seamus dubhghaill

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Birth of Margaret Pearse, Politician & Mother of Patrick Pearse

Margaret Pearse (née Brady), Irish politician and mother of Patrick and Willie Pearse, who are both executed after the 1916 Easter Rising, is born in Dublin on February 12, 1857.

Margaret Brady is born to Patrick Brady, a coal merchant whose family are from County Meath, and Brigid Brady (née Savage) of Oldtown, Dublin. She is baptised in St. Lawrence O’Toole’s parish. At the time, her parents are living at 1 Clarence Street. She has three known siblings and is educated by the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. She is employed as a stationery shop assistant where she meets her future husband, James Pearse.

In 1877, she marries James Pearse at St. Agatha’s Church, off the North Strand. James is born in Bloomsbury, Middlesex, on December 8, 1839, and later lives in Birmingham. He comes to Ireland to work as a sculptor in the late 1850s with his first wife, Emily Susanna Fox, who dies in 1876. They have four children together. The first three children are Margaret Mary (born on August 4, 1878), Patrick (born on November 10, 1879) and William (born on November 15, 1881). All three children are born while the family lives in 27 Great Brunswick Street. Their youngest child, Mary Brigid, is born on September 29, 1888, by which time the family has moved to Newbridge Avenue, Sandymount. Pearse’s aunt, Margaret Brady, an Irish speaker, is a frequent visitor to the family home and encourages the children’s interest in the Irish language and culture. Her husband dies in 1900. Pearse does not permit her children to play with other children, however, she supports her children in all their aspirations. She has a very strong relationship and consequent effect on her eldest son, Patrick, who founds St. Enda’s School in 1908 and is the headmaster up until the time of his execution. She takes over the responsibility of Housekeeper at the school.

Pearse supports her sons’ political beliefs. After their execution, she wishes to maintain their legacy and becomes involved in political life. She joins Sinn Féin after the Rising and gives support and endorsement to candidates during the 1918 Westminster election. During the 1920 Poor Law Elections for the Rathmines area of Dublin, she stands as a Sinn Féin candidate and is elected on the first count. She is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin County constituency at the 1921 Irish elections.

Pearse strongly opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty, as do all the female TDs. She states during the Treaty debate that:

“I rise to support the motion of our President for the rejection of the Treaty. My reasons for doing so are various, but my first reason for doing so I would like to explain here today is my son’s account. It has been said here on several occasions that Patrick Pearse would have accepted this Treaty. I deny it. As his mother I deny it, and on his account, I will not accept it.”

Later she continues in a similar vein:

“Always we had to be on the alert. But even the Black and Tans alone would not frighten me as much as if I accepted this Treaty; because I feel in my heart – and I would not say it only I feel it – that the ghosts of my sons would haunt me.”

Following the ratification of the Treaty Pearse leaves the Dáil with the other anti-Treaty deputies. She is defeated at the 1922 Irish general election. She supports those who oppose the Treaty during the Irish Civil War and continues to be a member of Sinn Féin until 1926. In 1926 she leaves the party conference with Éamon de Valera and becomes a founder member of Fianna Fáil. She never stands for election again.

At the launch of The Irish Press newspaper, Pearse is asked to press the button to start the printers rolling. At many public occasions she states that were her sons alive they too would have joined Fianna Fáil. Accordingly, Patrick Pearse is recognised as the spiritual figurehead of the party to this day.

After Patrick’s death, the responsibility for running the school falls to Pearse and her two daughters. As Patrick Pearse had died without a will, the school is left in a precarious financial position. In May 1924, when she is aged 70, she undertakes a trip to the United States to raise funds for the school, alongside showing support for Éamon de Valera and the Irish Republic. At an event in Brooklyn on May 19, 1924, when referencing the execution of her two sons, she declares herself the “proudest mother in Ireland.” She also states that Michael Collins had attempted to “bribe” her with an offer to subsidise the school, which she refused. During a meeting in Seattle on August 11, 1924, she again discusses her sons and how she believes “the best way to honour their memory was to carry on their work for Ireland.” She raises over $10,000 in donations for the school during the trip. Notwithstanding her fundraising activities, St. Enda’s continues to decline and eventually closes in 1935. Great Brunswick Street, where she and the Pearse family originally lived, is renamed Pearse Street in 1920 by a resolution passed at the Dublin City Council meeting.

Pearse dies on April 22, 1932. She is honoured with a large state funeral and a motion is passed at the meeting of Dublin City Council expressing sympathy with the Pearse family. On April 26, 1932, sizeable crowds pay their respects as her funeral procession makes its way through the streets of Dublin. At the General Post Office (GPO), where Patrick and William fought during the Easter Rising, the funeral cortege pauses for a minute of silence before proceeding to Glasnevin Cemetery. Éamon de Valera gives an oration as she is laid to rest, which praises her inspiring courage, charity and cheerfulness during the years after her son’s death.

After Pearse’s death, her daughter, Mary Margaret, continues to reside at St. Enda’s. She also joins Fianna Fáil, and serves as a TD from 1933 to 1937 and later serves in Seanad Éireann as a Senator from 1938 until her death in 1968. Upon her death, as per her mother’s request, she passes St. Enda’s on to the people of Ireland.


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Death of John Daly, Leading Member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood

John Daly, Irish republican and a leading member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), dies in Limerick, County Limerick, on June 30, 1916. He is uncle to Kathleen Clarke, wife of Tom Clarke who is executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising and who is a leading member of the IRB, and her brother Edward “Ned” Daly who is also executed in 1916. Daly briefly serves as a member of the British Parliament but is resented for having previously been convicted for treason against the British state. He also serves as Mayor of Limerick for three years at the turn of the century.

Daly is born in Limerick on October 18, 1845. His father works in James Harvey & Son’s Timber Yard. At the age of sixteen, he joins his father working as a lath splitter. At eighteen he is sworn in as a member of the IRB, also known as the Fenians, and becomes fully involved in Republican activities. When he is refused absolution in confession because he admits to being a Fenian, he decides that from then on, his loyalty will no longer be to “faith and Fatherland” but to “God and Fatherland.”

