Kenny holds a meeting with U.S. PresidentBarack Obama. This is President Obama’s last Saint Patrick’s Day in the White House and, pending government formation negotiations, it may also be Kenny’s last as Taoiseach. Obama criticises the vicious nature of the current U.S. political cycle and pledges to continue to push for immigration reform while he is still in office. He is speaking as he attends several engagements with Kenny to mark Saint Patrick’s Day.
Earlier in the day at a breakfast reception at Number One Observatory Circle, the official residence of the vice president of the United States, Kenny tells Vice President Joe Biden that Ireland will be able to put together a stable government during the next “short period ahead.” The recent General Election is mentioned several times during speeches from both men. Biden says that he is surprised at the outcome saying “he did a hell of a job, is still the most popular guy, and he lost.” Biden says Kenny had assured him that it was “going to work out.”
In the evening, Kenny presents the traditional bowl of shamrock to Obama at a reception at the White House. The bowl is mouth-blown and hand-cut at the House of Waterford Crystal factory in Ireland. The piece is designed by Tom Cooke and inspired by the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin. It features the five themes of the Irish 2016 Centenary Programme – Remembering, Reconciling, Presenting, Imagining and Celebrating – which are inscribed on the piece.
Kenny also presents Obama with a pair of cufflinks modeled on the buttons of the coat Michael Collins was wearing when he was killed, and a limited-edition, fine-press collection of poetry and art, to celebrate the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, published by Stoney Road Press, in association with An Post and Poetry Ireland. First LadyMichelle Obama receives a ring designed by Paul Kelly, inspired by the Ring of Kerry, and a hamper of Irish food items. Daughters Malia and Sasha Obama are given two Newbridge Silverware compact mirrors.
Speaking to reporters after visiting the Oval Office, Kenny says Fine Gael is talking to like-minded parties and individuals on government formation and is working on drawing-up a set of priorities. “We’re actually determining our set of priorities that will be important in the discussions that Fine Gael will have in putting together a government. Some of that comes from our own programme, some of it comes from the parties and the alliances that we’ve been talking to. And some of it clearly comes from the concerns raised by people during the course of the election, like housing and homelessness, health issues and so on.”
Kenny adds, “We expect to have that finalised next week and that gives us really the basis for negotiations and for discussions about putting a government together.”
The following day, Kenny returns to Ireland for a short time before traveling to Brussels for a European Council meeting on Saint Patrick’s Day.
(From: “Kenny meets Obama and Biden in Washington,” RTÉ News, http://www.rte.ie, March 15, 2016)
O’Connor is educated in St. Mary’s College, Dublin, and then in Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare, a public school run by the Jesuit order. It is also attended by the man who later condemns O’Connor to death, his close friend Kevin O’Higgins. He studies experimental physics, logic, and metaphysics. He also attends the College of Science, Merrion Street. He takes a BA (1906) and receives a B.Eng (1911). In 1910, he takes his Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Arts degrees at University College Dublin (UCD), then known as the National University. Prominent in the university’s Literary and Historical Society, he advocates militant constitutional nationalism as one of the many society members active in the Young Ireland branch of the United Irish League.
During the subsequent Irish War of Independence (1919-21) O’Connor is Director of Engineering of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a military organisation descended from the Irish Volunteers. The specialist skills of engineering and signaling are essential to the development of the 5th Battalion, Dublin Brigade. Its men are forbidden frontline duty as their contribution is regarded as vital, their number too small. But units only expand on an incremental local basis, disappointing General Richard Mulcahy.
O’Connor is also involved in the Republican breakout from Strangeways Prison in Manchester, England, on October 25, 1919. Michael Collins takes a particular interest in the escape, and actually visits Austin Stack in the prison under a false name to finalise the arrangements. IRA men hold up traffic while a ladder is propped up against the outside of a prison wall. In all six prisoners escape, among them Piaras Beaslaí.
