Born Helen Ruth Gifford on November 9, 1880, in Phibsborough, Dublin, to Frederick Gifford, a solicitor, and Isabella Julia Gifford (née Burton), Gifford is the fifth child and second eldest daughter of the family of six daughters and six sons. Her father is a Catholic while her mother, a niece of the painter Frederic Burton, is rigorously Protestant. All the children are brought up in the Church of Ireland. The men, emigrate and remain unionist while the women are active nationalists. Most famous are the two youngest, the artistGrace Gifford, and the journalist and broadcaster Sidney Czira.
Gifford grows up in Rathmines and goes to school at Alexandra College. She trains as a domestic economy teacher and works for seven years at a series of positions in County Meath.
Gifford experiences the living conditions of the landless rural poor while lodging in labourers’ cottages during this time. As a result, she becomes a supporter of the campaigns of the land agitator and nationalist MPLaurence Ginnell.
During the 1913 Dublin lock-out Gifford assists James Larkin enter the Imperial Hotel, on August 31 to address the crowd. He enters in disguise, that of an elderly and infirm clergyman. She poses as his niece. She speaks to the hotel staff to prevent Larkin’s strong Liverpool accent giving away his identify. This is the speech which precipitates the “Bloody Sunday” police baton charge. Gifford goes on to be a founding member of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA). This group is attractive to many women due to the feminist beliefs of James Connolly.
Gifford gives lessons on camp cookery in Liberty Hall and finds jobs for recruits coming in from abroad. As a result of this work she, very fatefully, introduces Michael Collins to her future brother-in-law Joseph Plunkett who go on to serve together in the 1916 Easter Rising. Collins is Plunkett’s aide-de-camp.
Gifford is the only one of her sisters to actively participate in the rising itself. She is with the ICA’s St. Stephen’s Green contingent alongside Countess Markievicz. Throughout the week she supervises the garrison’s provisions in the Royal College of Surgeons building, commandeering food from shops and bread vans, and by courier from other garrisons. She also ensures the delivery of provisions to troops both in the college with her and in outlying posts. She is one of the women arrested at the surrender and jailed in Kilmainham Gaol. At the same time, in the same prison her sister Grace marries Joseph Plunkett hours before his execution. Only twelve women are detained after the main release of women prisoners on May 8, 1916. Gifford is one of those transferred to Mountjoy Prison until her release on June 4, 1916. Afterward she continues to be as involved in the campaigns.
After her time in prison, Gifford travels through England to the United States where she and other women veterans of Easter week lecture throughout America. While there she marries Joseph Donnelly, of Omagh, County Tyrone in 1918. In 1921 she and their year-old daughter Maeve leave him to return to Ireland.
Frederick Gifford dies in September 1917 and leaves Gifford £800. However, she is was not well off. She becomes a broadcaster and journalist for the national radio and the Irish press. Holding to her upbringing, she remains a staunch Protestant, unlike four of her sisters, who had married Catholics.
Gifford becomes devoted to preserving the historical record of the independence movement. Noticing the huge number of visitors for the 1932 Eucharistic Congress, she organises a small exhibition there of 1916 memorabilia for the National Museum of Ireland. She is irritated by the display of Catholic religious artifacts there. She campaigns for a permanent exhibition of recent Irish nationalist history. She coordinates a substantial body of material pertinent to nationalist organisations, the Easter Rising, and the Irish War of Independence, which now forms the core of the present collection.
Over the years Gifford is secretary of the Old IRA Association, a member of the Old Dublin Society, and a founder of the Kilmainham Gaol Restoration Society. She also looks after stray and neglected dogs and cats. She dies at the age of 90 on June 23, 1971, at the Gascoigne nursing home in Rathmines, Dublin.
(Pictured: Irish nationalist Nellie Gifford taken in Boston in 1917)
Rice joins the Irish Volunteers in 1913 but does not take part in the 1916 Easter Rising. For a time, he shares lodgings in Rock Street, Tralee, with Austin Stack, and like Stack he is a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) member, playing hurling with Kenmare. At the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), he becomes Officer Commanding of the 5th Battalion of the Kerry No. 2 Brigade. He also holds the post of second in command of that brigade, under Humphrey Murphy. On April 26, 1921, he attends the meeting in Kippagh, County Tipperary, that sees the establishment of the First Southern Division. After the truce, Murphy is transferred to command Kerry No. 1 Brigade, and Rice becomes commanding officer of Kerry No. 2.