On November 22, 1866, Daly and his brother Edward are arrested at their family home having been betrayed by an informer, for running a munitions factory in the Pennywell district close to their home. He is released on bail in February 1867 toughened and more dedicated by the experience.

On March 5, 1867, the ill-prepared Fenian Rising takes place. Daly takes charge of the Limerick detachment of the IRB. Limerick is one of the few areas where the Fenians are able to make some show of force, however weak. Through lack of numbers, they fail to make a significant impact on the vastly superior forces arrayed against them. Moving out of the city, he moves his men into the country and joins up with other Fenians in an attack on the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks at Kilmallock. The attack is repelled, and Daly disperse his men.

After this Daly flees the country by stowing away first on a boat, the Hollywood, to England, and from London then on board the Cornelius Grenfel to the United States.

Life in America for working class immigrants is particularly tough and Daly’s first job on leaving the ship is digging a cellar. He then obtains work in a white lead factory and works for a while as a mason’s helper before getting a reasonably good job as a brakeman on a tram system. He is to recall these experiences in his Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism.

In 1869, Daly return to Ireland and takes up his old job in the timber yard, and also his Republican activities. He begins to help reorganise the IRB and takes part in a number of agitations to keep the IRB agenda in the public view. He becomes a leading voice in the Amnesty Association to help in the release of those Fenians still in jail.

In November 1869, a major tenants’ right meeting takes place in the city. The IRB objects to the meeting because the issue of the prisoners is not on the agenda. In what comes to be known as “The Battle of the Markets,” the IRB charges the platform and succeeds in dismantling it. Though the organisers of the meeting attempt to hold some form of gathering, Daly and the IRB refuse to relent. It is Daly’s opinion that “it was one of the greatest moral victories ever achieved.” The issue of the political prisoners is to keep him occupied for much of the 1870s. In 1876, he is again arrested for disturbing another home rule gathering, though on being brought before the court he is acquitted.

During the Land War Daly is a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB and becomes organiser for Connacht and Ulster.

In the summer of 1883, Daly moved to Birmingham, England, and settles in the home of James Egan, an old friend from Limerick and a generally inactive IRB man. E.G. Jenkinson, head of Special Branch, is informed that Daly is on his way to Britain from the United States. He has been asked by the Supreme Council to deliver the graveside oration at the funeral of Charles J. Kickham while in the United States. When he arrives, a plain-clothes detective is assigned to follow him at all times. As a result of this, Special Branch are alerted to the importance of John Torley in Glasgow, Robert Johnston in Belfast and Mark Ryan in London of the IRB.

Jenkinson uses agent provocateurs in his attempts to convict Republicans. One such recruit is a publican and local IRB man named Dan O’Neill. Both Jenkinson and a Major Nicholas Gosselin persuade O’Neill to betray Daly. O’Neill then asks Daly to deliver sealed cases to some associates in London, and on April 11, he is arrested as he is about to board the train for London, and explosives are found in the case he is carrying. The police then raid the home of James Egan where explosives are “allegedly found buried” in Egan’s garden in addition to some documents.

In Chatham prison Daly becomes friends with Tom Clarke, who would later marry his niece Kathleen and who was a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising. While in prison he claims that he is being poisoned with belladonna which causes an investigation by a commission of inquiry in 1890. It is admitted by prison officials as an error by a warder. A series of articles in the Daily Chronicle in 1894 analyse prison methods. Daly gives an interview to the Chronicle which appears on September 12, 1896.

Daly is elected unopposed as a member of parliament (MP) for Limerick City at the 1895 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, as a member of the Parnellite Irish National League (INL). However, he is disqualified on August 19, 1895, as a treason-felon. In August 1896, he goes on a lecture tour of England with Maud Gonne and in 1897 on a tour of the United States which is organised by John Devoy. He later founds a prosperous bakery business in Limerick and goes on to become Mayor of his native city.

Daly is elected three times as Mayor of Limerick City, from 1899 to 1901. He jointly finances with Patrick McCartan the IRB newspaper Irish Freedom in 1910.

Daly dies on June 30, 1916, at his home, 15 Barrington Street, Limerick. He never marries. A tall, energetic, and gregarious man, he is a simple but often effective propagandist for the separatist cause.

In 1928, Madge Daly, a niece of Daly, presents the Daly cup to William P. Clifford, the then-chairman of the Limerick GAA county board. Since then, the Daly cup is presented to the winners of the Limerick Senior Hurling Championship.

(Pictured: Irish Republican and Fenian John Daly in the ceremonial garb of the Mayor of Limerick, circa 1900)


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John Boland Becomes First Irish Olympic Gold Medal Winner

On March 30, 1896, an Irishman wins an Olympic gold medal for the first time when John Mary Pius Boland triumphs in tennis at the first modern Olympics, which take place in Athens, Greece. In addition to being a gold medalist tennis player, he is an Irish Nationalist politician and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) for South Kerry from 1900 to 1918.

Boland is born on September 16, 1870, at 135 Capel Street, Dublin, to Patrick Boland, businessman, and Mary Donnelly. Following the death of his mother in 1882, he is placed with his six siblings under the guardianship of his uncle, Nicholas Donnelly, auxiliary bishop of Dublin.

Boland is educated at two private Catholic schools, the Catholic University School, Dublin, and Birmingham Oratory in Birmingham, England, where he becomes head boy. His secondary education at the two schools help give him the foundation and understanding to play an influential role in the politics of Great Britain and Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century, when he is a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, which pursues constitutional Home Rule.

In 1892, Boland graduates with a BA from London University. He studies for a semester in Bonn, Germany, where he is a member of Bavaria Bonn, a student fraternity that is member of the Cartellverband. He studies law at Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with a BA in 1896 and MA in 1901. Although called to the Bar in 1897, he never practises.

