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Birth of John Bruton, Fine Gael Politician & 10th Taoiseach of Ireland

John Gerard Bruton, Irish Fine Gael politician who serves as Taoiseach from 1994 to 1997 and Leader of Fine Gael from 1990 to 2001, is born to a wealthy, Catholic farming family in Dunboyne, County Meath, on May 18, 1947. He plays a crucial role in advancing the process that leads to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Bruton is educated at Clongowes Wood College and then goes on to study economics at University College Dublin (UCD), where he receives an honours Bachelor of Arts degree and qualifies as a barrister from King’s Inns, but never goes on to practice law. He joins the Fine Gael party in 1965 and is narrowly elected to Dáil Éireann in the 1969 Irish general election, as a Fine Gael TD for Meath. At the age of 22, he is one of the youngest ever members of the Dáil at the time. He serves as a parliamentary secretary in the government of Liam Cosgrave (1973–77).

Following Fine Gael’s defeat at the 1977 Irish general election, the new leader, Garret FitzGerald, appoints Bruton to the front bench as Spokesperson on Agriculture. He is later promoted as Spokesperson for Finance. He plays a prominent role in Fine Gael’s campaign in the 1981 Irish general election, which results in another coalition with the Labour Party, with FitzGerald as Taoiseach. He receives a personal vote in Meath of nearly 23%, and at the age of only 34 is appointed Minister for Finance, the most senior position in the cabinet. In light of overwhelming economic realities, the government abandons its election promises to cut taxes. The government collapses unexpectedly on the night of January 27, 1982, when Bruton’s budget, that was to impose an unpopular value-added tax (VAT) on children’s shoes, is defeated in the Dáil.

The minority Fianna Fáil government which follows only lasts until November 1982, when Fine Gael once again returns to power in a coalition government with the Labour Party. However, when the new government is formed, Bruton is moved from Finance to become Minister for Industry and Energy. After a reconfiguration of government departments in 1983, he becomes Minister for Industry, Trade, Commerce and Tourism. In a cabinet reshuffle in February 1986, he is appointed again as Minister for Finance. Although he is Minister for Finance, he never presents his budget. The Labour Party withdraws from the government due to a disagreement over his budget proposals leading to the collapse of the government and another election.

Following the 1987 Irish general election, Fine Gael suffers a heavy defeat. Garret FitzGerald resigns as leader immediately, and a leadership contest ensues between Alan Dukes, Peter Barry and Bruton himself, with Dukes being the ultimate victor. Dukes’s term as leader is lackluster and unpopular. The party’s disastrous performance in the 1990 Irish presidential election, in which the party finishes in a humiliating and then unprecedented third in a national election, proves to be the final straw for the party and Dukes is forced to resign as leader shortly thereafter. Bruton, who is the deputy leader of Fine Gael at the time, is unopposed in the ensuing leadership election.

Bruton’s election is seen as offering Fine Gael a chance to rebuild under a far more politically experienced leader. However, his perceived right-wing persona and his rural background are used against him by critics and particularly by the media. However, to the surprise of critics and of conservatives, in his first policy initiative he calls for a referendum on a Constitutional amendment permitting the enactment of legislation allowing for divorce in Ireland.

By the 1992 Irish general election, the anti-Fianna Fáil mood in the country produces a major swing to the opposition, but that support goes to the Labour Party, not Bruton’s Fine Gael, which actually loses a further 10 seats. Even then, it initially appears that Fine Gael is in a position to form a government. However, negotiations stall in part from Labour’s refusal to be part of a coalition which would include the libertarian Progressive Democrats, as well as Bruton’s unwillingness to take Democratic Left into a prospective coalition. The Labour Party breaks off talks with Fine Gael and opts to enter a new coalition with Fianna Fáil.

In late 1994, the government of Fianna Fáil’s Albert Reynolds collapses. Bruton is able to persuade Labour to end its coalition with Fianna Fáil and enter a new coalition government with Fine Gael and Democratic Left. He faces charges of hypocrisy for agreeing to enter government with Democratic Left, as Fine Gael campaigned in the 1992 Irish general election on a promise not to enter government with the party. Nevertheless, on December 15, 1994, aged 47, he becomes the then youngest ever Taoiseach. This is the first time in the history of the state that a new government is installed without a general election being held.