Rice opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and leads the brigade throughout the Irish Civil War (1922-1923). When Michael Collins comes to Killarney on April 22, 1922, to speak in favour of the agreement, he is met at the train station by a group of fifty men, led by Rice, who attempt to prevent him from speaking. The meeting goes ahead despite several attempts by the group to stop it. During the civil war he leads his men into Limerick, briefly seizing Rathkeale, but for the most part they are on the defensive. In September he commands a force of seventy republicans to take Kenmare. This is a rare and morale-boosting success. When the First Southern Division council meets on February 26-28, 1923, he is one of only two senior officers, among a group of eighteen, who feel that it is worth fighting on.
Shortly after the civil war, Rice marries Nora Aherne, a Cumann na mBan member; they have one son, George. After the war he continues to be active in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Sinn Féin. He attends IRA executive meetings in 1923 and is involved in attempts to reorganise the IRA in 1924. He is a delegate to the Sinn Féin ardfheis in 1926, opposing the proposal of Éamon de Valera that abstention be a matter of policy rather than principle. He is elected as a Sinn Féin TD for the Kerry South constituency at the 1957 Irish general election. He does not take his seat in the Dáil due to the Sinn Féin policy of abstentionism. He is one of four Sinn Féin TDs elected at the 1957 Irish general election, the others being Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, John Joe McGirl and Eighneachán Ó hAnnluain. During his time as a TD, he campaigns against the Special Powers Act, which grants the Irish state extra abilities to deal with and punish suspected members of the IRA. He is defeated at the 1961 Irish general election.
In 1966, Rice and fellow Kerry Republican John Joe Sheehy are expelled from Sinn Féin, as are many others, by the new Marxist-Leninist party leadership that had recently come into power. This move both foreshadows and fuels the split in 1969/1970 of both the IRA and Sinn Féin, which leads to the creation of the Marxist-Leninist Official IRA and the more traditional but still left-wing Provisional IRA, and in parallel Sinn Féin – The Workers’ Party and “Provisional” Sinn Féin. Rice gives his support to the Provisionals.
Rice drives an oil lorry for a time and then becomes manager of the Tralee branch of Messrs Nash, mineral water manufacturers and bottlers. He remains in this position until his retirement in 1965. He dies on July 24, 1970, at his son’s residence in Oakview, Tralee.
Rice’s sister, Rosalie, is a member of Cumann na mBan during the 1916 Easter Rising and is arrested for sending a telegram alerting the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in the United States to the rising. His cousins Eugene and Timothy Ring are members of the IRB and are also involved with the telegram. His grandfather, Timothy Ring, was a Fenian who fought in the uprising. Two of his cousins are members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) who both help the republican side during the Irish revolutionary period.
Boland is enrolled in the IRB along with his younger brothers Harry in 1904, following in the footsteps of his father. He and his brothers Harry and Ned subsequently join the Irish Volunteers when that organisation is established in 1913, serving in the same company as Arthur Griffith. When news breaks out of the Easter Rising in 1916 he immediately leaves his job, however, he is bitterly disappointed when he finds out that the order has been countermanded. When the rebellion begins in earnest on Easter Monday, he makes his way to Jacob’s Mill where he fights under Thomas MacDonagh. Following the official surrender, he is arrested and interned at Frongoch internment camp in Wales, where he comes into contact with other notable revolutionary leaders, including his brother Harry’s friend Michael Collins.
Boland is released after a general amnesty in December 1916, however, he remains involved in revolutionary circles, although he declines to rejoin the IRB, believing the organisation is no longer needed. He is arrested and imprisoned in Belfast from May to December 1918 for practising military drills in the Dublin Mountains. Meanwhile, a number of his colleagues secure their release by winning seats in the 1918 United Kingdom general election.
Boland and his brothers are opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. He is Battalion Commandant of 3 Battalion, 2 Dublin Brigade (South Dublin) in Blessington, County Wicklow, but is captured early on in the Irish Civil War on July 7, 1922, and is interned until his release in July 1924. On the outside, his brother Harry dies some days after being shot, in August 1922, after two National Army officers attempt to arrest him at the Grand Hotel in Skerries, County Dublin. Boland applies to the Irish government for a service pension under the Military Service Pensions Act of 1934 and is awarded 11 and 5/12 years of service at Grade C for his service with the Irish Volunteers and the IRA between April 1, 1916 and September 30, 1923.