Boland is the first Olympic champion in tennis for Great Britain and Ireland at the first modern Olympics, which take place in Athens in 1896. He visits his friend Thrasyvoulos Manos in Athens during the Olympics, and Manos, a member of the organising committee, enters Boland in the tennis tournament. He promptly wins the singles tournament, defeating Friedrich Traun of Germany in the first round, Evangelos Rallis of Greece in the second, Konstantinos Paspatis of Greece in the semifinals, and Dionysios Kasdaglis of Greece in the final.

Boland then enters the doubles event with Traun, the German runner whom he had defeated in the first round of the singles. Together, they win the doubles event. They defeat Aristidis and Konstantinos Akratopoulos of Greece in the first round, have a bye in the semifinals, and defeat Demetrios Petrokokkinos of Greece and Dimitrios Kasdaglis in the final. When the Union Jack and the German flag are run up the flagpole to honour Boland and Traun’s victory, Boland points out to the man hoisting the flags that he is Irish, adding “It [the Irish flag]’s a gold harp on a green ground, we hope.” The officials agreed to have an Irish flag prepared.

Following a visit to County Kerry, Boland becomes concerned about the lack of literacy among the native population. He also has a keen interest in the Irish Language.

Boland’s patriotic stand is well received in nationalist circles in Ireland. This and a lifelong friendship with John Redmond gain for him an invitation to stand as a candidate for the Irish Parliamentary Party in the safe seat of South Kerry, which he holds from 1900 to 1918. He is unopposed in the general elections of 1900 and 1906, and the first of 1910. In the second election of 1910 he is challenged by a local man, T. B. Cronin, who stands as an independent nationalist in the interest of William O’Brien. Boland stands down at the 1918 United Kingdom general election.

In 1908, Boland is appointed a member of the commission for the foundation of the National University of Ireland (NUI). From 1926 to 1947, he is General Secretary of the Catholic Truth Society. He receives a papal knighthood, becoming a Knight of St. Gregory in recognition for his work in education. In 1950, he is awarded an honorary Doctor of Law by the NUI.

Boland marries Eileen Moloney at SS Peter and Edward, Palace Street, Westminster, on October 22, 1902, the daughter of an Australian Dr. Patrick Moloney. They have one son and five daughters. His daughter Honor Crowley succeeds her husband Frederick Crowley upon his death sitting as Fianna Fáil TD for South Kerry from 1945 until her death in 1966. His daughter Bridget Boland is a playwright who notably writes The Prisoner and co-writes the script for Gaslight, and, among other books, co-authors Old Wives’ Lore for Gardeners with her sister, Maureen Boland.

Boland dies at his home, 40 St George’s Square, in London on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1958.


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The Birmingham Pub Bombings

The Birmingham pub bombings are carried out on November 21, 1974, when bombs explode in two public houses in Birmingham, England, killing 21 people and injuring 182 others. The bombings are one of the deadliest acts of the Troubles, and the deadliest act of terrorism to occur in England between World War II and the 2005 London bombings.

In 1973, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) extends its campaign to mainland Britain, attacking military and symbolically important targets to both increase pressure on the British government, via popular British opinion, to withdraw from Northern Ireland and to maintain morale amongst their supporters. By 1974, mainland Britain sees an average of one attack — successful or otherwise — every three days.

In the early evening hours of November 21, at least three bombs connected to timing devices are planted inside two separate public houses and outside a bank located in and around central Birmingham. It is unknown precisely when these bombs were planted. If official IRA protocol of preceding attacks upon non-military installations with a 30-minute advance warning to security services is followed, and subsequent eyewitness accounts are accurate, the bombs would have been planted at these locations after 7:30 p.m. and before 7:47 p.m.

According to testimony delivered at the 1975 trial of the six men wrongly convicted of the bombings, the bomb planted inside the Mulberry Bush pub is concealed inside either a duffel bag or briefcase, whereas the bomb planted inside the Tavern in the Town is concealed inside a briefcase or duffel bag (possibly concealed within a large, sealed plastic bag) and Christmas cracker boxes. The remnants of two alarm clocks recovered from the site of each explosion leaves the possibility that two bombs had been planted at each public house. The explosion crater at each location indicates that if two bombs had been planted at each public house, they would each have been placed in the same location and likely the same container.

Reportedly, those who plant the bombs then walk to a preselected phone box to telephone the advance warning to security services. However, the phone box has been vandalised, forcing the caller to find an alternative phone box and thus shortening the amount of time police have to clear the locations.

At 8:11 p.m., an unknown man with a distinct Irish accent telephones the Birmingham Post newspaper. The call is answered by operator Ian Cropper. The caller says, “There is a bomb planted in the Rotunda and there is a bomb in New Street at the tax office. This is Double X,” before terminating the call. (“Double X” is an IRA code word given to authenticate any warning call.) A similar warning is also sent to the Birmingham Evening Mail newspaper, with the anonymous caller again giving the code word, but again failing to name the public houses in which the bombs had been planted.

The Rotunda is a 25-story office block, built in the 1960s, that houses the Mulberry Bush pub on its lower two floors. Within minutes of the warning, police arrive and begin checking the upper floors of the Rotunda, but they do not have sufficient time to clear the crowded pub at street level. At 8:17 p.m., six minutes after the first telephone warning had been delivered to the Birmingham Post, the bomb, which had been concealed inside either a duffel bag or briefcase located ner the rear entrance to the premises, explodes, devastating the pub. The explosion blows a 40-inch crater in the concrete floor, collapsing part of the roof and trapping many casualties beneath girders and concrete blocks. Many buildings near the Rotunda are also damaged, and pedestrians in the street are struck by flying glass from shattered windows. Several of the victims die at the scene, including two youths who had been walking past the premises at the moment of the explosion.