Bruton’s politics are markedly different from most Irish leaders. Whereas most leaders had come from or identified with the independence movement Sinn Féin (in its 1917–22 phase), Bruton identifies more with the more moderate Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) tradition that Sinn Féin had eclipsed at the 1918 Irish general election.

Continued developments in the Northern Ireland peace process and Bruton’s attitude to Anglo-Irish relations come to define his tenure as Taoiseach. In February 1995, he launches the Anglo-Irish “Framework Document” with the British prime minister John Major. It foreshadows the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which, among other things, establishes an elected, power-sharing executive authority to be run by these onetime adversaries, ending 30 years of bloodletting that had claimed more than 3,000 lives. However, he takes a strongly critical position on the British Government‘s reluctance to engage with Sinn Féin during the Irish Republican Army‘s 1994–1997 ceasefire. He also establishes a working relationship with Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin; however, both are mutually distrustful of each other.

Bruton presides over a successful Irish Presidency of the European Union in 1996, and helps finalise the Stability and Growth Pact, which establishes macroeconomic parameters for countries participating in the single European currency, the euro. He is the fifth Irish leader to address a joint session of the United States Congress on September 11, 1996. He presides over the first official visit by a member of the British royal family since 1912, by Charles, Prince of Wales.

The coalition remains in force to contest the 1997 Irish general elections, which are indecisive, and Bruton serves as acting taoiseach until the Dáil convenes in late June and elects a Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats government. He retires from Irish politics in 2004 and serves as the European Union Ambassador to the United States (2004–09).

Bruton dies at the age of 76 on February 6, 2024, at the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin, following a long bout with cancer. A state funeral is held on February 10 at St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s Church in Dunboyne.


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Roger Casement’s Efforts to Gain German Military Aid Ends

During World War I, Roger Casement makes efforts to gain German military aid for the 1916 Easter Rising. His journey on the German submarine SM U-19 comes to an end on April 21, 1916.

In April 1916, Germany offers the Irish 20,000 Mosin–Nagant 1891 rifles, ten machine guns and accompanying ammunition, but no German officers. It is a fraction of the quantity of the arms Casement had hoped for, with no military expertise on offer. The weapons leave Germany bound for Ireland on a German cargo vessel named the SS Libau, disguised as a Norwegian vessel, Aud-Norge.

Casement confides his personal papers to Dr. Charles Curry, with whom he has stayed at Riederau on the Ammersee, before leaving Germany. He departs with Robert Monteith and Sergeant Daniel Beverley (Bailey) of the Irish Brigade in a submarine, initially the SM U-20, which develops engine trouble, and then the SM U-19, shortly after the Aud sails. According to Monteith, Casement believes the Germans are toying with him from the start and providing inadequate aid that will doom a rising to failure. He wants to reach Ireland before the shipment of arms and to convince Eoin MacNeill, who he believes is still in control, to cancel the rising.

Casement sends John McGoey, a recently arrived Irish American, through Denmark to Dublin, ostensibly to advise what military aid is coming from Germany and when, but with Casement’s orders “to get the Heads in Ireland to call off the rising and merely try to land the arms and distribute them.” McGoey does not reach Dublin, nor does his message. His fate is unknown until recently. Evidently abandoning the Irish Nationalist cause, he joins the Royal Navy in 1916, survives the war, and later returns to the United States, where he dies in an accident on a building site in 1925.

About 2:00 a.m. on the morning of April 21, 1916, three days before the rising begins, Robert Monteith, Daniel Bailey (calling himself Beverly), and Casement climb into a small boat for the trip to shore at Banna Strand in Tralee Bay, County Kerry. Their boat, now in the Imperial War Museum in London, capsizes before they reach shore.

Monteith helps an exhausted Casement to safety on shore. Casement is convinced that the Rising cannot be successful without a large number of German troops, and the best he has been able to obtain is one boatload of arms. Suffering from a recurrence of the malaria that had plagued him since his days in the Congo, and too weak to travel, Monteith and Bailey leave Casement at the ruins of McKenna’s Fort, an ancient ring fort in Rahoneen, Ardfert, now renamed Casement’s Fort, and head for Tralee.

