In a letter to his family written on April 30, 1916, Thomas MacDonagh recalls “I was astonished to receive by a messenger from P.H. Pearse, Commandant General of the Army of the Irish Republic, an order to surrender unconditionality to the British General. I did not obey the order as it came from a prisoner. I as then in supreme command of the Irish Army, consulted with my second in command and decided to confirm the order. I knew that it would involve my death and the deaths of other leaders. I hoped that it would save many true men among our followers, good lives for Ireland. God grant it has done so and God approve our deed. For my self I have no regret. The one bitterness that death has for me is the separation it brings from my beloved wife Muriel, and my beloved children, Donagh and Barbara. My country will then treat them as wards, I hope. I have devoted myself too much to National work and too little to the making of money to leave them a competence. God help them and support them, and give them a happy and prosperous life. Never was there a better, truer, purer woman than my wife Muriel, or more adorable children than Don and Barbara. It breaks my heart that I shall never see my children again, but I have not wept or murmured. I counted the cost of this and am ready to pay it. Muriel has been sent for here. I do not know if she can come. She may have no one to take the children while she is coming. If she does.”
MacDonagh and Pearse are contemporaries of one another: poets, progressive educators, Gaelic revivalists. They are men who gird for battle “with a revolver in one hand and a copy of Sophocles in the other.” Each man commands a unit of Irish Volunteers during the Easter Rising, which takes place the week of April 24-30,1916. MacDonagh occupies Jacob’s biscuit factory and Pearse the General Post Office (GPO), from which he issues the surrender at the end of the week.
McDonagh and Pearse are signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, a document issued by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army at the beginning of the Easter Rising, proclaiming Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom. The reading of the proclamation by Pearse outside the General Post Office (GPO) on Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), Dublin‘s main thoroughfare, marks the beginning of the Rising.
Pearse’s and MacDonagh’s signatures on the Proclamation are a fatal endorsement for them and for each of the other five men to lend it their signatures. After being court-martialed, both Pearse and MacDonagh, along with Thomas Clarke, are executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin on May 3, 1916, the first of the rebels to be executed.
(Pictured: Thomas McDonagh (left) and Patrick Pearse)
Colbert is the fourth youngest of thirteen children of Michael Colbert, a farmer, and Honora McDermott. His family moves to the village of Athea when he is three years old. He is educated at the local national school. In 1901, his family is living in the townland of Templeathea West. A younger brother, James, and a cousin, Michael Colbert, later serve as Teachtaí Dála (TDs).
Colbert leaves Athea at the age of 16 and goes to live with his sister Catherine in Ranelagh, County Dublin. He continues his education at a Christian Brothers school in North Richmond Street. He is employed as a clerk in the offices of Kennedy’s Bakery in Dublin. In 1911, he is living with Catherine, two other siblings and two boarders at a house on Clifton Terrace, Rathmines. He is a deeply religious Catholic and refrains from smoking or drinking.
Colbert is sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) by his cousin Art O’Donnell in Art’s home in 1908. He joins Fianna Éireann at its inaugural meeting in 1909 and rises to Chief Scout. The following year he becomes a drill instructor at St. Enda’s School, founded by Patrick Pearse. In 1912, he becomes head of an IRB circle within the Fianna started by Bulmer Hobson. During 1913 he is one of a number of Fianna who conduct military training at the Forester’s Hall in Rutland Square (now Parnell Square), and in November of that year he joins the Provisional Committee of the newly formed Irish Volunteers.
In the weeks leading up to the Rising, Colbert acts as bodyguard for Thomas Clarke. Before the Rising, because he lives out of the city, he stays with the Cooney family in the city centre. During Easter Week, he fights at Watkin’s Brewery, Jameson’s Distillery and Marrowbone Lane. Thomas MacDonagh surrenders to Brigadier GeneralWilliam Lowe at 3:15 p.m. on Sunday, April 30. MacDonagh then goes around the garrisons under his command to arrange for their surrender.
Colbert surrenders with the Marrowbone Lane Garrison along with the South Dublin Union Garrison, which had been led by Éamonn Ceannt. When the order to surrender is issued, he assumes the command of his unit to save the life of his superior officer, who is a married man.
They are marched to Richmond Barracks, where Colbert is later court-martialed. Transferred to Kilmainham Gaol, he is told on Sunday, May 7, that he is to be shot the following morning. He writes no fewer than ten letters during his time in prison. During this time in detention, he does not allow any visits from his family. Writing to his sister, he says a visit “would grieve us both too much.”