Ten people are killed in this explosion and dozens are injured, including many who lose limbs. Several casualties are impaled by sections of wooden furniture while others have their clothes burned from their bodies. A paramedic called to the scene of this explosion later describes the carnage as being reminiscent of a slaughterhouse. One fireman says that, upon seeing a writhing, “screaming torso,” he begs police to allow a television crew inside the premises to film the dead and dying at the scene, in the hope the IRA would see the consequences of their actions. However, the police refuse this request, fearing the reprisals would be extreme.

The Tavern in the Town is a basement pub on New Street located a short distance from the Rotunda and directly beneath the New Street Tax Office. Patrons there hear the explosion at the Mulberry Bush, but do not believe that the sound, described by one survivor as a “muffled thump,” is an explosion.

Police have begun attempting to clear the Tavern in the Town when, at 8:27 p.m., a second bomb explodes there. The blast is so powerful that several victims are blown through a brick wall. Their remains are wedged between the rubble and live underground electric cables that supply the city centre. One of the first police officers on the scene, Brian Yates, later testifies that the scene which greeted his eyes was “absolutely dreadful,” with several of the dead stacked upon one another, others strewn about the ruined pub, and several screaming survivors staggering aimlessly amongst the debris, rubble, and severed limbs. A survivor says the sound of the explosion is replaced by a “deafening silence” and the smell of burned flesh.

Rescue efforts at the Tavern in the Town are initially hampered as the bomb had been placed at the base of a set of stairs descending from the street, the sole entrance to the premises, had been destroyed in the explosion. The victims whose bodies are blown through a brick wall and wedged between the rubble and underground electric cables take up to three hours to recover, as recovery operations are delayed until the power can be isolated. A passing West Midlands bus is also destroyed in the blast.

This bomb kills nine people outright, and injures everyone in the pub, many severely. Two later die of their injuries. After the second explosion, police evacuate all pubs and businesses in Birmingham city centre and commandeer all available rooms in the nearby City Centre Hotel as an impromptu first-aid post. All bus services into the city centre are halted, and taxi drivers are encouraged to transport those lightly injured in the explosions to hospital. Prior to the arrival of ambulances, rescue workers remove critically injured casualties from each scene upon makeshift stretchers constructed from devices such as tabletops and wooden planks. These severely injured casualties are placed on the pavement and given first aid prior to the arrival of ambulance services.

At 9:15 p.m., a third bomb, concealed inside two plastic bags, is found in the doorway of a Barclays Bank on Hagley Road, approximately two miles from the site of the first two explosions. This device consists of 13.5 pounds of Frangex connected to a timer and is set to detonate at 11:00 p.m. The detonator to the device activates when a policeman prods the bags with his truncheon, but the bomb does not explode. The device is destroyed in a controlled explosion early the following morning.

The bombings stoke considerable anti-Irish sentiment in Birmingham, which then has an Irish community of 100,000. Irish people are ostracised from public places and subjected to physical assaults, verbal abuse and death threats. Both in Birmingham and across England, Irish homes, pubs, businesses and community centres are attacked, in some cases with firebombs. Staff at thirty factories across the Midlands go on strike in protest of the bombings, while workers at airports across England refuse to handle flights bound for Ireland. Bridget Reilly, the mother of the two Irish brothers killed in the Tavern in the Town explosion, is herself refused service in local shops.

The bombings are immediately blamed on the IRA, despite the organisation not having claimed responsibility. Due to anger against Irish people in Birmingham after the bombings, the IRA Army Council places the city “strictly off-limits” to IRA active service units. In Northern Ireland, loyalist paramilitaries launch a wave of revenge attacks on Irish Catholics and within two days of the bombings, five Catholic civilians have been shot dead by loyalists. The Provisional IRA never officially admits responsibility for the Birmingham pub bombings.

Six Irishmen are arrested within hours of the blasts and in 1975 are sentenced to life imprisonment for the bombings. The men, who become known as the Birmingham Six, maintain their innocence and insist police had coerced them into signing false confessions through severe physical and psychological abuse. After 16 years in prison, and a lengthy campaign, their convictions are declared unsafe and unsatisfactory, and quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1991. The episode is seen as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history.

In 2001, each of the Birmingham Six is subsequently paid between £840,000 and £1.2 million in compensation.

(Pictured: The Mulberry Bush pub after the November 21, 1974, bombing)


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Death of Major General William Hickie, Irish-Born British Army Officer

Major General Sir William Bernard Hickie, KCB, Irish-born senior British Army officer and Irish nationalist politician dies in Dublin on November 3, 1950. He sees active service in the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1902, is Assistant Quartermaster General in the Irish Command from 1912 to 1914 and serves in World War I from 1914 to 1918. He commands a brigade of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 and is commander of the 16th (Irish) Division from 1915 on the Western Front.

Hickie is born on May 21, 1865, at Slevoir, Terryglass, near Borrisokane, County Tipperary, the eldest of the eight children of Colonel James Francis Hickie and his wife Lucila Larios y Tashara, originally of Castile. He is educated at St. Mary’s College, Oscott, Birmingham, England, a renowned seminary for training youths of prosperous Roman Catholic families.

Hickie attends the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from 1882 to 1885. He is commissioned into his father’s regiment, the Royal Fusiliers at Gibraltar, in 1885 and serves with them for thirteen years in the Mediterranean, Egypt, and India, during which time he is promoted to captain on November 18, 1892. In 1899 he graduates as captain at the Staff College, Camberley, and is selected when the Second Boer War breaks out as a Special Service Officer in which capacity he acts in various positions of authority and command. He leaves Southampton for South Africa on board the SS Canada in early February 1900 and is promoted from captain of mounted infantry to battalion command as major on March 17, 1900. He is subsequently in command of a corps until eventually at the end of 1900 he is given command of an independent column of all arms. He holds this position for eighteen months. He serves with distinction at the Battle of Bothaville in November 1900 and receives the brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel on November 29, 1900. He serves in South Africa throughout the war, which ends with the Treaty of Vereeniging in June 1902. Four months later he leaves Cape Town on the SS Salamis with other officers and men of the 2nd battalion Royal Fusiliers, arriving at Southampton in late October, when the battalion is posted to Aldershot Garrison. In December 1902 he is elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS).

