The Copley Street riot occurs on August 13, 1934, at the Copley Street Repository, Cork, County Cork, after Blueshirts opposed to the collection of annuities from auctioned cattle ram a truck through the gate of an ongoing cattle auction. The Broy Harriers open fire and one man, 22 year old Michael Lynch, is killed and several others injured.
Following the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), Britain relinquishes its control over much of Ireland. However, aspects of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which had marked the end of the war, lead to the Irish Civil War (1922–23). The aftermath leaves Ireland with damaged infrastructure and hinders its early development.
Éamon de Valera, who had voted against the Anglo-Irish treaty and headed the Anti-Treaty movement during the civil war, comes to power following the 1932 Irish general election and is re-elected in 1933. While the treaty stipulates that the Irish Free State should pay £3.1 million in land annuities to Great Britain, and despite advice that an economic war with Britain could have catastrophic consequences for Ireland (as 96% of exports are to Britain), de Valera’s new Irish government refuses to pay these annuities – though they continue to collect and retain them in the Irish exchequer.
This refusal leads to the Anglo-Irish trade war (also known as the “Economic War”), which persists until 1935, when a new treaty, the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement, is negotiated in 1938. During this period, a 20% duty is imposed on animals and agricultural goods, resulting in significant losses for Ireland. Specifically, poultry trade declines by 80%, butter trade by 50% and cattle prices drop by 50%. Some farmers are forced to kill and bury animals because they cannot afford to maintain them.
In 1933, Fine Gael emerges as a political party—a merger of Cumann na nGaedheal and the National Centre Party. Fine Gael garners substantial support from rural farmers who are particularly affected by the Economic War. They strongly object to the collection of land annuities by the Fianna Fáil government. The Blueshirts, a paramilitary organisation founded as the Army Comrades Association in 1932 and led by former Garda CommissionerEoin O’Duffy, transforms into an agrarian protest organisation, mobilising against seizures, cattle auctions, and those tasked with collecting annuities.
O’Duffy, a key figure in Irish politics, encourages farmers to withhold payment of land annuities to the government. Arising from this stance, Gardaí start to seize animals and farm equipment, auctioning them to recover the outstanding funds. While seized cattle are auctioned, local farmers rarely participate. Instead, Northern Ireland dealers, often associated with the name O’Neill, are the primary buyers. These auctions are protected by the Broy Harriers, an armed auxiliary group linked to the police.
By 1934, tensions escalate, and a series of anti-establishment incidents are attributed to the Blueshirts. These incidents range from minor acts of violence, such as breaking windows, to more serious offenses like assault and shootings.
On August 13, 1934, an auction takes place at Marsh’s Yard on Copley Street in Cork, featuring cattle seized from farms in Bishopstown and Ballincollig. The police establish a cordon by 10:00 a.m., with 300 officers on duty. Lorries arrived at 11:00 a.m.
Around noon, three thousand protestors assemble. Within twenty-five minutes, an attempt is made to breach the yard gate by ramming it with a truck. According to Oireachtas records, there are approximately 20 men in the truck which they run against the gate. The Minister for JusticeP. J. Ruttledge, says that the truck “with those people in it charged through those cordons of Guards; that several Guards jumped on to the lorry and tried to divert the driver by catching hold of the steering wheel and trying to twist it.” Some contemporary news sources suggest that the ramming truck knocked down the surrounding police cordon “like ninepins and crush[ed] a police inspector against a gate.” Later sources suggest that the senior officer (a superintendent) was injured in a fall, while attempting to avoid being struck, rather than being hit directly by the truck.
A man named Michael Lynch, wearing the distinctive blue shirt, and approximately 20 others reportedly manage to enter the yard. As soon as they enter the yard they are fired upon by armed “special branch” police detectives who are in the yard. Lynch later succumbs to his injuries at the South Infirmary. Thirty-six others are wounded. Despite the violence, the auction proceeds after a one-hour delay.
Following the shooting, a riot ensues, but when news of Lynch’s death reaches the participants, they cease rioting, kneel, and recited a Rosary.
The funeral of Michael Lynch occurs on August 15, 1934. The funeral procession is planned to depart from Saints Peter and Paul’s Church, Cork at 2:30 PM.
The occasion allows for a significant show of force for Eoin O’Duffy and the Blueshirts, and features Roman salutes and military drills. Farmers in Munster reportedly stop work for an hour, and Blueshirt members ask shopkeepers to close their businesses, as a show of respect for the “martyr.” Lynch is afforded a “full Blueshirt burial,” and the coffin is adorned with the flag of the Blueshirts (the Army Comrades Association).
According to the Minister for Justice, at the funeral W. T. Cosgrave stands beside O’Duffy as the Blueshirt leader gives an oration saying, “We are going to carry on until our mission is accomplished […] those 20 brave men, whose deed will live for ever, not only in Cork but in every county in Ireland, broke through in the lorry […] all Blueshirts should try to emulate his bravery and nobleness. Every Blueshirt is prepared to go the way of Michael for his principles.”
The court grants the family £300 in 1935. This is appealed to the High Court, followed by the Supreme Court, which dismisses the case. In the Supreme Court, Henry Hanna describes the Broy Harriers as “an excrescence” upon the Garda Síochána.
When the matter is discussed in the Seanad in September 1934, and before a vote is taken to “[condemn] the action of the members of the special branch of the Gárda Síochána […] on Monday, the 13th August 1934,” the senators who support Éamon de Valera’s government walk out.
