Shortly before her twelfth birthday, Hone suffers from polio (infant paralysis), suffering a fall while helping to decorate the Taney parish church for Easter. Her resulting ill health leads to her seeking treatment in Harley Street, Marylebone, Central London. She is educated by a governess, continuing her education in Switzerland, and goes on tours to Spain and Italy before moving to London in 1913. Her three sisters all marry British Army officers, and all are widowed in World War I.
Hone is extremely devout. She spends time in an Anglican Convent in 1925 at Truro in Cornwall and converts to Catholicism in 1937. This possibly influences her decision to begin working in stained glass. Initially, she works as a member of the An Túr Gloine stained glass co-operative before setting up a studio of her own in Rathfarnham.
Hone’s most important works are probably the East Window, depicting the Crucifixion, for the Chapel at Eton College, Windsor (1949–1952) and My Four Green Fields, now located in Government Buildings, Dublin. This latter work, commissioned for the Irish Government’s Pavilion, wins first prize for stained glass in the 1939 New York World’s Fair. It graces CIÉ‘s Head Office in O’Connell Street from 1960 to about 1983. The East Window of Eton College is commissioned following the destruction of the building after a bomb is dropped in 1940 on the school during World War II. She is commissioned to design the East Window in 1949, and the new window is inserted in 1952. This work is featured on an Irish postage stamp in 1969. From December 2005 to June 2006, an exhibition of her work is on display at the National Gallery of Ireland. Saint Mary’s church in Clonsilla also features her stained glass windows.
Despite ill health, Hone continues to produce a huge number of small stained glass panels as well as oils, watercolours, and gouache landscapes. In 1953, she is represented at the Contemporary Irish Art exhibition at Aberystwyth, Wales, and at the Tate gallery in London, receiving as well an honorary LLD from Trinity College Dublin (TCD). In 1954, she is elected an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA).
Unmarried, Hone dies on March 13, 1955, while entering her parish church at Rathfarnham. She is survived by two of her sisters. Over 20,000 people visit a memorial exhibition of her work at University College Dublin (UCD), Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin, in 1958.
(Pictured: Portrait of Evie Hone by Hilda van Stockum)
The last time England had played Ireland at Lansdowne Road was a UEFA Euro 1992 qualifying Group 7 match on November 14, 1990. After that match, there were clashes between some Irish and English fans and the Gardaí on O’Connell Street in Dublin. Before the 1995 friendly match, the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) holds talks with The Football Association (The FA) to review security arrangements to avoid a similar episode. The FA is offered 4,000 out of approximately 40,000 tickets, for English fans.
In pubs near Lansdowne Road stadium some English fans chant “No surrender to the IRA,” “Fuck the Pope” and “Clegg is innocent.” Irish fans are goaded, spat on and attacked. Pub staff find British National Party (BNP) literature left behind and, in some cases, pro-Loyalist graffiti in toilets.
The match begins at 6:15 p.m., and after 22 minutes, David Kelly scores a goal for Ireland. When a David Platt goal is disallowed for England in the 26th minute due to Platt being offside, some of the English fans begin throwing debris down into the lower stands, including parts of benches which they had ripped out earlier in the match. When this happens, the referee immediately stops the game, and brings the players off the pitch. When Jack Charlton, the Irish manager and former England player, walks off the pitch, the mobs “Judas, Judas.” The fans in the lower stands then spill out onto the pitch to escape the missiles from the English fans. Some Irish fans had mistakenly been put into the area where the English fans are when the FA returned a number of tickets to the FAI.
After the teams leave the pitch, the frequency of missiles intensifies, and after 12 minutes, the game is called off, and the fans are evacuated, with the exception of 4,500 English fans, who are kept in the stadium until the Garda Public Order Unit attempts to escort them out, at which time more violence breaks out. The Gardaí are slow to reach the area where the rioters are, and there is some confusion as to the exact location of the English fans between the Gardaí and the stewards. Twenty people are injured during the rioting, and forty are arrested.
The rioting is condemned on both sides of the Irish Sea. England manager Terry Venables says, “It was terrible. I have no words strong enough to describe how we feel about this. There could be repercussions.” Jack Charlton says, “I have seen a lot in football but nothing like this. It is a disaster for Irish football, but I didn’t want the game abandoned because what do you do with 2,000 English fans running around the town? The English fans were being bombarded by some of their own. And they brought out the worst in some of ours.” The rioting brings into question England’s hosting of UEFA Euro 1996, with Ireland’s Minister of State for Youth and Sport, Bernard Allen asking, “How can people from Ireland and from other countries go to England and expect to be safe watching matches in the presence of people like those who were here tonight?” The Garda handling of the match is criticised in the press when it is revealed that the Gardaí had been informed of the plans of some of the English fans to cause trouble by the British National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS). The decision to seat the English fans in an upper tier is also questioned in the press.