About 1:30 p.m., Casement is discovered by two Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officers. He nearly talks his way out of being arrested, but a 12-year-old boy at the scene points out a piece of paper Casement had tossed away as the police approach. On that paper is a German code list. He is arrested on charges of high treason, sabotage and espionage against the Crown. He manages to send word to Dublin about the inadequate German assistance.

The Kerry Brigade of the Irish Volunteers might have tried to rescue Casement over the next three days, but its leadership in Dublin holds that not a shot is to be fired in Ireland before the Easter Rising is in train and therefore orders the Brigade to “do nothing.” A subsequent internal inquiry attaches “no blame whatsoever” to the local Volunteers for failing to attempt a rescue. Casement is taken to Brixton Prison and placed under special observation for fear of an attempt of suicide as there is no staff at the Tower of London to guard suicidal cases.

Casement’s trial at bar opens at the Royal Courts of Justice on June 26, 1916, before the Lord Chief Justice (Viscount Reading), Justice Horace Avory, and Justice Thomas Horridge. Refusing to agree to a “guilty but insane” plea, he is subsequently found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. He unsuccessfully appeals against his conviction and death sentence.

On the day of his execution by hanging at Pentonville Prison, August 3, 1916, Casement is received into the Catholic Church at his request. He is attended by two Catholic priests, Dean Timothy Ring and Father James Carey, from the East London parish of SS Mary and Michael. The latter, also known as James McCarroll, says of Casement that he was “a saint … we should be praying to him [Casement] instead of for him.” At the time of his death he is 51 years old.

Casement’s body is buried in quicklime in the prison cemetery at the rear of Pentonville Prison, though his last wish was to be buried at Murlough Bay on the north coast of County Antrim, in present-day Northern Ireland. Finally, in 1965, his remains are repatriated to Ireland. His remains lay in state at the Garrison Church, Arbour Hill (now Arbour Hill Prison) in Dublin for five days, close to the graves of other leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, although he would not be buried beside them. After a state funeral, the remains are buried with full military honours in the republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, alongside other Irish republicans and nationalists. The President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, who is then in his mid-eighties and the last surviving leader of the Easter Rising, attends the ceremony, along with an estimated 30,000 others.


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Birth of Sir Edward Carson, Politician, Barrister & Judge

Edward Henry Carson, Baron Carson, Irish unionist politician, barrister and judge, known as the “uncrowned king of Ulster,” is born on February 9, 1854, at 4 Harcourt Street, in Dublin. He serves as the Attorney General and Solicitor General for England, Wales and Ireland as well as the First Lord of the Admiralty for the British Royal Navy.

Although Carson is to become the champion of the northern province, he is born into a Protestant family in southern Ireland. He is educated at Portarlington School, Wesley College, Dublin, and Trinity College Dublin, where he reads law and is an active member of the College Historical Society. He graduates BA and MA.

From 1877, early in his Irish legal career, he comes to mistrust the Irish nationalists. As senior Crown prosecutor, he sternly enforces the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act 1887, securing numerous convictions for violence against Irish estates owned by English absentee landlords. He is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland and elected to the British House of Commons in 1892, is called to the English bar at Middle Temple on April 21, 1893, and serves as Solicitor General for England and Wales from 1900 to 1905. During these years he achieves his greatest success as a barrister. In 1895, his cross-examination of Oscar Wilde largely secures the Irish writer’s conviction for homosexuality.

On February 21, 1910, Carson accepts the parliamentary leadership of the anti-Home Rule Irish Unionists and, forfeiting his chance to lead the British Conservative Party, devotes himself entirely to the Ulster cause. His dislike of southern Irish separatism is reinforced by his belief that the heavy industry of Belfast is necessary to the economic survival of Ireland. The Liberal government (1908–16) under H. H. Asquith, which in 1912 decides to prepare a Home Rule bill, cannot overcome the effect of his extra-parliamentary opposition. The Solemn League and Covenant of resistance to Home Rule, signed by Carson and other leaders in Belfast on September 28, 1912, and afterward by thousands of Ulstermen, is followed by his establishment of a provisional government in Belfast in September 1913. Early in that year he recruits a private Ulster army, the Ulster Volunteer Force, that openly drills for fighting in the event that the Home Rule Bill is enacted. In preparation for a full-scale civil war, he successfully organizes the landing of a large supply of weapons from Germany at Larne, County Antrim, on April 24, 1914. The British government, however, begins to make concessions to Ulster unionists, and on the outbreak of World War I he agrees to a compromise whereby the Home Rule Bill is enacted but its operation suspended until the end of the war on the understanding that Ulster’s exclusion will then be reconsidered.