In August 1940, a memorial is unveiled on the tomb of Lynch in Dunbulloge Cemetery in Carrignavar, County Cork, consisting of a limestone Celtic cross and pedestal. The pedestal is engraved with a quote from the American orator, William Jennings Bryan: “The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the armour of a righteous cause is stronger than all the hosts of error.”
(Pictured: Aftermath of the ramming of Marsh’s Yard, Copley Street, that leads to the death of Michael Lynch and the Copley Street Riot on August 13, 1934)
Mills is born in 31 South Square, Inchicore, Dublin, on October 8, 1923. Her mother, Winifred (née Wills), is from Inchicore and her father, Thomas, is from Glanmire, County Cork. Her father works for Great Southern Railways. She has three siblings, Gertrude, Ada and Robert. Her mother dies when she is just eighteen months old, leaving her to be raised by her maternal grandmother, Charlotte Wills, who lives at 1 Abercorn Terrace, Inchicore. She is educated at St. Vincent’s Industrial School, Goldenbridge, where she plays table tennis and association football as well as doing gymnastics. However, camogie is her first love, which she starts playing at age five. She leaves school at a young age, and goes to work in Lamb’s jam factory.
Through her father, Mills is able to participate in and avail of the sporting activities in the GSR Athletic Union. Two pence per week are deducted from the worker’s wages to go toward the financing of the sports activities in the Railway. In 1947, she marries George Hill. They run the Red Seal Handbag Company from the North Circular Road, and later Hill Street. Later they become vintners, running the Seventh Lock public house on the Grand Canal, Ballyfermot.
Mills makes her camogie debut with the Great SouthernRailways club in Dublin in 1938 at the age of fourteen, and is promoted to the senior team for her second match. Three years later she makes her debut for Dublin while still sixteen and plays in Dublin’s unsuccessful 1941 All-Ireland Senor Camogie Championship final against Cork, winning her first All-Ireland medal after a replay against Cork a year later in the 1942 All-Ireland Senior Camogie Championship final.
In 1943, the same counties meet in the All-Ireland final for the third consecutive year. Once again Mills ends up claiming an All-Ireland medal, her goal from fifty yards range being described as the highlight of the match. The following year, 1944, brings a third All-Ireland medal. In 1945 and 1946, a dispute in the camogie association keeps Dublin out of the All-Ireland championship in spite of being Leinster champions in both years. In 1948, Dublin is back on form and Mills captures a fourth All-Ireland medal. She takes no part in the 1949 championship, however, the 1950s brings much success to Mills.
From 1950 to 1955, Mills captures six consecutive All-Ireland titles. In 1956, “the Dubs” surrender their crown to Antrim but it is soon reclaimed in 1957. In 1958, she is appointed captain of the Dublin camogie team. Led by her, Dublin defeats Tipperary to capture yet another All-Ireland title. She captures three more All-Ireland medals in 1959, 1960 and 1961. The occasion of the 1961 final is special as it is her 38th birthday and her last outing in a Dublin jersey.
In her playing days Mills is regarded as one of the all-time greats. She is regarded as camogie’s first superstar she has often been described as the Christy Ring, Mick Mackey, Nicky Rackard and Lory Meagher of the camogie world. With a haul of fifteen senior All-Ireland medals, she is the most decorated player in the history of Gaelic games at the time of her retirement. Since then Rena Buckley and Briege Corkery have won more than Mills.
Mills-Hill dies on August 11, 1996, from undisclosed causes, at her home on the Naas Road, Dublin. She is buried in Palmerstown Cemetery. In 2010, the camogie trophy for the annual inter-county All-Ireland Junior Camogie Championship is named in her honour. The Kay Mills Cup is a replica of the O’Duffy Cup. A plaque to Mills is erected at her former home, 1 Abercorn Terrace, Inchicore.
Nationalist forces enter Newcastle West, County Limerick, on Monday, August 7, 1922, after a twelve-hour battle, in which twelve anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) members, sometimes referred to as Irregulars, are killed. The casualties of the Nationalists are less than those of the Irregulars.
Taking little respite after Sunday’s labors, the Nationals advance from Rathkele on Monday morning, and by midday are in sight of their fresh objective. Armored cars enter the town and machine gun fire is directed against a party of Irregulars, causing many casualties.
When the artillery goes into action against the headquarters of the Irregulars, the Irregulars flee precipitately along Cord road.
Owing to the slow progress in the operations in Southern Ireland, the meeting of Dáil Éireann, scheduled to open Saturday, is postponed again.
The official army bulletin announces that the Nationals captured Castle Island on Saturday, August 5. It says that the counties of Cork and Kerry with a part of South Tipperary and a small area in County Waterford are the only districts held by the Irregulars with any degree of security.
The streets of Dublin are lined with great crowds of people on Tuesday, August 8, for the military funeral of nine National Army soldiers who were killed in fighting the Republican Irregulars in County Kerry. Michael Collins, Chairman of the Provisional Government, and all the leading officers of the army in Dublin march beside the hearses. Each coffin is covered with the Republican tricolour. There are many clergymen and other civilians in the funeral procession.
Prominent Catholics of Dublin and Belfast are trying to effect a better understanding between the Ulster and Free State Governments, according to the Daily Mail. This newspaper further states that all efforts to this end, which have all been taken with the advice and approval of leading English Catholics, are without official character.
A message from Strabane, County Tyrone, received by the Exchange Telegraph Company on August 8 states that a settlement between the Ulster Government and the Free State authorities is imminent, the terms of agreement having been practically arranged in negotiations proceeding in London.