Following the end of the Irish Civil War, Boland helps to build up Sinn Féin as the main Republican party. While still imprisoned, he is selected to stand for Dáil Éireann as the Teachta Dála (TD) for Roscommon, Harry’s old seat, for the 1923 Irish general election, in which he is successful. He is among those in Kilmainham Gaol who go on hunger strike in October 1923. The hunger strike does not result in his release and he credits his practice of yoga with keeping him alive at the time.[3]
Boland is eventually released from the custody of the state in July 1924. Upon his release, he becomes secretary of Sinn Féin and stands on the executive of the party.
Boland is among the first in Sinn Féin to call for an end to the party’s abstentionism from DáilÉireann, believing it to be a political dead end. Party leader Éamon de Valera proposes that the party abandon this policy and take their seats in the Dáil if changes are made to the oath of allegiance to the British monarch. His proposal is defeated and de Valera and his supporters, including Boland, leave Sinn Féin. Shortly after this split, a new party emerges called Fianna Fáil, with de Valera acting as leader and the other disillusioned Republican TDs joining. Boland is vital in transferring many members from Sinn Féin to Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil briefly also has an abstentionist policy but in 1927 a new law forces Fianna Fáil TDs to take the oath of allegiance and take their seats in the Dáil. Fianna Fáil dismisses the oath as “an empty formula.”
Boland works alongside Seán Lemass in building up Fianna Fáil’s grassroots support and organisation, giving particular attention to the party’s rural apparatus. In the September 1927 Irish general election Fianna Fáil comes within four seats of the ruling Cumann na nGaedheal party. The latter forms a coalition of sorts with the Farmers’ Party and returns to government.
Following the 1932 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil forms a new government. Boland is appointed Government Chief Whip, a position which allows him to attend cabinet meetings but not vote at them.
Fianna Fáil remains in power with an increased mandate following the 1933 Irish general election and Boland is promoted to the position of Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Despite being the Minister in charge of the postal service, he does not own a telephone until some time later. During his tenure, the postal service makes considerable progress. It is also during this time that the Post Office becomes a paying concern. During his time as minister, he oversees a major expansion of the telephone service in Ireland, improvements in the transmission capacity of Radio Éireann, and construction of new provincial post offices and a new central postal sorting office.
Boland is acting Minister for Justice briefly for a time when P. J. Ruttledge is ill. It is during this time that he declares the Irish Republican Army a proscribed organisation.
A cabinet reshuffle in 1936 sees Boland become Minister for Lands. The Land Act 1939 reforms land distribution, broadening the criteria by which the state can take control over undeveloped land while offering the tenant of the land more favourable terms of compensation. He is critical of the policy of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Seán Lemass, of centralising industrial development in Dublin. He instead wishes to see a more decentralised economy based around food production. The differing viewpoint causes a rift between Boland and Lemass, but despite this Boland favoured Lemass’s policy of state intervention in the economy over Seán MacEntee‘s more laissez-faire approach.
In 1937 Boland is highly vocal during the drafting of a new constitution of Ireland by Fianna Fáil against any word which would give the Catholic Church special status, something heavily considered at the time. He declares that if the constitution elevates the position of the Catholic Church above others, it would be sectarian, anti-republican, and a hindrance to any prospects of Irish reunification. As a compromise, the term “special position” is used in the approved text of the Constitution.
Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, known in Ireland as the Emergency, there is a cabinet reshuffle, and Boland is appointed as Minister for Justice. He takes over at a time when the IRA has once again declared war against the British state and has begun their Sabotage Campaign. He is charged with the task of crushing the organisation and preventing the IRA from drawing the Irish state into conflict with the United Kingdom. Although he always considers himself a republican, he takes a hardline against the IRA and uses his powers to order the internment of hundreds of IRA members before introducing military courts and special criminal courts.
