Rossa becomes a shopkeeper in Skibbereen where, in 1856, he establishes the Phoenix National and Literary Society, the aim of which is “the liberation of Ireland by force of arms.” This organisation later merges with the IRB, founded two years later in Dublin.
In December 1858, Roosa is arrested and jailed without trial until July 1859. He is charged with plotting a Fenian rising in 1865, put on trial for high treason, and sentenced to penal servitude for life due to previous convictions. He serves his time in Pentonville, Portland, and Chatham prisons in England.
After giving an understanding that he will not return to Ireland, Rossa is released as part of the Fenian amnesty of 1870. Boarding the S.S. Cuba, he leaves for the United States with his friend John Devoy and three other exiles. Together they were dubbed “The Cuba Five.”
In 1885, Rossa is shot outside his office near Broadway by an Englishwoman, Yseult Dudley, but his wounds are not life-threatening. He is allowed to visit Ireland in 1894, and again in 1904. On the latter visit, he is made a “Freeman of the City of Cork.”
Rossa is seriously ill in his later years and is finally confined to a hospital bed in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Staten Island, where he dies suddenly at the age of 83 on June 29, 1915. His body is returned to Ireland for burial and a hero’s welcome. The funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery on August 1, 1915, is a huge affair, garnering substantial publicity for the Irish Volunteers and the IRB at time when a rebellion, later to emerge as the Easter Rising, is being actively planned. The graveside oration given by Patrick Pearse remains one of the most famous speeches of the Irish independence movement stirring his audience to a call to arms.
Humbert crosses the River Shannon at Ballintra Bridge on September 7, destroying it behind them, and continues to Drumshanbo where they spend the night – halfway between his landing-point and Dublin. News reaches him of the defeat of the Westmeath and Longford rebels at Wilson’s Hospital School at Multyfarmham and Granard from the trickle of rebels who have survived the slaughter and reached his camp. With Cornwallis’ huge force blocking the road to Dublin, facing constant harassment of his rearguard and the pending arrival of General Gerard Lake‘s command, Humbert decides to make a stand the next day at the townland of Ballinamuck on the Longford/Leitrim county border.
Humbert faces over 12,000 Irishmen and English forces. General Lake is close behind with 14,000 men, and Cornwallis is on his right at Carrick-on-Shannon with 15,000. The battle begins with a short artillery duel followed by a dragoon charge on exposed Irish rebels. There is a brief struggle when French lines are breached which only ceases when Humbert signals his intention to surrender and his officers order their men to lay down their muskets. The battle lasts little more than an hour.
While the French surrender is being taken, the 1,000 or so Irish allies of the French under Colonel Bartholomew Teeling, an Irish officer in the French army, hold onto their arms without signaling the intention to surrender or being offered terms. An attack by infantry followed by a dragoon charge breaks and scatters the Irish who are pursued into a bog where they are either bayoneted or drowned.
A total of 96 French officers and 746 men are taken prisoner. British losses are initially reported as 3 killed and 16 wounded or missing, but the number of killed alone is later reported as twelve. Approximately 500 French and Irish lay dead on the field. Two hundred Irish prisoners are taken in the mopping-up operations, almost all of whom are later hanged, including Matthew Tone, brother of Wolfe Tone. The prisoners are moved to the Carrick-on-Shannon Gaol. The French are given prisoner or war status however the Irish are not and some are hanged and buried in St. Johnstown, today known as Ballinalee, where most are executed in a field that is known locally as Bully’s Acre.
Humbert and his men are transported by canal to Dublin and exchanged for British prisoners of war. Government forces subsequently slowly spread out into the rebel-held “Irish Republic,” engaging in numerous skirmishes with rebel holdouts. These sweeps reach their climax on September 23 when Killala is captured by government forces. During these sweeps, suspected rebels are frequently summarily executed while many houses thought to be housing rebels are burned. French prisoners of war are swiftly repatriated, while United Irishmen rebels are executed. Numerous rebels take to the countryside and continue guerrilla operations, which take government forces some months to suppress. The defeat at Ballinamuck leaves a strong imprint on Irish social memory and features strongly in local folklore. Numerous oral traditions are later collected about the battle, principally in the 1930’s by historian Richard Hayes and the Irish Folklore Commission.