The night before his execution Colbert sends for Mrs. Ó Murchadha, who is also being held prisoner. He tells her he is “proud to die for such a cause. I will be passing away at the dawning of the day.” Holding his Bible, he tells her he is leaving it to his sister. He hands her three buttons from his volunteer uniform, telling her, “They left me nothing else.” He then asks her to say a Hail Mary for the souls of the departed when she hears the volleys of shots in the morning for Éamonn Ceannt, Michael Mallin and himself. The soldier who is guarding the prisoner begins crying according to Mrs. Ó Murchadha, and records him as saying, “If only we could die such deaths.”
The next morning, May 8, 1916, Colbert is shot by firing squad.
Colbert Railway Station in Limerick, Con Colbert Road in Dublin and the Fianna Fáilcumann in the University of Limerick are named in his honor. Colbert Street in his native Athea, County Limerick, is named after him, as is the local community hall. Colbert Avenue and Colbert Park Janesboro, Limerick, are also named after him.
On May 4, 1958, a plaque is erected over a bed in Barringtons Hospital, County Limerick. The plaque has since disappeared.
In May 2016, one hundred years after his execution, a full-scale limestone sculpture of Colbert is unveiled at the gable of his one-time house in Moanleana, County Limerick.
Gifford is the second youngest of 12 children born to Frederick Gifford, a solicitor and a Roman Catholic, and Isabella Julia Burton Gifford, a Protestant. The boys are baptised as Catholics and the girls as Protestant, but effectively the children are all raised as Protestants with the girls attending Alexandra College in Earlsfort Terrace.
Gifford returns to Dublin in 1908 and, with great difficulty, tries to earn a living as a caricaturist, publishing her cartoons in The Shanachie, Irish Life, Meadowstreet and The Irish Review, which is edited from 1913 by Joseph Plunkett. She considers emigrating but gives up the idea. Nora Dryhurst, a journalist from London, brings her to the opening of the new bilingual school Scoil Éanna in Ranelagh, Dublin. It is here that she meets Plunkett for the first time. He is a friend of her brother-in-law, another of the future leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, Thomas MacDonagh, who is married to her sister Muriel.
Gifford’s growing interest in the Roman Catholic religion leads to the deepening of Gifford and Plunkett’s relationship as she begins to discuss Catholic mystical ideas with him. Plunkett proposes to her in 1915, and she accepts and takes formal instruction in Catholic doctrine. She is received into the Catholic Church in April 1916. The couple plans to marry on Easter Sunday that year, in a double wedding with his sister and her fiancé.
After the Rising, Gifford’s brother-in-law Thomas MacDonagh is shot with Patrick Pearse and Thomas Clarke by firing squad on May 3. That day, she hears that Plunkett is to be shot at dawn. She purchases a ring in a jeweler’s shop in Dublin and, with the help of a priest, persuades the military authorities to allow them to marry. She and Joseph are married on the night of May 3 in the chapel of Kilmainham Gaol, a few hours before he is executed.
Grace Plunkett decides to devote herself through her art to the promotion of Sinn Féin policies and resumes her commercial work to earn a living. She is elected to the Sinn Féin executive in 1917.
During the Irish Civil War, Plunkett is arrested with many others in February 1923 and interned at Kilmainham Gaol for three months. She paints pictures on the walls of her cell, including one of the Blessed Virgin and the Christ Child. She is released in May 1923.
When the Civil War ends, Plunkett has no home of her own and little money. Like many Anti-Treaty Republicans, she is the target of social ostracism and has difficulty finding work. Her talent as an artist is her only real asset and her cartoons are published in various newspapers and magazines. She moves from one apartment to another and eats in the city-centre restaurants but has no wish to remarry. Her material circumstances improve in 1932 when she receives a Civil List pension from Éamon de Valera‘s Fianna Fáil government. She lives for many years in a flat in Nassau Street with a balcony overlooking the sports ground of Trinity College.
Plunkett’s in-laws refuse to honour her husband’s will, in which he leaves everything to his widow. Legally, the will is invalid because there is only one witness, rather than the required two, and the marriage takes place after the will is made, automatically revoking it. For years she receives nothing, so she begins legal proceedings against her in-laws in 1934. The Count and Countess Plunkett settle out of court, and she is paid £700, plus costs.
At around this time Plunkett joins the Old Dublin Society, where she meets the noted Irish harpsichord maker Cathal Gannon. When Cathal marries, she gives him and his wife Margaret a present of two single beds and a picture. From the late 1940s onwards, her health declines. In 1950 she is brought to St. Vincent’s Hospital. She convalesces in a nursing home, which she does not like, mainly because it restricts her freedom.