In Downing Street, however, all knowledge of any such Irish negotiations is disclaimed and a telegram from Belfast quotes Ulster Government officials as denying that a settlement with the Free State is imminent.
The Free State Government is also unaware of any negotiations for a settlement between the Ulster Government and the Free State authorities. It is further states that such negotiations are unlikely to take place.
(From: “Irish Irregulars Routed With Loss,” The New York Times, August 9, 1922 | Pictured: General Michael Collins inspects a soldier at Newcastle West, County Limerick, August 8, 1922)
The battle consists of ten days of fighting in the countryside around Kilmallock in County Limerick, in which the National Army of the Irish Free State, advancing south from Limerick city, find their path blocked by anti-Treaty IRA troops, dug into a number of villages at Bruff, Bruree and Patrickswell. The fighting end with the retreat of the anti-Treaty fighters and the occupation of Kilmallock by Free State forces.
The prelude to the battle is the fall of Limerick city to Free State forces. The Republican forces in the city under Liam Deasy withdraw from their positions after a week of fighting and concentrate in Kilmallock and the nearby towns of Bruff and Bruree. The Free State forces, advancing south from the city, find their path blocked by the Republicans dug in at the three hilltop towns.
The National Army’s attempt to break through this position produces the only “line battle” of the war with the two sides facing each other along clear front-lines. The Kilmallock-Bruff-Bruree triangle sees some of the war’s most intense fighting.
Whereas in the fighting in Dublin, Limerick and Waterford, Free State troops equipped with artillery overcome Anti-Treaty resistance relatively easily, at Kilmallock they have a much harder time. The main reason for this is that the Free State troops, most of whom are new recruits, are facing some of the best of the IRA forces without an advantage in numbers or firepower. General Eoin O’Duffy complains of shortage of arms and ammunition. He estimates that while his forces have about 1,300 rifles, the Republicans could muster over 2,000. He is also critical of the quality of the troops at his disposal, whom he describes as, “a disgruntled, undisciplined and cowardly crowd.”
The Republicans know this and are confident of success. Nevertheless, the Republican commanders have their own issues with logistical support and lack of co-operation between forces from different counties. Deasy’s command includes Volunteers from counties Limerick itself, Cork and Kerry, all of whom have their own commanders. They have three improvised armoured cars, some mortars and heavy machine guns but no artillery.
O’Duffy draws up plans for the advance on Kilmallock with the assistance of his second-in-command Major GeneralW. R. E. Murphy who had been a lieutenant colonel in World War I. His experience in the trenches has a major effect on his approach – pre-disposing him to cautious advances and use of trenches for cover.
The Republican forces have the better of the first clashes. On Sunday, July 23, Free State forces take Bruff and begin their advance on Kilmallock, but are twice beaten back by determined Republican resistance. The following day, the Republicans manage to retake Bruff in a counter-attack, taking 76 prisoners. As a result of this setback, O’Duffy calls off the advance for the time being and waits for reinforcements.
National Army forces quickly retake Bruff after reinforcements arrive. However, things get worse for the National Army as the week goes on. They make slow progress in taking the Republican strongpoints, and their casualties also mount. On Tuesday, July 25, a unit of the Dublin Guard under Tom Flood is ambushed on a narrow road. They fight their way clear, but only after losing four men. Three more Free State soldiers are killed two days later. On July 30, Major General Murphy launches an attack to take Bruree. The Dublin Guards attack the town from the southeast, supported by armoured cars and an 18-pound field gun. The Republicans hold out for five hours until Free State artillery is brought into action. At least 13 Free State soldiers and nine Anti-Treaty fighters are killed in the action and more are wounded before the Free State troops secure Bruree.
The Republican commander, Deasy, knows how important Bruree is to the defence of Kilmallock and draws up plans to recapture the town using three armoured cars, trench mortars and machine guns. On August 2, Republicans capture Patrickswell south of Limerick. The armoured cars then attack Bruree, taking Free State forces by surprise. One car attacks Commandant Flood’s headquarters at the Railway Hotel. The Commandant and his men manage to escape out the back of the building under the cover of Lewis gun fire. The second armoured car rams the front door of another post in the school house, which persuades the twenty-five troops inside to surrender.
However, when Free State reinforcements, along with armoured cars arrive, the Republican counter-attack stalls. The Free State reinforcements are led by Commandant General Seamus Hogan, who personally leads his forces, riding in the armoured car nicknamed “The Customs House.” Having failed to secure the surrender of the town, Republican forces retreat.
Having held Bruree against a Republican counterattack, Free State forces prepare to capture Kilmallock itself, but anticipate there will be heavy fighting. Republican Adjutant General Con Moloney comments on August 2, “Up to yesterday we have had the best of the operations there [the Kilmallock area]. There will, I fear, be a big change there now as the enemy have been reinforced very considerably.” In the 3rd Western Division area they have all but disbanded, unwilling to fight Free Staters, destroy roads, and now discouraged by the Catholic church.
On Thursday, August 3, a force of 2,000 Free State troops, backed up by armoured cars and artillery, advance on Kilmallock from Bruree, Dromin and Bulgaden. Seven hundred troops arrive the next day with an armoured car and a field gun. By Saturday, the town is surrounded by Free State forces. The Dublin Guard are also on hand to prevent Republican forces from escaping. Three miles away, Free State artillery is deployed and shells Republican forces on Kilmallock Hill and Quarry Hill. The two hills are soon controlled by Free State forces.
The National Army has, therefore, assembled sufficient force to smother resistance at Kilmallock. They are still, however, expecting hard fighting before they take the town. To their surprise, when the Free State troops enter the town, they encounter only light resistance from a Republican rearguard (volunteers from Cork). Most of the Republican troops have already abandoned their positions and retreated to Charleville.