(Pictured: Watercolour plan by an I. Hardy of the Battle of Ballinamuck in County Longford on September 8, 1798, showing position of the English & French Armies previous to the surrender of the latter at Balinamuck)
McGeown joins the IRA’s youth wing, Fianna Éireann, in 1970. He is first arrested at the age of 14, and in 1973 he is again arrested and interned in Long Kesh Detention Centre until 1974. In November 1975, he is arrested and charged with possession of explosives, bombing the Europa Hotel, and IRA membership. At his trial in 1976 he is convicted and receives a five-year sentence for IRA membership and two concurrent fifteen-year sentences for the bombing and possession of explosives, and is imprisoned at Long Kesh with Special Category Status.
In March 1978, McGeown attempts to escape along with Brendan McFarlane and Larry Marley. The three have wire cutters and dress as prison officers, complete with wooden guns. The escape is unsuccessful, and results in McGeown receiving an additional six-month sentence and the loss of his Special Category Status.
McGeown is transferred into the Long Kesh Detention Centre’s H-Blocks where he joins the blanket protest and dirty protest, attempting to secure the return of Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners.He describes the conditions inside the prison during the dirty protest in a 1985 interview:
“There were times when you would vomit. There were times when you were so run down that you would lie for days and not do anything with the maggots crawling all over you. The rain would be coming in the window and you would be lying there with the maggots all over the place.“
In late 1980, the protest escalates and seven prisoners take part in a fifty-three-day hunger strike, aimed at restoring political status by securing what are known as the “Five Demands:”
The right not to wear a prison uniform.
The right not to do prison work.
The right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits.
The right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week.
Full restoration of remission lost through the protest.
The strike ends before any prisoners die and without political status being secured. A second hunger strike begins on March 1, 1981, led by Bobby Sands, the IRA’s former Officer Commanding (OC) in the prison. McGeown joins the strike on July 9, after Sands and four other prisoners have starved themselves to death. Following the deaths of five other prisoners, his family authorises medical intervention to save his life after he lapses into a coma on August 20, the 42nd day of his hunger strike.
McGeown is released from prison in 1985, resuming his active role in the IRA’s campaign and also working for Sinn Féin, the republican movement’s political wing. In 1988, he is charged with organising the Corporals killings, an incident where two plain-clothes British Army soldiers are killed by the IRA. At an early stage of the trial his solicitor, Pat Finucane, argues there is insufficient evidence against McGeown, and the charges are dropped in November 1988. McGeown and Finucane are photographed together outside Crumlin Road Courthouse, a contributing factor to Finucane being killed by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in February 1989. Despite suffering from heart disease as a result of his participation in the hunger strike, McGeown is a member of Sinn Féin’s Ard Chomhairle and is active in its Prisoner of War Department. In 1993, he is elected to Belfast City Council.
McGeown is found dead in his home on October 1, 1996, after suffering a heart attack. Sinn Féin chairman Mitchel McLaughlin says his death is “a great loss to Sinn Féin and the republican struggle.” McGeown is buried in the republican plot at Belfast’s Milltown Cemetery. His death is often referred to as the “11th hunger striker.” In 1998, the Pat McGeown Community Endeavour Award is launched by Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, with Adams describing McGeown as “a modest man with a quiet, but total dedication to equality and raising the standard of life for all the people of the city.” A plaque in memory of McGeown is unveiled outside the Sinn Féin headquarters on the Falls Road on November 24, 2001, and a memorial plot on Beechmount Avenue is dedicated to the memory of McGeown, Kieran Nugent and Alec Comerford on March 3, 2002.
James NesbittMBE, a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Detective Chief Inspector who is best known for heading the Murder Squad team investigating the notorious Shankill Butchers‘ killings in the mid-1970s, dies on August 27, 2014, following a brief illness.
Nesbitt is born on September 29, 1934, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the son of James, an electrician, and Ellen. He is brought up in the Church of Ireland religion and lives with his parents and elder sister, Maureen, in a terraced house in Cavehill Road, North Belfast, which is considered to be a middle class area at the time. Having first attended the Model Primary School in Ballysillan Road, in 1946 he moves on to Belfast Technical High School where he excels as a pupil. From an early age, he is fascinated by detective stories and dreams about becoming a detective himself.