In 1940, several imprisoned IRA members go on hunger strike but Boland refuses to grant their release. Two of the men eventually die, one of whom is the nephew of one of his Fianna Fáil colleagues. Tony D’Arcy dies at the age of 32 on April 16, 1940, as a result of a 52-day hunger strike, and Jack McNeela dies three days later after 55 days on hunger strike. These deaths spark reprisals by the IRA on the Garda Síochána. Boland subsequently introduces tougher measures by setting up a military court with the death penalty and no provision for appeal except for a review by the government. In all, twelve men are found guilty with six of them facing death and the remaining six having their sentences changed to imprisonment. Among those executed is Charlie Kerins, an acting Chief of Staff of the IRA.
As Minister of Justice, Boland is also asked to enforce policies of wartime censorship, however, finding the idea of the state censorship distasteful he establishes a censorship board to avoid accusations of bias.
During the Emergency, Boland is also responsible for the detention of several foreign agents in pursuit of Ireland’s strict policy of neutrality. During this time some 500 individuals are interned and 600 are sentenced under the newly introduced Offences against the State Act, 1939. By 1943 the IRA is in disarray, particularly after the Chief of Staff is arrested and imprisoned, leaving the organisation without leadership. Boland and Fianna Fáil feel their hardline is backed by the electorate following strong returns for the party at the 1944 Irish general election.
In 1947, Boland is among four leading Fianna Fáil figures (including de Valera) involved in the “Locke’s Distillery Scandal”, an accusation brought by Oliver J. Flanagan that foreign businessmen are bribing members of Fianna Fáil to gain the right to purchase the distillery. A tribunal of inquiry finds no evidence to support the claims, but the event taints the public’s view of Fianna Fáil.
By 1948, Fianna Fáil has been in government for an uninterrupted 16 years. With World War II finally over, the electorate seeks change and a fresh start. Arising to meet this desire is the new political party Clann na Poblachta. Led by Seán MacBride, this new party seeks to kick off a new post-war political era in Ireland, and to do this means removing Fianna Fáil from power. Many in Clann na Poblachta have republican backgrounds and in some ways, the party can be partially described as an organic reaction to Fianna Fáil and Boland’s hardline stance during the war years. Many in political circles, including inside Fianna Fáil, believe Clann na Poblachta can be a new force to reckon with.
However, de Valera always holds a reputation for being cunning in selecting the dates of general elections, and he once again cements that notion, when he calls for a general election in early 1948 before Clann na Poblachta is completely ready to contest a national election. At the 1948 Irish general election Clann na Poblachta and other Fianna Fáil opponents do well, but not as well as expected. To remove Fianna Fáil from government, every single party in the Dáil and several independents have to form the unwieldy “First Inter-Party Government.” The coalition sees Clann na Poblachta forced to work with Fine Gael, considered the traditional “enemy” of Irish republicanism. By 1951, the coalition collapses and Fianna Fáil returns to government following that year’s election, with Boland re-appointed Minister for Justice.
Boland does not seek ministerial office in 1957 when Fianna Fáil returns to power after its defeat in 1954. However, his son, Kevin, is appointed to the cabinet as Minister for Defence at the beginning of his first term in the Dáil. By this stage, Boland is beginning to be seen as an aging warhorse, with his base in Roscommon starting to slip and Fianna Fáil unhappy that he is unable to get a Fianna Fáil running mate elected alongside himself.
At the 1961 Irish general election, Boland is defeated for the first time in fourteen general election campaigns. Despite losing his Dáil seat, he subsequently secures election to Seanad Éireann. Four years later in 1965, he returns to the Seanad, this time as a nominee by the Taoiseach Seán Lemass.
In 1970, the outbreak of the Arms Crisis sees Kevin Boland resign as a Minister and as Secretary of Fianna Fáil in protest at the government’s policy on Northern Ireland and in response to the sackings of Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney from the cabinet over allegations they had arranged for weapons to be provided to the Provisional IRA. Gerald Boland, in a similar protest, resigns as a vice president and as a trustee of Fianna Fáil, although he remains a member of the party. He also articulates his loss of confidence in the leadership of TaoiseachJack Lynch.
Boland dies in Dublin at the age of 87 on January 5, 1973. He is buried in the republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, County Dublin. His wife, Annie Boland, predeceases him in 1970. He is survived by his three daughters and four sons.
Deasy is the third among six sons of William Deasy, seaman, and Mary Deasy (née Murray). He is educated locally at Ballinadee before leaving school at the age of thirteen to work in nearby Bandon.
