seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: Easter Rising


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Death of Lily Kempson, Last Survivor of the Rising

lily-kempson

Lily Kempson, aged 99, the last surviving participant in the 1916 Easter Rising, dies in Seattle, Washington, on January 22, 1996. Born into the ranks of Dublin’s poor, Elizabeth Ann `Lily’ Kempson shares two rooms with her 92-year-old grandmother, her parents, and eight siblings.

Early on the morning of April 24, 1916, Lily dresses quietly so as to not disturb the other family members. Leaving undetected, Lily never returns home.

When Lily arrives at Liberty Hall, preparations for the Rising are already well underway. Weeks earlier Constance Markievicz and other women members of the Citizens Army, perhaps Lily amongst them, had stacked grenades and ammunition in the basement. Now this weaponry, already dispersed throughout the city, is to be used to defend the proclamation of an Irish Republic.

The initial plan for women to primarily take care of the wounded is scrapped. Attached to the Red Cross unit, Lily Kempson and her female comrades are swiftly incorporated within the main body of the fight. Lily is armed with a revolver. A handful of women, who have already played a key role in securing access to St. Stephens Green, set about evacuating civilians and guarding the gates. The insurgents dig in but they were unable to secure surrounding buildings because of a chronic shortage of personnel.

As dawn breaks on Tuesday morning, Lily is awakened by the rattle of machine gun fire. The British have occupied the Shelbourne, a hotel overlooking the park. The insurgents hold the Green for less than twenty hours. Throughout the week-long siege of Dublin, Kempson acts as a courier for Patrick Pearse and the other men inside the General Post Office (GPO).

The superior firepower of the British and the strategic advantage of the Shelbourne make evacuation of the park as inevitable as it is urgent. A line of retreat has been secured. In an advance party of three men and three women, Lily Kempson accompanies Constance Markievicz and Mary Hyland to seize the College of Surgeons, a sturdy building overlooking the north of the Green. It is here the Green’s contingent makes their heroic last stand, holding the ground for five days. They surrendered only after receiving a dispatch directly from the General Post Office. As their contingent prepares to surrender, Lily is chosen to carry the garrison’s last dispatches to addresses throughout the city.

In the immediate aftermath of The Rising, the Kempsons’ Dublin home is raided by the British army, but Lily is not to be found. Lily makes the decision to leave Ireland when her name appears on a British list of wanted suspects. Using her sister’s passport, she travels to England and boards a ship to New York. From New York, she then sails on to Seattle where she meets and marries a fellow Irishman, Matt McAlerney. They have seven children, 34 grandchildren, and 116 great-grandchildren by the time Lily passes away.

In her final years she attracts the attention of the local American press. Each Easter she briefly becomes a celebrity as her story of being the last survivor is retold.


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Death of Irish Actor Barry Fitzgerald

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Barry Fitzgerald, Irish stage, film, and television actor, dies on January 14, 1961.

Fitzgerald is born William Joseph Shields in Walworth Road, Portobello, Dublin, Ireland, on March 10, 1888. He is the older brother of Irish actor Arthur Shields. He goes to Skerry’s College in Dublin before going on to work in the civil service while also working at the Abbey Theatre.

Unknown to many, Fitzgerald is also a patriot. In 1916 he is a member of the Irish Volunteers and is prepared to fight in the Easter Rising on Easter Sunday when the orders are countermanded. On Easter Monday the revolution is on again, and Shields goes to the Abbey Theatre and retrieves his rifle from under the stage. He goes around the corner to Liberty Hall and joins with James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army.

He then marches to the General Post Office on Sackville Street where he fights before evacuating on Friday. He is sent to Stafford Prison in England with another famous rebel, Michael Collins, and from there they are both sent to the Frongoch internment camp in Wales. Both return to Dublin by the end of 1916, Collins to terrorise the British and Shields to return to the Abbey Theatre stage.

By 1929, he turns to acting full-time. He is briefly a roommate of famed playwright Sean O’Casey and stars in such plays as O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock and the premiere of The Silver Tassie.

Fitzgerald goes to Hollywood to star in another O’Casey work, The Plough and the Stars (1936), directed by John Ford. He has a successful Hollywood career in such films as The Long Voyage Home (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), And Then There Were None (1945), The Naked City (1948), and The Quiet Man (1952). Fitzgerald achieves a feat unmatched in the history of the Academy Awards. He is nominated for both the Best Actor Oscar and the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the same performance, as Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way (1944). He wins the Best Supporting Actor Award. This feat will likely never be matched as the Academy Award rules have since been changed to prevent this. During World War II, Oscar statues are made of plaster rather than gold due to wartime metal shortages. Being an avid golfer, Fitzgerald later breaks the head off his Oscar statue while practicing his golf swing.