After questions are raised about the conduct of the Gardaí, former Chief Justice of Ireland, Thomas Finlay, is appointed to investigate the events. He finds that the rioting was entirely caused by the English fans without any provocation. The investigation finds that the head of the NCIS had offered help to the Gardaí in dealing with the hooligans, an offer which the Gardaí refused. Gardaí failed to act on a warning that 20 supporters of the England team who wore insignia of Combat 18 were travelling to the match. The segregation of the fans was also found to be insufficient, and this was found to be a contributory factor to the incident.
The next meeting between the two sides does not take place until Wednesday, May 29, 2013, a friendly at Wembley Stadium, and the next meeting in the Republic of Ireland is on Sunday, June 7, 2015, at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium. Both games pass without major disturbances.
The fourth of four paramilitary bombings in the centre of Dublin takes place in Sackville Place on January 20, 1973.
The first bombing takes place in Burgh Quay on November 26, 1972. The next two bombings take place on December 1, 1972, in Eden Quay and Sackville Place. Three civilians are killed and 185 people are injured in the four bombings. No group has ever claimed responsibility for the attacks, and nobody has ever been charged in connection with the bombings.
On Saturday, January 20, 1973, at 3:08 p.m., a male caller with an English accent calls the telephone exchange in Exchequer Street, Dublin, with the following bomb warning: “Listen love, there is a bomb in O’Connell Street at the Bridge.” Although the call is placed from a coin box in the Dublin area, the exact location is never determined. The receiver of the call immediately contacts the Garda Síochána. The streets of central Dublin are more crowded than usual as Ireland is playing the All Blacks at an international rugby match being held that afternoon in Lansdowne Road.
At 3:18 p.m., a man leaving Kilmartin’s betting shop in Sackville Place notices smoke or steam emanating from the boot of a red Vauxhall Victor car parked outside Egan’s pub facing the direction of O’Connell Street. Its registration number was EOI 1229. About five seconds later the bomb inside the red car’s boot explodes, scattering sections of the vehicle and throwing the man off his feet. The explosion is so powerful that it hurls the car’s roof over adjacent Abbey Street where it lands in Harbour Place. The right-hand rear hub and axle sections are blasted through a metal grill on a shop window.
A CIÉ bus conductor, 21-year-old Thomas Douglas, originally from Stirling, Scotland, is passing the betting shop just as the bomb goes off and the force of the blast hurls him through a shop front window where he dies minutes later of shock and hemorrhage from the multiple injuries he received in the explosion. The entire shop front is devastated and spattered with blood. Fourteen people are badly injured in the bombing which causes bedlam as hysterical Saturday afternoon shoppers seek to flee the area in panic and confusion. The car bomb detonates at almost the exact location of the December 1 bomb. Later eyewitness accounts suggest that the car had been parked at the curb several hours before it exploded. According to journalists Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald in their book UVF: The Endgame (Poolbeg Press, 2008), the bomb is designed to cause widespread chaos and alarm throughout the city, and to inflict massive injuries upon shoppers and pedestrians as Saturday is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the week for Dubliners.
Suspicion initially falls on the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and other republican groups. Shortly afterwards, however the blame shifts to loyalist paramilitary organisations, in particular, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Gardaí receives a telephone call from a male caller in Belfast who gives the names of five men who he claims are responsible for January 20 car bombing. The caller says that the five men were originally from Belfast’s Sailortown area but had since relocated to new housing estates in the city. It is not known what action, if any, was ever undertaken by the Garda Síochána to follow up this telephone call. The UVF has never admitted responsibility for the bombing.
Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron commissions an official inquiry into the four bombings. The findings are published in a report in November 2004. The Inquiry concludes that it “seemed more likely than not” that the bombing of the Film Centre Cinema on November 26, 1972, was “carried out by Republican subversives as a response to a Government ‘crackdown’ on the IRA and their associates” and to influence the outcome of the voting in the Dáil regarding the passage of the controversial amendment to the Offences Against the State Acts. Regarding December 1, 1972, and January 20, 1973, car bombings, the Inquiry concludes that confidential information obtained by the Gardaí indicates the three attacks were perpetrated by the UVF, “but no evidence was ever found to confirm this. Nor was there any evidence to suggest the involvement of members of the security forces in the attacks.”
Four paramilitary bombings take place in the centre of Dublin between November 26, 1972, and January 20, 1973. On December 1, 1972, two separate car bombs explode within a 20-minute period in Eden Quay and Sackville Place. The bombings occur at the end of what is the bloodiest year in the entire 30-year-old religious-political conflict known as the Troubles, which had erupted at the end of the 1960s.
The first of the four bombs had exploded on November 26, 1972, in the laneway connecting Burgh Quay with Leinster Market outside the rear exit door of the Film Centre Cinema.