During the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), Deasy is adjutant of the IRA’s 3rd Cork Brigade (West Cork). He serves under Tom Barry in one of the unit’s best known actions, the Crossbarry ambush in March 1921. His younger brother, Pat, dies in action at the Kilmichael ambush in November 1920, an engagement at which Deasy is not present. He also takes part in the Tooreen ambush.
Deasy opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In the months that follow he tries to persuade Collins to renegotiate aspects of the treaty, especially to remove an oath to the British king from the constitution of the new Irish Free State. When fighting breaks out in Dublin in June 1922 between pro and anti-Treaty forces, he sides with the Anti-Treaty IRA in the ensuing Irish Civil War. However, he is reluctant to fight his former comrades and voices the opinion that the fighting should have ended with the Free State seizure of the Four Courts.
In late July 1922, Deasy commands 1,500 anti-Treaty fighters who hold a line around Kilmallock south of Limerick city against about 2,000 Free State troops under Eoin O’Duffy. His men are the most experienced IRA fighters of the 1919-21 war and hold their position until August 8, when they are outflanked by seaborne landings on the southern coast. His men then disperse. He goes on the run in the southeast of the country.
In August 1922, Deasy is in command of a band of republican guerrillas in West Cork when they hear that Collins is in the area. Deasy has his men prepare an ambush for Collins’ convoy at Béal na Bláth, should it return by the same route it had taken earlier.
Deasy and most of his men do not take part in the ambush as they had retired to a nearby pub, assuming that they had missed Collins. However, Collins arrives as the last of Deasy’s men are clearing the mine and barricade that had been erected on the road at Béal na Bláth. Collins is killed in the ensuing firefight. Deasy later writes in his memoirs that he profoundly regrets the death of his former commander.
In January 1923, by which time Deasy has become Deputy Chief of Staff of the IRA, he is captured by Free State forces near Clonmel, County Tipperary, and sentenced to death. He is aware that the newly formed government plans on wholesale executions and knows that the IRA will retaliate with reprisals. He decides that it is now time to end the war. He signs a document (written by his captors) ordering the men under his command to surrender themselves and their arms to the government. He is spared execution. On the day that his order is published, Free State authorities demand that the prisoners in a jail in Limerick sign a statement agreeing to unconditional surrender, threatening wholescale executions to those who refused. Some republicans denounce Deasy as a traitor and a coward for this action, but he argues in his book, Brother against Brother, that he was opposed to continuing the civil war anyway and would have called on republicans to surrender whether or not he had been captured.
Deasy takes no further part in politics following the end of the Irish Civil War. In 1924, he sets up a business making weatherproof textiles. On November 24, 1927, he marries Margaret Mary O’Donoghue. They have three daughters together.
During The Emergency, Deasy serves in the Irish Army from 1940 to 1945, reaching the rank of commandant. He later writes two memoirs about his experiences during the revolutionary period: Toward Ireland Free and Brother against Brother, the latter being published after his death.
Deasy dies at St. Anne’s Hospital, Northbrook Road, Dublin, on August 20, 1974. He is buried in Bohernabreena Cemetery in Dublin.
Mernin is born in Clanbrassil Street, Dublin, on November 16, 1886. Her parents are John Mernin and Marianne “Mary” (née McGuire). She has one sister, May. Her father is a baker and confectioner of Dorset Street, Dublin. After his death when Mernin is young, the children are raised by his family in Dungarvan, County Waterford.
In the 1910s, Mernin works as a typist in a number of Dublin companies, and by 1914 she is a shorthand typist in Dublin Castle at the garrison adjutant’s office. She is a member of the Keating branch of the Gaelic League, and through this her cousin, Piaras Béaslaí, introduces her to Michael Collins in 1918. From 1919 she begins working for Collins as an intelligence agent. She uses her position in Dublin Castle to obtain important documents and, in 1920, intelligence on British intelligence officers and the auxiliary police.
Under the alias of “Little Gentleman” or “Lt. G.,” Mernin is one of Collins‘a most important agents, so much so that many believe the Little Gentleman is a British intelligence officer. One of the most important contributions she makes is identifying the homes of British intelligence officers who are later killed on Bloody Sunday, November 21, 1920, by Collins‘s Irish Republican Army (IRA) unit The Squad. She aids Frank Saurin and Tom Cullen in identifying senior British agents in Dublin, typing secret reports for Collins in a room in 19 Clonliffe Road.