Fitzgerald has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for films located at 6220 Hollywood Blvd. and one for television located at 7001 Hollywood Blvd.

Fitzgerald returns to live in Dublin in 1959. He dies of heart failure on January 14, 1961, and is buried at Deansgrange Cemetery in Dublin.


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Birth of Thomas Patrick Ashe

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Thomas Patrick Ashe, a member of the Gaelic League, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and a founding member of the Irish Volunteers, is born in Lispole, County Kerry, on January 12, 1885. Ashe enters De La Salle Training College, Waterford, in 1905 and begins a teaching career as principal of Corduff National School, Lusk, County Dublin, in 1908.

Ashe plays a major part in the 1916 Easter Rising outside the capital city commanding the Fingal battalion of the Irish Volunteers. Ashe is commandant of the 5th battalion of the Dublin brigade, a force of 60–70 men engaging British forces around north County Dublin during the rising. They are armed only with a few rounds, about a dozen service rifles, a dozen Mausers, and a dozen Martini-Henry carbines. Some of Ashe’s men are armed only with a shotgun against the well-equipped army regulars.

Ashe’s battalion wins a major victory in Ashbourne, County Meath, where they engage a much larger force. They capture a significant quantity of arms and up to twenty Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) vehicles. Eleven RIC members, including County Inspector Alexander Gray, and two volunteers are killed during the 5-1/2-hour battle. Twenty-four hours after the rising collapses, Ashe’s battalion surrenders on the orders of Patrick Pearse. On May 8, 1916, Ashe and Éamon de Valera are court-martialled and sentenced to death. The sentences are commuted to penal servitude for life. Ashe is imprisoned in Lewes Prison in Lewes, East Sussex, England.

De Valera, Ashe, and Thomas Hunter lead a prisoner hunger strike on May 28, 1917. With accounts of prison mistreatment appearing in the Irish press and mounting protests in Ireland, Ashe and the remaining prisoners are freed on June 18, 1917, by David Lloyd George as part of a general amnesty.

Upon his release, Ashe returns to Ireland and begins a series of speaking engagements. In August 1917, he is arrested and charged with sedition for a speech that he makes in Ballinalee, County Longford, where Michael Collins is also speaking. He is detained at the Curragh but is then transferred to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. He is convicted and sentenced to two years hard labour. Ashe and other prisoners, including Austin Stack, demand prisoner of war status. On September 20, 1917, Ashe again goes on hunger strike. He dies at the Mater Hospital on September 25, 1917, after being force fed by prison authorities. At the inquest into his death, the jury condemns the staff at the prison for the “inhuman and dangerous operation performed on the prisoner, and other acts of unfeeling and barbaric conduct.” His body lies in state at Dublin City Hall and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

Ashe is a relative of Catherine Ashe, the paternal grandmother of American actor Gregory Peck, who emigrates to the United States in the 19th century. The Ashe Memorial Hall built in 1928, housing the Kerry County Museum, in Tralee, County Kerry, is named after him while Nelson Street, also in Tralee, is renamed Ashe Street.


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The Easter Rising Centennial

GPO_Easter_Rising_Plaque

I publish this site as we prepare to enter the year 2016, which will be an important year to Ireland and those of Irish heritage around the world. During the upcoming year, we mark the centennial of the Easter Rising of 1916 which began on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, and lasted for six days.

Approximately 1,200 Volunteers and Citizen Army members, led by Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, took over strongpoints in Dublin with the General Post Office being their headquarters. The British army, which had vastly superior numbers and artillery, quickly suppressed the Rising. Pearse agreed to an unconditional surrender on Saturday, April 29, 1916.

Ninety people were sentenced to death in a series of courts martial, which began on May 2. Fifteen of those, including all seven signatories of the Proclamation, had their sentences confirmed by British General John Maxwell and were executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol in Kilmainham, Dublin between May 3 and 12.

Although lasting but six days, the Rising succeeded in bringing physical force republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics.

Annual commemorations, rather than taking place on April 24–29, are typically based on the date of Easter, which is a moveable feast. The official programme of centenary events in 2016 climaxes from March 26 (Good Friday) to April 3 (Easter Saturday) with other events earlier and later in the year taking place on the calendrical anniversaries.