seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Category Archives: Home Rule, Easter Rising & War of Independence (1912-1922)


by Leave a comment

Birth of James McAlinden, Irish Footballer

James McAlinden, Irish footballer who plays as a forward for several clubs, most notably, Belfast Celtic, Portsmouth, Shamrock Rovers and Southend United, is born in Belfast on December 27, 1917. As an international, he also plays for both Ireland teams – the IFA XI and the FAI XI. After retiring as a player, he goes on to manage Glenavon, Lisburn Distillery and Drogheda United.

In 1934, aged 16, McAlinden is playing for Glentoran Reserves, when after a game against their reserves, he is offered a professional contract by Belfast Celtic. Together with Jackie Vernon, Tommy Breen, Billy McMillan and Charlie Tully, he subsequently becomes a prominent member of the Celtic team managed by Elisha Scott. This team dominates the Irish League in the era before and during World War II. Among his most notable contributions is scoring in the 2–1 win against Bangor in the 1938 Irish Cup final.

In December 1938, McAlinden signs for Portsmouth for a fee of £7.500. He makes his debut for the club against Chelsea and goes on to become a regular in the side. Within six months of his arrival at the club, he helps them win the 1939 FA Cup final, beating Wolverhampton Wanderers 4–1. After the outbreak of World War II, he plays three times for Portsmouth in wartime regional leagues, but his first spell with the club ends when he then returns to Belfast Celtic in 1939. He returns to Portsmouth for a second stint in 1946. In September 1947, he leaves Portsmouth once again and joins Stoke City for a fee of £7,000.

Following the end of his second stint with Belfast Celtic and before he rejoins Portsmouth, McAlinden signs for Shamrock Rovers in September 1945. He makes his debut against Shelbourne at Glenmalure Park on September 16. While playing for Rovers his teammates include Paddy Coad, Peter Farrell and Tommy Eglington. During his one season with Rovers, he helps the club reach the 1946 FAI Cup final. However Rovers lose 3–1 to Drumcondra.

McAlinden joins Stoke City in September 1947 for a then club record fee of £7,000. He becomes regular inside forward under manager Bob McGrory in 1947–48, playing in 33 matches scoring just twice against Aston Villa and Huddersfield Town. His lack of goals sees him fall out of favour at the Victoria Ground and he is sold to Third Division South side Southend United in October 1948.

In 1948, Southend United signs McAlinden from Stoke City for a fee of £8,000. He continues to play for United until 1954 and during his time with the club he serves as club captain. He also becomes something of a cult hero among the club’s fans and is remembered as being possibly the best player ever to play for the club. In 1950, he is caught up in controversy after it is alleged that he received illegal payments during his second spell with Portsmouth. As a result, he is suspended for the first two months of the 1950–51 season. In April 1954, he makes his last home appearance for United in a 4–1 win over Queens Park Rangers.

When McAlinden begins his international career in 1937 there are in effect, two Ireland teams, chosen by two rival associations. Both associations, the Northern Ireland–based Irish Football Association (IFA) and the Irish Free State–based Football Association of Ireland (FAI), claim jurisdiction over the whole of Ireland and select players from the whole island. As a result, several notable Irish players from this era, including McAlinden play for both teams.

Between 1937 and 1948, McAlinden makes five appearances for the IFA XI, making his international debut in a 1–1 draw with Scotland at Pittodrie Stadium on November 10, 1937. His IFA XI appearances also include the 8–4 defeat against a Combined Services XI at Windsor Park on September 9, 1944. This team is basically a Great Britain XI and features, among others, Matt Busby, Stanley Matthews, Tommy Lawton and Stan Mortensen. He also plays against England in 7–2 defeat at Windsor Park on September 9, 1946. He makes his last appearance for the IFA XI on October 10, 1948, in a 6–2 defeat to England at Windsor Park. He makes his first three appearances for the IFA XI while with Belfast Celtic, his fourth while at Portsmouth and his fifth while at Southend United.

In 1946, while with Portsmouth, McAlinden also makes two appearances for the FAI XI. He is one of several players born in Northern Ireland who benefits from the FAI’s attempts to establish their all-Ireland influence. In June 1946, when the FAI organises an Iberian tour, he, together with Jackie Vernon, Billy McMillan and Paddy Sloan, is one of four Northern Irish players called up. He subsequently plays in both the 3–1 defeat to Portugal on June 16 and then helps Ireland gain a surprise 1–0 victory against Spain on June 23, 1946.