O’Connor refuses to accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which establishes the Irish Free State. It is ratified by a narrow vote in Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament. He and many like him feel that the Treaty copper-fastens the partition of the six counties of Northern Ireland and undermines the Irish Republic declared in 1916.
On January 10, a meeting is held at O’Connor’s home in Monkstown, Dublin. In attendance are all senior anti-Treaty IRA officers except Liam Mellows. O’Connor is appointed to chair this grouping, known as the Republican Military Council. It is agreed that an IRA convention should be called without delay; failing this, a separate GHQ will be formed. At a further meeting in O’Connor’s office on March 20, a temporary IRA GHQ staff is elected under Liam Lynch as chief of staff. O’Connor remains in charge of engineering.
On March 26, 1922, the anti-Treaty officers of the IRA hold a convention in Dublin, in which they reject the Treaty and repudiate the authority of the Dáil. However, they are prepared to discuss a way forward. The convention meets again on April 9. It creates a new army constitution and places the army under a newly elected executive of 16 men, including O’Connor, that are to choose an army council and headquarters staff. Asked by a journalist if this development means the anti-Treatyites ware proposing a “military dictatorship” in Ireland, O’Connor replies, “You can take it that way if you want.”
On April 14, 1922, O’Connor is one of a number of IRA leaders in a 200-strong force that occupies the Four Courts building in the centre of Dublin in defiance of the Provisional Government. They intend to provoke the British troops, who are still in the country, into attacking them, which they believe will restart the war with Britain and re-unite the IRA against their common enemy. They also occupy other smaller buildings regarded as being associated with the former British administration, such as the Ballast Office and the Freemasons‘ Hall in Molesworth Street, but the Four Courts remains the focus of interest. On June 15, O’Connor sends out men to collect the rifles that belong to the mutineers of the Civic Guards.
Michael Collins tries desperately to persuade the IRA men to leave the Four Courts. At the Third IRA Convention on June 18, the Executive is split over whether the Irish Government should demand that all British troops leave within 72 hours. A motion to this effect, opposed by Lynch, is narrowly defeated, whereupon O’Connor and others leave the meeting to set up a separate GHQ. The IRA effectively splits into two factions opposed to the government.
On June 22, 1922, Sir Henry Wilson is assassinated in London by two IRA men, Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan, each a former British soldier. Some now argue that this was done on the orders of Michael Collins, who had been a close friend of Dunne’s in the London Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Prime MinisterDavid Lloyd George writes an angry letter to Collins, which includes the line “…still less can Mr. Rory O’Connor be permitted to remain his followers and his arsenal in open rebellion in the heart of Dublin… organizing and sending out from this centre enterprises of murder not only in the area of your Government…”
On June 28, 1922, after the Four Courts garrison has kidnapped J. J. “Ginger” O’Connell, a general in the National Army, Collins gives orders for the shelling of the Four Courts with borrowed artillery lent by Winston Churchill. The shelling leads to the Four Courts catching fire, damaging parts of the building in addition to destroying numerous government documents. O’Connor is one of 130 men that surrender on June 30, some of whom are arrested and imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison. This incident marks the official start of the Irish Civil War, as fighting breaks out openly around the country between pro- and anti-Treaty factions.
On December 8, 1922, along with three other republicans, Liam Mellows, Richard Barrett and Joe McKelvey, captured with the fall of the Four Courts, O’Connor is executed by firing squad in reprisal for the anti-Treaty IRA’s killing of Free State Teachta Dála (TD) Sean Hales. The execution order is signed by Kevin O’Higgins. O’Connor had been best man at O’Higgins’s wedding on October 27, 1921. Their deaths remain a symbol of the bitterness and division of the Irish Civil War. O’Connor, one of 77 republicans executed by the Provisional Government, is seen as a martyr by the Republican movement in Ireland.
On O’Connor’s execution, the equestrienne Joan de Sales La Terriere, a close friend of his, names her son in his honour. “Rory O’Connor Place” in Arklow is named in his honour. There is also a pub in Crumlin, Dublin, named after him and a housing estate near Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, called “Rory O’Connor Park.” A Sinn Féincumann (UCD) is named after him.