On Friday, December 1, 1972, at 7:58 p.m., a blue Hillman Avenger, registration number OGX 782 K, explodes at 29 Eden Quay close to Liberty Hall tower block. The blast blows the Avenger apart and what remains of the vehicle is catapulted 18 feet away to rest outside an optician’s office. A wall of flame shoots up which is visible to people across the River Liffey on the opposite Burgh Quay. Six cars parked in the vicinity of the Avenger are set on fire and piled on top of each other. Most of the windows of Liberty Hall and other nearby buildings implode and the edifices are damaged. Although a number of people suffer injuries – some horrific – nobody is killed. One of the injured is a pregnant woman. Customers inside the quayside Liffey Bar, near the explosion’s epicentre, are hurt by flying glass and some have open head wounds. Following the explosion, a huge crowd of people hurries to the scene where police and ambulances have already arrived.
At exactly the same time the carbomb detonates in Eden Quay, the Belfast News Letter receives a telephone call from a man using a coin box speaking with a Belfast English type of accent. He issues a warning that two bombs will explode in Dublin. He gives the locations as Liberty Hall and Abbey Street behind Clerys department store. The newspaper immediately phones the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), who in turn relay the warnings to the Garda Control Room at Dublin Castle at 8:08 p.m. A team of Gardaí are sent to investigate the area around Sackville Place and Earl Street.
A policeman runs into a CIÉ company canteen in Earl Place warning the employees inside to clear the building as there is a bomb scare. Just after the building is evacuated, at 8:16 p.m., a silver-grey Ford Escort, registration number 955 1VZ, explodes in Sackville Place forty feet away from its intersection with Marlborough Street, throwing people up in the air and in all directions, killing two CIÉ employees who moments before had left the canteen. The victims are George Bradshaw (30), a bus driver and Thomas Duffy (23), a bus conductor. Both men are married with children. Bradshaw, whose body is rendered unrecognisable by the effects of the blast, dies of severe head injuries and Duffy is killed by a flying metal fragment which lacerates his aorta. Henry Kilduff, a CIÉ bus driver, later tells Gardaí that he had seen Bradshaw and Duffy en to twenty yards away walking down Sackville Place towards Marlborough Street when the carbomb exploded beside them.
Denis Gibney, another co-worker, informs police that Bradshaw had been headed in the direction of Liberty Hall after hearing that a bomb had gone off near there. Bradshaw is found lying badly mangled beside a damaged car and is carried into a ruined shop front where a priest performs last rites. As at Eden Quay, the Sackville Place bombing causes considerable damage to buildings and vehicles near the blast’s epicentre. Sackville Place is a narrow street off O’Connell Street, Dublin’s main thoroughfare. There is further panic amongst the survivors when the petrol tank inside the burning bomb car explodes. A total of 131 people are injured in both explosions.
The two bombings have immediate political ramifications. Just as the bombs are exploding in the city centre, Dáil Éireann is debating the controversial bill to amend the Offences Against the State Act, which would enact stricter measures against the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and other paramilitary groups. As a result of the two attacks, the Dáil votes for the amendment which introduces special emergency powers to combat the IRA. In particular this means that a member of the IRA or any other paramilitary group can be sentenced on the sworn evidence of a senior Garda officer in front of three judges. Before the bombings, many commentators had actually believed the bill, considered by some to be ‘draconian,’ would be defeated. It is believed that the November 26 and December 1 bombings are executed to influence the outcome of the voting.
Thirteen days after the double-bombing, three incendiary devices are found in Dublin – one inside Clerys department store and the other two in the toilets of the Premier Bar in Sackville Place. The devices had failed to explode. According to journalists Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald, the devices were planted by the same Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) bomb unit that was responsible for the Eden Quay and Sackville Place car bombs.
Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron commissions an official inquiry into the bombings. The findings are published in a report in November 2004. The Inquiry concludes that it “seemed more likely than not” that the bombing of the Film Centre Cinema on November 26, 1972, was “carried out by Republican subversives as a response to a Government ‘crackdown’ on the IRA and their associates” and to influence the outcome of the voting in the Dáil regarding the passage of the controversial amendment to the Offences Against the State Acts. Regarding December 1, 1972, and January 20, 1973, carbombings, the Inquiry concludes that confidential information obtained by the Gardaí indicates the three attacks were perpetrated by the UVF, “but no evidence was ever found to confirm this. Nor was there any evidence to suggest the involvement of members of the security forces in the attacks.”
The Dublin City Coroner’s Court holds an inquest in February 2005 into the deaths of George Bradshaw, Thomas Duffy, and Thomas Douglas. The jury of three men and four women returns a verdict of unlawful killing by persons or persons unknown for the three dead men.
The UVF has never admitted responsibility for the bombings.
(Pictured: The scene of destruction at Sackville Place, off O’Connell Street, Dublin, following the explosion. Photograph credit: Paddy Whelan)
O’Hegarty is born Jeremiah Stephen Hegarty on December 26, 1892, in Lowertown, Skibbereen, County Cork, the eldest of seven children of Jeremiah Hegarty (1856–1934) and his wife Eileen (née Barry), both teachers. He is educated at the Christian Brothers school, St. Patrick’s Place, Cork, joins the Dublin civil service in 1910 and is posted to the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, acquiring invaluable administrative experience as private secretary to T. P. Gill, secretary of the department.