They departed not because the Free State troops are stronger, but because they have been outflanked by Free State seaborne landings on the coasts of County Kerry and County Cork on August 2 and 8 respectively. The landings in Cork and Kerry force Commandant General Deasy to release units from this area to return home to their own areas. Although the landings in Cork occur after the retreat from Kilmallock, the subsequent loss of brigades from Cork adds to Commandant General Deasy’s problems. The final phase of the fighting in County Limerick comes when the Free State advance south is held up at Newcastle West. Another day of heavy fighting ensues in which the National Army troops have to bring up armoured cars and artillery to dislodge the Republicans, who reportedly lose up to 12 men before they retreat in the direction of Cork.
(Pictured: National Army troops lined up for a roll call during the Irish Civil War with local children casting an eye over the proceedings)
O’Brien is one of five children of Pierce O’Brien, a gentleman landowner, and Sophia Angel St John O’Brien. Her first cousin is woodcarver Sophia St John Whitty. She attends the Mercy Convent in Ennis, going on to win a scholarship to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. While there she studies under William Orpen and Alfred E. Child who teach her the art of stained glass.
Among O’Brien’s first commissions is the St. Ita window for St. Brendan’s cathedral in Loughrea, County Galway, in 1904, which is designed by Sarah Purser. She joins An Túr Gloine in 1906, beginning her career there by designing Angel of the Annunciation window in the Enniskillen convent chapel. For a window in the Wilson private chapel at Coolcarrigan House, Naas, County Kildare, in 1912, she incorporates Celtic design, some drawing on the Book of Durrow. In 1914, she tours the cathedrals of Paris, Rouen, and Chartres with Purser and Wilhelmina Geddes. She designs three windows depicting St. John, St. Flannan, and St. Munchin, for the Honan Chapel at University College Cork in 1916. Her 1923 design of the centenary memorial window in St. Andrew’s church, Lucan, represents the parable of the Good Shepherd. When in 1925 An Túr Gloine becomes a cooperative society, she becomes a shareholder along with Ethel Rhind, Evie Hone, and Michael Healy.
O’Brien’s 1926 lunetteThe Spirit of Night represents night, twilight, and dawn, and is for the private home of Keng Chee in Singapore, which is later demolished. The window of St. Catherine of Siena for the Sacred Heart convent chapel in Newton, Massachusetts dates from 1927. Her 1931 St. Patrick window, for the De La Salle school, East Coast Rd., Singapore, commissioned by architect Denis Santry, is the only extant stained-glass work by an Irish artist in that country. Much like Rhind, O’Brien also employs opus sectile, such as in her 1936 Mass in Penal Days in the Franciscan friary, Athlone, County Westmeath. She contributes two windows, Pelican and Lamb and Host and Chalice: Wheat and Grapes, to the ten windows An Túr Gloine produces for Brophy College Chapel, Phoenix, Arizona in 1937. From 1937 until 1947, she works on 22 opus sectile panels for the Protestant Church in Ennis.
Purser retires from An Túr Gloine in 1940, and O’Brien succeeds her as director, going on to purchase it and the contents in 1944. She rents a section of the premises to fellow stained-glass artist Patrick Pollen from 1954 onwards. She exhibits at the 1953 Irish Exhibition of Living Art, and the 1958 exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland. When the An Túr Gloine studios are damaged by fire in 1958, she rebuilds them and reopens by 1959. She is an active member of the Soroptimists and the Guild of Irish Art Workers. The last work she completes is a three-light window for the Church of St. Multose, Kinsale, County Cork, in 1962. A commission for two windows for the private chapel of Áras an Uachtaráin for PresidentÉamon de Valera is left unfinished at her death.
O’Brien dies in Dublin on July 18, 1963, and is buried in Whitechurch Parish Graveyard, County Dublin. She is commemorated in a window designed by Pollen in St. Laurence O’Toole chapel, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, where for forty years she made floral arrangements. Over 150 of her An Túr Gloine drawings from notebooks are now in the National Gallery of Ireland.
(Pictured: Stained glass window in the south wall of Ferns Cathedral, Ferns, County Wexford)
The East Clare Brigade plans to raid the Limerick train to take mail which will reveal the identity of a local spy. The eight IRA men, under the command of John McCormack, build a stone barricade across the tracks and put a red flag on top to stop the train. They will then board the train and take what they need. Tom Bentley, an IRA volunteer from Cratloe, is aboard the train so he can signal his comrades if there are British soldiers or Black and Tans on the train.
When the driver, a republican and supporter of the cause of Irish freedom, sees the barricade, he knows an ambush is about to take place but he also knows there are 30 British soldiers of the Royal Scots Regiment onboard and, should an ambush take place, the IRA will be out numbered and certainly outgunned. He smashes through the stone barricade, which is for the best, as McCormack does not see the signal from Bentley, their man on the train.
As the train passes, McCormack takes a pot shot at a soldier on the train, which turns out to be a bad idea. Once the train reaches Cratloe station, the soldiers make all civilians disembark and at gunpoint force the train driver to return to Woodcock Hill. McCormack knows the soldiers will alert the local military barracks and enemy troops will soon swarm the area. He climbs a telegraph pole to cut the wire but the shears break. He sends Lieutenant James O’Halloran to a nearby house to get replacement shears.