(Pictured: Rory O’Connor addressing members of the IRA’s Dublin City Brigade at Smithfield, April 1922)
Following the Irish War of Independence, Mountjoy Prison is transferred to the control of the Irish Free State, which becomes the State of Ireland in 1937. In the 1920s, the families of the dead men request their remains be returned to them for proper burial. This effort is joined in the later 1920s by the National Graves Association. Through the efforts of the Association, the graves of the men are identified in 1934, and in 1996 a Celtic cross is erected in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, to commemorate them.
The campaign to rebury the men drags on for 80 years from their deaths. Following an intense period of negotiations, the Irish government relents. Plans to exhume the bodies of the ten men are announced on November 1, 2000, the 80th anniversary of the execution of Kevin Barry. On October 14, 2001, the Forgotten Ten are afforded full state honours, with a private service at Mountjoy Prison for the families of the dead, a Requiem Mass at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral and burial in Glasnevin Cemetery.
According to The Guardian, some criticise the event as glorifying militant Irish republicanism. It coincides with the Fianna FáilArdfheis. The progress of the cortège through the centre of Dublin is witnessed by crowds estimated as being in the tens of thousands who break into spontaneous applause as the coffins pass. On O’Connell Street, a lone piper plays a lament as the cortège pauses outside the General Post Office (GPO), the focal point of the 1916 Easter Rising. In his homily during the Requiem Mass, CardinalCahal Daly, a long-time critic of the IRA campaign in Northern Ireland, insists that there is a clear distinction between the conflict of 1916–22 and the paramilitary-led violence of the previous 30 years:
“The true inheritors today of the ideals of the men and women of 1916 to 1922 are those who are explicitly and visibly committed to leaving the physical force tradition behind… Surely this state funeral can be an occasion for examination of conscience about the ideals of the men who died, and about our responsibility for translating those ideals into today’s realities.”
In his graveside oration TaoiseachBertie Ahern echoes these sentiments and also pays tribute to the Ten:
“These 10 young men were executed during the War of Independence. The country was under tremendous pressure at the time. There was a united effort. Meanwhile, elected by the people, Dáil Éireann was developing, in spite of a war going on. Democracy was being put to work. Independent civic institutions, including the Dáil courts, were beginning to function. Before their deaths, the ten had seen the light of freedom. They understood that Ireland would be free and independent.”
The state funeral, broadcast live on national television and radio, is only the 13th since independence. Patrick Maher is not reburied with his comrades. In accordance with his wishes, and those of his family, he is reinterred in Ballylanders, County Limerick.
A feature length Irish language documentary on the re-interments, An Deichniúr Dearmadta (The Forgotten Ten) airs on TG4 on March 28, 2002.
(Pictured: The grave of nine of the Forgotten Ten in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin)
Sheppard is based in Dublin for almost all of his life, having traveled widely across Europe. His wife Rosie dies in 1931, with whom he has several children. They live at Howth and 30 Pembroke Road in central Dublin.
From 1902 to 1937 Sheppard teaches sculpture at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. His annual stipend is £250 but for this he only has to lecture three mornings a week, allowing him plenty of time for work on commissioned projects. One of his most famous students is the sculptor Kathleen Cox.
The Dying Cuchulain is considered Sheppard’s masterpiece and an important work of Irish art. It is a bronze figure of the mythological warrior-hero Cuchulain, who continued to fight against his enemies while gravely wounded and tied to a tree. It is created in 1911 and later chosen by Éamon de Valera in 1935 as the national memorial to the 1916 Easter Rising. It can still be viewed today in the General Post Office (GPO), O’Connell Street, Dublin.
Sheppard is generally critical of the low standards of sculpture in Ireland: “For the last sixty years or so thousands of figures and groups have been executed in Dublin for ecclesiastical purposes, and, with one or two exceptions … was not up to a reasonable standard. The making of a work of art hardly entered into it at all. The sculptor, well trained and properly encouraged, should collaborate with the architect.”