O’Hegarty is a member of the Keating branch of the Gaelic League and the closely associated Teeling circle of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). In 1913 he becomes secretary and stage manager of a troupe of Gaelic players, Na hAisteoirí, which includes several who later become prominent revolutionaries: Piaras Béaslaí, Gearóid O’Sullivan, Fionán Lynch, and Con Collins. As second lieutenant of F Company, 1st Battalion, Dublin Brigade, Irish Volunteers, during the Easter Rising, he is in charge of barricades in Church Street, Mary Lane, Mary’s Abbey, and Jameson Distillery, an area which sees fierce fighting. Imprisoned in Knutsford (May 1-18), he is released in error and returns to his post in the civil service. On his return he is a key figure in the reorganisation of the Volunteers and IRB, becoming a member of the executive of the IRB’s supreme council along with Michael Collins and Seán Ó Murthuile. He also becomes a central figure in Kathleen Clarke‘s prisoner support group, the Irish Volunteer Dependents Fund, and when it amalgamates with the more moderate Irish National Aid Association to form the INA&VDF in August 1916, he helps to ensure that it is dominated by republicans.
O’Hegarty is very close to Michael Collins and Harry Boland and in 1918 this IRB triumvirate exercises considerable control in the nomination of Sinn Féin candidates for the 1918 Irish general election. In the same year he is dismissed from the civil service for refusing to take the oath of allegiance, but his administrative talents find ample outlet in the secretariat of the revolutionary Dáil and later in the service of the Irish Free State to such an extent that he has been called ‘the civil servant of the revolution’ and ‘the Grey Eminence of the Free State Government.’ As clerk of the First Dáil and secretary to the Dáil cabinet (1919–21), he is largely responsible for its success, organising meetings of the clandestine parliament and coordinating the work of various departments from his offices on the corner of O’Connell Street and Abbey Street and later in Middle Abbey Street. He is determined that the Dáil will demonstrate its worth by ‘functioning as any progressive government would be expected to function.’ He records the minutes and handles all correspondence of the Dáil cabinet. As the conduit through which the Dáil’s ministers communicate, his role is central to the effective operation of government on the run. The influence this gives him within the revolutionary movement is bolstered by his senior role within the IRB and the positions of military significance which he occupies. He is a member of the Volunteer Executive (Jun 1916–Nov 1921), Irish Republican Army (IRA) Director of Communications (Jul 1918–Mar 1920), and Director of Organisation (Mar 1920–Apr 1921). When convicted of illegal assembly and jailed in Mountjoy Prison (Nov 1919–Feb 1920), he immediately wields power within the prison, ordering Noel Lemass off a hunger strike.
O’Hegarty resigns his military duties in April 1921 to concentrate on his work in the Dáil secretariat and serves as secretary to the Irish delegation during the Anglo–Irish Treaty negotiations in London (Oct–Dec 1921). He is a vital voice for the Treaty within the IRB and is appointed secretary to the cabinet of the Provisional Government in 1922, participating in the unsuccessful army unification talks of May 1922. During the Irish Civil War, he is briefly seconded from his civil service post to serve as military governor of Mountjoy Prison (Jul-Aug 1922), where he threatens that prisoners who persist in leaning out of windows and talking to the public outside the prison will be shot. Peadar O’Donnell, who is a prisoner there at the time, remembers him as the focus of much “republican bitterness.” A member of the army council during the Irish Civil War, he serves as Director of Organisation (Jul–Dec 1922) and Director of Intelligence (Dec 1922–May 1923), leaving the army with the rank of lieutenant general on May 1, 1923, to resume his civil service career.
O’Hegarty is secretary to the Executive Council of the Irish Free State (1923–32) and principal private secretary to its president, W. T. Cosgrave. Again, he records the cabinet minutes and is the administrative pivot upon which government turns. He serves as secretary to numerous governmental delegations and is widely praised for his work in this role at the 1926 Imperial Conference and the 1930 Imperial Conference. In 1927 he goes to New York to represent the government at a hearing into the fate of republican funds in the United States. His career is the prime example of the influence of revolutionary veterans within the higher civil service in the early years of the state. After the change of government following the 1932 Irish general election, he is one of the very few senior civil servants who is effectively removed from his position. He is appointed to be a commissioner of public works, becoming chairman in 1949, a position he holds until his retirement in 1957. In 1939–40 he serves on the Economy Committee established by the government to advise on wartime spending, and in 1941 is a member of a tribunal of inquiry into public transport, which is principally concerned with the poor financial state of Great Southern Railways.
On April 27, 1922, with Michael Collins as his best man, O’Hegarty marries Claire Archer, daughter of Edward Archer, a post office telegraph inspector from Dublin, and Susan Archer (née Matthews). Her brother is William (Liam) Archer. They live at 9 Brendan Road, Donnybrook, Dublin.
Byrne is born on March 17, 1882, the second of seven children born to Thomas Byrne, an engineer, and Fanny Dowman. His childhood home is at 36 Seville Place, a terraced house with five rooms just off the North Strand in Dublin. He drops out of school at the age of thirteen and is soon juggling jobs as a grocer’s assistant and a bicycle mechanic. Eventually he uses his savings to buy a pub on Talbot Street. He marries Elizabeth Heagney in 1910.
