Burke is born into an influential Drogheda family, the Burkes of Duleek Street. His father, also named Christopher Patrick Burke, is a gas works secretary, and his mother is Mary McQuillan. The family lives initially on Coola Street before moving to Duleek Street after his father’s death in 1906.
Raised in a well-off household, Burke’s early years are shaped by the nationalist and cultural revival movements of the time, including the Gaelic League, which fosters physical resilience and republican ideals. His family connections, including to fellow revolutionary Thomas Burke, provide him with early exposure to Sinn Féin and Irish Volunteers activities.
Burke operates under the nom de guerre “Seán Jones” (also “Seaghan Mac Seaghan”) and is captured on at least one occasion by British forces, later released in a prisoner exchange.
During the Irish Civil War, Burke undertakes a 23-day hunger strike, reflecting his continued commitment to republican resistance against the Irish Free State.
In 1932, Burke is brought to court by his older brother, Michael, after assaulting him in the family home on Duleek Street, Drogheda. The house had been left to Michael in the will of their aunt Jane McQuillan, who died in 1919, leaving the premises to him, but requiring his mother and two sisters, Mary “Maise” and Christina Mary “Tena”, to be supported there. However, Burke insists on living there, along with his brother Joseph, leading to a family dispute. The Justice rules that the will gives Michael Burke the ownership of the house and the tenants subject to the charges set out in it. He fines Burke five shillings.
After this, Burke goes into the dairy business with his brother Joseph, and builds a house on the family farm in Bryanstown, County Meath. He dies from coronary occlusion at the age of 65 in his home on June 23, 1964. His sister, Christina Mary “Tena” Burke is present at his death. His requiem mass is celebrated at St. Mary’s Church in Drogheda. His republican comrades attend the funeral, and the Mayor of Drogheda and members of the Drogheda Corporation walk in the cortége wearing their robes of office.
Burke’s contributions to the IRA’s armament production and his steadfast republican stance cements his place in Irish revolutionary history. His life bridges the technical skills of a craftsman with the political resolve of a nationalist leader, making him a notable figure in the struggle for Irish independence.
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.
When appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1789, FitzGibbon is granted his first peerage as Baron FitzGibbon, of Lower Connello in the County of Limerick, in the Peerage of Ireland that year. This does not entitle him to a seat in the British House of Lords, only in the Irish House of Lords. His later promotions come mostly in the Peerage of Ireland, being advanced to a Viscountcy in 1793 and the Earldom of Clare in 1795. He finally achieves a seat in the British House of Lords in 1799 when created Baron FitzGibbon, of Sidbury in the County of Devon, in the Peerage of Great Britain.
As Lord Chancellor for Ireland, FitzGibbon is a renowned champion of the Protestant Ascendancy and an opponent of Catholic emancipation. He despises the Parliament of Ireland‘s popular independent Constitution of 1782. He is also personally and politically opposed to the Irish politician Henry Grattan who urges a moderate course in the Irish Parliament and is responsible for defeating Grattan’s efforts to reform the Irish land tithe system under which Irish Catholic farmers (and all non-Anglican farmers) are forced to financially support the minority Anglican Church of Ireland. These are not fully repealed until 1869 when the Church of Ireland is finally disestablished, although Irish tithes are commuted after the Tithe War (1831–1836).
FitzGibbon opposes the Irish Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 personally but apparently recommends its acceptance in the House of Lords, being forced out of necessity when that Act had been recommended to the Irish Executive by the British Cabinet led by William Pitt the Younger. Pitt expects Ireland to follow the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 and allow Catholics to vote again and hold public offices. At the same time, FitzGibbon apparently denounces the policy this Act embodies, so it is probably safe to say that FitzGibbon’s own beliefs and principles conflict with his obligations as a member of the Irish executive of the time.
FitzGibbon’s role in the recall, soon after his arrival, of the popular pro-Emancipation Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl of Fitzwilliam, is debatable. Although he is probably politically opposed to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Fitzwilliam is apparently recalled, because of his own independent actions. Fitzwilliam is known to be friendly to the Ponsonby family and is generally a Foxite liberal Whig. His close association with and patronage of Irish Whigs led by Grattan and Ponsonby during his short tenure, along with his alleged support of an immediate effort to secure Catholic emancipation in a manner not authorized by the British cabinet is likely what leads to his recall. Thus, if anyone is to blame in the short-lived “Fitzwilliam episode” it is Henry Grattan and the Ponsonby brothers – presumably William Ponsonby, later Lord Imokilly, and his brother George Ponsonby — not to mention Lord Fitzwilliam himself. Irish Catholics at the time and later naturally see things very differently and blame hardline Protestants such as FitzGibbon.