In 1955, McAlinden becomes player/manager of Glenavon. He continues playing for an additional year before finally retiring as a player to concentrate on management. During a thirteen-year stint with Glenavon, he guides them two Irish League titles, three Irish Cup victories and one Gold Cup. After leaving Glenavon, works as a full-time scout for Coventry City before taking charge at Lisburn Distillery in 1969. He subsequently guides a Distillery team that includes a young Martin O’Neill to a win in the 1971 Irish Cup. Later in his first season with Drogheda United, he guides them to the 1976 FAI Cup final, only to lose 1–0 to Bohemian.

McAlinden dies at the age of 75 on November 15, 1993.


by Leave a comment

Death of Séamus Dwyer, Irish Politician

Séamus Dwyer, Pro-Treaty politician, is shot dead at his shop in Rathmines, Dublin, by Anti-Treaty fighters on December 20, 1922.

Dwyer is born in Dublin on November 15, 1886.

Serving as an intelligence officer for the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and as a Dáil Court judge he is imprisoned by the British in 1921. He is elected unopposed at the 1921 Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland general election for the Dublin County constituency as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) in the 2nd Dáil. He votes in favour of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. He stands as a pro-Treaty Sinn Féin candidate at the 1922 Irish general election but is not elected.

Dwyer runs a off-licence/grocery shop in Rathmines and is a member of the Rathmines Urban Council. He marries Marie Molloy in 1914, they have no children. He is a member of the Peace Committee of ten men which sit in May 1922 and bring about the agreement between Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera.

On December 20, 1922, Dwyer is shot dead in his shop at 5 Rathmines Road, Dublin, by anti-Treaty IRA Volunteer Robert Bonfield. At about 4:50 p.m., Dwyer is talking to a customer when a young man enters the shop. Addressing Dwyer, the young man asks “Are you Mr. O’Dwyer?” Dwyer replies yes and the young man says that he has a note for him. The young man reaches into the pocket of his overcoat a draws a revolver. He fires twice at Dwyer at point-blank range and he dies instantly. The customer and a shop assistant give chase but are unable to catch the assassin. Two republicans, Frank Lawlor and the actual assassin, Robert Bonfield, are later killed by Free State forces in revenge for the shooting of Dwyer.

Dwyer is buried in Plot UA 67 South Section, Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, County Dublin.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Dame Jean Iris Murdoch, Novelist & Philosopher

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch DBE, Irish and British novelist and philosopher, is born on July 15, 1919, in Phibsborough, Dublin. She is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. In 2008, The Times ranks her twelfth on a list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945.”

Murdoch is the daughter of Irene Alice (née Richardson) and Wills John Hughes Murdoch. Her father, a civil servant, comes from a mainly Presbyterian sheep farming family from Hillhall, County Down. In 1915, he enlists as a soldier in King Edward’s Horse and serves in France during World War I before being commissioned as a second lieutenant. Her mother trains as a singer before Iris is born and is from a middle-class Church of Ireland family in Dublin. Her parents first meet in Dublin when her father is on leave and are married in 1918.  Iris is the couple’s only child. When she is a few weeks old the family moves to London, where her father had joined the Ministry of Health as a second-class clerk.  She is a second cousin of the Irish mathematician Brian Murdoch.

Murdoch is brought up in Chiswick and educated in progressive independent schools, entering the Froebel Demonstration School in 1925 and attending Badminton School in Bristol as a boarder from 1932 to 1938. In 1938 she goes up to Somerville College, Oxford, with the intention of studying English, but switches to “Greats“, a course of study combining classics, ancient history, and philosophy. At Oxford she studies philosophy with Donald M. MacKinnon and attends Eduard Fraenkel‘s seminars on Agamemnon. She is awarded a first-class honours degree in 1942. After leaving Oxford she goes to work in London for HM Treasury. In June 1944 she leaves the Treasury and goes to work for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). At first, she is stationed in London at the agency’s European Regional Office. In 1945 she is transferred first to Brussels, then to Innsbruck, and finally to Graz, Austria, where she works in a refugee camp. She leaves the UNRRA in 1946.

From 1947 to 1948 Murdoch studies philosophy as a postgraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge. She meets Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge but does not hear him lecture, as he had left his Trinity College professorship before she arrives. In 1948 she becomes a fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where she teaches philosophy until 1963. From 1963 to 1967 she teaches one day a week in the General Studies department at the Royal College of Art.

In 1956 Murdoch marries John Bayley, a literary critic, novelist, and from 1974 to 1992 Warton Professor of English at Oxford University, whom she had met in Oxford in 1954. The unusual romantic partnership lasts more than forty years until Murdoch’s death. Bayley thinks that sex is “inescapably ridiculous.” She in contrast has “multiple affairs with both men and women which, on discomposing occasions, Bayley witnesses for himself.”