As a child, Nesbitt avidly reads about all the celebrated murder trials in the newspapers. At the age of 16, he opts to leave school and goes to work as a sales representative for a linen company where he remains for seven years.
At the age of 23, Nesbitt seeks a more exciting career and realises his childhood dream by joining the Royal Ulster Constabulary as a uniformed constable. He applies at the York Road station in Belfast and passes his entry exams. His first duty station is at Swatragh, County Londonderry. During this period, the Irish Republican Army‘s Border Campaign is being waged. He earns two commendations during the twelve months he spends at the Swatragh station, having fought off two separate IRA gun attacks which had seen an Ulster Special Constabulary man shot. In 1958, he is transferred to the Coleraine RUC station where his superiors grant him the opportunity to assist in detective work. Three years later he is promoted to the rank of detective.
Nesbitt marries Marion Wilson in 1967 and begins to raise a family. By 1971 he is back in his native Belfast and holds the rank of Detective Sergeant. He enters the RUC’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) section and is based at Musgrave Street station. Many members of the RUC find themselves targeted by both republican and loyalistparamilitaries as the conflict known as The Troubles grows in intensity during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In September 1973, Nesbitt is promoted to Detective Inspector and moves to head up the RUC’s C or “Charlie” Division based in Tennent Street, off the Shankill Road, the heartland of loyalism and home of many loyalist paramilitaries. C Division covers not only the Shankill but also the republican Ardoyne and “The Bone” areas. Although he encounters considerable suspicion from his subordinates when he arrives at Tennent Street, he manages to eventually create much camaraderie within the ranks of those under his command when before there had been rivalry and discord. C Division loses a total of twelve men as a result of IRA attacks. During his tenure as Detective Chief Inspector at Tennent Street, he and his team investigate a total of 311 killings and solve around 250 of the cases.
By 1975, Nesbitt is encountering death and serious injury on a daily basis as the violence in Northern Ireland shows no signs of abating. However, toward the end of the year, he is faced with the first of a series of brutal killings that add a new dimension to the relentless tit-for-tat killings between Catholics and Protestants that has already made 1975 “one of the bloodiest years of the conflict.”
The Shankill Butchers are an Ulster loyalist paramilitary gang, many of whom are members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), that is active between 1975 and 1982 in Belfast. It is based in the Shankill area and is responsible for the deaths of at least 23 people, most of whom are killed in sectarian attacks.
The gang kidnaps, tortures and murders random civilians suspected of being Catholics. Each is beaten ferociously and has their throat slashed with a butcher knife. Some are also tortured and attacked with a hatchet. The gang also kills six Ulster Protestants over personal disputes and two other Protestants mistaken for Catholics.
Most of the gang are eventually caught by Nesbitt and his Murder Squad and, in February 1979, receive the longest combined prison sentences in United Kingdom legal history.
In 1991, after Channel 4 broadcasts a documentary claiming that the Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee had been reorganised as an alliance between loyalist paramilitaries, senior RUC members and leader figures in Northern Irish business and finance, Nesbitt and Detective Inspector Chris Webster are appointed by Chief Constable Hugh Annesley to head up an internal inquiry into the collusion allegations. The investigation delivers its verdict in February 1993 and exonerates all those named as Committee members who did not have previous terrorist convictions arguing that they are “respectable members of the community” and in some cases “the aristocracy of the country.”
Prior to his retirement, Nesbitt has received a total of 67 commendations, which is the highest number ever given to a policeman in the history of the United Kingdom. In 1980, he is awarded the MBE “in recognition of his courage and success in combating terrorism.”
Nesbitt dies on August 27, 2014, after a brief illness.
Brayton is born Teresa Coca Boulanger in Kilbrook, the youngest daughter and fifth child of Hugh Boylan and Elizabeth Boylan (née Downes). Her family are long-time nationalists, with her great grandfather previously leading a battalion of pikesmen at the Battle of Prosperous.