Sheppard is in the minority of Irish Protestants who support independence, starting with support for the Irish Parliamentary Party in the 1880s, when he is an art student.
In 1890–1910 Sheppard is a part of the Celtic Revival movement, and, from his works such as Inis Fáil, is admired by his student William Pearse. Through him he meets his brother Patrick Pearse who later helps launch the Easter Rising in 1916. While most of the Revival’s artists are writers, playwrights and poets, Sheppard can claim to be the main sculptor working on themes similar to theirs.
After the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) Sheppard says, “They thought me too old to fight but I have tried to help in other ways. My politics are simple. I have always thought that this country should be a free country.” His opinions are not overly dogmatic, considering his work on the war memorials in 1920.
In the mid-1920s the first series of Irish Free State coinage is planned, and is finally launched in 1928. Sheppard is one of the designers short-listed but his designs are not accepted.
After his retirement in 1937 from the National College of Art, the now renamed Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, he is appointed in 1938 by the Minister for Education to the College’s standing committee. He is also made a judge in the Royal Dublin Society art competition in 1939 and 1940.
Sheppard dies on September 14, 1941, in Dublin and is buried at Old St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton, Dublin. There is a small retrospective exhibition of fourteen of his works at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1942. There are portraits of Sheppard by George William Russell (Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane) and Sir William Orpen (NGI), and photographic portraits in the Sheppard collection, National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, where his papers are located.
Frank Ryan, politician, journalist, intelligence agent and paramilitary activist, is born in the townland of Bottomstown, Elton, County Limerick, on September 11, 1902. A fascinating, somewhat mythical figure, he lives during turbulent times when Ireland finally disposes of tyrannical British rule in Ireland and becomes an icon for socialist republicans in Europe during the 1930s and 40s.
Ryan fights on the Anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War (1922-23), and is wounded and interned. In November 1923 he is released and returns to UCD. He secures his degree in Celtic Studies and further secures the editorship of An Phoblacht (The Republic), the newspaper of the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA).
The split in the Irish independence party, Sinn Féin, results in regular fist fights between pro and anti-Treaty forces. Cumann na nGaedhael, the pro-Treaty political party in government, recruits the Army Comrades Association (Blueshirts) under former Garda CommissionerEoin O’Duffy to protect their members from anti-Treaty IRA protesters at annual Armistice Day and Wolfe Tone commemorations. Ryan is a forceful orator at these events and is frequently arrested and beaten up by the Gardai. The fractious politics results in Dáil members Sean Hales and Kevin O’Higgins being shot dead in public.
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) inspires Ryan to lead the first contingent of Irish volunteers to support the Popular Front government of Republican Spain. A brave and inspiring leader, he serves with Italian and German Republican divisions. He is seriously wounded at the Battle of Jarama in February 1937. Following recuperation in Ireland, he is appointed adjutant to republican General José Miaja. During the Aragon Offensive he is captured with 150 of his men in April 1938 and sentenced to death. Irish President, Éamon de Valera, intervenes with General Francisco Franco and Ryan’s sentence is commuted to thirty years. His health suffers severely in Burgos Prison, Spain during his two year incarceration.
Franco refuses to release Ryan because he is considered his most dangerous prisoner. In August 1940 he is transferred to Berlin, where he is re-united with IRA Chief of StaffSeán Russell. An attempt to return both men to Ireland by U-boat ends with Russell dying from a perforated ulcer. Ryan voluntarily returns to Germany where he serves as the unofficial IRA ambassador for German intelligence. Irishman Francis Stuart, son-in-law of Maud Gonne, who writes some of William Joyce’s propaganda, takes good care of Ryan until his untimely death at a hospital in Loschwitz in Dresden on June 10, 1944.