Murdoch’s first novel, Under the Net, is published in 1954 and is selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library’s 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. She had previously published essays on philosophy, and the first monograph about Jean-Paul Sartre published in English. She goes on to produce 25 more novels and additional works of philosophy, as well as poetry and drama.

Murdoch’s 1978 novel The Sea, the Sea wins the Booker Prize. Her other books include The Bell (1958), A Severed Head (1961), The Red and the Green (1965), The Nice and the Good (1968), The Black Prince (1973), Henry and Cato (1976), The Philosopher’s Pupil (1983), The Good Apprentice (1985), The Book and the Brotherhood (1987), The Message to the Planet (1989), and The Green Knight (1993).

In 1976, Murdoch is named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 1987 is made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature.  She is awarded honorary degrees by the University of Bath (D.Litt, 1983), University of Cambridge (1993) and Kingston University (1994), among others. She is elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1982.

Murdoch’s last novel, Jackson’s Dilemma, is published in 1995. She is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1997 and dies on February 8, 1999, in Oxford, England. There is a bench dedicated to her in the grounds of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she enjoyed walking.


by Leave a comment

Death of Basil Maturin, Catholic Priest & Writer

Basil William Maturin, Irish-born Anglican priest, preacher and writer who later converts to Catholicism, dies aboard the RMS Lusitania after it is torpedoed by a German U-boat and sinks on May 7, 1915.

Maturin is born on February 15, 1847, at All Saints’ vicarage, Grangegorman, Dublin, the third of the ten children of the Rev. William Basil Maturin and his wife, Jane Cooke (née Beatty). The Maturins, a prominent Anglo-Irish family of Huguenot ancestry, have produced many influential Church of Ireland clergymen over the generations, the most notable being Maturin’s grandfather, the writer Charles Robert Maturin. His own father, whose tractarian convictions are considered too “high church” for many in Dublin, is a somewhat controversial figure in the church. Religion plays a huge part in the Maturin children’s lives. Two of his brothers enter the church and two sisters become nuns. As a young man, he assists in training the choir and playing the organ at his father’s church. Educated at home and at a Dublin day school, he goes on to attend Trinity College Dublin (TCD), from where he graduates BA in 1870.

Though he initially intends to make a career in the army as an engineer, a severe attack of scarlet fever around 1868, and the death of his brother Arthur, changes his outlook on life, and he decides to become a clergyman. He is ordained a deacon in 1870 and later that year goes as a curate to Peterstow, Herefordshire, England, where his father’s friend Dr. John Jebb is rector. He subsequently joins the Society of St. John the Evangelist, entering the novitiate at Cowley, Oxford, in February 1873. As a Cowley father he is sent in 1876 to establish a mission in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he works as an assistant priest and, from 1881, as rector of Saint Clement’s Church. Though he proves to be an effective clergyman and popular preacher, his growing religious doubts and increasing interest in Catholicism results in his returning to Oxford in 1888. Then follows a six-month visit in 1889–90 to a society house in Cape Town, South Africa. He returns to Britain, where he preaches, and conducts retreats around the country and occasionally on the continent. In 1896 he produces the first in a series of religious publications, Some Principles and Practices of Spiritual Life.

Maturin’s continuing religious anxieties eventually lead to his conversion to Catholicism on March 5, 1897, at the Jesuit Beaumont College outside London. He then studies theology at the Canadian College, Rome, and is ordained there in 1898. Following his return to England he lives initially at Archbishop’s House, Westminster, and undertakes missionary work. He then serves at St. Mary’s, Cadogan Street, in 1901. He becomes parish priest of Pimlico and, in 1905, having joined the newly established Society of Westminster Diocesan Missionaries, organises the opening of St. Margaret’s chapel on St. Leonard’s Street, where huge crowds come to hear his sermons. As a Catholic priest, he returns to Ireland on several occasions, and frequently preaches at the Carmelite church, Clarendon Street, Dublin. His attempt, at the age of sixty-three, to enter into monastic life at the Benedictine monastery at Downside, in 1910, proves unsuccessful. He returns to London and begins working in St. James’s, Spanish Place, while maintaining his preaching commitments. He continues to write, publishing Self-Knowledge and Self-Discipline (1905), Laws of the Spiritual Life (1907) and his autobiographical The Price of Unity (1912), in which he traces his gradual move toward Catholicism. His sermons, like his approach when hearing confessions, are said to have much appeal for their integrity. Despite his influence as a preacher, he seems often feel that his life and vocation lack real purpose and at times he suffers from depression.

After a brief visit to the United States in 1913, Maturin accepts the post of Catholic chaplain at the University of Oxford in 1914. He travels to New York in 1915 and, after preaching there throughout the spring, boards the RMS Lusitania in May to return to England. The liner is torpedoed and sinks on May 7, 1915, off the southern coast of Ireland. He assists his fellow passengers in the last minutes, and it is presumed that he refuses a life jacket, as they are in short supply. His body washes ashore. A service is held for him at Westminster Cathedral.