Byrne becomes an Alderman on Dublin Corporation in 1914. He is a member of the Dublin Port and Docks Board, a significant position for a politician from the Dublin Harbour constituency. In the records of the Oireachtas his occupation is given as company director. He is elected as MP for Dublin Harbour as a candidate of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in a by-election on October 1, 1915, following the death of William Abraham. The Easter Rising in 1916 is followed by the rapid decline of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the rise of Sinn Féin. At the 1918 Irish general election he is defeated by a Sinn Féin candidate, Philip Shanahan.
Byrne is elected as an Independent TD supporting the Anglo-Irish Treaty for the Dublin Mid constituency at the general election to the Third Dáil in 1922. From 1923 to 1928 he represents Dublin City North. In 1928 he is elected for a six-year term as a member of Seanad Éireann. He vacates his Dáil seat on December 4, 1928. He resigns from the Seanad on December 10, 1931, and returns to the Dáil in 1932. He remains a TD until his death in 1956, representing Dublin City North (1932–37) and Dublin North-East (1937–56). In several elections he secures more votes than any other politician in the country.
Byrne is elected as Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1930, serving in the post for nine consecutive years. When cycling or walking around the city he dispenses lollipops to children, who are often seen chasing him down the street. With a handshake and a few words for all, his eternal canvassing soon earns him the first of his nicknames: the Shaking Hand of Dublin. Married with eight children, he treats the people of Dublin as his second family. Every morning he finds up to fifty people waiting for him in the Mansion House. None have appointments. All are met. He answers 15,000 letters in his first year as Lord Mayor. Many are from Dubliners looking for a job, a house, some advice or a reference. One morning in 1931 a journalist watches the Lord Mayor attend to his correspondence. Within an hour he accepts “seventeen invitations to public dinners, one invitation to a public entertainment and eight invitations to public functions.” Then he dictates forty-three sympathetic letters to men and women looking for employment.
In 1937, children between the ages of eight and eleven years old are being sentenced to spend up to five years in Industrial Schools. Their crime is stealing a few apples from an orchard. When Byrne says such sentences are “savage,” a judge responds with a defence of the Industrial School system, urging an end to “ridiculous Mansion House mummery.” He stands firm: “For the punishment of trifling offences the home of the children is better than any institution.” In 1938, he is favoured by the press for the presidency of Ireland, a ceremonial role created in the new Constitution, but he is outgunned by the political establishment.
When, in 1935, Byrne becomes the first Lord Mayor of Dublin to visit North America in 40 years, he is granted the freedom of Toronto, and The New York Times hails the arrival of a “champion showman.” He often extends a hand of friendship to Britain. He also improves relations between Dublin, until recently the centre of British authority, and the rest of the country. One night Dublin Fire Brigade gets an urgent call for assistance from Clones, County Monaghan. As Lord Mayor, he feels obliged to join the men on top of the fire engine as they set off on the 85-mile journey in the middle of the night.
In August 1936, Byrne addresses the inaugural meeting of the anti-communistIrish Christian Front, some of whose members later express anti-Semitic views. In 1938, as Lord Mayor, he presents a gift of a replica of the Ardagh Chalice to Italian naval cadets visiting Dublin on board two warships, who had been welcomed by the Irish government despite the protests of Dubliners. A photograph exists of Byrne giving a fascist salute along with Eoin O’Duffy, commander of the Blueshirts, around 1933.
In 1954, Byrne is elected as Lord Mayor for a record tenth time. This time he does not live in the Mansion House, but stays in Rathmines with his family, taking the bus to work each morning. He is just as devoted to the job. When flooding damages 20,000 houses in Fairview and North Strand, he rises from his sick bed to organise a relief fund. His final term as Lord Mayor comes to an end in 1955. Shortly afterwards, Trinity College Dublin awards him an honorary Doctorate of Law, describing him as a “champion of the poor and needy, and a friend of all men.”
Byrne dies on March 13, 1956. His funeral is the largest seen in Dublin for many years. TheEvening Herald reports that “Traffic in O’Connell Street was held up for almost 20 minutes to allow the cortege of over 150 motor cars to pass, and at all the junctions along the route to Glasnevin people silently gathered to pay tribute to one of Dublin’s most famous sons.” The members of the Dáil stand and observe a short silence as a mark of respect. A telegram is sent to his widow from the Mayor of New York City, Robert F. Wagner Jr., expressing deepest sympathy, and stating “that Ald. Byrne had attained high office of Lord Mayor many times, but he never lost contact with the poor and the underprivileged, whose champion he was.”
The by-election caused by Byrne’s death, is won by his son, Patrick Byrne. Two other sons, A. P. Byrne and Thomas Byrne, are also TDs for various Dublin constituencies. Alfie Byrne Road in Clontarf is named after him. The Dublin Bay North branch of Young Fine Gael is renamed “Alfie Byrne YFG.”