After the end of the war in South Africa there follows various staff appointments, the first from December 1902 as deputy-assistant adjutant general for district staff in the Cork district. In 1907 Hickie is back in regimental service in Dublin and Mullingar with the 1st Royal Fusiliers, where he is in command of the regiment for the last two years. From 1909 to 1912 is appointed to the Staff of the 8th Infantry Division in Cork where for four years he is well known in the hunting field and on the polo ground. In May 1912, he is promoted to colonel and becomes Quartermaster General of the Irish Command at Royal Hospital Kilmainham for which he is appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath.

When war is declared, the Staff of the Irish Command becomes automatically the staff of the II Army Corps and accordingly with the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Hickie is promoted to brigadier general and, as part of the British Expeditionary Force in France, takes charge of the Adjutant and Quartermaster-General’s Department during the retreat of the II Corps after the Battle of Mons, to Paris, and during the First Battle of the Marne. In mid-September 1914, he relieves one of the brigadiers in the fighting line as commander of the 13th Brigade (5th Infantry Division) and then commands the 53rd Brigade (18th Infantry Division) until December 1915, when he is ordered home to assume command of the 16th (Irish) Division at Blackburn.

Promoted to major general, Hickie takes over from Lieutenant General Sir Lawrence Parsons. It is politically a highly sensitive appointment which requires the professionalism and political awareness he, fortunately, possesses as the division is formed around a core of Irish National Volunteers in response to Edward Carson‘s Ulster Volunteers. He is much more diplomatic and tactful than his predecessors and speaks of the pride which his new command gives him but does not hesitate to make sweeping changes amongst the senior officers of the Irish Division. After putting the division through intensive training, it leaves under Irish command of which each man takes personal pride. It arrives in December 1915.

In the next two years and four months during which Hickie commands the 16th (Irish) Division, it earns a reputation for aggression and élan and wins many memorials and mentions for bravery in the engagements during the 1916 Battle of Guillemont and the capture of Ginchy, both of which form part of the Battle of the Somme, then during the Battle of Messines, the Third Battle of Ypres and in attacks near Bullecourt in the Battle of Cambrai offensive in November 1917.

During this period the Division makes considerable progress in developing its operational techniques but at a price in losses. The growing shortage of Irish replacement recruits, due to nationalist disenchantment with the war and the absence of conscription in Ireland, is successfully met by Hickie by integrating non-Irish soldiers into the division.

In February 1918, Hickie is invalided home on temporary sick leave, but when in the hospital the German spring offensive begins on March 21, with the result that after his division moves under the command of General Hubert Gough it is practically wiped out and ceases to exist as a division. Although promised a new command, this does not happen before the Armistice in November. He typifies the army’s better divisional commanders, is articulate, intelligent and is competent and resourceful during the BEF’s difficult period 1916–17, laying the foundations for its full tactical success in 1918. He is advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1918.

Hickie retires from the army in 1922, when the six Irish line infantry regiments that have their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new Irish Free State are all disbanded. He identifies himself strongly with the Home Rule Act and says that its scrapping is a disaster and is equally outspoken in condemning the activities of the Black and Tans. In 1925, he is elected as a member of Seanad Éireann, the Irish Free State Senate.

Hickie holds his seat until the Seanad is dissolved in 1936, to be replaced by Seanad Éireann in 1937. He is President of the Area Council (Southern Ireland) of the Royal British Legion from 1925 to 1948. He never marries.

Hickie dies on November 3, 1950, in Dublin and is buried in Terryglass, County Tipperary.


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“The Siege of Rochelle” First Performed at Drury Lane Theatre

Irish composer Michael William Balfe‘s opera The Siege of Rochelle is first performed at the Drury Lane Theatre in London on October 29, 1835.

The opera is originally prepared for the English Opera House but for some reason the theatrical manager, Samuel James Arnold, does not want it. Instead, Alfred Bunn, the manager of Drury Lane Theatre, seizes the opportunity and begins what is a very fruitful collaboration with Balfe that lasts a decade. Balfe is to become the mainstay of English Opera for almost the next 30 years with a succession of popular operas.

The opera runs for 70 nights on its initial run and is revived in the following three seasons with Balfe singing the role of Michel. Queen Victoria sees the opera on November 15, 1837, her first state visit to a theatre during her reign. In 1836, the opera is reported as staged in Leeds, York, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Bath and Dublin with Abigail Betts as Clara. John Wilson, who sings in the initial run of the opera, also sings in, at least, some of these. Madame Balfe chooses the opera for her benefit in 1841, and Bunn opens his 1843 season with it on September 30. Emma Romer uses it to open her 1853 season at the Surrey Theatre, although it is being described by then as “somewhat hacknied.”

October 1875 sees a revival of the opera by the Carl Rosa Opera Company at the Princess’s Theatre, and it is then included in the company’s repertoire that tours to Manchester in 1875, Liverpool in 1876, Birmingham in 1877 and Dublin in 1879. The Turner Company tours it in 1893. This is possibly the opera’s last performance until the Wexford Festival Opera performances in 1963. The overture and songs from the opera, such as “When I beheld the anchor weigh’d” continue to retain a place in the concert hall and the home into the 20th century.

In 1838, the opera is performed by the Caradori-Allan troupe at the Park Theatre in New York but fails although it appears to be retained in the repertory. In 1839, it is performed again in Dublin with Balfe as Michel and in Sydney in 1848.

The opera’s production sparks an acrimonious argument between a correspondent in The Examiner accusing Balfe of plagiarism from Luigi Ricci‘s 1832 opera, Chiara di Rosemberg, and, in defence, Frederick Beale, from Balfe’s publishers, and Balfe. The matter seems to be settled in Balfe’s favour when the score of Chiara di Rosemberg is displayed at music publisher Cramer, Beale and Co. so that people can compare the two for themselves. While Edward Fitzball probably uses Ricci’s libretto as the basis for his, it does not seem to have been a straight translation, as some allege, but similarities would help to feed the accusations of plagiarism, bolstered by the Italian training and approach of both composers and the fact that Balfe had sung in Chiara di Rosemberg in Italy in 1834.