Gleeson and McCarthy are in charge of a group of volunteers waiting at the top of a field armed with rifles. When they see that something is delaying the cutting of the telegraph wires, they walk down the field to see what is happening. When they reach the edge of the tracks, the train comes around the bend one hundred yards from them. The Scots train their two machine guns and rifles on the fleeing volunteers. McCarthy is wounded during the opening volley and falls to the ground. As the rest of the ambushing party scatters, Gleeson realizes that McCarthy is not with them.
Gleeson races down the open field through a hail of British rifle and machine gun fire. He reaches McCarthy and helps him to his feet. In a desperate attempt to escape, Gleeson draws his revolver and staggers uphill supporting McCarthy with one arm and firing back at the British soldiers with his free hand.
They have only covered a short distance when Gleeson is shot and both men collapse to the ground. Gleeson is unable to continue but McCarthy manages to stagger on. Within a few seconds, the advancing British soldiers surround Gleeson and shoot him dead where he lay. McCarthy carries on through the fields but is soon outrun and is captured and killed by Lieutenant A. Gordan and a group of the Royal Scots, who shoot him several times and stab him with their bayonets.
Meanwhile, on the southern side of the railway track, McCormack is lying flat, hidden from the British soldiers. In order to make good his escape, he needs to climb over a thick fence of wire and hedge in full view of the soldiers. The train is only a short distance away and if the British soldiers make a search of the area, he is likely to become the third casualty the day. When he realises McCormack’s difficulty, James O’Halloran attempts to draw the British soldiers’ fire and attention and give McCormack a chance to escape. From behind a stone pier, O’Halloran opens fire on the British soldiers. He comes under heavy rifle fire but stands his ground and succeeds in wounding one of them before his rifle jams and he is forced to retreat. By this time, O’Halloran’s action has allowed McCormack to escape unseen. All the other IRA volunteers also manage to get away safely.
When the fighting ends, the British soldiers go to the scene of the killings and force a number of farm labourers to help them remove the two bodies. McCarthy’s body had been placed on a wicker gate and Michael Doherty and another farm labourer are ordered to carry it. Doherty lifts back the covering that has been placed over McCarthy’s body and sees that his throat has been cut and his chest is riddled with bullet wounds. Immediately, Doherty receives a blow of a rifle butt from one of the Royal Scots, who replaces the covers on McCarthy’s body.
Both bodies are taken to the house of the Collins family where the soldiers guard them until British reinforcements arrive and take them to Limerick. Gleeson and McCarthy are buried in the Republican plot in Meelick churchyard alongside Patrick White, who had been shot by a British sentry at Spike Island Prison, County Cork, earlier in the month.
This event, subsequently known as The Meelick Ambush, is the only occasion in County Clare during the Irish War of Independence when two Republicans are killed in action fighting against the British forces.
The eldest of the three sons and one daughter of Daniel Sheehan, tenant farmer, and his wife, Ellen (née Fitzgerald). He is educated at the local primary school. In his book Ireland since Parnell (1921) he states that witnessing the ragged poverty of labourers’ and smallholders’ children who attended the school made him determined to do something for the poor. The family’s Fenian tradition and his parents’ eviction from their holding in 1880 form his early years. At the age of sixteen he becomes a schoolteacher.
In 1890, Sheehan takes up journalism, serving as correspondent of the Kerry Sentinel and special correspondent of the Cork Daily Herald in Killarney. He also becomes correspondence secretary to the Kanturk trade and labour council, which campaigns on behalf of agricultural labourers. He manages to get reports of meetings into the Cork papers, and this helps the rapid spread of the association, which in 1890 becomes the Irish Democratic Trade and Labour Federation, under the leadership of Michael Davitt. It is, however, fatally disrupted by the Parnell split. While Sheehan continues to admire Davitt, and despite the pre-split Irish party leadership having opposed the federation as a threat to Charles Stewart Parnell‘s leadership, he becomes a Parnellite, and always remembers his only meeting with Parnell at Tralee, when the chief is presented with a loyal address (drafted by Sheehan) from his Killarney supporters. After Parnell’s death and the defeat of the Second Home Rule Bill, he temporarily drops out of Irish politics.
Following his marriage on February 6, 1894, to Mary Pauline O’Connor of Tralee, Sheehan joins the staff of the Glasgow Observer in pursuit of journalistic experience, then becomes editor of the Catholic News in Preston, Lancashire. In 1898, he returns to Ireland and works on various papers, including the Cork Constitution, before serving as editor of the Skibbereen-based Cork County Southern Star (1899–1901), where his Parnellism brings him into conflict with the Bishop of Ross, Denis Kelly. He expresses sympathy for the newly founded United Irish League (UIL), established by William O’Brien in Connacht with the dual aim of representing western smallholders and using a new land agitation as a vehicle for Irish Party reunion. He does not, however, join the UIL himself.
In August 1894, the Clonmel solicitor J. J. O’Shee, anti-Parnellite MP for West Waterford from 1895, forms the Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA) to agitate on behalf of agricultural labourers and small tenant farmers. Its appearance reflects the breakdown of the centralised party discipline which had existed before the Parnell split, and recognition that the land war’s prime beneficiaries had been large and middle-sized tenant farmers rather than the nation as a whole. On returning from Britain in 1898, Sheehan throws himself into organising the ILLA and becomes its president. In 1900 there are 100 branches, mostly in Cork, Tipperary, and Limerick. The Irish Party leadership look on this organisation with some suspicion.