Byrne is born into a successful family of journalists from Dublin. Cared for by servants, from a young age Byrne feels like she isn’t loved as much as the other children in the family. She is the middle child with two brothers and two sisters. She attends boarding school in Rathfarnham and has a limited relationship with her parents. Her father is a racing journalist and broadcaster who lives in the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street where his job at Radio Éireann is located. She becomes addicted to nicotine and alcohol. Two of her siblings die from alcoholism.
In the late 1940s, Byrne works at the Brazilian embassy in Dublin. She is a pioneer in Irish radio and her program, “Agony Aunt,” leads to public confessionals on the radio. She writes an Agony Aunt column for the Evening Press during the same period. She is best known for her 22 years of the radio program ‘Dear Frankie.’ On the show she gives relationship advice to listener requests. Dear Frankie, sponsored by Jacob’s, paves the way for the contemporary radio programs such as The Gerry Ryan Show and RTÉ Radio 1’s Liveline with Joe Duffy.
Dear Frankie is broadcast from 1963 to 1985. It opens with the words, ‘Welcome to Women’s Page, a program for and about you.’ The program begins as a 15-minute question and answer format on household issues but soon becomes a radio program that allows people to share confidences and seek advice. She shares household problems with her listeners ranging from jealous husband to lovelorn teenagers. She claims to know nothing about domestic science but that she does know about love. She advises on domestic relationships while living a life of turmoil. The most unique feature of Dear Frankie is that the program sets people to talking, and helps begin a national conversation on the lonely struggles of generations of Irish women.
Byrne never marries but has a 25+ year relationship with Frank Hall, the satirist and columnist for the Evening Herald. Their relationship has been disputed by some family members who deny they had a child together and that the couple were just good friends. Nevertheless, in the middle of this relationship, she becomes pregnant in the mid-1950s, giving birth to their daughter Valerie on July 12, 1956. She wants to keep the baby but ultimately gives her up to St. Clare’s Orphanage in Stamullen. She frequently visits her baby daughter until she is eventually adopted some 15 weeks later, going to a family who goes on to adopt four more children. Her relationship with Frank Hall comes to an end in the mid-1970s. Although she had struggled with alcoholism for many years, she stops drinking in the mid-1970s, but is subsequently prescribed Valium and is addicted to the drug for the remainder of her life.
Byrne and her daughter are reunited on December 13, 1983, a decade before her death. The last time Valerie sees her mother is exactly ten years later, on December 13, 1993, in the mortuary in St. Vincent’s Hospital.
Byrne dies at the age of 71 from Alzheimer’s disease in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, on Saturday, December 11, 1993. Tributes are paid by colleagues and friends including the RTÉ assistant Director-General, Bobby Gahan, who describes her voice as “one of the greatest sounds of radio.” Others who pay public tribute to her include fellow broadcasters Larry Gogan and Gay Byrne.
Byrne is remembered as an influential force during the time of her radio show, and it has been said that an entire generation can hum the signature tune to her radio program. Following her death there is an outburst of support. Gay Byrne describes her as having been “a national institution who had been loved by everyone.” Dear Frankie is often credited as the first ‘agony aunt’ radio show program format in Ireland.
Byrne’s talk show and life inspire numerous pieces of literature including a stage production in 2010 and 2012, authored by Niamh Gleeson and produced by the Five Lamps Theater Company, which tells the story of her ‘tragic and secretive life.’ She is also the subject of a book published in 1998, which compiles the advice which she gave on Dear Frankie. In 2006, RTÉ airs a documentary on Byrne, in which they explore her life following the show, and include interviews with her family and friends, including her daughter Valerie.
Byrne is also famous for having been the first woman to found a public relations company in 1963, that works almost exclusively in promoting Jacob’s.
Three years later, O’Brien withdraws the Young Irelanders from the association. In January 1847, with Thomas Francis Meagher, he founds the Irish Confederation, although he continues to preach reconciliation until O’Connell’s death in May 1847. He is active in seeking relief from the hardships of the famine. In March 1848, he speaks out in favour of a National Guard and tries to incite a national rebellion. He is tried for sedition on May 15, 1848 but is not convicted.
On July 29, 1848, O’Brien and other Young Irelanders lead landlords and tenants in a rising in three counties, with an almost bloodless battle against police at Ballingarry, County Tipperary. In O’Brien’s subsequent trial, the jury finds him guilty of high treason. He is sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Petitions for clemency are signed by 70,000 people in Ireland and 10,000 people in England. In Dublin on June 5, 1849, the sentences of O’Brien and other members of the Irish Confederation are commuted to transportation for life to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania in present-day Australia).
O’Brien attempts to escape from Maria Island off Tasmania, but is betrayed by the captain of the schooner hired for the escape. He is sent to Port Arthur where he meets up with John Mitchel.
O’Brien is a founding member of the Ossianic Society, which is founded in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day 1853, whose aim is to further the interests of the Irish language and to publish and translate literature relating to the Fianna. He writes to his son Edward from Van Diemen’s Land, urging him to learn the Irish language. He himself studies the language and uses an Irish-language Bible, and presents to the Royal Irish Academy Irish-language manuscripts he has collected.