Brayton is educated from the age of 5 in Newtown National School. She writes her first poem at the age of twelve, and soon after wins her first literary award. Later on, she trains to be a teacher, and then becomes an assistant teacher to her older sister Elizabeth in the same school she received her education.
Brayton’s father is a tenant farmer, and from a young age she witnesses the effects of the land wars in Ireland. She is a supporter of Parnell, the Irish National Land League and the Irish Home Rule movement. Her work is largely influenced by her family history and Irish nationalism.
In September 1895, Brayton emigrates to the United States at the age of 27. She first lives in Boston, Chicago, and later moves to New York City. She meets Richard H. Brayton, a French-Canadian who works as an executive in the Municipal Revenue Department, who she then marries. She looks after their home and focuses on her career as a freelance journalist. She lives in the United States for 40 years and becomes well known in Irish American circles as a prominent figure in the Celtic Fellowship. It was in the United States that her reputation is established.
In the 1880s, Brayton begins her career as a poet, writing poetry for both national and provincial Irish newspapers, including Young Ireland and the King’s County Chronicle. She uses the pseudonym “T. B. Kilbrook” while contributing to these papers.
Brayton continues writing under the pseudonym until moving to the United States, where she becomes an acclaimed writer and continues to contribute to papers including the Boston newspaper The Pilot, New York Monitor and Rosary Magazine. Her target audience is the Irish immigrant population of the United States. After establishing herself she releases her poetry in collections including Songs of Dawn (1913) and The Flame of Ireland (1926).
Brayton makes return trips to Ireland regularly and develops a relationship with nationalist peers, and the leaders of the Easter Rising. Upon returning to the United States, she becomes an activist for the Irish Republic and participates in organising the distribution of information to the Irish population through pamphlets and public speaking. Her contribution is acknowledged by Constance Markievicz. Her patriotism to Ireland admit her to the Celtic Fellowship in America, where she shares her poetry at events.
Brayton’s best-known poem is “The Old Bog Road,” which is later set to music by Madeline King O’Farrelly. It has since been recorded and released by many Irish musicians including Finbar Furey, Daniel O’Donnell and Eileen Donaghy, among many others. Many more of her best-known ballads include, The Cuckoo’s Call, By the Old Fireside and Takin’ Tea in Reilly’s.
Brayton makes her permanent return to Ireland at the age of 64 following the death of her husband in 1932 and continues her career as a journalist writing for Irish newspapers and publishes religious poetry in the volume Christmas Verses in 1934. A short story called The New Lodger written by Brayton is published by the Catholic Trust Society in 1933. She dedicates much of her work to the exiled Irish living in the United States, incorporating themes of nostalgia, the familiarity of home and religion throughout her poetry.
Initially upon moving back to Ireland, she lives for a few years with her sister in Bray, County Wicklow. She then moves to Waterloo Avenue, North Strand, County Dublin. Here, she witnesses the bombing of the North Strand on May 31, 1941 during World War II. Shortly after the bombing, she eventually settles back in Kilbrook, where she was born, and lives there for the rest of her life. She spends a brief period of time in the Edenderry Hospital before her death. During her stay there she becomes a good friend with Padraig O’Kennedy, the “Leinster Leader,” who is able to reveal to her something that is linked to a family member of his. A copy of her The Old Bog Road which had been set to music and autographed by her while she was living in the United States. She had it sent to O’Kennedy’s eldest son and on it she wrote the words: “To the boy who sings the Old Bog Road so sweetly.”
Two years after her return to Kilbrook, on August 19, 1943, Brayton dies in the same room where her mother had given birth to her over 75 years previously. She is buried at the Cloncurry cemetery in County Kildare. Her funeral is attended by many, including the then Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera.
From the vivid imagery she speaks of in her poetry, Brayton, both a poet and a novelist, is described by some as “the poet of the homes of Ireland.” Such scenes include the vivid imagery of the fireside chats, the sound of her latch lifting as neighbours in to visit at night from her poem “The Old Boreen” and about her home cooking and work from “When the Leaves Begin to Fall.” Such images can be compared to most Irish households and can depict a vivid picture to those reading her poetry.