Ryan’s funeral in Dresden is attended by Elizabeth Clissmann, wife of Helmut Clissmann, and Francis Stuart. Clissmann eventually forwards details of Ryan’s fate to Leopold Kerney in Madrid. According to Stuart and Clissmann, the cause of death is pleurisy and pneumonia.
In 1963, historian Enno Stephan locates Ryan’s grave in Dresden. Three volunteers of the International Brigades, Frank Edwards, Peter O’Connor and Michael O’Riordan travel to East Germany as a guard of honour to repatriate Ryan’s remains in 1979. On June 21, 1979, his remains arrive in Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church, his local church when he lived in Dublin. The church is packed with all shades of Republican and left-wing opinion, as well as those from his past such as the Stuarts, the Clissmanns, Peadar O’Donnell, George Gilmore, and ex-comrades and sympathizers from all over the world. The cortège on its way to Glasnevin Cemetery halts at the GPO in memory of the dead of the 1916 Easter Rising. His coffin is borne to the grave in Glasnevin Cemetery by Irish veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Frank Edwards, Peter O’Connor, Michael O’Riordan and Terry Flanagan. Con Lehane delivers the funeral oration while a piper plays “Limerick’s Lamentation.” He is buried next to Éamonn Mac Thomáis.
Ryan leads a vicarious life in pursuit of human rights, socialism and republicanism. His life story remains more colourful than fiction.
Lemass is the second of nine children born to John T. Lemass and his wife Frances (née Phelan) Lemass. He is educated at O’Connell School, where he is described as studious (his two best subjects being history and mathematics).
Lemass is persuaded to join the Irish Volunteers. He becomes a member of the A Company of the 3rd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade. The battalion adjutant is Éamon de Valera, future Taoiseach and President of Ireland. While out on a journey in the Dublin mountains during Easter 1916, he is informed of the Easter Rising that is taking place in Dublin. On April 25, Seán and his brother Noel are allowed to join the Volunteer garrison at the General Post Office (GPO). He is equipped with a shotgun and was positioned on the roof. He also is involved in fighting on Moore Street. However, the Rising ends in failure and all involved are imprisoned. He is held for a month in Richmond Barracks but, due to his age, he is released. Following this, his father wants his son to continue with his studies and be called to the Irish Bar.
Lemass opposes the establishment of the Irish Free State as a dominion under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and becomes a member of the headquarters staff of the Irish Republican Army in the Irish Civil War (1922–23). He plays a key role in persuading de Valera to found a new republican party, Fianna Fáil, in 1926. After de Valera rises to the premiership in 1932, Lemass holds portfolios in all his cabinets for 21 of the next 27 years, notably as Minister of Industry and Commerce and then as Tánaiste.
When de Valera becomes President of Ireland in 1959, Lemass is appointed Taoiseach on June 23, 1959, on the nomination for Dáil Éireann. Under him the country takes a more outward-looking approach, and he especially presses for Ireland’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC), now the European Communities, embedded in the European Union, and for reconciliation with Northern Ireland. His greatest legacy, Ireland’s membership in the EEC, is not secured until 1973, after his death.
In 1966, Ireland celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. Éamon de Valera comes within 1% of defeat in that year’s Irish presidential election, less than two months after the celebrations in which he played such a central part. On November 10, 1966, Lemass announces to the Dáil his decision to retire as Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach with his usual penchant for efficiency, “I have resigned.” He retires to the backbenches and remains a TD until 1969. On the day of his retirement, Jack Lynch becomes the new leader of Fianna Fáil and Taoiseach.
During the last few years of his leadership, Lemass’s health begins to deteriorate. He had been a heavy pipe smoker all his life, smoking almost a pound of tobacco a week in later life. At the time of his retirement, it is suspected that he has cancer, but this assumption is later disproved. In February 1971, while attending a rugby game at Lansdowne Road, he becomes unwell. He is rushed to hospital and is told by his doctor that one of his lungs is about to collapse.