In 1854, after five years in Tasmania, O’Brien is released on the condition he never returns to Ireland. He settles in Brussels. In May 1856, he is granted an unconditional pardon and returns to Ireland that July. He contributes to The Nation newspaper, but plays no further part in politics.
In 1864 he visits England and Wales, with the view of rallying his failing health, but no improvement takes place and he dies in Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales on June 18, 1864.
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)
The Irish Citizen Army also becomes involved in the battle, supporting the anti-Treaty IRA in the O’Connell Street area. The fighting begins with an assault by Provisional Government forces on the Four Courts building, and ends in a decisive victory for the Provisional Government.
On April 14, 1922 about 200 Anti-Treaty IRA militants, with Rory O’Connor as their spokesman, occupy the Four Courts in Dublin, resulting in a tense stand-off. They want to spark a new armed confrontation with the British, which they hope will bring down the Anglo-Irish Treaty, unite the two factions of the IRA against their former common enemy and restart the fight to create an all-Ireland Irish Republic. At the time the British Army still has thousands of soldiers concentrated in Dublin, awaiting evacuation.
Winston Churchill and the British cabinet have been applying pressure on the Provisional Government to dislodge the rebels in the Four Courts, as they consider their presence a violation of the Treaty. Such pressure falls heaviest on Michael Collins, President of the Provisional Government Cabinet and effective head of the regular National Army. Collins, a chief IRA strategist during the War of Independence from Britain, has resisted giving open battle to the anti-Treaty militants since they occupied Four Courts in April. His colleagues in the Provisional Government Cabinet, including Arthur Griffith, agree that Collins must mount decisive military action against them.
In June 1922 the Provisional Government engages in intense negotiations with the British Cabinet over a draft Constitution that seeks to avert the impending civil war. They particularly seek to remove the requirement of an oath to the British Crown by all members of the Dublin government, a key point of contention with anti-Treaty partisans. However, the conservative British Cabinet refuses to cooperate. The pro-treaty element of Sinn Féin wins the elections on June 16.
Following the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson in London on June 22, 1922 and the arrest by Four Courts troops of National Army Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. J. J. “Ginger” O’Connell, British pressure on the Provisional Government intensifies. The British now threaten to invade and re-occupy all of Ireland. On June 27 the Provisional Government Cabinet agrees on an ultimatum to the Four Courts garrison to evacuate or face immediate military action.
Churchill offers a loan of British artillery for use by the National Army, along with 200 shells from their store of 10,000 at Kilmainham, three miles away. It is possible that some British special troops are also covertly loaned. Two 18-pounder field guns are placed on Bridge Street and Winetavern Street, across the River Liffey from the Four Courts complex. After an ultimatum is delivered to the anti-Treaty garrison in the early hours of June 28, the National Army commences the bombardment of Four Courts.
No authoritative record exists regarding the order to commence bombardment. Historians tend to attribute the order to Collins, but some biographers dispute this. Anti-Treaty survivors allege that they are preparing for an 8:00 a.m. evacuation when the bombardment begins at 4:00 a.m.
Inside the building are 12 members of the Irish Republican Army Executive, including Chief of StaffJoe McKelvey, Director of Engineering Rory O’Connor, Quartermaster General Liam Mellows and Director of Operations Ernie O’Malley. The garrison consists of roughly 180 men drawn from the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the IRA’s 1st Dublin Brigade, commanded by Commandant Paddy O’Brien, armed for the most part only with small arms apart from one captured armoured car, which they name “The Mutineer.” The members of the IRA Army Executive are the political leaders of the garrison, but serve as common soldiers under the command of O’Brien. The Anti-Treaty side fortifies the Four Courts to some extent, planting mines around the complex and barricading the doors and windows, but their leadership orders them not to fire first, in order to retain the moral high ground, and so the Free State troops are allowed to surround the Four Courts.
After the first day’s bombardment proves ineffective, the British give the Free State two more 18-pounder cannon and proffer 60-pounder howitzers along with an offer to bomb the Four Courts from the air. Collins turns down the latter two offers because of the risk of causing heavy civilian casualties. On June 29, Free State troops storm the eastern wing of the Four Courts, losing three killed and 14 wounded and taking 33 prisoners. The republicans’ armoured car is disabled and abandoned by its crew. Early the next day O’Brien is injured by shrapnel and O’Malley takes over military command in the Four Courts. By this time the shelling has caused the Four Courts to catch fire. In addition, orders arrive from Oscar Traynor, the anti-treaty IRA commander in Dublin, for the Four Courts garrison to surrender, as he cannot reach their position to help them. O’Malley rules this order invalid, as the Four Courts is a GHQ operation. However, in view of the rapidly deteriorating situation, at 3:30 p.m. on June 30, O’Malley surrenders the Four Courts to Brigadier GeneralPaddy Daly of the Free State’s Dublin Guard unit. Three of the republican garrison die in the siege.
