
“Is this all you’ve got to show me?”
“Why, no ma’am there’s some more to see, Póg mo thóin! (Kiss my arse)”
And he took her up Monto, Monto, Monto
He set her up in Monto, lan-ge-roo,
For you!

The inclusion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers may have been a nod towards Oliver St. John Gogarty, who rather cleverly suggested that Monto was where soldiers returning from the Boer War would be heading upon arrival back in Dublin. A poem entitled The Irish Yeoman’s Return, or Love is Lord of All appeared in the pages of the rather conservative Irish Society newspaper in 1901. On first glance, it was patriotic stuff:

The Gallant Irish yeoman
Home from the war has come
Each victory gained o’er foeman
Why should our bards be dumb.

How shall we sing their praises
Our glory in their deeds
Renowned their worth amazes
Empire their prowess needs.

So to Old Ireland’s hearts and homes
We welcome now our own brave boys
In cot and Hall; neath lordly domes
Love’s heroes share once more our joys.

Love is the Lord of all just now
Be he the husband, lover, son,
Each dauntless soul recalls the vow
By which not fame, but love was won.

United now in fond embrace
Salute with joy each well-loved face
Yeoman: in women’s hearts you hold the place.

Reading the first letter of each line downwards, it read: The Whores Will Be Busy. Though sent anonymously, it was the work of Oliver St. John Gogarty, then a young medical student in Trinity College Dublin. Not unlike James Joyce, he had a familiarity with the Monto himself.

Hoddy’s song referenced both heroes and villains in an Irish context. Take the mentioned de Wet for example. The famed Boer general Christiaan de Wet achieved something of a legendary status among Irish nationalists in the early twentieth century. In his Bureau of Military History Witness Statement, Irish Volunteer Patrick O’Reilly recounted:

I was five years of age in 1900, when the Boer War was raging. My recollections of the period are very vivid. The neighbours around who gathered at our house in the evenings discussed with vigour the pros and cons of the war, All were in favour of the Boers and had the greatest contempt for the British. The weekly papers, giving details of the fighting, would be read and re-read several times. In all these discussions, we youngsters became familiar with such tiaras as Kruger, De Wet, Cronge. Horses and dogs were named after those heroes.

The song caught the attention of Luke Kelly, finding its way onto the Dubliners Finnegan Wakes LP, released in 1966. Featuring what many regard as the iconic Dubliners line-up (Ronnie Drew, Barney McKenna, John Sheehan, Ciarán Bourke and Luke Kelly), it was a live recording from Dublin’s Gate Theatre in April of that year. It was an immediate crowd pleaser, destined to remain in The Dubliners set-list for decades to come.

Finnegan Wakes (ItsTheDubliners)

Hoddy died in September 1990, leaving behind a fine collection of reviews and writings in The Irish Times. More than anything however, ‘Monto’ remains. In 2016, singer Róisín Murphy christened her album Take Her Up To Monto, remembering that her uncle was a photographer with The Irish Times who knew Hoddy personally. To her:

Take Her Up to Monto is a very satirical song. I don’t really like people calling it a folk song because it kind of isn’t. It’s a bit cheeky calling it Take Her Up to Monto, but the whole idea was to be very irreverent. My da used to sing Take Her Up to Monto to me when we were walking down the street – he still does actually – because it’s got a walking tempo, and I still sing it to myself when I’m walking along. So it’s a little postmodern fragment, a bit of history.

Noel Hughes, Moore Street 2017. (Image: Las Fallon)

Like many people we were saddened to hear of the passing of Noel ‘Chalky’ Hughes this week.

A veteran of the ‘Operation Harvest’ Border Campaign of the 1950s, Noel was a committed republican and a very proud Dubliner. For many years he conducted walking tours of Glasnevin Cemetery, and also provided tours of the Dublin 7 area which was his home through many decades. We were lucky enough to set out on one of these tours with Noel, from the familiar setting of The Cobblestone, taking in the Smithfield Market,Church Street and more besides. Chalky was centrally involved to many commemorations in the capital over decades, where he was a familiar sight with the ‘Dublin Brigade – Oglaidh na hÉireann’ flag.