At the 1900 United Kingdom general election in Ireland Sheehan seeks the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) nomination for South Cork but was defeated by Edward Barry. After the death of Dr Charles Tanner, however, he succeeds in obtaining the IPP nomination for the constituency of Mid Cork, despite the party leadership’s attempts to deny recognition to ILLA branches in order to hand the nomination to its favoured candidate. Sheehan is elected unopposed on May 17, 1901. At the age of 28, he is the youngest Irish member of parliament. Although he has been admitted to the party, his position as a labour representative and his perceived independent base make him something of an outsider.
From October 1904 Sheehan allies himself with O’Brien, writing regularly for the latter’s weekly a TheIrish People. Redmondites accuse him of opportunism, but he always maintains that his personal inclination as an old Parnellite has been towards John Redmond and that his support for O’Brien derives from the older man’s willingness from 1904 to identify himself with the labourers’ campaign. Although their alliance originally likely contains elements of expediency, Sheehan and O’Brien develop a deep personal friendship.
Sheehan’s support for O’Brien leads to a split in the ILLA in 1906, with Tipperary and Waterford branches following O’Shee and Redmond, and Sheehan retaining the support of his Cork base and of some branches in Limerick and Kerry. He serves on the Cork advisory committee which represents tenant interests in land purchase negotiations under the Wyndham Land Act. It’s policy of “conference plus business” combines an offer to negotiate with willing landlords and a threat of agitation against those unwilling to give satisfactory terms. His faction of the ILLA becomes the basis for the grassroots organisation of O’Brien’s followers, and sporadic attempts, financed by O’Brien, are made to spread it outside its Munster base. Both factions of the ILLA claim credit for the passage of the 1906 and 1911 Labourers’ (Ireland) Acts which provide for the allocation of cottages and smallholdings to labourers. In Cork and some other parts of Munster these buildings become popularly known as “Sheehan’s cottages,” a term which long outlives Sheehan’s political career. He also helps to bring about the creation of a “model village” at Tower, near Blarney, the result of cooperation between the local ILLA branch and the rural district council.
At the 1906 general election the Redmond leadership attempts to avoid an open split by allowing O’Brien’s supporters to return unopposed. However, the continuing conflict between the two factions rapidly leads to a formal break. Shortly after the election Sheehan is excluded from the IPP, and thereby deprived of the parliamentary stipend paid to MPs with insufficient resources to maintain themselves. With the support of O’Brien and the small group of O’Brienite MPs, he maintains that the party has no right to exclude an elected MP willing to take the party pledge. After resigning his seat to which he was re-elected without opposition on December 31, 1906, he demands readmission to the party and mounts an unsuccessful lawsuit demanding payment of the stipend. He is subsequently supported from the proceeds of collections outside church gates on Sundays.
Sheehan and the other O’Brienite MPs are readmitted to the party in 1908 as part of an attempt at general reconciliation after the disruptions following the rejection of the Irish Council Bill. Dissensions rapidly reappear over Augustine Birrell‘s 1909 land act, which the O’Brienites see as wriggling out of the financial responsibilities accepted by the British government in the Wyndham land act and as sabotaging land purchase, since landlords will not accept the terms offered. Sheehan’s section of the ILLA is denied official recognition and thereby prevented from sending delegates to a party convention called to consider the bill. At the convention, groups of “heavies”recruited from Joseph Devlin‘s Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) exclude delegates with Cork accents, while O’Brienite speakers are howled down. This leads to the formation in March 1909 of the All-for-Ireland League (AFIL), a body based on the existing O’Brienite organisation and advocating O’Brien’s policy of gradually implementing home rule through step-by-step cooperation with moderate unionist supporters of devolution. Although O’Brien’s temporary retirement for health reasons in April 1909 leads to the suspension of the AFIL, it is revived in response to an attempted purge of the O’Brienite MPs by the leadership and by O’Brien’s reappearance in response to the January 1910 general election. Sheehan writes regularly for its paper, the Cork Free Press.
In the general election the O’Brienites hold their seats while two Cork Redmondites are displaced. Sheehan is re-elected for Mid Cork, defeating the Redmondite W. G. Fallon in a campaign marked by widespread rioting and impassioned clerical denunciations of Sheehan. Fallon subsequently attempts to get up a “red scare” against the ILLA. The Cork ILLA later splits over Sheehan’s slightly erratic leadership. While the split is initially personality-driven, the breakaway faction, led by Patrick Bradley and centred in east Cork, moves back toward alignment with Redmond. At the December 1910 election the AFIL consolidates its position in Cork, but is defeated everywhere else. Sheehan retains his Mid Cork seat against a local candidate but is defeated in a simultaneous contest in East Limerick. He is also defeated when he stands for Cork County Council in June 1911, though the AFIL wins control of that body.
Sheehan studies law at University College Cork (UCC) (1908–09), where he is an exhibitioner and prizeman, and at King’s Inns, where he graduated with honours. He is called to the bar in 1911 and practised on the Munster circuit. In 1913–14 he is active in the AFIL’s attempts to avert partition by trying to recruit sections of British political opinion in favour of a conference between the parties. He becomes vice-chairman of the Imperial Federation League. This receives considerable attention among the British political classes but contributes to the decline of the AFIL’s electoral base. The policy of conciliation has been driven to a considerable extent by the belief that it is the only way of achieving home rule. The abolition of the House of Lords’ veto and the introduction of the third home rule bill by the Asquith government undercuts this argument and increases Redmond’s prestige, while AFIL denunciations of Redmondism are seen as driven by personal resentment and playing into the hands of unionists. The decision of the AFIL MPs to abstain from supporting the bill on its final passage through the House of Commons in 1914 as a protest against the prospect of a partition-based compromise is represented by Redmondites as a vote against home rule itself and contributed to AFIL loss of Cork County Council in June 1914.