Appointed Attorney General for England in Asquith’s wartime coalition ministry on May 25, 1915, Carson resigns on October 19 because of his dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war. In David Lloyd George’s coalition ministry (1916–22) he is First Lord of the Admiralty from December 10, 1916, to July 17, 1917, and then a member of the war cabinet as minister without portfolio until January 21, 1918.

Disillusioned by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 that partitions Ireland and establishes what is essentially a Home Rule parliament in Belfast, Carson declines an invitation to head the Northern Ireland government and resigns as Ulster Unionist Party leader in February 1921. Accepting a life peerage, he serves from 1921 to 1929 as Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and takes the title Baron Carson of Duncairn.

Carson retires in October 1929. In July 1932, during his last visit to Northern Ireland, he witnesses the unveiling of a large statue of himself in front of Parliament Buildings at Stormont. The statue is sculpted by Leonard Stanford Merrifield, cast in bronze and placed upon a plinth. The inscription on the base reads “By the loyalists of Ulster as an expression of their love and admiration for its subject.” It is unveiled by James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, in the presence of more than 40,000 people.

Carson lives at Cleve Court, a Queen Anne house near Minster-in-Thanet in the Isle of Thanet, Kent, bought in 1921. It is here that he dies peacefully on October 22, 1935. A warship brings his body to Belfast for the funeral. Thousands of shipworkers stop work and bow their heads as HMS Broke steams slowly up Belfast Lough, with his flag-draped coffin sitting on the quarterdeck. Britain gives him a state funeral on Saturday, October 26, 1935, which takes place in Belfast’s St. Anne’s Cathedral. He remains the only person to have been buried there. From a silver bowl, soil from each of the six counties of Northern Ireland is scattered onto his coffin, which had earlier been covered by the Union Jack. At his funeral service the choir sings his own favourite hymn, “I Vow to Thee, My Country.”


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The State Funeral of Garda Tony Golden

On October 15, 2015, President Michael D. Higgins and Taoiseach Enda Kenny join thousands of mourners and gardaí in Blackrock, County Louth, for the State funeral of Garda Tony Golden. Garda Golden, a father of three, is shot dead on the evening of October 11 as he goes to the aid of Siobhan Phillips, who is the victim of domestic violence.

Among the thousands paying their respects are 4,000 serving and retired gardaí, over 2,000 in uniform. Garda Golden is remembered as a happy man, proud to serve, a role model for the community – and by his brother Patrick as a “big gentle giant.”

In his homily, chief celebrant parish priest Father Pádraig Keenan tells the congregation that the killing of Garda Golden was “cold-blooded murder.” He reminds the mourners that Garda Golden is the 88th garda to die in the line of duty. He says, “It is 88 members too many. He like all the others is mourned by the entire nation.”

“His murder brings to mind once again all the families and communities that have been affected on our island.”

Fr. Keenan says, “Garda Tony’s death once again reflects how north Louth and the Cooley Peninsula have been affected by the tragic history of the Troubles on the island of Ireland, and especially the murder of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe, three years ago at Lordship Credit Union in Bellurgan.”

He says that too many hearts have been broken and too many lives shattered. There is no place for violence in our society, violence is wrong, always wrong. He refers to Garda Golden as one of life’s gentlemen.

Fr. Keenan begins the funeral mass by saying that Garda Golden quietly let “his light shine in so many ways through his life in a very humble way. Amidst our sadness may we be thankful for the charisma of his beautiful but too short life.”

The stillness of the water across from the churchyard in Dundalk Bay mirrors the silence and sadness that has unfolded on everyone since the weekend, he tells the congregation.

“Tony was so proud to serve the community of Omeath,” he says. “As one person from Omeath put it to me in recent days, he was ‘our garda’, and to a person amongst his family and colleagues, all are immensely proud of Garda Tony and his selfless nature. Proud of everything he lived for, worked for and stood for. Tony Golden was a much-loved role model in our community.”

Symbols including a family photograph are taken to the altar in memory of Garda Golden. A club jersey and hurley from the Stephenites GAA club in his native Ballina, County Mayo, represent his roots and love of sport. A television remote control, a soft drink, a bar of chocolate and packet of crisps were offered to recall his cherished “time out.”