In February 1922, Mernin is discharged from the British service, taking up a position as a typist in the Irish Army from July 1922 until February 1952, when she retires. She works primarily at Clancy Barracks. She is awarded a military pension for her service from 1918-1922, and her statement is held in the Bureau of Military History in the Military Archives.
Mernin never marries, although she gives birth to a son in London in June 1922, with some evidence suggesting Béaslaí is the father. She lives at 167 Mangerton Road, Drimnagh. She dies at the age of 70 on February 18, 1957, in Dublin.
O’Hegarty is born to John and Katherine (née Hallahan) Hegarty. His parents’ families emigrate to the United States after the Great Famine, and his parents are married in Boston, Massachusetts. His father is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).
O’Hegarty is educated at North Monastery CBS, where he forms an enduring friendship with Terence MacSwiney. In 1888, his father dies of tuberculosis at the age of 42. Left destitute, his mother pawns her wedding ring to pay for an advertisement looking for work, and eventually becomes a cook.
O’Hegarty serves at the main Postal Sorting Office in Mount Pleasant, London, from 1902 to 1913. Along with J. J. Walsh, he spends three years at King’s College London, studying for the Secretary’s Office. While he succeeds in his studies, Walsh does not and returns to Ireland. O’Hegarty becomes the IRB representative for South East England and joins the Gaelic League and Sinn Féin and becomes a strong advocate of the Irish language. In 1905, he is elected secretary of the local Dungannon Club, which draws in as members Robert Lynd, Herbert Hughes and George Cavan. In 1907, as Sinn Féin’s London Secretary, he approves and signs the membership card of Michael Collins, later becoming friend and mentor to Collins.
O’Hegarty has to return to Ireland for a break due to overwork in 1909 and gives up some of his work for the Gaelic League. However, he takes over as editor of the IRB publication, Irish Freedom. It is in this publication that he famously writes, concerning the visit of King George V to Ireland in 1911: “Damn your concessions, England: we want our country!” In 1912, at the height of the Playboy riots, he writes four articles entitled “Art and the Nation” in Irish Freedom, which take a very liberal and inclusionist approach to Anglo-Irish literature and art in general but invokes the wrath of many of the paper’s readers.
In 1913, he is re-posted to Queenstown (present-day Cobh) as postmaster. He continues editing nationalist newspapers such as Irish Freedom (founded in 1910 and suppressed in December 1914 on account of its seditious content) and An tÉireannach and joins the Irish Volunteers. At the outbreak of war he is moved to Shrewsbury, probably on account of his political activities. In 1915, he marries Wilhelmina “Mina” Smyth, a schoolteacher and suffragist, and is then moved to Welshpool, Montgomeryshire. In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, he is opposed to physical force. In 1918, he refuses to take the British Oath of Allegiance and resigns his position in the Post Office.
O’Hegarty feels that the Abbey Theatre is “doing good for Ireland” and supports W. B. Yeats against attacks from Arthur Griffith and like-minded Nationalists. He opposes the extremist views of D. P. Moran, who seeks a Roman Catholic Irish-speaking Ireland.
O’Hegarty is Secretary of the Irish Department of Post and Telegraphs from 1922 to 1945. He is elected a member of the Irish Academy of Letters in 1954.
O’Hegarty’s son, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, is a founder of the Irish-language publishing house Sáirséal agus Dill. His daughter Gráinne, a harpist, marries Senator Michael Yeats, son of W. B. Yeats.
Dwyer runs a off-licence/grocery shop in Rathmines and is a member of the Rathmines Urban Council. He marries Marie Molloy in 1914, they have no children. He is a member of the Peace Committee of ten men which sit in May 1922 and bring about the agreement between Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera.
On December 20, 1922, Dwyer is shot dead in his shop at 5 Rathmines Road, Dublin, by anti-Treaty IRA Volunteer Robert Bonfield. At about 4:50 p.m., Dwyer is talking to a customer when a young man enters the shop. Addressing Dwyer, the young man asks “Are you Mr. O’Dwyer?” Dwyer replies yes and the young man says that he has a note for him. The young man reaches into the pocket of his overcoat a draws a revolver. He fires twice at Dwyer at point-blank range and he dies instantly. The customer and a shop assistant give chase but are unable to catch the assassin. Two republicans, Frank Lawlor and the actual assassin, Robert Bonfield, are later killed by Free State forces in revenge for the shooting of Dwyer.