Balfe is said to have been paid £5 a night by Bunn and 400 guineas for the score by the publishers Cramer, Beale and Co. In 1871, the Bury and Norwich Post (April 11, 1871) report that the copyright has sold for £156 and just over ten years later the Aberdeen Evening Express (May 8, 1883) notes that the copyright has been sold again for approximately £20, adding “So much for Balfe’s ‘popularity.”


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Death of George Derwent Thomson, Philosopher & Scholar of the Irish Language

George Derwent Thomson (Irish: Seoirse Mac Tomáis), English classical scholar, Marxist philosopher, and scholar of the Irish language, dies on February 3, 1987, at his home in Moseley, Birmingham, England.

Thomson is born on August 19, 1903, in West Dulwich, London, the eldest of a family of three sons and two daughters born to William Henry Thomson, an accountant, and his wife Minnie (née Clements). Inheriting an interest in Ireland from his maternal grandfather, an Ulsterman of Orange stock, and his mother, he attends Irish language classes run by the Gaelic League in London while a pupil at Dulwich College (1916–22).

Awarded a scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, in 1922, Thomson studies classics, where he attains First Class Honours in the Classical Tripos and subsequently wins a scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin (TCD). At TCD he works on his first book, Greek Lyric Metre, and begins visiting the Blasket Islands in the early 1920s. He becomes lecturer and then Professor of Greek at University College Galway.

Thomson moves back to England in 1934, when he returns to King’s College, Cambridge, to lecture in Greek. He becomes a professor at the University of Birmingham in 1936, the year he joins the Communist Party of Great Britain. He pioneers a Marxist interpretation of Greek drama. His Aeschylus and Athens (1941) and Marxism and Poetry (1945) win him international attention. In the latter book he argues a connection between the work song and poetry, and that pre-industrial songs are connected to ritual.

Thomson befriends and is an important influence on Alfred Sohn-Rethel and his theory of the genesis of occidental thought in Ancient Greece through the invention of coining.

Thomson first visits the Blasket Islands off the west coast of Ireland in 1923. Mac Tomáis, as he quickly becomes known to the islanders, had attended rudimentary Irish classes at a branch of Conradh na Gaeilge in London before he went to Cambridge. When he arrives on the island, he immerses himself in the language. In six weeks of walking around, talking with Muiris Ó Súilleabháin and others, he achieves near complete fluency in the language.

Thomson spends several years with the people of the islands studying their language, history and culture. He maintains a special study of the now extinct community in Ireland, in which he perceives elements of surviving cultural resonances with historical society prior to the development of private property as a means of production. He becomes a champion of the Irish language.

Thomson has a role in the publication of the memoirs of Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, Fiche Bliain Ag Fás (Twenty Years Growing) in 1933. The introduction to Ó Súilleabháin’s autobiography by E. M. Forster can also be attributed to Thomson.

When Thomson applies for the new position of lecturer of Greek at the National University of Ireland, Galway, in 1931 he, in the words of Richard Roche, “astonished the interview board with a flow of Blasket Irish” and is awarded the post.

In 1951, Thomson is the only member of the Communist Party’s Executive Committee to vote against the Party’s programme, The British Road to Socialism, because “the dictatorship of the proletariat was missing.” He also serves on the Party’s Cultural Committee.

The Chinese revolution of 1949 has a profound effect on Thomson and leads to differences with the British Communist Party, from which he eventually drifts. He never loses his political beliefs. He is committed to working class education, including giving lectures to factory workers at Birmingham’s Austin car plant. He also maintains a special affection and support for the Morning Star in his later years.

Thomson authors three popular expositions on Marxism published by the China Policy Study Group in the early 1970s. From Marx to Mao Tse-tung: A study in revolutionary dialectics (1971), Capitalism and After: The rise and fall of commodity production (1973), and The Human Essence: The sources of science and art (1974). He is also the author of Marxism and Poetry (1945).


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Six Charged in the Birmingham Pub Bombings

On November 24, 1974, British police charge six men in connection with the Birmingham pub bombings three days earlier. Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Hill, Robert Hunter, Noel McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker are accused of the murder of the youngest victim of the attacks, Jane Davis, age 17, who is one of 19 people killed when bombs explode on November 21 in the Mulberry Bush at the foot of the Rotunda, and the Tavern in the Town, a basement pub in New Street.

A massive security operation is launched in Birmingham the following day when the six accused men appear in a hearing at the Victoria Law Courts. Assistant Chief Constable Maurice Buck, who is leading the investigation, says the six had been apprehended on the night of the attacks.

Five of the alleged bombers, who are from Northern Ireland but have been resident in England for at least eleven years, are arrested on the Belfast ferry at Heysham. Callaghan is arrested in Birmingham. All of the men had been living in the city, but Buck declines to give their addresses “for security reasons.”

The assistant chief constable tells reporters that the alleged bombers will be charged soon in connection with the deaths of the other 18 victims. “We are satisfied that we have found the men primarily responsible, but our inquiries will continue,” he says.

The so-called Birmingham Six are found guilty in August 1975 of carrying out the bombings and sentenced to life imprisonment. They are released after 16 years in jail when their convictions are quashed by the Court of Appeal in May 1991. One of the six, Paddy Hill states on his release, “The police told us from the start they knew we hadn’t done it. They didn’t care who had done it.” The real bombers have never been prosecuted and no group has ever admitted planting devices.

Three detectives are charged with perjury and conspiracy in connection with the investigation, but their trial is halted in 1993 on the grounds of prejudicial media coverage.

The six men finally agree on undisclosed compensation settlements in June 2002 – more than ten years after they had been freed.