Garda Golden’s final journey begins at the home in the village of Blackrock he shared with his wife Nicola and their three young children, Lucy, Alex and Andrew. The funeral cortège is led by the Garda Commissioner, while thousands of gardaí escort their colleague into his parish church, St. Oliver Plunkett’s, for the funeral mass at noon.

Other dignitaries attending Garda Golden’s funeral are Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable George Hamilton, as well as political representatives from all parties.

Fr. Keenan is joined on the altar by the vicar general of the Armagh diocese Dean Colum Curry, who represents the Primate of All Ireland, Bishop Eamon Martin. As well as the chaplains to the Garda and the Defence Forces, Bishop John Fleming and Father Gerard O Hora travel to the funeral from Golden’s home county of Mayo.

Screens are erected in the grounds and the village to relay the service to those outside.

Businesses shut down along the route as a mark of respect during the funeral. Roads around the village are sealed off for several hours. Garda Golden is laid to rest at St. Paul’s Cemetery Heynestown.

Golden is killed as he is bringing Siobhan Phillips to her home to retrieve her personal possessions. Phillips is also shot in the incident and is in a critical condition in hospital with her family at her bedside at the time of Garda Golden’s funeral.

President of the Garda Representative Association, Dermot O’Brien, says members of the gardaí from all corners of Ireland traveled to County Louth to pay their respects to their colleague. He says they are grief-stricken and numb.

O’Brien says everyone will reflect in their own way and that the realisation has struck that Garda Golden was murdered doing “a bread-and-butter type call.”

“They are going to ask themselves, those that attended the same type of call on Sunday that it could have been them. These are very similar calls that a lot of members did on Sunday, and they will sit back and reflect on what happened to Tony as they responded to a similar call.”

O’Brien says he had spoken to Garda Golden’s unit in the days leading to the funeral and, while they are coping, they are not well. “They are angry, grieving and disillusioned because today they have to bury a second friend, a murdered friend, a second murdered colleague.”

Father Michael Cusack also speaks of the pain and anger expressed by members of the garda force he met following Garda Golden’s death. Speaking on RTÉ‘s Today with Sean O’Rourke, Fr. Cusack says it is a very difficult day and week for gardaí. He says a lot of care needs to be offered to the members of the force and that there needs to be appropriate follow-up care given.

(From: “Garda Tony Golden ‘mourned by entire nation’,” RTÉ News, http://www.rte.ie, October 15, 2015)


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Birth of John Bowman, Broadcaster & Presenter

John Bowman, Irish historian and a long-standing broadcaster and presenter of current affairs and political programmes with Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), is born in Dublin on July 28, 1942. He chairs the audience-participation political programme Questions and Answers on RTÉ One for 21 years.

Bowman is brought up in Ballsbridge in south Dublin. His father works for Great Southern Railways (later CIÉ) and his mother is a nurse, originally from County Monaghan. He is educated at Belvedere College and Trinity College Dublin where he receives a bachelor’s degree in history and political science in 1970 and a PhD in political science in 1980. He joins Radio Éireann in 1962, later becoming the presenter and commentator on numerous current affairs programmes, as well as an analyst of political developments and interviewer of politicians on radio and later on television. In the 1980s, he presents the current affairs programme Today Tonight, the precursor to Prime Time.

Bowman wins Jacob’s Awards in 2013 and 2016 for his radio broadcasting, the former for his presentation of the current affairs programme, Day by Day. In April 2008, he comments on RTÉ television coverage of the state funeral of Patrick Hillery, a former President of Ireland.

Bowman chairs the audience-participation political programme Questions and Answers on RTÉ One television for 21 years, the final edition airing on June 29, 2009. He is the presenter of Bowman: Sunday: 8.30 (previously Bowman Saturday) on radio, a weekly compilation of material from broadcasting archives at home and abroad.

In May 2011, Bowman fronts RTÉ television coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to the Republic of Ireland.

Bowman writes a history of RTÉ Television called Window and Mirror. RTÉ Television: 1961-2011. It is launched by Taoiseach Enda Kenny at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin on November 23, 2011.

In January 2019, Bowman is awarded the Freedom of the City of Cork.