Gearóid O’Sullivan, soldier and politician, is born on January 28, 1891 at Coolnagrane, near Skibbereen, County Cork, fourth son among six sons and three daughters of Michael O’Sullivan, farmer, of Loughine, and Margaret Sullivan (née McCarthy) of Coolnagrane.
Christened Jeremiah but known in later life as Gearóid, O’Sullivan is an outstanding pupil at national school and secondary school in Skibbereen. Encouraged by his teachers, he acquires a love of the Irish language. Not yet ten, he joins the Gaelic League in Skibbereen in October 1900. He takes part in the Oireachtas debates of 1909. In 1911 he qualifies at St. Patrick’s College, Dublin, as a national school teacher and teaches at Kildorrery, County Cork, but returns to Dublin in 1912 to take up a post at St. Peter’s National School, Phibsborough. He takes an honours degree in Celtic studies at University College Dublin (UCD) (1913), an H.Dip.Ed. (1914), and an M.Ed. (1915). At the same time, he is an organiser and teacher with the Gaelic League, a member of its Keating branch at Parnell Square, Dublin, and a founder of the League’s “fáinne” proficiency badge.
O’Sullivan joins the F Company, 1st Battalion, Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers at their foundation in November 1913, is aide-de-camp to Seán Mac Diarmada during the 1916 Easter Rising, and is ordered by Patrick Pearse to raise the flag of rebellion over the General Post Office (GPO) stronghold in Dublin. Interned at Frongoch internment camp in Wales after the rising, he belongs to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) group of prisoners closely linked with Michael Collins, a proximity that continues throughout the crisis years to follow. Released in the amnesty of December 1916, he intensifies his Volunteer activity, playing a prominent role in Carlow Brigade, for which he is briefly detained while working as a teacher at St. Mary’s Knockbeg College, County Carlow. When the Irish Volunteers become the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1919, he is arrested again and goes on hunger strike at Mountjoy Prison, which leads to his release. Active throughout the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) and narrowly avoiding recapture during meetings with Collins, he joins the supreme council of the IRB in November 1921, remaining there for the remainder of his military career.
From February 1920, O’Sullivan replaces Collins as adjutant general of the IRA, a position he retains until the Anglo–Irish Treaty of December 1921 (which he supports), resuming it a month later as a lieutenant general of the new National Army, responsible for personnel and promotions. He is also elected to Dáil Éireann for Carlow–Kilkenny in 1921 and again in 1922, retiring in 1923. His intellectual and organisational abilities guarantee that his position within the army is safe after the death in August 1922 of Collins, to whom he owes much for his initial rise to prominence. On August 28 he is appointed to the newly created army council, whose most draconian prerogative becomes the military execution of republican prisoners.
After the Irish Civil War (1922–23), wholesale demobilisation of officers and other ranks takes place, but O’Sullivan and his council colleagues Richard Mulcahy, Seán Mac Mahon, and Seán Ó Murthuile survive the fiscal axe. Their privileged position angers some officers, led by Major GeneralLiam Tobin, alarmed at the rate of demobilisation and the state’s apparent abandonment of Collins’s republican ideals. Through the Irish Republican Army Organisation, they deplore the devaluation of their pre-treaty IRA service and the retention of certain former British Army officers and instructors. O’Sullivan’s brief time as adjutant general places him in the role of personnel manager. As the Defence Forces (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1923, transforms the National Army into the defence forces of an Irish dominion, he is clearly in the sights of those who disagree with how these forces took shape.
As demobilisation continues and former British personnel become more evident, O’Sullivan and his colleagues become targets of suspicion that a hostile IRB clique had controlled the army council since its formation after the death of Collins. Exaggerated or not, such claims precipitate the army crisis of March 1924, in which O’Sullivan personally orders a raiding party under Colonel Hugo MacNeill to arrest its leaders. To defuse the crisis, he and his army council colleagues are forced to stand down, while the arrested dissidents are summarily retired. The subsequent army inquiry (April–June 1924) absolves him and his colleagues of any wrongdoing, but their active military careers are over. O’Sullivan, however, is for some time secretary of the military service pensions board.