Maturin’s friend Wilfrid Philip Ward edits a collection of his spiritual writings, Sermons and Sermon Notes, in 1916.

(From: “Maturin, Basil William” by Frances Clarke, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


by Leave a comment

Thomas MacDonagh’s Letter to Family at End of Easter Week 1916

In a letter to his family written on April 30, 1916, Thomas MacDonagh recalls “I was astonished to receive by a messenger from P.H. Pearse, Commandant General of the Army of the Irish Republic, an order to surrender unconditionality to the British General. I did not obey the order as it came from a prisoner. I as then in supreme command of the Irish Army, consulted with my second in command and decided to confirm the order. I knew that it would involve my death and the deaths of other leaders. I hoped that it would save many true men among our followers, good lives for Ireland. God grant it has done so and God approve our deed. For my self I have no regret. The one bitterness that death has for me is the separation it brings from my beloved wife Muriel, and my beloved children, Donagh and Barbara. My country will then treat them as wards, I hope. I have devoted myself too much to National work and too little to the making of money to leave them a competence. God help them and support them, and give them a happy and prosperous life. Never was there a better, truer, purer woman than my wife Muriel, or more adorable children than Don and Barbara. It breaks my heart that I shall never see my children again, but I have not wept or murmured. I counted the cost of this and am ready to pay it. Muriel has been sent for here. I do not know if she can come. She may have no one to take the children while she is coming. If she does.”

MacDonagh and Pearse are contemporaries of one another: poets, progressive educators, Gaelic revivalists. They are men who gird for battle “with a revolver in one hand and a copy of Sophocles in the other.” Each man commands a unit of Irish Volunteers during the Easter Rising, which takes place the week of April 24-30,1916. MacDonagh occupies Jacob’s biscuit factory and Pearse the General Post Office (GPO), from which he issues the surrender at the end of the week.

McDonagh and Pearse are signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, a document issued by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army at the beginning of the Easter Rising, proclaiming Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom. The reading of the proclamation by Pearse outside the General Post Office (GPO) on Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), Dublin‘s main thoroughfare, marks the beginning of the Rising.

Pearse’s and MacDonagh’s signatures on the Proclamation are a fatal endorsement for them and for each of the other five men to lend it their signatures. After being court-martialed, both Pearse and MacDonagh, along with Thomas Clarke, are executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin on May 3, 1916, the first of the rebels to be executed.

(Pictured: Thomas McDonagh (left) and Patrick Pearse)


by Leave a comment

Birth of Donogh O’Malley, Fianna Fáil Politician & Rugby Union Player

Donogh Brendan O’Malley, Irish Fianna Fáil politician and rugby union player, is born on January 18, 1921, in Limerick, County Limerick. He serves as Minister for Education (1966-68), Minister for Health (1965-66) and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance (1961-65). He also serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Limerick East constituency (1954-68). He is best remembered as the Minister who introduces free secondary school education in the Republic of Ireland.

O’Malley is one of eight surviving children of Joseph O’Malley, civil engineer, and his wife, Mary “Cis” (née Tooher). Born into a wealthy middle-class family, he is educated by the Jesuits at Crescent College and later at Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare. He later studies at University College Galway (UCG), where he is conferred with a degree in civil engineering in 1943. He later returns to Limerick, where he works as an engineer before becoming involved in politics.

O’Malley plays rugby at provincial level for Munster, Leinster and Connacht and at club level for Bohemians and Shannon RFC. His chances at an international career are ruined by the suspension of international fixtures during World War II. It is at a rugby match in Tralee that he first meets Dr. Hilda Moriarty, who he goes on to marry in August 1947.

Although O’Malley runs as a Fianna Fáil candidate, he is born into a politically active family who supports Cumann na nGaedheal until a falling-out with the party in the early 1930s. He first becomes involved in local politics as a member of Limerick Corporation. He becomes Mayor of Limerick in 1961, the third O’Malley brother to hold the office (Desmond from 1941-43 and Michael from 1948-49). He is a strong electoral performer, topping the poll in every general election he runs in.

O’Malley is first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil TD for Limerick East at the 1954 Irish general election. Fianna Fáil is not returned to government on that occasion. He spends the rest of the decade on the backbenches. However, his party is returned to power in 1957. Two years later, the modernising process begins when Seán Lemass takes over from Éamon de Valera as Taoiseach. Lemass introduces younger cabinet ministers, as the old guard who has served the party since its foundation in 1926 begin to retire.