Noel contributed two videos to the Storymap oral history project, recalling his youth in the Coleraine Street/Smithfield area:

The Turkish Baths of 1860, Lincoln Place, Dublin. Our story today concerns an early forerunner of these Turkish Baths. (Image: Archiseek)

In the Dublin of the late eighteenth century, Achmet Borumborad cut an unusual shape. A tall Turkish man sporting a fine beard and wearing traditional Turkish attire, Jonah Barrington (judge, lawyer and Dublin socialite) remembered him as “being extremely handsome without any approach to the tawdry, and crowned with an immense turban, he drew the eyes of every passersby; I must say that I have never myself seen a more stately-looking Turk since that period.”

Borbumborad was literally followed through the streets of the capital by the curious, with Barrington relating how “the eccentricity of the doctor’s appearance was, indeed, as will be readily be imagined, the occasion of much idle observation and conjecture. At first, wherever he went,a crowd of people, chiefly boys,was sure to attend him, but at a respectful distance”.

A doctor by profession with immaculate English, Borbumboard quickly made his way into the upper echelons of Dublin society, wining and dining with the elite of the College Green Parliament, gaining a reputation as a fine conversationalist who was “pregnant with anecdote, but discreet in its expenditure.” He is mentioned in contemporary publications, with a poem entitled The Medical Review from 1775 describing “his foreign accent, head close-shaved or sheard. His flowing whiskers, and great length of beard.”

While the period calls to mind the privileged dueling ‘Bucks’ of Trinity College, sedan chairs on College Green and the occasional riot in the Smock Alley Theatre, eighteenth century Dublin had its fair share of poverty and misery too, evident from primary sources like the survey census of the city carried out by the Reverend James Whitelaw in the summer of discontent that was 1798. Whitelaw was horrified to report:

I have frequently surprised from ten to 16 persons, of all ages and sexes, in a room, not 15 feet square, stretched on a wad of filthy straw, swarming with vermin, and without any covering, save the wretched rags that constituted their wearing apparel. Under such circumstances, it is not extraordinary, that I should have frequently found from 30 to 50 individuals in a house.

While groundbreaking work on the infectious nature of disease (such as that carried out by Oscar Wilde’s father, Sir William Wilde) remained a long way off in the distance, many contemporary observers in the eighteenth century were aware of the poor health of the less well-off inhabitants of Dublin. Borbumborad, the man from God knows where, was among such voices. Barrington recounts how “he proposed to establish what was greatly wanted at that time in the Irish metropolis, ‘Hot and Cold Sea-water Baths’, and by way of advancing his pretensions to public encouragement, offered to open free baths for the poor on an extensive plan, giving them as a doctor attendance and advice gratis every day in the year.”

Jonah Barrington, responsible for some of the most entertaining and colourful memoirs of late eighteenth century Dublin.

With public subscription, Borbumborad succeeded in opening his Turkish Baths beside Bachelor’s Walk in October 1771, supported by dozens of parliamentarians, surgeons and physicians. The baths were a great success, Barrington proclaiming that “a more ingenious or useful establishment could not be formed in any metropolis.” Borumborad constructed “an immense cold bath…to communicate with the River, it was large and deep, and entirely renewed every tide. The neatest lodging rooms for those patients who chose to remain during a course of bathing were added to the establishment, and always occupied.”

Given Borbumborad’s popularity with the elite of the city, it became the doctor’s “invariable custom to give a grand dinner at the baths to a large number of his patrons, members of Parliament who were in the habit of proposing and supporting his grants.” Barrington recounts a great tale of one such gathering ending in disaster, when a pissed-up parliamentarian, Sir John S. Hamilton, inadvertently found himself in a bath, opening the wrong door “when splash at once comes Sir John, not into the street, but into the great cold bath, the door of which he had retreated by in mistake!” The ridiculous circumstances of a parliamentarian falling into the baths and others rushing in to his rescue greatly damaged Borbumborad’s standing among the chattering classes of the capital.