Brayton’s poetry leaves a lasting sense of Irish beauty and community. This can be seen in such poems as “A Christmas Blessing” where she speaks of “taking and giving in friendship” during Christmas. Since her passing she has continued to keep an audience from overseas from Boston and New York primarily, this as a result of the reminder her poems give to Irish exiles of Irish traditions and music which was close to them. While her poems are more often serious, some portray an almost comical undertone tone. In an article in The Irish Times, her poetry is also said to have a racy feel to them.
Born Leslie Yodaiken into a Russian–Jewish family in Portobello, Dublin, Daiken is the son of Samuel and Rosa Yodaiken. His father is a dealer in rubber and scrap metal, with premises in Dublin and Glasgow, and he is educated at two independent fee-paying schools, St. Andrew’s College and Wesley College, and then in 1930 he enters Trinity College Dublin. In his first year, one of his lecturers in French literature was Samuel Beckett. He is an active member of the Dublin University Socialist Society and a founding member of the college’s Gaelic Society.
In 1933, Daiken is present at the house of Charlotte Despard in Eccles Street, Dublin, also used as a Workers’ College, when it is attacked by a mob of Blueshirts. He leads the immediate defence of the building, which is saved on that occasion by the intervention of Irish Republican Army (IRA) men posing as the police.
In 1934, as Yodaiken, he graduates with a BA from Trinity in English and French Literature, with a Second Class degree. After graduating, Daiken works briefly as a schoolteacher in Dublin. In April 1935, his short story “Angela” is published in The New English Weekly under the pen name of Ned Kiernan. That year, he migrates to London.
Soon after his arrival in London, Daiken is one of the three founders of a duplicated publication called Irish Front, together with two other poets, Charles Donnelly and Ewart Milne.
In England, Daiken starts to shorten his surname from Yodaiken to Daiken, for his publications, but he does not make this change formally until doing so by deed poll in 1943.
In December 1935, The Irish Times reviews a production in Camden Town of Ireland Unfree, a stage version by Daiken of Patrick Pearse’s poem “The Rebel.” It states that “Mr. Daiken carries Pearse’s theme beyond his idealistic conclusion to the revolutionary viewpoint of the Irish workers.”
Daiken keeps up his links with leftist Irish writers and dissidents and edits the collection of working-class political verse Goodbye Twilight: songs of the struggle in Ireland (1936), illustrated by Harry Kernoff. The Irish Press describes this as “forty young poets with blazing eyes and clenched fists.” In another review, Louis MacNeice calls the book a “collection of proletarian poems – some communist, some Irish republican, and all written in a defiant spirit of opposition … a violent reaction against Yeats and all that he stood for.”
In 1939, Mairin Mitchell is highly critical of the Irish leftists, and in particular Daiken, for their views on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and writes to Desmond Ryan in September, “Brian O’Neill, Bloomsbury, and Daiken will sing Russia right or wrong.”
In October 1939, at the time of the wartime National Registration Act, Daiken is living in a studio at Old Castle Wharf, Twickenham, and describes himself as “Script-writer and advertising copywriter.”
During World War II, Daiken enlists in the Corps of Signals of the Irish Army, a neutral force, and also works for Reuters as a correspondent on education. In 1944, he edits They Go, the Irish, a collection of essays, including one from Seán O’Casey. In 1945, a collection of his verse is published under the title Signatures of All Things. In the summer of that year, Samuel Beckett gives Daiken his unpublished novel Watt, in the hope that he can find a publisher for it, but he fails to do so. They continue to write to each other and meet in London and Paris in the 1950s. He also keeps up with another friend from Trinity, Con Leventhal.
After he becomes a father in 1945, Daiken’s main interest moves on from political activism to children’s games and toys, and by 1951 the basement of his London home has become a toy museum. He writes on the subject and makes television and radio programmes for the BBC about it. His film One potato, two potato, a compilation of children’s street rhymes, wins the Festival Mondial du Film prize in 1958. His radio play The Circular Road is about a Jewish-Irish child.
In the 1950s Daiken founds the National Toy Museum and Institute of Play, today part of the Toy Collection at Hove Museum of Creativity.