Bowman serves a two-year term as president of The Irish Association for Cultural, Economic and Social Relations from 1991 and of Comhar, an environmental pressure group, from 1999 until 2004.

Bowman is married to psychiatrist Eimer Philbin Bowman and they have have four children: Jonathan, Emma, Abie and Daniel. His eldest son, Jonathan Philbin Bowman, a journalist, television and radio presenter, dies in an accident in March 2000. His daughter, Emma Philbin Bowman, works in Dublin as a psychotherapist. His middle son, Abie Philbin Bowman, is a columnist for The Dubliner magazine and a stand-up comedian, while in 2005 his youngest son, Daniel, initiates Be Not Afraid, a charity wristband campaign which raises over €80,000 in aid of Turning the Tide of Suicide and the Irish Red Cross and later sets up a youth marketing firm, Spark.


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Patrick Maher’s Remains Returned to County Limerick

The dying wish of Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer Patrick Maher is fulfilled on October 19, 2001, when his remains are brought from Dublin to his native County Limerick for burial the following day with full military honours. He is executed in Mountjoy Prison on June 7, 1921 following his alleged part in the rescue of IRA man Seán Hogan from a heavily guarded train in Knocklong, County Limerick, in May 1919, which results in the death of two Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officers. Maher always protests his innocence. He is 32 years old at the time of his death.

Maher, a native of County Limerick born around 1889, is hanged along with Edmond Foley for his alleged involvement in the rescue of Seán Hogan at Knocklong Railway Station on May 13, 1919 in which two RIC officers are killed.

Unlike Foley, Maher has no direct involvement in the rescue. He merely works at the station grading poultry and eggs and he is at a crossroads three miles away at the time of the ambush. He strongly protests his innocence. Two civilian juries fail to reach a verdict. He is finally convicted of involvement by a military court-martial and sentenced to death.

In a final message to other members of the IRA, Foley and Maher write:

“Fight on, struggle on, for the honour, glory and freedom of dear old Ireland. Our hearts go out to all our dear old friends. Our souls go to God at 7 o’clock in the morning and our bodies, when Ireland is free, shall go to Galbally. Our blood shall not be shed in vain for Ireland, and we have a strong presentiment, going to our God, that Ireland will soon be free and we gladly give our lives that a smile may brighten the face of ‘Dear Dark Rosaleen.’ Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!”

Maher is one of a group of men hanged and buried in Mountjoy in the period 1920–21, commonly referred to as the Forgotten Ten. In 2001 Maher and the other nine, including Kevin Barry, are exhumed and given a full State funeral. He is the only one of the Ten not to be buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. In accordance with his wishes and those of his family, he is buried at Ladywell Graveyard in Ballylanders, County Limerick.


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State Funeral in Honour of the “Forgotten Ten”

On October 14, 2001, the first multiple state funeral is held in honour of the “Forgotten Ten,” a term applied to ten Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers who were executed by British forces in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, following courts martial for their role in the Irish War of Independence.

Based upon military law at the time, they are buried within the prison precincts, their graves unmarked in the unconsecrated ground. The names of the Forgotten Ten are Kevin Barry, Thomas Whelan, Patrick Moran, Patrick Doyle, Bernard Ryan, Thomas Bryan, Frank Flood, Thomas Traynor, Edmond Foley, and Patrick Maher. The hangman is John Ellis.

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 Fáil Ardfheis. 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, Cardinal Cahal 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 Taoiseach Bertie 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)


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Birth of Sir Roger Casement, Diplomat & Irish Nationalist

Sir Roger Casement, in full Sir Roger David Casement, diplomat and Irish nationalist, is born on September 1, 1864, in Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire), County Dublin. Following his execution for treason in 1916, he becomes one of the principal Irish martyrs in the revolt against British rule in Ireland.

Casement is born into an Anglo-Irish family, and lives his very early childhood at Doyle’s Cottage, Lawson Terrace, Sandycove. His father, Captain Roger Casement of the (King’s Own) Regiment of Dragoons, is the son of Hugh Casement, a Belfast shipping merchant who goes bankrupt and later moves to Australia. After the family moves to England, Casement’s mother, Anne Jephson (or Jepson), of a Dublin Anglican family, purportedly has him secretly baptised at the age of three as a Roman Catholic in Rhyl, Wales.