Civilian life treats O’Sullivan well, as he enters a legal career and in 1926 is called to the bar. In 1927 he is appointed Judge Advocate General and remains so until 1932. After the assassination of Minister for JusticeKevin O’Higgins in July 1927, he fills the vacated Dublin County seat in a by-election in August, retaining it at subsequent elections until 1937. In August 1928 he is a Free State delegate to the Empire Parliamentary Association conference in Canada. Openly supporting Gen. Eoin O’Duffy and the short-lived ‘Blueshirts’ vanguard of the fledgling Fine Gael party during 1933–34, he pointedly refuses to surrender his legally held revolver when gardaí demand it as a precaution against a feared Blueshirt coup d’étât. In 1937 he becomes a barrister on the western circuit, and in 1940 commissioner for special purposes of the income tax acts, a post he holds for life.
O’Sullivan lives at St. Kevin’s Park, Dartry, Dublin, where he dies at the age of 57 on March 26, 1948. His military funeral to Glasnevin Cemetery, with his coffin draped in the same flag that had covered the coffin of Michael Collins, reflects his high national profile.
In 1922, O’Sullivan marries Maude Kiernan, sister of Kitty Kiernan and daughter of Peter and Bridget Kiernan, whose family is closely involved with the Irish political leadership, notably Michael Collins and Harry Boland. After Maude’s death he marries Mary Brennan of Belfast. They have three daughters and a son, all of whom survive him. O’Sullivan is commemorated in County Cork by a plaque at Skibbereen town hall.
Pearse follows his brother into the Irish Volunteers and the Republican movement. He takes part in the Easter Rising in 1916, always staying at his brother’s side at the General Post Office. Following the surrender he is court-martialed and sentenced to death. It has been said that as he is only a minor player in the struggle it is his surname that condemns him. However, at his court martial he emphasizes his involvement.
On May 3, 1916, Pearse is granted permission to visit his brother in Kilmainham Gaol, to see him for the final time. However, while he is en route, Patrick is executed. He is executed on May 4. He and his brother are the only two brothers to be executed after the Easter Rising.
There are many more public commemorations of Patrick Pearse than of William. In 1966, Dublin’s Westland Row railway station is renamed Dublin Pearse railway station to honour both brothers. Pearse Square and Pearse Street in Dublin are renamed in honour of both, Pearse Street (then Great Brunswick Street) having been their birthplace. Many streets and roads in Ireland bear the name Pearse. Few name William, but there is a Pearse Brothers Park in Rathfarnham. The bridge over the River Dodder on the Rathfarnham Road, between Terenure and Rathfarnham is named after them and carries a plaque depicting the brothers in profile.
Brothers Pearse Athletic Club, founded in Rathfarnham, is named after the two brothers. A number of Gaelic Athletic Association clubs and playing fields are named after both Pearses, and at least one after William.
O’Sullivan is the son of Florence O’Sullivan and Margaret Aloysius O’Sullivan (née Barry) of Denis Quay, Kinsale, County Cork, who were married in Wicklow, County Wicklow in 1895. His father is a solicitor, practising in Kinsale.
O’Sullivan joins the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and is commissioned as a Temporary Lieutenant on June 8, 1918. He is sent for training to HMS Hermione, an Astraea-class cruiser, from where he is sent on August 22, 1918 to “Our Allies,” the mother ship for motor launches. He later serves on Motor Launches 386 and 530. While serving on a motor launch in the Mediterranean Sea, he is awarded the Military Cross for bravery during the Second Battle of Durazzo on October 2-3, 1918. He is demobilised on July 8, 1919, with the rank of Lieutenant, but this is later reversed as he had not yet reached the minimum age of 22.
O’Sullivan then qualifies as a solicitor, and subsequently joins the Royal Irish Constabulary on July 24, 1920. He is appointed a District Inspector on October 1, 1920.