Daiken returns to Ireland many times as a visitor. In the early 1960s he completes a radio play about the Jewish community of Dublin in the 1920s, which is broadcast on RTÉ.
In October 1963, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, recruits Daiken as a lecturer in education, and not long before his death he makes a film called The Piano about teaching white and black children in a school in Africa. He dies on August 15, 1964, while spending the summer vacation at home in London, leaving an estate valued at £3,865. He is cremated. His widow survives him until 1981.
In a tribute to Daiken, his 1930s communist associate Brian O’Neill writes, “He was always busy, always with a half dozen irons in the fire, always trying to give a hand to some Irish writer who needed it.”
In the early 1990s, Katrina Goldstone interviews Daiken’s brother, Aubrey Yodaiken, and later reports: “I was left with a faint sense of melancholy, as my interviewee had become distressed speaking about his brother, Leslie Daiken, and recalling his irrepressible and exasperating personality, his many projects, half-started novels…”
Aubrey Yodaiken is distressed by the lack of appreciation of his brother’s many cultural efforts and by the fact that his “scattershot literary endeavours” seem to have come to naught.
The National Library of Ireland holds a collection of Daiken’s papers, in particular his publications and correspondence, presented to it in 1995 by his elder daughter, by then Melanie Cuming, and his younger brother, Aubrey Yodaiken. The papers are mostly in English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, and Irish.
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)
Gifford is the youngest of twelve children of Frederick and Isabella Gifford. Isabella Gifford (née Burton), is a niece of the artist Frederic William Burton, and is raised with her siblings in his household after the death of her father, Robert Nathaniel Burton, a rector, during the Great Famine.
Gifford’s parents—her father is Catholic and her mother Anglican—are married in St. George’s Church, a Church of Ireland church on the north side of Dublin, on April 27, 1872. She grows up in Rathmines and is raised as a Protestant, as are her siblings.
Gifford is educated in Alexandra College in Earlsfort Terrace. After leaving school she studies music at the Leinster House School of Music. It is her music teacher, in her teens, who first gives her her first Irish national newspaper, The Leader. She begins reading this secretly and then starts reading Arthur Griffith’s newspaper, Sinn Féin.
Gifford is a member of Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a women’s political organisation active from the 1900s. It is founded by Maud Gonne and a group of working-class and middle-class women to promote Irish culture and help to alleviate the shocking poverty of Dublin and other cities at a time when Dublin’s slums are unfavourably compared with Calcutta‘s. Gifford, who is already writing under the name “John Brennan” for Sinn Féin, is asked to write for its newspaper Bean na h-Éireann. Her articles vary from those highlighting poor treatment of women in the workplace to fashion and gardening columns, some written under the pseudonym Sorcha Ní hAnlúan.
She also works, along with her sisters, in Maud Gonne’s and Constance Markievicz‘s dinner system in St. Audoen’s Church, providing good solid dinners for children in three Dublin schools – poor Dublin schoolchildren often arrive at school without breakfast, go without a meal for the day, and if their father has been given his dinner when they arrive home, might not eat or might only have a crust of bread that night.
In 1911, Gifford is elected (as John Brennan) to the executive of the political group Sinn Féin.
Gifford is a member of Cumann na mBan (The Irish Women’s Council) from its foundation in Dublin on April 2, 1914. Its members learn first aid, drilling and signalling and rifle shooting, and serve as an unofficial messenger and backup service for the Irish Volunteers. During the fight for Irish Independence the women carry messages, store and deliver guns and run safe houses where men on the run can eat, sleep and pick up supplies.
In 1914, Gifford moves to the United States to work as a journalist. Through her connection with Padraic Colum and Mary Colum, whom she had met through her brother-in-law Thomas MacDonagh, she meets influential Irish Americans such as Thomas Addis Emmet and Irish exiles like John Devoy, and marries a Hungarian lawyer, Arpad Czira, a former prisoner of war who is said to have escaped and fled to America. Their son, Finian, is born in 1922.
Czira writes both for traditional American newspapers and for Devoy’s newspaper, TheGaelic American. She and her sister Nellie found the American branch of Cumann na mBan, and she acts as its secretary. Both sisters tour and speak about the Easter Rising and those involved. She is an active campaigner for Irish independence and against the United States joining the war against Germany, seen as a war for profit and expansion of the British Empire, and so to the disadvantage of the work for Irish independence. She helps Nora Connolly O’Brien to contact German diplomats in the United States.