The family lives in England in genteel poverty. Casement’s mother dies when he is nine years old. His father takes the family back to County Antrim in Ireland to live near paternal relatives. His father dies when he is thirteen years old. He is educated at the Diocesan School, Ballymena (later the Ballymena Academy). He leaves school at 16 and goes to England to work as a clerk with Elder Dempster Lines, a Liverpool shipping company headed by Alfred Lewis Jones.

Casement is a British consul in Portuguese East Africa (1895–98), Angola (1898–1900), Congo Free State (1901–04), and Brazil (1906–11). He gains international fame for revealing atrocious cruelty in the exploitation of native labour by white traders in the Congo and the Putumayo River region of Peru. His Congo report, published in 1904, leads to a major reorganization of Belgian rule in the Congo in 1908, and his Putumayo report of 1912 earns him a knighthood, which is ultimately forfeited on June 29, 1916.

Ill health forces Casement to retire to Ireland in 1912. Although he comes from an Ulster Protestant family, he has always sympathized with the predominantly Roman Catholic Irish nationalists. Late in 1913 he helps form the National Volunteers, and in July 1914 he travels to New York City to seek American aid for that anti-British force. After World War I breaks out in August, he hopes that Germany might assist the Irish independence movement as a blow against Great Britain. On arriving in Berlin in November 1914, he finds that the German government is unwilling to risk an expedition to Ireland and that most Irish prisoners of war would refuse to join a brigade that he intends to recruit for service against England.

Later, Casement fails to obtain a loan of German army officers to lead the Irish rising planned for Easter 1916. In a vain effort to prevent the revolt, he sails for Ireland on April 12 in a German submarine. Put ashore near Tralee, County Kerry, he is arrested on April 24 and taken to London, where, on June 29, he is convicted of treason and sentenced to death. An appeal is dismissed, and he is hanged at London’s Pentonville Prison on August 3, 1916, despite attempts by influential Englishmen to secure a reprieve in view of his past services to the British government. During this time, diaries reputedly written by Casement and containing detailed descriptions of homosexual practices are circulated privately among British officials. After years of dispute over their authenticity, the diaries are made available to scholars by the British home secretary in July 1959. It is generally considered that the passages in question are in Casement’s handwriting.

In 1965 Casement’s remains are repatriated to Ireland. Despite the annulment, or withdrawal, of his knighthood in 1916, the 1965 UK Cabinet record of the repatriation decision refers to him as “Sir Roger Casement.”

Casement’s last wish is to be buried at Murlough Bay on the north coast of County Antrim, in present-day Northern Ireland, but Prime Minister Harold Wilson‘s government had released the remains only on condition that they could not be brought into Northern Ireland, as “the government feared that a reburial there could provoke Catholic celebrations and Protestant reactions.”

Casement’s remains lay in state at the Garrison Church, Arbour Hill (now Arbour Hill Prison) in Dublin for five days, close to the graves of other leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. After a state funeral, his remains are buried with full military honours in the Republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, alongside other Irish republicans and nationalists. The President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, then the last surviving leader of the Easter Rising, attends the ceremony, along with an estimated 30,000 others.


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Birth of Margaret Mary Pearse, Politician & Teacher

Margaret Mary Pearse, Fianna Fáil politician and teacher, is born on August 24, 1878, at 27 Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street) in Dublin. She is a sister of Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, and Willie Pearse, both of whom are executed for their part in the Rising.

Pearse is the eldest child of James Pearse and Margaret Pearse (née Brady), who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) in the 1920s. She is educated at the Holy Faith Convent in Glasnevin. After leaving school, she trains as a teacher. She helps to found St. Enda’s School with her brothers Patrick and Willie. Following the executions of her brothers in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, she continues to run St. Enda’s, along with Fergus De Búrca, until 1933.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, Pearse is first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil TD for the Dublin County constituency at the 1933 general election. She is defeated at the 1937 general election on the 7th count of votes but is elected to the Administrative Panel of the 2nd Seanad. She serves in the Seanad until her death in 1968, however, she and her mother are never considered to be more than figureheads for the party. She is a founding member of the teaching staff of Ardscoil Éanna in Crumlin, Dublin, upon its establishment in 1939.