In addition to the Bachelor’s Walk Turkish Baths, Borbumborad had also operated a sort of health spa at Finglas, where he built “baths and a pump house”, convinced of the healing powers of a local well. Well beyond the city, it says something of Borbumborad’s reputation that some traveled the distance to it on account of what he himself said of the wells healing powers.

Achmet Borumborad’s story then is one of a medical professional, socialite and exotic outsider in the Dublin of the eighteenth century. Or is it? The learned philanthropist who had escaped from Constantinople was, alas, revealed to be a total invention. Having fallen in love, he revealed himself to his partner, falling to his knees and proclaiming himself not only a Christian, but “your own countryman, sure enough! Mr. Patrick Joyce, from Kilkenny County, the devil a Turk any more than yourself, my sweet angel!”.

Borbumborad vanished from the historical record, to such an extent that when Barrington wrote his colourful memoir of the late eighteenth century, he had to inform readers that “I regret that I never inquired as to Joyce’s subsequent career, nor can I say whether he is or not still in the land of the living.”

Did he ever exist at all? In 1956, Desmond Ryan took up the story for the Irish Press,  suggesting that while aspects of Barrington’s tale may be fabricated, there is indeed evidence of the “celebrated pseudo-Turk” in the contemporary press, with the Freeman’s Journal in particular pouring praise onto the Turkish baths. Drawing on the work of the great historian of eighteenth century Ireland, Dr. R.B Madden, Ryan was convinced that not only was the Borumborad name an invention of a colorful Irishman, so was Patrick  Joyce! In reality, it seems the great pretender was a Dublin-based tradesman named William Cairns. What became of him, nobody seems to know. Borbumborard’s Dictionary of Irish Biography entry ends by noting he was “no more than an opportunist seeking to make his fortune by elaborate means, a far from unusual human characteristic, and a common career path in the 18th century.”

Eventually, the Turkish baths at Lincoln Place came along, with their distinctive appearance leading to them being refereed to as “the Mosques of the baths” in Ulysses. They were a far cry from Borumborad’s experiment by the Liffey, but it is they that are today remembered thanks to James Joyce and others.

Allow me to tip my Magee cap in the direction of Simon Conway. Man about town, DJ, promoter and publican (behind Lucky’s on Meath Street and The Yacht in Ringsend) his insistence led to us putting together this forthcoming evening of chat.

Ringsend is an area with a strong football heritage, the birthplace of both Shelbourne and Shamrock Rovers. It is also associated with some remarkable players and footballing figures like Billy Behan, recently examined on the blog.

This forthcoming night is a chance to talk about some of that history. Eoghan Rice is the author of We Are Rovers, which remains one of the finest League of Ireland books, right up there with There’s Only One Red Army (examining the other SRFC).Fergus Dowd from the Patrick O’Connell memorial fund will talk about the forthcoming documentary ‘The Man Who Saved Barcelona’ and the Patrick O’Connell Memorial Fund. We’ll be showing the extended trailer for that forthcoming documentary, as well as the wonderful ‘In My Book, You Should Be Ahead’, which examines Shels.

The poster is a magnificent tribute to both the beautiful game and Ringsend, all credit to Manus Jude Sweeney.

Dublin’s newest plaques were unveiled today on the Frank Flood Bridge, Drumcondra. They commemorate a young and fearless IRA Active Service Unit commander, a mere 19 years of age at the time of his execution. A student of University College Dublin, Flood was among the ‘Forgotten Ten’, buried in Mountjoy Prison until a state funeral in 2001 saw the men reburied in Glasnevin cemetery.

I was asked to say a few words today to put Frank Flood in context and to explain the importance of the Active Service Unit in the War of Independence:

Frank Flood, in some ways, was an unlikely radical. The son of a policeman, he was a very capable student of the same university attended by his friend Kevin Barry. Before this, he had been a student of the CBS North Richmond Street school, and perhaps therein lies the answer. This remarkable school was attended by republicans as diverse as Ernie O’Malley, Seán Heuston, Éamonn Ceannt and Sean Lemass. It was an atmosphere that nurtured nationalism.