In 1922, Czira returns to Ireland with her son. As a member of the Women’s Prisoners’ Defence League, she is an activist against the ill-treatment of Republican prisoners during the Irish Civil War. She continues to work as a journalist, though she is stymied in her work, as are the women of her family and many of those who had taken the anti-Free State side. In the 1950s her memoirs are published in The Irish Times, and she moves into work as a broadcaster and produces a series of historical programmes.
Born at 35 William Street in Wexford on September 17, 1886, Corish is the eldest child of carpenter Peter Corish and Mary Murphy. He is educated by the Christian Brothers in the town on George’s Street and leaves school at fourteen years old, which is not unusual at this time.
On September 29, 1913, at 27 years of age, he marries Catherine Bergin, daughter of labourer Daniel Bergin. They have six children, including Brendan.
Corish works as a fitter in the Wexford Engineering foundry the Star Iron Works. It is in this job that he witnesses the poor working conditions that industrial workers have to face all over the country. Many people of Ireland feel that this needs to change and so, in 1909, James Larkin forms the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU). Many important figures join the union including P. T. Daly, James Connolly and eventually Corish himself, who becomes a voice for the Wexford workers.
The Wexford lockout from 1911 to 1912 that ensues because of this union is the event that first brings public attention to Corish in his hometown. Wexford employers counter the ITGWU by locking out their employees. On a conciliation committee, Corish represents the workers of the town and becomes a leader of this local union. During the lockout, he is arrested, spending a night in jail, for expressing his anger to a recently employed non-union foundry worker.
When visiting Wexford to support the workers, ITGWU leader James Larkin and trusted members James Connolly and P. T. Daly are put up in the Corish household on William Street.
In February 1912, the dispute is resolved with the introduction of the Irish Foundry Workers’ Union of which Corish is secretary until 1915. His career as a tradesman however is over as he is blacklisted by all employers. This new union is absorbed by the ITGWU two years later. He remains a respected figure in the town, especially by the foundry workers, and continues as secretary in the ITGWU until 1921.
Corish first takes his seat in the Wexford Borough Council in January 1913, where he is given the title of “Alderman.”
In May 1916, Corish is arrested after being suspected of having involvement in the Easter Rising and is imprisoned in Stafford, England until June. He is often targeted because of his republican activism, receiving a life-threatening letter in 1920 regarding the killing of Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officers.
Corish is first elected to Wexford County Council in 1920 and later that year is appointed mayor of the town.
Corish is an Irish Labour Party representative. However, as the Labour Party in the southern 26 counties, later the Irish Free State, choose not to contest the 1921 Irish elections, Corish runs as a Sinn Féin candidate and is elected to Dáil Éireann for the Wexford constituency.
Corish supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty and votes in favour of it. He also runs as a member of the Labour Party at the 1922 Irish general election. His involvement in the trade union movement and his clear speech-giving skills displayed during a visit from Michael Collins to Wexford that same year are what give him a fighting chance in the election. He is elected and serves in Dáil Éireann until his death in 1945.
He is a public supporter of the Garda Síochána, expressing his disagreement with the reductions in Garda pay and allowances in 1924 and 1929.
Corish is a recipient of the Honorary Freedom of the Borough of Wexford in early 1945 and dies later that year, on July 19, 1945, after serving as mayor and council member for 25 years. During exploratory surgery for stomach pain, the doctors of Wexford County Hospital realise that his condition is much worse than imagined and he dies at the age of 58 shortly thereafter. After appearing in the Dáil only a few days prior, his death is unexpected.
His death causes a by-election to the Dáil which is won by his son, Brendan Corish, who is later a leader of the Labour Party and Tánaiste. He serves as mayor up until his retirement in 1982. Another son, Des Corish, later also becomes mayor of the town. Corish’s granddaughter, Helen Corish, is mayor in 1990.
Corish Park is built in his honour in the early 1950s.
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.
seamus dubhghaill 