Illness forces Pearse into the Linden Convalescent Home in Blackrock, County Dublin when she is in her 80s. In 1967, when she is 89 years old, her condition is described to be deteriorating. However, in 1968 during the months leading up to her 90th birthday, she leaves the Linden Convalescent Home for a short while in order to spend her birthday at St. Enda’s in Rathfarnham. The president of Ireland at the time, Éamon de Valera, visits her at St. Enda’s to congratulate her on her upcoming 90th birthday.

Margaret Pearse dies, unmarried, at the Linden Convalescent Home in Blackrock, County Dublin, on November 7, 1968, and is given a state funeral. President de Valera, the church and the state all pay tribute to her at the funeral. She is buried beside her parents and sister at Glasnevin Cemetery. The Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, says that Margaret Mary Pearse is the last remaining member of the noble Pearse family. He says her life, like her patriotic brothers, was dedicated to Ireland.

As per her mother’s wishes, Pearse bequeaths St. Enda’s to the people of Ireland as a memorial to her brother’s sacrifice. The school is now home to the Pearse Museum.


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Birth of Seán Lemass, Fianna Fáil Leader & Taoiseach

Seán Francis Lemass, born John Francis Lemass, Irish patriot and Fianna Fáil politician who serves as Taoiseach and Leader of Fianna Fáil from 1959 to 1966, is born at Norwood Lodge, Ballybrack, Dublin on July 15, 1899. He also serves as Tánaiste (1945-48, 1951-54 and 1957-59), Minister for Industry and Commerce (1932-39, 1945-49, 1951-54 and 1957-59), Minister for Supplies (1939-45) and Teachta Dála (TD) (1924-69).

Lemass is the second of nine children born to John T. Lemass and his wife Frances (née Phelan) Lemass. He is educated at O’Connell School, where he is described as studious (his two best subjects being history and mathematics).

Lemass is persuaded to join the Irish Volunteers. He becomes a member of the A Company of the 3rd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade. The battalion adjutant is Éamon de Valera, future Taoiseach and President of Ireland. While out on a journey in the Dublin mountains during Easter 1916, he is informed of the Easter Rising that is taking place in Dublin. On April 25, Seán and his brother Noel are allowed to join the Volunteer garrison at the General Post Office (GPO). He is equipped with a shotgun and was positioned on the roof. He also is involved in fighting on Moore Street. However, the Rising ends in failure and all involved are imprisoned. He is held for a month in Richmond Barracks but, due to his age, he is released. Following this, his father wants his son to continue with his studies and be called to the Irish Bar.

Lemass opposes the establishment of the Irish Free State as a dominion under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and becomes a member of the headquarters staff of the Irish Republican Army in the Irish Civil War (1922–23). He plays a key role in persuading de Valera to found a new republican party, Fianna Fáil, in 1926. After de Valera rises to the premiership in 1932, Lemass holds portfolios in all his cabinets for 21 of the next 27 years, notably as Minister of Industry and Commerce and then as Tánaiste.

When de Valera becomes President of Ireland in 1959, Lemass is appointed Taoiseach on June 23, 1959, on the nomination for Dáil Éireann. Under him the country takes a more outward-looking approach, and he especially presses for Ireland’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC), now the European Communities, embedded in the European Union, and for reconciliation with Northern Ireland. His greatest legacy, Ireland’s membership in the EEC, is not secured until 1973, after his death.

In 1966, Ireland celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. Éamon de Valera comes within 1% of defeat in that year’s Irish presidential election, less than two months after the celebrations in which he played such a central part. On November 10, 1966, Lemass announces to the Dáil his decision to retire as Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach with his usual penchant for efficiency, “I have resigned.” He retires to the backbenches and remains a TD until 1969. On the day of his retirement, Jack Lynch becomes the new leader of Fianna Fáil and Taoiseach.

During the last few years of his leadership, Lemass’s health begins to deteriorate. He had been a heavy pipe smoker all his life, smoking almost a pound of tobacco a week in later life. At the time of his retirement, it is suspected that he has cancer, but this assumption is later disproved. In February 1971, while attending a rugby game at Lansdowne Road, he becomes unwell. He is rushed to hospital and is told by his doctor that one of his lungs is about to collapse.

On Tuesday, May 11, 1971, Lemass dies at the age of 71 in the Mater Hospital in Dublin. He is afforded a state funeral and is buried in Deans Grange Cemetery.