Traynor is born in Dublin on March 21, 1886, into a strongly nationalist family. He is educated by the Christian Brothers. In 1899, he is apprenticed to John Long, a famous woodcarver. As a young man he is a noted footballer and tours Europe as a goalkeeper with Belfast Celtic F.C. whom he plays with from 1910 to 1912. He rejects claims soccer is a foreign sport calling it “a Celtic game, pure and simple, having its roots in the Highlands of Scotland.”
When the Irish Civil War breaks out in June 1922, Traynor takes the Anti-Treaty IRA side. The Dublin Brigade is split, however, with many of its members following Michael Collins in taking the pro-Treaty side. During the Battle of Dublin, he is in charge of the Barry’s Hotel garrison, before making their escape. He organises guerilla activity in south Dublin and County Wicklow, before being captured by Free State troops in September. He is then imprisoned for the remainder of the war.
In 1936, Traynor is first appointed to the Cabinet as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. In September 1939, he is appointed Minister for Defence and holds the portfolio to February 1948. In 1948, he becomes President of the Football Association of Ireland, a position he holds until his death. He serves as Minister for Defence in several Fianna Fáil governments and as Minister for Justice, where he is undermined by his junior minister, and later Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, before he retires in 1961.
Traynor dies in Dublin at the age of 77 on December 14, 1963. He has a road named in his memory, running from the Malahide Road through Coolock to Santry in Dublin’s northern suburbs.
Byrne is born on November 23, 1900, in the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, Dublin, the elder among one son and one daughter of Vincent Byrne, carpenter, of 33 Denzille Street (now Fenian Street), and his wife Margaret (née White). By 1911 the family is living with maternal relatives at 1 Anne’s Lane. Educated at St. Andrew’s national school, Westland Row, he is apprenticed as a cabinet maker under Thomas Weafer, a company captain in the Irish Volunteers, who is subsequently killed in the 1916 Easter Rising. At the age of fourteen, he joins the Irish Volunteers in January 1915, and is posted to the 2nd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade. His training includes lectures on street fighting by James Connolly. During the 1916 rising he serves with the 2nd Battalion in Jacob’s biscuit factory under Thomas MacDonagh. At the surrender he is slipped out a factory window to safety by a priest who is acting as an intermediary. Arrested in his home a week later, he is held in Richmond Barracks with other youngsters, all of whom are released after an additional week. Active in the post-rising reorganisation of the Dublin Brigade, he claims to have voted twenty times for Sinn Féin candidates in the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland.
In November 1919, Byrne is recruited to an elite counter-intelligence squad of the Dublin Brigade, whose primary mission is the assassination of plainclothes detectives of the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s (DMP) political (‘G’) division. He participates in the attempted ambush of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, John French, at Ashtown, Dublin, on December 19, 1919, a combined operation of the Dublin and the 3rd Tipperary brigades. In March 1920, he leaves his civilian employment with the Irish Woodworkers, Crow Street, when the squad is constituted as a full-time, paid, GHQ guard, under direct orders from Michael Collins. Dubbed “The Twelve Apostles,” the squad also includes James Slattery, a workmate of Byrne since their apprenticeships. For the duration of the Irish War of Independence, Byrne takes part in the stakeouts and killings of police detectives and military intelligence agents. His witness statement to the Bureau of Military History recounts his participation in some fifteen such operations. On Bloody Sunday he commands an IRA detail that kills two of the “Cairo Gang“ agents in their boarding house at 38 Upper Mount Street on November 21, 1920. He takes part in The Custom House raid on May 25, 1921.