Grace Gifford Plunkett dies suddenly on December 13, 1955, in her apartment in South Richmond Street, Portobello. Her body is removed to St. Kevin’s Church, Harrington Street and among the attendees at her funeral is PresidentSeán T. O’Kelly. She is buried with full military honours close to the republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery.
Mellows is born at Hartshead Military Barracks, Ashton-Under-Lyne, Lancashire, England, to William Joseph Mellows, a British Armynon-commissioned officer, and Sarah Jordan, of Inch, County Wexford. His family moves to 10 Annadale Avenue, Fairview, Dublin, in February 1895 when Sergeant Mellows is transferred there, however Liam remains in Wexford with his grandfather Patrick Jordan due to ill health. He attends the military school in Wellington Barracks in Cork and the Portobello garrison school in Dublin but ultimately refuses a military career much to his father’s disappointment, instead working as a clerk in several Dublin firms, including the Junior Army & Navy Stores on D’Olier Street.
A nationalist from an early age, Mellows approaches Thomas Clarke, who recruits him to Fianna Éireann, an organisation of young republicans.
Mellows leads roughly 700 Volunteers in abortive attacks on Royal Irish Constabulary stations at Oranmore and Clarinbridge in County Galway and takes over the town of Athenry. However, his men are very badly armed and supplied and they disperse after a week, when British troops and the cruiser HMS Gloucester are sent west to attack them.
After this insurrection fails, Mellows escapes to the United States, where he is arrested and detained without trial in The Tombs in Lower Manhattan, New York, on a charge of attempting to aid the German side in World War I. After his release in 1918, he works with John Devoy and helps to organise Éamon de Valera’s fund-raising visit to America in 1919–1920.
Mellows returns to Ireland to become Irish Republican Army “Director of Supplies” during the Irish War of Independence, responsible for buying arms. At the 1918 general election of December, he is elected to the First Dáil as a Sinn Féin candidate for both East Galway and for North Meath. He considers the Anglo-Irish Treaty as signed to be a betrayal of the Irish Republic. A conference of 9 TDs is deputed to meet privately on January 5, 1922, to resolve the dispute and to achieve a unified front by compromise. The four other anti-Treaty TDs say there is agreement but Mellows does not and is seen thereafter by pro-Treaty TDs as one of their most implacable opponents. The following day the Dáil votes to approve the Treaty by a majority of 64 to 57.
Mellows is one of the more strident TDs on the approach to the Irish Civil War. In June 1922, he and fellow republicans Rory O’Connor, Joe McKelvey and Richard Barrett, among others, enters the Four Courts, which has been occupied by anti-Treaty forces since April. However, they are bombarded by pro-Treaty Free State forces and surrender after two days. Mellows has a chance to escape along with Ernie O’Malley but does not take it. Imprisoned in Mountjoy Gaol, Mellows, O’Connor, McKelvey and Barrett are executed by firing squad on December 8, 1922, in reprisal for the shooting of TD Seán Hales. Mellows is buried in Castletown cemetery, County Wexford, a few miles from Arklow. An annual commemoration ceremony is held at his grave site, in which a wreath is laid by a member of the Liam Mellows Commemoration committee.
Mellows is commemorated by statues in Oranmore and Eyre Square in Galway, in the official name of the Irish Defence Forces army barracks at Renmore and in the naming of Mellows Bridge in Dublin. Mellows Avenue in Arklow is named in his honour. He is also commemorated in the names of two hurling clubs, one in Galway and one in Wexford, and by Unidare RFC in Ballymun and their “Liam Mellows Perpetual Cup.”
Grace Evelyn Gifford Plunkett, Irish artist and cartoonist who is active in the Republican movement, dies suddenly in her apartment in South Richmond Street, Portobello, Dublin, on December 13, 1955.
Gifford is the second youngest of twelve children born to Frederick Gifford, a solicitor and Roman Catholic, and Isabella Julia Burton Gifford, a Protestant. She grows up in the fashionable suburb of Rathmines in Dublin. The boys are baptised as Catholics and the girls as Protestant, but effectively the children are all raised as Protestants. The girls attend Alexandra College in Earlsfort Terrace, and the boys attend the The High School in Harcourt St.
At the age of 16, Gifford enters the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, where she studies under the Irish artist William Orpen. Orpen regards Gifford as one of his most talented pupils. He often sketches her and eventually paints her as one of his subjects for a series on “Young Ireland.” Around this time, Gifford’s talent for caricature is discovered and developed. In 1907 she attends a course in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London.