Irish Catholics and FitzGibbon apparently agree on one point – Irish political and economic union with Great Britain, which eventually takes place in 1801. Pitt wants Union with Ireland concomitantly with Catholic emancipation, commutation of tithes, and the endowment of the Irish Catholic priesthood. Union is opposed by most hardline Irish Protestants, as well as liberals such as Grattan. FitzGibbon is a strong supporter of the Union since 1793 but refuses to have Catholic emancipation with the Union.
In the end, FitzGibbon’s views wins out, leading to the Union of Ireland with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland without any concessions for Ireland’s Catholic majority, or for that matter, Catholics in the rest of the new United Kingdom. He later claims that he has been duped by the way in which the Act is passed and is bitterly opposed to any concessions during the short remainder of his life.
FitzGibbon’s role as Lord Chancellor of Ireland during the period of the 1798 rebellion is questionable. According to some, he supports a hardline policy which uses torture, murder and massacre to crush the rebellion, or that as Lord Chancellor, he has considerable influence on military affairs, and that martial law cannot be imposed without his consent. Others allege that as Lord Chancellor, he has no say in military affairs. His former side is displayed by sparing the lives of the captured United Irish leaders in return for their confession of complicity and provision of information relating to the planning of the rebellion. However, this willingness of the prisoners to partake of the agreement is spurred by the execution of the Sheares brothers on July 14, 1798.
In contrast to the leniency shown to the largely upper-class leadership, the full weight of military repression is inflicted upon the common people throughout the years 1797–98 with untold thousands suffering imprisonment, torture, transportation and death. Fitzgibbon ss inclined to show no mercy to unrepentant rebels and in October 1798 he expressed his disgust upon the capture of Wolfe Tone that he had been granted a trial and his belief that Tone should have been hanged as soon as he set foot on land.
FitzGibbon is quick to recognise that sectarianism is a useful ally to divide the rebels and prevent the United Irishmen from achieving their goal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, writing in June 1798, “In the North nothing will keep the rebels quiet but the conviction that where treason has broken out the rebellion is merely popish.”
FitzGibbon is noted by some as a good, improving landlord to both his Protestant and Catholic tenants. Some claim that the tenants of his Mountshannon estate call him “Black Jack” FitzGibbon. However, there is no evidence to support this claim, although there is little to no evidence on his dealings as a landlord. Irish nationalists and others point out that while he might have been interested in the welfare of his own tenants on his own estate, he treats other Irish Catholics very differently. Without further evidence, his role as a Protestant landowner in mainly Catholic Ireland is of little importance against his known dealings as Lord Chancellor.
FitzGibbon dies at his home, 6 Ely Place near St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on January 28, 1802, and is buried in the churchyard at St. Peter’s Church, Aungier Street, Dublin. A hero to Protestant hardliners, but despised by the majority Catholic population, his funeral cortege is the cause of a riot and there is a widespread story that a number of dead cats are thrown at his coffin as it departs Ely Place.
(Pictured: “Portrait of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare,” painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1789)
In the late 1980s, Reid facilitates a series of meetings between Gerry Adams and John Hume, in an effort to establish a “Pan-Nationalist front” to enable a move toward renouncing violence in favour of negotiation. Reid, himself a staunch nationalist who favours a united Ireland and the withdrawal of British forces from Northern Ireland, then acts as their contact person with the Irish Government in Dublin from a 1987 meeting with Charles Haughey up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In this role, which is not public knowledge at the time, he holds meetings with various Taoisigh, and particularly with Martin Mansergh, advisor to various Fianna Fáil leaders. After the eventual success of the peace negotiations, Gerry Adams says, “there would not be a peace process at this time without [Father Reid’s] diligent doggedness and his refusal to give up.”
After he moves to Dublin, Reid is involved in peace efforts in the Basque Country. In January 2003, he is awarded the Sabino Arana 2002 “World Mirror” prize, by the Sabino Arana Foundation in Bilbao, in recognition of his efforts at promoting peace and reconciliation. He and a Methodist minister, the Rev. Harold Good, announce that the IRA has decommissioned their arms at a news conference in September 2005.
Reid is involved in controversy in November 2005 when he makes comments during a meeting in Fitzroy Presbyterian Church concerning the Unionist community in Northern Ireland. When the loyalist activist Willie Frazer makes remarks that Catholics had butchered Protestants during the Troubles, Reid angrily responds, “You don’t want to hear the truth. The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews.” Reid later apologises, saying his remarks had been made in the heat of the moment. In an interview with CNN, he says that “The IRA were, if you like, a violent response to the suppression of human rights.”