Owing largely to his devoted allegiance to Collins, Byrne supports the Anglo–Irish Treaty of December 1921, regarding it as a stepping stone to complete independence. Enlisting in the National Army, he serves in the Dublin Guard. Promoted five times from January 1922 to February 1923, he rises in rank from company sergeant to commandant. He is OC of the guard at the handover of Dublin Castle from British to Irish authority on January 16, 1922. During ensuing months he commands guard details at government buildings and the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin. In March 1922, he foils an attempt by Anti-Treaty forces to seize the bank with the aid of mutinous soldiers within the building’s guard. Having displayed courage and presence of mind throughout the incident, he is promoted captain in the field. Resenting the role given to ex-British-army officers in the National Army, and feeling that the political elite of the Free State are betraying the national interest, he is among the group of officers involved in the failed army mutiny of 1924, and accordingly is forced to resign his commission on March 21. He then works as a carpenter on the industrial staff of the Office of Public Works (OPW), and in the post office stores, St. John’s Road, Kilmainham, Dublin, until his retirement.
Byrne is a founding member of both the Association of Dublin Brigades and the 1916–1921 Club. Long lived, and a willing raconteur with a colourful turn of phrase, he becomes probably the best known of Collins’s squad (of which he is the last surviving member), granting many interviews to journalists and historians. He expresses no misgivings about his role as a revolutionary hit man, arguing the necessity of the ruthless methods employed, which deterred potential informers, and eventually won the struggle by crippling British intelligence.
Byrne lives in Dublin at 59 Blessington Street, and later at 227 Errigal Road, Drimnagh. His last address is 25 Lein Road, Artane. His wife Eileen predeceases him. He dies on December 13, 1992, survived by two daughters and one son. He is buried at Balgriffin Cemetery, Balgriffin, County Dublin.
(From: “Byrne, Vincent (‘Vinnie’)” by Lawrence William White and Pauric J. Dempsey, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Power is born to Henry Power, a watchmaker, and Mary (née Atkins), an embroideress. He has one older brother, and one younger sister. He attends a Christian Brothersnational school in North Brunswick Street. As a child he plays in local clay brickyards and sculpts busts of his friends. After finishing his primary school education, he trains with a firm of sculptors run by Edward Smyth. In 1884, he enrolls as an evening pupil at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA), later attending as a full-time student from 1906 to 1911. During his time at the DMSA he is taught and strongly influenced by John Hughes, Oliver Sheppard and William Orpen. He wins a number of prizes during his time at the DMSA, including medals, three scholarships, book prizes, and the national gold medal for the best modeling of a nude figure, in Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands in 1911.
Power marries Agnes Kelly in 1903. The couple has ten children, four daughters and six sons, including May and James who also become sculptors.
Power establishes his own stone-carving business in 1912 from his new home at 18 Geraldine Street, Phibsborough, Dublin. As the firm grows, it moves to premises nearby at 15 Berkeley Street from 1930. He executes a wide range of works, including monuments and architectural features in bronze, marble, and stone. Among his notable works are the figure of “Science” designed by Sheppard from the façade of the new Royal College of Science for Ireland (later Government Buildings) on Merrion Street, Dublin, carved motifs and sphinxes for the Gresham Hotel, O’Connell Street, and four statues on the dome of Christ the King church, Carndonagh, County Donegal.
Power is considered the leading Irish sculptor of the 1920s and 1930s. He is a nationalist and promotes the use of Irish materials such as limestone from Durrow and Connemara marble. He is noted for his academic realist style. He exhibits regularly with the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1906, becoming an associate member in 1911, and a full member in 1919. Among those he models sculptures for are James Stephens (1913), W. B. Yeats (1918), and Lord Dunsany (1920). Among his patrons are Oliver St. John Gogarty, and through Gogarty he is commissioned to model a number of prominent Irish nationalists. Gogarty asks him to carve a portrait of Terence MacSwiney in 1920, while MacSwiney is on hunger strike in HM Prison Brixton, London. Smuggled into the prison to do a thumbnail sketch, Power then carves a portrait in the form of a life mask.
On Gogarty’s recommendation, Power is commissioned by the Irish Free State government to create portraits of a number of leading politicians including Arthur Griffith (1922), Michael Collins (1936), and Austin Stack (1939). He is also privately commissioned to execute a portrait of Éamon de Valera in 1944. Among his monumental works are sculptures of Tom Kettle (1919) at St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, Christ the King in Gort, County Galway, (1933), Pádraic Ó Conaire (1935) at Eyre Square, Galway, and W. B. Yeats (1939) at Sandymount Green, Dublin. He is one of the artists invited to submit designs for the new coinage of the Irish Free State in 1928.
Power dies in Dublin on July 10, 1945, following complications from a double hernia. His is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
seamus dubhghaill 