On the outbreak of World War I, Sheehan supports O’Brien in calling for Irish enlistment for foreign service. In November 1914, at the age of forty-two, he enlists himself and is gazetted as a lieutenant in the Royal Munster Fusiliers. It is claimed that he is almost single-handedly responsible for raising the 9th (service) battalion of this regiment. Three of his sons also enlist. Two of his sons are killed in action with the Royal Flying Corps, and a daughter is disabled by injuries received in an air raid while serving as a nurse. In the spring and summer of 1915 he organises and leads recruiting campaigns in Cork, Limerick, and Clare. This is part of a nationwide drive for recruits, aimed in particular at the farming community, which reflects the realisation that the war is going to last much longer than expected.
In 1915, Sheehan is promoted to the rank of captain and serves with his battalion on the Loos-en-Gohellesalient and at the Battle of the Somme, contributing a series of articles from the trenches to the London Daily Express. Various ailments, including deafness caused by shellfire, and hospitalisation necessitate his transfer to the 3rd Royal Munster Fusiliers (Reserve) Battalion, and he resigns his commission on January 13, 1918, due to ill health. In April 1918 he speaks at Westminster against the bill extending conscription to Ireland, threatening to resist it by force. One of his last parliamentary speeches (in October 1918) is in support of a bill providing land grants for Irish ex-servicemen. With the growth of Sinn Féin and the virtual demise of the AFIL, his position in Cork grows increasingly untenable. The Sheehan family faces intimidation and are obliged to leave their home on the Victoria Road for London, where he has secured the Labour Party nomination for the Limehouse–Stepney division of the East End, later represented by Clement Attlee.
Sheehan is unsuccessful in the 1918 United Kingdom general election, and is obliged to leave politics after a financially disastrous involvement in an Achill Island mining company leads to his bankruptcy. Unable to practise at the bar because of the hearing loss caused by his war service, he returns to journalism and becomes editor and publisher of TheStadium, a daily newspaper for sportsmen. In 1921, shortly before the Anglo-Irish truce, he publishes Ireland since Parnell, a history of recent events heavily dependent on the writings of O’Brien but incorporating some personal reminiscences. It concludes by blaming the outbreak of the IRA guerrilla campaign on provocation by Crown forces, denouncing reprisals, and pleading for British recognition of Dáil Éireann and dominion home rule for an undivided Ireland.
Sheehan moves to Dublin in 1926 after hearing that the threats against him have been lifted. His wife, who has never fully recovered from the stresses and bereavements she has experienced since 1914, dies soon afterward. Sheehan himself becomes managing editor of Irish Press and Publicity Services and, in 1928, publisher and editor of the South Dublin Chronicle. The paper gives critical support to the Irish Labour Party, publishes campaigning articles on slum conditions, and advocates housing reform. In September 1930, he is an unsuccessful Labour candidate for Dublin County Council. In the 1930s, as his health deteriorates further, he works as coordinator for the ex-servicemen’s group the Old Comrades’ Association, editing both northern and southern editions of its annual journal. In 1942, he offers himself to Richard Mulcahy as a Fine Gael candidate for Cork South-East, but is turned down. He dies on November 28, 1948, while visiting his daughter at Queen Anne Street, London. Both he and his wife are buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
(From: “Sheehan, Daniel Desmond (‘D. D.’)” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
O’Reilly is one of six children of James P. O’Reilly, shopkeeper and musician, and Catherine O’Reilly (née Donegan). The family moves to Dublin when he is nine years old. He is educated at the Christian Brothers school in James’s Street, where he excels at Gaelic football and develops an interest in drama and music. Toward the end of his schooldays, he begins to participate in athletics, particularly the high jump, and is coached by Jack Sweeney, a leading athletics coach.
Always a man of many talents and interests, after leaving school O’Reilly combines working in the insurance business with an athletics career with Donore Harriers and evening drama classes. He wins several Irish titles, including the high jump, javelin, and decathlon, and sets a national record in the high jump. In 1954 he wins the British AAA Championships high jump title, beating the Commonwealth champion into second place, and setting a championship record of 6 ft. 5 in. (1.96 m). As a result, he secures a United States athletics scholarship to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he takes a degree in liberal arts, majoring in speech and drama. While at Michigan he improves his Irish record to 6 ft. 7 in. (2.007 m). His athletic career, however, is dogged with bad luck. He is selected to compete in the high jump at the European Athletics Championships in Bern, Switzerland, in 1954 but fractures an ankle in practice and fails to advance beyond the qualifying round. Although he competes at international level for ten years (1952–62), he is unlucky to never take part in the Olympic Games. A victim of sporting politics in 1952, as an NCAA athlete he is not entitled to compete. He is selected for the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne but is unable to attend when, at the last minute, his club cannot provide the finance for him to attend. Earlier that year he wins the Big Ten Conference high jump title.
On leaving Michigan O’Reilly moves to New York City, where he embarks on an acting career with the Irish Players, but he returns to Dublin in 1959, where, after brief spells working as a teacher and for an advertising agency, he applies to Ireland’s new television station for a position. He is looking for an acting job but ends up being offered a position as a presenter, joining Teilifís Éireann in 1961 as an announcer/interviewer. His relaxed and unobtrusive style appeals to viewers and his light entertainment show, The Life of O’Reilly, is the most popular programme on Irish television in the day, eclipsing even a fledgling The Late Late Show. It is as a sports presenter and commentator, however, that O’Reilly is primarily remembered, as he becomes the face of sport on RTÉ Television for many years. He attends five Olympic Games as a broadcaster, from Mexico in 1968 to Los Angeles in 1984, commentating on athletics and gymnastics. The first presenter of RTÉ’s flagship Saturday afternoon sports programme Sports Stadium in 1984, he continues to present it over its fourteen-year life, co-presenting the final programme in December 1997. He also is the regular presenter of RTÉ’s Wimbledon Championships tennis coverage for many years, the sports results on news broadcasts on TV and radio, and Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio, as well as commentating on individual sports such as ice-skating.