Reid dies in a Dublin hospital on November 22, 2013. He is survived by two sisters and an aunt, and is buried in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast.
The Brady funeral is making its way along the Andersonstown Road toward Milltown Cemetery when the corporals’ car appears from the opposite direction. The car drives straight towards the front of the funeral, which is headed by several black taxis. It drives past a Sinn Féin steward who signals it to turn. Mourners at the funeral say they believed they were under attack from Ulster loyalists, as three days earlier, loyalist Michael Stone had attacked an IRA funeral and killed three people. The car then mounts a pavement, scattering mourners, and turns into a small side road. When this road is blocked, it then reverses at speed, ending up within the funeral procession. Corporal Wood attempts to drive the car out of the procession but his exit route is blocked by a black taxi.
An angry crowd surrounds the car, smashes the windows and attempts to drag the soldiers out. Wood produces a Browning Hi-Power 9mm handgun. He climbs partly out of a window and fires a shot in the air, which briefly scatters the crowd. The crowd then surges back, with some of them attacking the car with a wheel-brace and a stepladder snatched from a photographer. The corporals are eventually pulled from the car and punched and kicked to the ground.
The attack is witnessed by the media and passersby. JournalistMary Holland recalls seeing one of the men being dragged past a group of journalists. “He didn’t cry out; just looked at us with terrified eyes, as though we were all enemies in a foreign country who wouldn’t have understood what language he was speaking if he called out for help.”
The men are taken to nearby Casement Park sports ground, just opposite. Here they are beaten, stripped to their underpants and socks, and searched by a small group of men. The BBC and The Independent write that the men were “tortured.” A search reveals that the men are British soldiers. Their captors find a military ID on Howes which is marked “Herford,” the site of a British military base in Germany, but it is believed they misread it as “Hereford,” the headquarters of the Special Air Service (SAS).
Redemptoristpriest Father Alec Reid, who plays a significant part in the peace process leading to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, intervenes and attempts to save the soldiers, and asks people to call an ambulance. “I got down between the two of them and I had my arm around this one and I was holding this one up by the shoulder….They were so disciplined, they just lay there totally still and I decided to myself they were soldiers. There was a helicopter circling overhead and I don’t know why they didn’t do something, radio to the police or soldiers to come up, because there were these two of their own soldiers.”
One of the captors warns Father Reid not to interfere and orders two men to take him away.
The two soldiers are placed in a taxi and driven fewer than 200 yards to a waste ground near Penny Lane (South Link), just off the main Andersonstown Road. There they are taken out of the vehicle and shot dead. Wood is shot six times and Howes is shot five times. Each also has multiple injuries to other parts of their bodies. The perpetrators quickly leave the scene. Father Reid hears the shots and rushes to the waste ground. He believes one of the soldiers is still breathing and attempts to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Upon realizing that the soldiers are dead, he gives them the last rites. According to photographer David Cairns, although photographers have their films taken by the IRA, he is able to keep his by quickly leaving the area after taking a photograph of Reid kneeling beside the almost naked body of Howes, administering the last rites. Cairns’ photograph is later named one of the best pictures of the past 50 years by Life magazine.
The whole incident is filmed by a British Army helicopter hovering overhead. An unnamed soldier of the Royal Scots says his eight-man patrol is nearby and sees the attack on the corporals’ car but are told not to intervene. Soldiers and police arrive on the scene three minutes after the corporals had been shot. A British Army spokesman says the army did not respond immediately because they needed time to assess the situation and were wary of being ambushed by the IRA. The large funeral procession also prevents them getting to the scene quickly.
Shortly after, the IRA releases a statement:
“The Belfast Brigade, IRA, claims responsibility for the execution of two SAS members who launched an attack on the funeral cortege of our comrade volunteer Kevin Brady. The SAS unit was initially apprehended by the people lining the route in the belief that armed loyalists were attacking them and they were removed from the immediate vicinity. Our volunteers forcibly removed the two men from the crowd and, after clearly ascertaining their identities from equipment and documentation, we executed them.”
Two men, Alex Murphy and Harry Maguire, are sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, but are released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Several other men receive lesser sentences for their part in the corporals killings.
(Pictured: Catholic priest Father Alec Reid administers the last rights to Corporal David Howes, one of two British soldiers brutally beaten and murdered in Belfast)
seamus dubhghaill 