In 1961, O’Malley joins the government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. He is part of a new, brasher style of politician that emerges in the 1960s, sometimes nicknamed “the men in the mohair suits.” It is expected that this generation of politician, born after the Irish Civil War, will be a modernising force in post-de Valera Ireland.

Although his sporting background is in rugby and swimming, it is association football which O’Malley gets involved in at a leadership level, becoming President of the Football Association of Ireland despite never having played the sport.

Following Fianna Fáil’s retention of power in the 1965 Irish general election, O’Malley joins the cabinet as Minister for Health. He spends just over a year in this position before he is appointed Minister for Education, a position in which he displays renowned dynamism. Having succeeded Patrick Hillery, another dynamic young minister, he resolves to act swiftly to introduce the recommendations of an official report on education.

As Minister for Education, O’Malley extends the school transport scheme and commissions the building of new non-denominational comprehensive and community schools in areas where they are needed. He introduces Regional Technical Colleges (RTCs), now called Institutes of Technology, in areas where there is no third level college. The best example of this policy is the University of Limerick, originally an Institute of Higher Education, where O’Malley is credited with taking the steps to ensure that it becomes a university. His plan to merge Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin arouses huge controversy, and is not successful, despite being supported by his cabinet colleague Brian Lenihan. Access to third-level education is also extended, the old scholarship system being replaced by a system of means-tested grants that give easier access to students without well-off parents.

Mid-twentieth century Ireland experiences significant emigration, especially to the neighbouring United Kingdom where, in addition to employment opportunities, there is a better state provision of education and healthcare. Social change in Ireland and policies intending to correct this deficit are often met with strong resistance, such as Noël Browne‘s proposed Mother and Child Scheme. As a former Health Minister, O’Malley has first-hand experience of running the department which had attempted to introduce this scheme and understood the processes that caused it to fail, such as resistance from Department of Finance and John Charles McQuaid. This influences his strategy in presenting the free-education proposal.

Shortly after O’Malley is appointed, he announces that from 1969 all education up to Intermediate Certificate level will be without cost, and free buses will bring students in rural areas to their nearest school, seemingly making this decision without consulting other ministers. However, he does discuss it with Lemass. Jack Lynch, who, as Minister for Finance, has to find the money to pay for the programme, is not consulted and is dismayed at the announcement.

By announcing the decision first to journalists and on a Saturday (during a month when the Dáil is in recess), the positive public reaction tempers resistance to the idea before the next cabinet meeting. O’Malley’s proposals are hugely popular with the public, and it is impossible for the government to go back on his word.

Some Irish commentators consider that O’Malley’s extension of education, changing Ireland from a land where the majority are schooled only to the age of 14 to a country with universal secondary-school education, indirectly leads to the Celtic Tiger boom of the 1990s-2000s when it is followed for some years by an extension of free education to primary degree level in university, a scheme that is launched in 1996 by the Labour Party and axed in 2009 by Fianna Fáil’s Batt O’Keeffe.

In 1967, O’Malley appoints Justice Eileen Kennedy to chair a committee to carry out a survey and report on the reformatory and industrial school systems. The report, which is published in 1970, is considered ground-breaking in many areas and comes to be known as the Kennedy Report. The Report makes recommendations about a number of matters, including the Magdalene laundries, in relation to which they are not acted upon. The report recommends the closure of a number of reformatories, including the latterly infamous reformatory at Daingean, County Offaly.

O’Malley’s reforms make him one of the most popular members of the government. He is affectionately known as “the School Man” for his work in education. His sudden death in Limerick on March 10, 1968, before his vision for the education system is completed, comes as a shock to the public. He is buried with a full Irish state funeral.

Following O’Malley’s death, his widow, Hilda O’Malley, does not run in the subsequent by-election for the seat he has left vacant. It is won narrowly by their nephew Desmond O’Malley. Hilda seeks the Fianna Fáil nomination for the 1969 Irish general election, but Fianna Fáil gives the party nomination to Desmond, as the sitting TD. Hilda runs as an Independent candidate in that election. After what proves a bitter campaign against her nephew, she fails to get the fourth seat in Limerick East by just 200 votes.


by Leave a comment

Attempted Assassination of Sir John French

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempts to assassinate British General John French, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in his car at Phoenix Park, Dublin, on December 19, 1919. French is unhurt, but one IRA Volunteer, Martin Savage, is killed. IRA volunteer Dan Breen and two Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) men and a driver are wounded. A Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) sergeant is knocked unconscious.

On a cold December day in 1919, a group of young IRA volunteers wait at a public house near the Ashtown gate of Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Some are from Dublin, members of Michael Collins’ recently created assassination unit, the Squad. Others are from farther afield, like Dan Breen and Seán Treacy from County Tipperary and Martin Savage from County Sligo.