Although sports presenting is a natural progression for an athlete with his talents, O’Reilly’s real love is the arts. He continues to act, playing the part of Detective Inspector Michael Roarke in the classic children’s film Flight of the Doves (1971) with Ron Moody and Willie Rushton. He is also an accomplished singer and songwriter, and writes and performs his own one-man show, Across the Spectrum, comprising his own poems and songs in 1992. As well as a book of poems, The Great Explosion (1977), he releases a number of albums and tops the charts with his own song, “The Ballad of Michael Collins,” in 1981. He has a great admiration for Michael Collins, and this leads to his becoming the first non-political figure to give the oration at the annual Collins commemoration at Béal na Bláth, County Cork, in 1981. He also writes the song “Let the Nations Play” (1985), inspired by the boycotts of the Olympic games of 1980 and 1984, and the song is adopted as an anthem of the international Olympic movement.
Tall and slim in build, O’Relly is affable, modest, and self-deprecating in character. His relaxed style is no mere public affectation. He often exasperates colleagues by turning up just in time for broadcasts, and his ability to ad-lib is important in a live television environment. He once describes himself as “a champion high-jumper who could enunciate properly and keep my hair neatly combed” (The Irish Times, April 7, 2001). Despite the disappointments in his sporting career, he maintains that his other interests more than compensated. In relation to the Olympics he is quoted as saying, “If you asked me whether I’d have preferred to win a medal or have written the song, I’d honestly say I would have preferred to have written the song” (Longford Leader, April 6, 2001).
O’Reilly lives in Ranelagh, Dublin, and is married twice. He meets his first wife Linda Herbst (née Kuhl) in New York in the late 1950s. His second marriage is to Johanna Lowry. He has four children. After a lengthy illness, he dies on April 1, 2001, in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Fairview, Dublin. He is buried at Mount Venus cemetery, Rathfarnham.
(From: “O’Reilly, Brendan” by Jim Shanahan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Downing is the second son of Eugene Downing, a local merchant, and his wife, Helena, daughter of Timothy McCarthy of Kilfadamore, County Kerry. They have two other sons and two daughters. He is apprenticed in 1830 to his elder brother, Francis Henry, who practises as a solicitor at Killarney. Once admitted as a solicitor himself in 1836, he moves to Skibbereen, County Cork, where he practises until the mid-1860s, making from his practice a large fortune. By the mid-1870s he owns 4,067 acres in Cork and Kerry valued at £1,413.
Downing is prominent locally in public affairs, supporting the repeal campaign of Daniel O’Connell and the temperance campaign of Fr. Theobald Mathew. He is the first chairman of Skibbereen town commissioners, from 1862 to 1879. He later helps James Stephens and Michael Doheny escape to France in 1849. After Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and other members of the Phoenix National and Literary Society are arrested on December 5, 1858, he acts as their solicitor. His chief clerk, Mortimer Moynahan, a member of the society, unwittingly takes on as an assistant a man who proves to be an informer.
Downing involves himself in the National Association of Ireland, the political pressure group formed by the CatholicArchbishop of Dublin, Paul Cullen, and succeeds in getting tenant-right added to its demands in March 1865. He is elected as one of the two MPs for County Cork on November 30, 1868, and is reelected without a contest on February 5, 1874. Nominally a liberal, he draws his main support from the Catholic bishops and most of the parish clergy and, more significantly, from the tenant farmer class. The farmers’ interests he vigorously pursues in parliament and outside.
After the passing of William Ewart Gladstone‘s first land act, Downing plays a prominent part in the formation of the Home Rule League under the leadership of Isaac Butt. He is always a moderate on the home-rule issue – he opposes the pledging of home-rule MPs always to act together and later the obstructive tactics of fellow home-rulers Joseph Gillis Biggar and Charles Stewart Parnell. He is one of the nine members of the standing committee of Butt’s Irish Parliamentary Party (1874–79) and proves a stalwart of Butt particularly in disputes with Parnell. It is he who draws to the attention of the House of Commons the condition of tenants on the Buckley estate in the foothills of the Galtee Mountains at Skeheenarinky in County Tipperary in March 1877. In Butt’s absence Downing introduces an Irish land tenure bill on February 6, 1878, which is, however, quickly defeated.
Downing dies January 10, 1879, at his residence, Prospect House, Skibbereen, a deputy lieutenant of County Cork. The cortège that follows his body to the Old Caheragh Graveyard, Skibbereen, for burial is said to be four miles long. In Emmet Larkin‘s judgement, “it was not altogether unlikely, if he had survived, that he would have eventually succeeded Butt as chairman of the Irish party.”
In 1837, Downing marries Jane, youngest daughter of Daniel McCarthy of Ave Hill, Dromore, County Cork, and with her has four sons and three daughters. His younger brother, Washington, is a parliamentary reporter and later the Rome correspondent for The Daily News of London, and husband of Mary McCarthy Downing.
(From: “Downing, Timothy McCarthy” by C.J. Woods, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
seamus dubhghaill 