If radicalism was found closer to home, it was in his siblings. Seán Flood, a brother, was a member of the 1st Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA, serving under Ned Daly in 1916 and throughout the subsequent years of struggle. Young Frank, born in December 1901, joined the Volunteer movement in the aftermath of the Rising in 1917. The family lived at 19 Summerhill Parade. Six Flood siblings played a part in the revolutionary period.

Flood proved capable of balancing student life with his involvement in the Republican movement. An active member of the college Literary and Historical Society, he involved himself in college life, in a university that could count Seán MacBride, Sean Ó Faoláin, Kevin Barry and Todd Andrews among its student body.  On the day Kevin Barry was hanged, young Seán MacBride was among those to raise a tricolour to half mast over the university, leading to a military raid on the college.

Flood was a quick rising star of the IRA, which found itself operating in difficult terrain in Dublin city centre, far removed from the rural hills and valleys of the Flying Columns. Flood was among the men who raided King’s Inn’s for arms in June of 1920, securing a Lewis gun among other captured items. Such acts were a morale boost to the movement, as well as providing crucially important arms.

Flood was among the participants in the Church Street Ambush in September 1920, when British soldiers at Monks Bakery were fired upon by an IRA party, resulting in several fatalities. A young Kevin Barry, hiding under a lorry in the confusion that followed the attack, was captured at the site. Barry’s sister later recalled Frank Flood’s heartbreak at Barry’s detention, insisting to her on several occasions that he and his comrades would do all in their power to break him out.

The creation of the IRA’s Active Service Unit in Dublin was a landmark moment in the conflict. As James Harpur recalled, “it was the intention of the Army Council to increase the activities of the I.R.A. and to counter increased British activities in Dublin, and to this end the Active Service Unit was being formed.” Harpur recounted being addressed by Oscar Traynor, and “he informed us that the
British were becoming a bit too ‘cocky’ in the city and were being allowed too much freedom of movement to carry out their policy of subduing the population, and that it had been decided to counter this activity on their part by giving them battle on our own ground.” It was dangerous and stressful work; ASU member Patrick Collins recalled Traynor telling the men “if any man felt that the work now or in the future would cause him too great a strain he was free to withdraw at any time without any reflection on him.”

Flood immediately took a prominent leadership position in the northside ASU’s. On the 21 January 1921, Flood led an IRA ambush party near to here. Dermot O’Sullivan, a surviving participant, recounted the events of that day in his Bureau of Military History Witness Statement:

On the 21st January, 1921, No. 1 Section was detailed to take up positions at Binn’s Bridge, Drumcondra, at 8.30 a.m. and to ambush a party of Black & Tans which usually came into the city at that time from Gormanstown….

 …The  Section Commander’s instructions for the attack on the Tan lorry were that the lorry was to be allowed to pass through our first pair of men and when it came in line with the -pair located on the north side of Binns Bridge they were to open fire on it. We were all to fire simultaneously likewise when it came abreast of our positions. The entire Section remained in position until 9.30 and as no Tan lorry came our way within that time the Section Commander decided to withdraw to a position further down the Drumcondra Road in the vicinity of Clonturk Park.

 The detection of the IRA men in the area by a passing police man created a dilemma, and the DMP man continued on his way, no doubt altering authorities. O’Sullivan recalled their decision to  attack a military van which approached from the Whitehall direction. O’Sullivan’s Witness Statement tells us:

Almost simultaneously with the arrival of the van we noticed that an armoured car and a few lorries of military were coming in our direction from the city and another armoured car and some lorries were also approaching our position from Whitehall direction. It was clear to us then that someone must have summoned the aid of the military and Tans as the place seemed to be surrounded. We saw there was nothing for it but to get out as quickly as we could, so we made our way down Richmond Road in the direction of Ballybough with the intention of cutting across country towards Clontarf. As we reached the junction of Gracepark Road we saw two tenders of Black & Tans approaching us from the Ballybough direction. We wheeled up Gracepark Road and into Gracepark Gardens. At that time Clonturk Park was open country. A Lewis gun which had opened fire at some of our section crossing Clonturk Park (which was not then a built-up area) could have brought us under fire. In fact, one of our men, McGee, was killed as he was trying to get away.