They are waiting for Sir John French, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the most senior British official in the land. He is returning from a visit to the west of Ireland and has alighted at Ashtown train station before returning by car to his official residence, the Viceregal Lodge, in the Phoenix Park.

The IRA men have a signaler in a tree and when French’s car approaches, they attempt to block the road with a farm cart. However, they are too late to block the Lord Lieutenant’s car which sweeps through the impromptu barricade. Shots are fired and one policeman is wounded but French himself emerges unscathed.

A second car, which the IRA believes to contain French, bears the brunt of the volunteers’ revolver fire and grenades. Though the car is badly damaged, there are no casualties.

The third car in the convoy contains French’s military escort and the soldiers inside the vehicle return fire, killing one of the attackers, Martin Savage. Some of the volunteers attempt to recover his body but the Crown forces’ fire is too heavy. Savage’s body is left on the scene as the IRA party flees on bicycles back to the city.

The Irish Times, for one, expresses outrage at the attack, “the attempted assassination of the greatest of Irishmen” which it says will “shock Ireland” and force Sinn Féin, victorious in the election of the previous year, to reflect on whether it wants to be associated with “outrage and assassination.” “There will now be many throughout the world ready to attribute the character of a murder society to the whole new Irish movement.”

But some, even British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, are surprisingly unsympathetic. “They are bad shots” is his only remark on hearing of the attack.

Many in Ireland are even less sympathetic to hear of the escape of the Lord Lieutenant. The Irish Catholic bishops issue a statement the next day condemning not the attack but British rule in Ireland, which they characterise as “rule of the sword, utterly unsuited to a civilised nation.”

The attack is, in hindsight, a turning point, moving the standoff over Irish independence toward all out guerrilla warfare, but also, in a way, symbolising the eclipse of French and of his vision for what the country should be.

Sir John French’s health declines in 1920 and though he holds the position of Lord Lieutenant until April 1921, his central role in Irish affairs is eclipsed by new Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood. He wants to retire to his estates in Ireland in 1922 but is told it is simply too dangerous for him. During the Irish Civil War (1922-23), his country house at Drumdoe, County Roscommon, is raided by armed men who carry off much of the furniture.

French dies from cancer of the bladder at Deal Castle in Deal, Kent, England, on May 22, 1925.

(From: “Today in Irish History: 19 December 1919, The Attempted Assassination of Sir John French” by John Dorney, The Irish Story, http://www.theirishstory.com, December 18,2019 | Pictured: L to R, Sir John French and Martin Savage)


by Leave a comment

The Shooting Death of Eileen Quinn

Eileen Quinn, age 24 and within two months of the birth of her fourth child, is shot by Galway police on November 1, 1920, during the Irish War of Independence (1919-21), while holding her nine-month-old child in her arms and sitting on the lawn in front of her farmhouse at Kiltartan near Gort, bleeding to death later that night. She leaves three children, the eldest of whom is not yet four years old.

Afraid of ambushes, police have begun to “reconnoiter by fire,” shooting blindly into woods and possible ambush sites. Quinn is near one such site when the police open fire, and she is hit by a stray bullet.

At the time of the shooting, her husband Malachy Quinn, who is a farmer, is in Gort. Another messenger going to Ardrahan for Dr. Foley is, it is reported, wounded by a bullet. Uniformed men pass into Gort subsequently firing shots. When the lorry passes the house where the dying woman lay, the terror-stricken occupants flee by the back way.

Rev. Fr. John Considine, C.C., Gort, gives a graphic description of Quinn’s last moments.

“It is too awful, too inhuman, to contemplate.” These are Father Considine’s opening remarks concerning the tragedy. Pressed to explain what occurred, he says, “I have read of Turkish atrocities; I have read of the death of Joan of Arc; I have read of the sufferings of Nurse Cavell, and as I read those things I often felt my blood boil and I often prayed that the good God might change the minds and hearts of those cruel monsters.”

“Little did I then dream that I should witness a tragedy, an atrocity more hideous, more revolting, more frightful, more brutal, more cruel than any of those things, and here in our own little peaceful parish of Gort. My God, it is awful! About three o’clock on Tuesday, Malachy Quinn weeping bitterly, called for me. Father, says he, ‘I have just heard that my wife had been shot. Will you run down immediately?’ I procured a motor car and hurried to the scene. At the gateway there we beheld a large pool of blood. In the yard another pool, and the porch leading to the kitchen was covered with blood. I entered the room. Oh, God! what a sight. There lay the poor woman, the blood oozing out through her clothes.”

“She turned her eyes towards me and said, ‘Oh, Father John, I have been shot.’ ‘Shot!’ I exclaimed. ‘Yes,’ she replied. By whom, I asked. ‘Police’ she answered.”