O’Sullivan is engaged to a Miss Moore and he meets her near the General Post Office (GPO) on O’Connell Street in Dublin on December 17, 1920. They are walking down Henry Street when he is assassinated by a group of four men. One man shoots him in the head, but Miss Moore manages to grab the revolver from him. A second man shoots him as he lay on the ground. He dies one hour later in nearby Jervis Street Hospital. The cause of death is listed as shock and haemorrhage resulting from bullet wounds. His body is identified by his father. He is buried in the grave of his grandfather.
O’Sullivan had been identified by Ned Kelliher, possibly also from Kinsale, who had trailed him for a week. He points out O’Sullivan to members of Michael Collins‘s Squad, one of whom is Joe Byrne. Miss Moore states that she had been warned some time previously that O’Sullivan was “one of the Black and Tans” and she should have nothing to do with him. She had dismissed the threat.
O’Sullivan’s death is registered on January 7, 1921, on foot of a certificate received from a Military Court of Inquiry, following an inquest held on December 18, 1920.
The assassination is recorded by Joe Byrne in Witness Statement No. 461 to the Bureau of Military History, dated December 16, 1950. “I remember an evening in December 1920, when I was instructed, with others to proceed to Henry Street to assist in the shooting of D.I. O’Sullivan. About four of us comprised the party. A couple of us were detailed not to take part in the actual shooting but to cover off the men who were to do the job. I saw the D.I. being shot by a member of the Squad and when the shooting was over we returned to Morelands.” Morelands is a shop on Abbey Street, Dublin, used as a base by The Squad.
O’Sullivan’s name is included on the supplementary list of the Glasnevin Cemetery War Memorial.
(From: The Royal Irish Constabulary Forum, irishconstabulary.com | Pictured: Photograph of District Inspector Philip John O’Sullivan, Cork Examiner, December 21, 1920)
Lemass is a member of the 3rd Battalion, Dublin Brigade of the IRA. He along with his younger brother Seán, later Ireland’s fourth Taoiseach, take part in the Easter Rising where he fights at the General Post Office (GPO). He is employed as an engineer in Dublin Corporation. When the Irish Civil War breaks out in 1922 both he and his brother take the Anti-Treaty side and both fight together at the Four Courts.
After the fall of the Four Courts, Lemass is imprisoned but manages to escape and makes his way to England. He returns to Ireland in the summer of 1923 when the cease-fire has been declared and goes back to his former employers at the Dublin Corporation, hoping to resume his work there. He offers the town clerk, John J. Murphy, if he would forward a letter to the authorities that he plans to write, “stating that he had no intention of armed resistance to the Government.”
In July 1923, two months after the Irish Civil War ends, Lemass is kidnapped in broad daylight by Free State agents outside MacNeils Hardware shop, at the corner of Exchequer and Drury Street. Three months later, on October 13, his decomposed body is found on the Featherbed Mountain near Sally Gap, twenty yards from the Glencree Road, in an area known locally as ‘The Shoots.’
The body is clothed in a dark tweed suit, light shirt, silk socks, spats and a knitted tie. The pockets contain Rosary beads, a watch-glass, a rimless glass, a tobacco pouch and an empty cigarette case. The trousers’ pockets are turned inside out, as if they had been rifled. There is what appears to be an entrance bullet wound on the left temple and the top of the skull is broken, suggesting an exit wound. He has been shot at least three times in the head and his left arm is fractured, his teeth have been brutally forced from his jaws and his right foot is never found. It is likely that he is killed elsewhere and dumped at this spot.
Meeting two days later, Dublin Council passes a strongly worded vote of sympathy with Lemass’s family. Describing their fellow employee as an “esteemed and worthy officer of the Council who had been foully and diabolically murdered,” the Council adjourns for one week as a mark of respect.
(Pictured: Captain Noel Lemass Memorial Stone at the spot where his body was found on Featherbed Mountain)
Noel Lemass, Anti-Treaty 
seamus dubhghaill 