Hopelessly surrounded, most of the remaining the men  surrendered. The following day they were interrogated by intelligence agents from the Castle, with O’Sullivan recalling Frank Flood was “Struck across the face with a butt of a revolver and told to take the grin off his face.” Despite their efforts, their interrogators learned nothing of the inner-functions of the ASU, which was quickly attacking crown forces on the streets of the capital again.

O’Sullivan lived to tell that tale, his life being spared on the basis of his youth, though one could hardly consider Flood and his comrades old men. Four of the party which participated in the planned ambush were executed on the 14 March 1921. They were:

Patrick Doyle, aged 29

Francis Xavier Flood, aged 19

Thomas Bryan, aged 24

Bernard ‘Bertie’ Ryan, aged 21.

The crime for which Frank Flood was executed was ‘High Treason’, yet he had acted not out of any sense of treason, but loyalty to the idea of the Republic proclaimed at Easter Week, and reaffirmed in the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil. In the words of Canon Waters inside the prison, these condemned men “walked to the scaffold like lions.”

In recognition of their contribution, the men were rightly reburied in Glasnevin cemetery in 2001. Let this new memorial, like their prominent resisting place there, remind Dubliners of their bravery and heroism.

The crossroads of Ballybough Road and Clonliffe Road will be known to many Dubliners who make their way to and from Croke Park to watch Dublin compete. Today dominated by large advertising boards on what is prime advertising real estate, there is nothing to indicate the rather macabre history of the corner, which it seems was once home to a so-called ‘Suicide Plot’. This was essentially an unconsecrated burial location in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for those who took their own lives, as well as the occasional outlaw. It has entered local folklore, and was even mentioned in the Dail in 1990 by a TD who commented “there is also a suicide burial plot in the area and it is said that spirits are still in the park beside the Luke Kelly Bridge.”

Google Street view of the corner in July 2014. It has since been improved and includes recreational seating.

Ballybough’s name derives from the Irish language ‘Baile Bocht‘, meaning ‘poor town’. Before urban development, the district from Ballybough to North Strand was known colloquially as Mud Island, with the Rev. John Kingston noting in a 1950s piece that “Ballybough had an evil reputation during the eighteenth century…Beside the bridge was a noted suicide plot, where the bodies of suicides were interred in the time honoured fashion, transfixed with stakes, which according to belief, effectually prevented these unhappy beings from wandering about and alarming the public.”

There was little sympathy or understanding in most cases for those who took their own lives in earlier centuries. In an interesting History Ireland feature on Theobald Wolfe Tone, who made the decision to take his own life rather than face the death of a criminal, Georgina Laragy rightly notes that “At the time of his death suicide was a mortal sin, condemned by both Catholic and Protestant churches, and a crime under common law. It was punishable by burial at the crossroads with a stake through the heart, and the confiscation of one’s goods and chattels (both these punishments were overturned by legislation in 1823 and 1872 respectively).” Tone, a formidable political figure, was buried in consecrated ground at Bodenstown in Kildare, which very much defied the norm for such a death.  Felo de se, or ‘Felon of himself’, was the archaic legal term used to describe those who took their own lives.

Curiously little has been written about the site, with most of what has appeared in print bring rooted primarily in local lore. In his popular Dublin history The Labour and the Royal, Eamonn MacThomáis talks of Larry Clinch, an early nineteenth century highwayman figure, who was hanged in the vicinity following a shootout with militia men in November 1806: “The bodies of Larry and his gang were left lying on Clonfliffe Road to warn all other highwaymen. Later they were buried at the end of Clonliffe Road, at Ballybough Crossroads. Down the years many people have reported seeing a strange horseman rising up and down Clonfliffe Road late at night.”

A 1939 local history feature from the Irish Independent eludes to Larry Clinch and the “suicides’ ground at Ballybough.”

In Dublin, facts need not always interfere with stories of course, and the manner in which the plot is remembered (and even geographically placed) by locals is important in itself. It is certainly something most locals of a certain vintage seem to have at least heard of, which is interesting given the absence of a historic marker. The excellent East Wall for All blog has speculated on its potential literary importance, but there is undoubtedly a lot more work to be done.