Quinn then becomes weaker, Father Considine explains, and on rallying exclaims, “Father John, will you do something for me?” He tries to console her and administers the Last Sacrament.

“When I finished, she whispered to me, bring me Malachy, bring him to me, I hear him crying. I have something to tell him. I did so. What a scene. Then she became weak and fainted off. Gradually she became worse.”

“I sent word immediately to the Head Constable at Gort. He arrived with police and military. All seemed shocked at the tragedy. I asked him to go in and see the woman. He and his men felt the trial too much, as he answered, ‘I cannot.’ No trace of the bullet could be found.”

Continuing, Father Considine says Quinn is sitting on the lawn with her child when the lorry passes from which the fatal shot is fired. The bullet pierces her stomach and the child she is holding falls from her arms. She crawls over the wall into the yard, and then crawls to the porch to tell her servant that she has been shot. “Take in the little children!” she exclaims.

From 3:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. she lingers on in pain. Occasionally she clasps Father Considine’s hand and pulls him toward her, and says, “I’m done, I’m done!” At 10:30 her condition becomes worse, and they kneel by her bedside to recite the Rosary and prayers for the dying. She tries to join but is too weak.

At 10:45 p.m. the little children begin to cry, and with them the crowded house bursts into tears. As Father Considine reads the last prayer of the Ritual she looks around, then closes her eyes and dies.

Irish public opinion is outraged when a military court of inquiry subsequently returns a verdict of “death by misadventure.” Soon afterward, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Headquarters and the Chief of Police issue orders against wild firing from motor vehicles.

(From: The Galway Observer, November 1920)


by Leave a comment

Birth of George Francis Mitchell, Historian, Archaeologist & Educator

George Francis (Frank) Mitchell, FRS, HonFRSE, MRIA, environmental historian, archaeologist, geologist, and educator, is born on October 15, 1912, in Dublin.

Mitchell is the younger son of David William Mitchell, owner of a Dublin ironmongery and furniture business, and Francis Elizabeth Mitchell (née Kirby). His elder brother David becomes president of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) and his sister Lillias is a noted weaver and teacher. He is educated at The High School, Dublin, and Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he is a scholar in 1933 and receives a gold medal the following year. In 1934 he is appointed assistant to the professor of geology at TCD, and later is lecturer in geology (1940), reader in Irish archaeology (1959) and professor of Quaternary studies – a personal chair (1965). He is an efficient administrator and serves TCD successively as registrar, senior lecturer, and tutor, and after retirement is briefly a pro-chancellor of the university.

Mitchell’s major research focuses on the evolution of Ireland during the last two million years, particularly during the Quaternary since the retreat of the glacial ice over Ireland, and the effect man has had on this landscape. His interest in Quaternary studies begins in 1934, when he is appointed by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) as an assistant to the Danish botanist and Quaternary geologist Knud Jessen, who uses the distribution of ancient pollen grains to reconstruct vegetational history. From 1940 he publishes a series of papers on topics such as the distribution of Irish giant deer and reindeer remains in Ireland, lacustrine deposits in County Meath, interglacial deposits in southeast Ireland, the palynology of Irish raised bogs, cave deposits, fossil pingos in County Wexford, bog flows, and the deposits of the older Pleistocene period in Ireland. His major study in this field is the documentation (1965) of the vegetational history of Littleton bog, County Tipperary, which has given its name to the present interglacial – the Littletonian warm stage.

Mitchell does not confine his studies to Ireland but also carries out work in Glasgow, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man. In 1957, he helps organise the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Dublin and is later chairman of the Geological Society of London sub-commission on British and Irish Quaternary stratigraphy, which produces a comprehensive report in 1973. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and a prolific author of academic papers, and in later life writes several acclaimed books, including The Irish Landscape (1976), which goes through two further editions as Reading the Irish Landscape (1986, 1997), and a volume of semi-autobiography, The Way That I Followed (1990).

Although the recipient of many honours, Mitchell is modest about his achievements. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) (1939), its president (1976–79), and Cunningham medalist (1989); president of the Dublin Naturalists’ Field Club (1945–46); Fellow of Trinity College Dublin (1945); president of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI) (1957–60); president of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland (RZSI) (1958–61); president of the International Union for Quaternary Research (1969–73); Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) (1973); founder member and later president (1991–93) of An Taisce; Boyle medalist of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) (1978); pro-chancellor of Dublin University (1985–87); personal chair in Quaternary studies, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) (1965–79); honorary member, Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) (1981); honorary life member, Royal Dublin Society (RDS) (1981); honorary member, The Prehistoric Society (1983); honorary member, Quaternary Research Association (1983); honorary member, International Association for Quaternary Research (1985); and honorary fellow, Royal Society of Edinburgh (1984). He receives honorary degrees from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) (D.Sc., 1976), the National University of Ireland (NUI) (D.Sc., 1977), and Uppsala University (fil.D., 1977).