(From: “1974: Six charged over Birmingham pub bombs” by BBC News, http://www.news.bbc.co.uk)


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Birth of Dana Rosemary Scallon, Singer & Former European Parliament Member

Dana Rosemary Scallon, Irish singer, pantomime performer, and a former Member of the European Parliament known as Dana, is born on August 30, 1951, in Islington, London, England, where her Northern Irish family had relocated to find work. She wins the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest with “All Kinds of Everything,” a subsequent worldwide million-seller. She resides in Birmingham, Alabama, for much of the 1990s, hosting a Christian music and interview series on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).

Scallon is born Rosemary Brown, the fifth of seven children of a King’s Cross railway station porter and trumpet player originally from Derry, Northern Ireland. When she is five, the family moves back to Derry where she grows up in the Creggan housing estate and Bogside. She attends St. Eugene’s Primary School and then enrolls at Thornhill College. A singing talent from childhood, she wins several local contests while also participating in local choirs and taking piano, violin and ballet lessons.

In the early 1960s Scallon forms a trio with two of her sisters, often performing at charity concerts organized by their father. When one sister leaves, the remaining duo lands a summer-long booking at the Palladium and a recording contract with Decca Records. Her other sister, however, leaves to join her new husband, a United States airman, in America. Stricken with stage fright, Scallon the solo singer manages to win a folk competition at the Embassy Ballroom with her eyes shut. The contest’s sponsor, teacher and music promoter Tony Johnston, helps her complete her equivalency degree and records a demo that convinces Decca Records to sign her on as a solo artist. She releases a single in 1967 that brings some attention from local TV and radio.

Performing under her school nickname “Dana,” Scallon becomes a fixture in Dublin‘s cabaret and folk clubs. She is crowned “Queen of Cabaret” and feted with a parade and a reception at Clontarf Castle on the Saturday before Easter 1968.

At the suggestion of Decca Record’s local agent, Phil Mitton, Scallon auditions for the Irish National Song Contest, a preliminary for the 1969 Eurovision competition. She reaches the finals in Dublin but comes in second.

RTÉ Television chief Tom McGrath invites Scallon back to compete the following year. She accepts even though she is preparing to retire from active performing to pursue teaching. The song, “All Kinds of Everything” by Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith, is picked for her by McGrath and propels her to victory. She goes on to represent Ireland in the 1970 Eurovision contest, held in Amsterdam. She performs perched on a stool on stage and defeats England’s Mary Hopkin and Spain‘s Julio Iglesias to secure Ireland’s victory.

Scallon is given a hero’s welcome upon her return to Ireland, especially in Northern Ireland. “All Kinds of Everything” shoots to #1 on the Irish Singles Chart, as well as the UK Singles Chart. It is also successful in Australia, Austria, Germany, Israel, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland and Yugoslavia, on its way to passing 1 million sales. She quickly records an album, with orchestral accompaniment. Her follow-up single, “I Will Follow You,” fails to make much of a splash. Given the choice of giving up, she decides to fight for her recording career, and succeeds with Paul Ryan‘s “Who Put the Lights Out,” which spends eleven weeks on the UK charts.

In 1974 Scallon switches to GTO Records. Her first single on that label, “Please Tell Him That I Said Hello,” returns her to the top 10. Her 1975 holiday single “It’s Gonna be a Cold Cold Christmas” by Roger Greenaway and Geoff Stephens, reaches #4 and remains a classic. Now an established Irish singing star she appears in films and festivals and sells out a week of concerts at the London Palladium. She also maintains her “Queen of the Cabaret” reputation with regular appearances in top London clubs. The BBC gives her two shows of her own: a series called A Day with Dana in 1974 and four-part series of Wake Up Sunday in 1979. BBC Radio follows suit with a series of I Believe in Music in 1977.

Meanwhile, Scallon begins performing stage pantomime in a blockbuster production of Cinderella in Oxford. In September 1976, however, she is hospitalized with a non-malignant growth on her left vocal cord, requiring surgery. The single “Fairytale” is sustained in the charts with the publicity from her dire medical prognosis. The experience strengthens her religious faith. On October 5, 1978, she marries Damien Scallon, a hotel-owner from Newry, at St. Eugene’s Cathedral in Derry.

In 1979, recovered from her surgery, Scallon records a new album entitled The Girl is Back, which has modest success. Pope John Paul II‘s visit to Ireland that year inspires her to write a song based on his personal motto, “Totus Tuus,” which tops the Irish charts. Long associated with Christian causes and Sunday-morning programs, she and her husband look for opportunities to reach a broader market for Christian music and find one in the United States. They attend the National Religious Broadcasters conference in Washington, D.C. in 1980 and secure a contract with Word Records.

Scallon’s first album of Christian songs, Totally Yours, is released on Word Records in 1981. She continues to record pop music, including the 1982 album Magic and the official 1982 FIFA World Cup song for the Northern Ireland team, “Yer Man.” She also continues her stage career, starring in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at Hull and later in London’s West End and Wolverhampton. She tours the United States in 1984, including appearances at Billy Graham‘s Boston crusades. She pens an autobiography in 1985. She performs “Totus Tuus” before a packed Superdome crowd during John Paul II’s visit to New Orleans in 1987.

Also in 1987, after one of her husband’s hotels is damaged for the seventh time by a terrorist bomb, he takes a job managing retreats for EWTN and moves the family to Alabama. They rent a house in the Cherokee Bend area of Mountain Brook and enroll their children at Saint Rose Academy. Scallon is welcomed to the network as well, hosting the Say Yes and We Are One Body programs. She leaves Word Records and signs with Heart Beat Records for her later Catholic albums. In 1993 she again performs for the Pope at a World Youth Day event in Denver, Colorado.

Scallon is naturalized as a dual citizen of the United States and Northern Ireland in 1997 and moves back there a year later because she has been drafted as an independent candidate for President of Ireland. She garners 15% of the popular vote, finishing third in the race won by Mary McAleese, ahead of the Labour Party candidate. Most of her votes come from rural districts where conservative values are more strongly held.