Several hours before the surrender, the Public Record Office of Ireland (PRO) block located in the western block of the Four Courts, which is used as an ammunition store by the Four Courts garrison, is the centre of a huge explosion, destroying Irish state records going back to the Anglo-Norman conquest. Forty advancing Free State troops are badly injured. Assigning blame for the explosion remains controversial. It is alleged by the National Army Headquarters that the Anti-treaty forces deliberately booby-trapped the PRO to kill advancing Free State troops. Tim Healy, a government supporter, later claims that the explosion is the result of land mines laid before the surrender, which explode after the surrender. However, a study of the battle concludes that the explosion is caused by fires ignited by the shelling of the Four Courts, which eventually reach two truckloads of gelignite in the munitions factory. A towering mushroom cloud rises 200 feet over the Four Courts.
At this stage in the battle troops on each side still have a sense of kinship with the other, as most of them had fought together in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. By appealing to friends on the Free State side, several anti-Treaty leaders among the Four Courts garrison, notably Ernie O’Malley and Seán Lemass, escape from captivity to continue the fight.
Despite the Free State force’s success in taking the Four Courts, fighting continues in Dublin until July 5. On June 29 anti-Treaty IRA units from the Dublin Brigade led by Oscar Traynor have occupied O’Connell Street, part of Parnell Square, York Street and some of other locations to try to distract Free State attention from their attack on the Four Courts. Not all the IRA units in the capital are prepared to fight against the new Irish government, however, and their numbers are probably about 500 throughout the city. Their numbers are supplemented by about 150 Citizen Army men and women who bring with them arms and ammunition dumped since the insurrection of Easter 1916.
The republicans occupy the northeastern part of O’Connell Street, with their strong point at “the block,” a group of buildings that the Anti-Treatyites had connected by tunneling through the walls. They had also taken over the adjoining Gresham, Crown, Granville and Hammam hotels. Their only position on the western side of the street is in the YMCA building. Additionally, they have an outpost south of the River Liffey at the Swan Pub on Aungier Street. Oscar Traynor apparently hopes to receive reinforcements from the rest of the country, but only Anti-Treaty units in Belfast and Tipperary reply and both of them arrive too late to take part in the fighting.
The Provisional Government troops, commanded by General Tom Ennis, start by clearing out the outlying anti-treaty garrisons, which is accomplished by July 1. They then draw a tighter cordon around O’Connell Street. Artillery is used to drive the Anti-Treaty fighters out of positions on Parnell Street and Gardiner Street, which gives the Free State troops a clear field of fire down O’Connell Street.
The republican outpost in the YMCA is eliminated when Free State troops tunnel underneath it and detonate a bomb. Traynor’s men in “the block” hold out until artillery is brought up, under the cover of armored cars, to bombard them at point-blank range. Incendiary bombs are also planted in the buildings. Traynor and most of his force make their escape when the buildings they are occupying catch fire. They mingle with civilian crowds and make their way to Blessington.
Left behind is Republican leader Cathal Brugha and a rear guard of 15 men, who stay behind in the Hammam Hotel after Traynor and most other IRA men have left. At 5:00 p.m. on July 5, when the fires make the hotel untenable, Brugha orderes his men to surrender. He, however, stays behind, only to emerge from the building alone, armed with a revolver. He is shot in the thigh by Free State troops and dies later from blood loss. There are some further sporadic incidents of fighting around the city as Free State troops disperse anti-treaty IRA groups.
Cathal Brugha is the last casualty in the Battle of Dublin, which costs the lives of at least 80 people (15 anti-Treaty IRA Volunteers, 29 National Army soldiers, one British Royal Air Force serviceman and 35 civilians) and over 280 wounded. In addition, the Free State takes over 450 Republican prisoners. The high civilian casualties are doubtless the result of the use of heavy weapons, especially artillery, in a densely populated urban area.
When the fighting in Dublin dies down, the Free State government is left firmly in control of the Irish capital and the anti-treaty forces disperse around the country. Round-ups after the fighting result in more Republican prisoners and the death of prominent anti-Treaty activist Harry Boland who is shot dead in Skerries, Dublin, on July 31.
Oscar Traynor, Ernie O’Malley and the other anti-Treaty fighters who escape the fighting in Dublin regroup in Blessington, around 30 km southwest of the city. An anti-Treaty IRA force from County Tipperary had arrived there but too late to participate in the Dublin fighting. Instead, this force heads south and takes a string of towns, including Enniscorthy and Carlow, but quickly abandons them when faced with superior Free State forces. Most of the Republicans then retreat further south to the so-called Munster Republic, territory southwest of a line running from Limerick to Waterford. This in turn is taken by the Free State in an offensive from July to August 1922.
Four of the Republican leaders captured in the Four Courts, Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, Joe McKelvey and Richard Barrett, are later executed by the government in reprisal for the Anti-Treaty side’s killing of TDSeán Hales. The street where Cathal Brugha is killed is later renamed Cathal Brugha Street in his honour.
seamus dubhghaill 