Mitchell dies on November 25, 1997, in Townley Hall, County Louth.

In 1940, Mitchell marries Lucy Margaret (‘Pic’) (1911–87), daughter of E. J. Gwynn, provost of TCD. They have two daughters. For many years they live at Townley Hall, near Drogheda, County Louth, which had been TCD’s agricultural facility. A 1985 portrait by David Hone is displayed at Trinity College Dublin.

(From: “Mitchell, George Francis (‘Frank’)” by Patrick N. Wyse Jackson, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


by Leave a comment

Death of Muriel Gifford MacDonagh

Muriel MacDonagh (née Gifford), Irish nationalist and member of Inghinidhe na hÉireann, dies in Skerries, Dublin, on July 9, 1917. Her husband, Thomas MacDonagh, is one of the signees of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, which leads to the Easter Rising of 1916.

Muriel Enid Gifford is born at 12 Cowper Road, Rathmines, on December 18, 1884. She is the fourth daughter and eighth child of twelve of Frederick and Isabella Gifford. As a child, she suffers at different times from rheumatic fever and phlebitis. She attends Alexandra College and spends a brief time in England training to as a poultry instructor. Returning to Ireland, she trains at Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital, Dublin, as a student nurse, but her health suffers from the work.

Along with her sisters, MacDonagh is active in the Irish Women’s Franchise League and Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a nationalist organisation. She is involved in the school meals programme of 1910 to 1911, takes part in a 1914 Women’s Franchise League fundraiser, appearing in a tableau vivant as Maeve, the Warrior Queen. Less ardently feminist than her sisters, she takes delight in inviting home activists and artists for a “proper meal.” In an outgoing family, she is shy and reserved, known for her gentle manner. In 1908, she is introduced to Thomas MacDonagh by suffragette journalist Nannie Dryhurst along with her sisters, Grace and Sidney, on a visit to St. Enda’s School. Dryhurst advises Thomas to “fall in love with one of these girls and marry her,” to which he replies laughingly, “That would be easy; the only difficulty would be to decide which one.” The Gifford sisters remain acquaintances with Thomas until the autumn of 1911, when the couple has a short and intense courtship. They meet secretly in galleries and museums and have copious correspondence. When he is appointed assistant lecturer to University College Dublin (UCD) in December 1911, they marry on January 3, 1912. They have one son, Donagh MacDonagh, and one daughter, Barbara MacDonagh Redmond. The family lives first at 32 Baggot Street, and later at 29 Oakley Road, Rathmines.

MacDonagh suffers with poor health and depression, which leads to periods of convalescence and confinement. When her husband is arrested after the Easter Rising, she is unable to see him before his execution on May 3, 1916, which heightens the intensity of her bereavement. Devastated by his death and estranged from her parents due to their disapproval of his involvement in the Rising, she briefly lives with the Plunketts at Larkfield, Kimmage, and then with relatives of her husband in Thurles, County Tipperary. She later returns to Dublin to rent rooms in a Plunkett family property, 50 Marlborough Road. With two young children to support, she is nearly destitute, but like the other widows and orphans of the executed leaders of the Rising, they are aided by the Irish Volunteers Dependents’ Fund, in her case with £250. She also serves as an officer and committee member on this aid association. Her husband had named her as his literary executor, and she prepares a collected edition of his poetry that is published in October 1916. The success of this volume, and his bestselling Literature in Ireland, published at the time he is executed, ease her financial difficulties somewhat.

MacDonagh converts to Catholicism on May 3, 1917.

MacDonagh dies while swimming in the sea during a holiday with other 1916 widows and orphans in Skerries, County Dublin, on July 9, 1917. She almost does not attend the holiday, as her son is in hospital having been injured in a fall. It is believed that she is attempting to swim to Shenick Island from Skerries, possibly to place a tricolour flag on the island’s Martello tower. Her body is found near Loughshinny Beach and, as there is no water in her lungs, it is concluded that she died of heart failure and not drowning. As there is great interest in the 1916 widows and their families, her funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery attracts a large crowd of mourners estimated at 5,000 in the funeral procession.

Following MacDonagh’s death, there is a legal custody battle between the Giffords and the MacDonaghs over Donagh and Barbara. Their aunt Mary MacDonagh, a nun known as Sister Francesca and with whom MacDonagh had grown close, wins custody. Even though several of her siblings offer to take the children, she places them in a foster home.

On the centenary of MacDonagh’s death, a festival takes place in Skerries in her memory.