In 1999 Scallon wins a seat on the European Parliament, representing Connacht-Ulster on a family values and anti-abortion platform. During her five-year term she opposes the development of a European constitution. She also speaks out against a 2001 proposal to amend the Irish constitution to legalize the “morning-after pill” and intrauterine contraceptive devices. With the support of the mainstream parties, the amendment is put to a popular referendum, which fails in 2002. That same year she is defeated in a campaign to represent Galway West in the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Irish parliament. In 2004 she fails to hold her seat in the European Parliament and also does not secure a nomination for President.

Leaving politics behind, Scallon joins a weight-loss challenge on RTÉ’s The Afternoon Show in 2005. In 2006 she competes with Ronan McCormack on Celebrity Jigs ‘n’ Reels, finishing second on the popular dance contest.

That same year, Scallon and her husband launch their own music label, DS Music Productions, and release a compilation of songs deidcated to John Paul II’s memory. That is followed by Good Morning Jesus: Prayers and Songs for Children of All Ages, which is featured in a special series on EWTN. Heart Beat Records files a lawsuit against DS Music Productions for alleged copyright violations.

In 2007 Scallon appears as a guest judge for Young Star Search, a Belfast CityBeat radio contest. In 2009 she is brought on as a judge for The All Ireland Talent Show. That same year she returns to EWTN as host of Dana and Friends.


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Death of Sister Catherine McAuley, Founder of the Sisters of Mercy

Catherine Elizabeth McAuley, Irish religious sister who founds the Sisters of Mercy in 1831, dies in Dublin on November 11, 1841. The Sisters of Mercy has always been associated with teaching, especially in Ireland, where the sisters teach Catholics, and at times Protestants, at a time when education is mainly reserved for members of the established Church of Ireland.

McAuley is born on September 29, 1778, at Stormestown House in Dublin to James and Elinor (née Conway) McAuley. Her father dies in 1783 when she is five and her mother dies in 1798. She first goes to live with a maternal uncle, Owen Conway, and later joins her brother James and sister Mary at the home of William Armstrong, a Protestant relative on her mother’s side. In 1803, she becomes the household manager and companion of William and Catherine Callaghan, an elderly, childless, and wealthy Protestant couple and friends of the Armstrongs, at their estate in Coolock, a village northeast of Dublin. For 20 years she gives catechetical instruction to the household servants and the poor village children. Catherine Callaghan, who is raised in the Quaker tradition, dies in 1819. When William Callaghan dies in 1822, McAuley becomes the sole residuary legatee of their estate.

McAuley inherits a considerable fortune and chooses to use it to build a house where she and other compassionate women can take in homeless women and children to provide care and education for them. A location is selected at the junction of Lower Baggot Street and Herbert Street in Dublin, and in June 1824, the cornerstone is laid by the Rev. Dr Blake. As it is being refurbished, she studies current educational methods in preparation for her new endeavour. On the feast of Our Lady of Mercy, September 24, 1827, the new institution for destitute women, orphans, and schools for the poor is opened and McAuley, with two companions, undertake its management.

For three years, McAuley and her companions continue their work as lay women. She never intends to found a community of religious women. Her initial intention is to assemble a lay corps of Catholic social workers. In 1828 Archbishop of Dublin Daniel Murray permits the staff of the institute to assume a distinctive dress and to publicly visit the sick. The uniform adopted is a black dress and cape of the same material reaching to the belt, a white collar and a lace cap and veil – such a costume as is now worn by the postulants of the congregation. In the same year the archbishop desires McAuley to choose some name by which the little community might be known, and she chooses that of “Sisters of Mercy,” having the design of making the works of mercy the distinctive feature of the institute.

McAuley is desirous that the members should combine with the silence and prayer of the Carmelites, with the active labours of a Sister of Charity. The position of the institute is anomalous, its members are not bound by vows nor are they restrained by rules. The clergy and people of the church of the time, however, are not supportive of groups of laywomen working independently of church structures. The main concern is for the stability and continuity of the works of mercy which the women had taken on. Should any of them get married or lose interest, the poor and the orphans whom they are caring for would then be at a loss.

McAuley’s clerical mentor urges her to form a religious institute. Along with two other women, Mary Ann Doyle and Mary Elizabeth Harley, she enters the novitiate of the Presentation Sisters to formally prepare for life as women religious in September 1830. On December 12, 1831, they profess vows and return to the House of Mercy. The Sisters of Mercy consider December 12, 1831, as the day of their founding as a religious community. Archbishop Murray assists McAuley in founding the Sisters of Mercy and professes the first three members. He then appoints her Mother Superior.

Between 1831 and 1841 McAuley founds additional Convents in Tullamore, Charleville, Cork, Carlow, Galway, Limerick, Birr, Bermondsey and Birmingham and branch houses in Kingstown and Booterstown. A cholera epidemic hits Dublin in 1832, and she agrees to staff a cholera hospital on Townsend Street.

The rule of the Sisters of Mercy is formally confirmed by Pope Gregory XVI on June 6, 1841. McAuley lives only ten years as a Sister of Mercy, Sister Mary Catherine.

McAuley dies of tuberculosis at the age of sixty-three on November 11, 1841, at Baggot Street. She is buried at Baggot Street Cemetery. At the time of her death, there are 100 Sisters of Mercy in ten foundations. Shortly thereafter, small groups of sisters leave Ireland to establish new foundations on the east and west coasts of the United States, in Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina.

Total worldwide membership consists of about 5,500 Sisters of Mercy, 5,000 Associates, and close to half a million partners in ministry. The Mercy International Centre in Dublin is the international “home” of Mercy worldwide and the mercyworld.org website is the virtual home.

In 1978, the cause for the beatification of the Servant of God Catherine McAuley is opened by Pope Paul VI. In 1990, upon recognition of her heroic virtues, Pope John Paul II declares her Venerable.