Gifford returns to Dublin in 1908 and, with great difficulty, attempts to earn a living as a caricaturist, publishing her cartoons in The Shanachie, Irish Life, Meadowstreet, and The Irish Review, which is edited from 1913 by Joseph Plunkett. She considers emigrating but gives up the idea. Later that year, she meets Plunkett for the first time at the opening of St. Edna’s School, a new bilingual school in Ranelagh, Dublin. Plunkett is a friend of her brother-in-law, another of the future leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, Thomas MacDonagh, who is married to Gifford’s sister Muriel.
Her growing interest in the Roman Catholic religion leads to the deepening of Gifford and Plunkett’s relationship. Plunkett proposes to her in 1915. She accepts and takes formal instruction in Catholic doctrine. She is received into the Catholic Church in April 1916. The couple plan to marry on Easter Sunday that year, in a double wedding with his sister and her fiancé.
After the Rising, her brother-in-law Thomas MacDonagh is executed by firing squad along with Patrick Pearse and Thomas Clarke on May 3. That same day, Gifford learns that Plunkett is to be shot at dawn. She purchases a ring in a jeweler’s shop in Dublin city centre and, with the help of a priest, persuades the military authorities to allow them to marry. She and Plunkett are married on the night of May 3, 1916, in the chapel of Kilmainham Gaol, a few short hours before he is executed.
Grace Plunkett decides to devote herself through her art to the promotion of Sinn Féin policies and resumes her commercial work to earn a living. She is elected to the Sinn Féin executive in 1917.
During the Irish Civil War, Plunkett is arrested with many others in February 1923 and interned at Kilmainham Gaol for three months. She is released in May 1923.
When the Civil War ends, Plunkett has no home of her own and little money. Like many Anti-Treaty Republicans, she is the target of social ostracism and has difficulty finding work. She moves from one rented apartment to another and eats in the city-centre restaurants. She befriends many people and has many admirers but has no wish to remarry. Her material circumstances improve in 1932 when she receives a Civil List pension from Éamon de Valera‘s Fianna Fáil government. She lives for many years in a flat in Nassau St. with a balcony overlooking the sports ground of Trinity College.
Plunkett’s in-laws refuse to honour her husband’s will, which leaves everything to his widow. Legally, the will is invalid because there is only one of the required two witnesses and also the marriage takes place after the will is made, automatically revoking it. She begins legal proceedings against her in-laws in 1934. The Count and Countess Plunkett settle out of court and Plunkett is paid £700, plus costs.
From the late 1940s onwards, Plunkett’s health declines. In 1950 she is brought to St. Vincent’s Hospital, then in the city centre. She convalesces in a nursing home, which she does not like because it restricts her freedom.
After her sudden death on December 13, 1955, Grace Gifford Plunkett’s body is removed to St. Kevin’s Church, Harrington Street, and among the attendees at her funeral is President Seán T. O’Kelly. She is buried with full military honours near the republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery.
Grace Gifford Plunkett is the subject of “Grace,” a song written in 1985 by Frank and Seán O’Meara, which becomes popular in Ireland and elsewhere and has been recorded by many musicians.
Just three days after the end of the 1916 Easter Rising, the first military courts martial sits on May 2, 1916. Pearse, Clarke, and MacDonagh are immediately sentence to death. The three are taken that evening to the disused Kilmainham Gaol and are shot at dawn the following morning.
Patrick Pearse is born in Dublin in 1879, becoming interested in Irish cultural matters in his teenage years. In 1898, Pearse becomes a member of the Executive Commmittee of the Gaelic League. He graduates from the Royal University of Ireland in 1901 with a degree in Arts and Law. Pearse’s literary output is constant, and he publishes extensively in both Irish and English, becoming the editor of An Claidheamh Soluis, the newspaper of the Gaelic League. He is a keen believer in the value of education, and establishes two schools, Coláiste Éanna and Coláiste Íde, devoted to the education of Irish children through the Irish language. Pearse is one of the founding members of the Irish Volunteers and the author of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. He is Commander in Chief of the Irish forces and headquartered in the General Post Office (GPO) during the 1916 Easter Rising.
Thomas Clarke is born on the Isle of Wight in 1857, the son of a soldier in the British army. During his time in America as a young man, he joins Clan na Gael, later enduring fifteen years (1883-1898) of penal servitude for his role in a bombing campaign in London. In 1907, having returned from a second sojourn in America, his links with Clan na Gael in America copper-fastens his importance to the revolutionary movement in Ireland. He holds the post of Treasurer to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and is a member of the Supreme Council from 1915. Clarke is the first signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic through deference to his seniority. Clarke is also stationed at the GPO during Easter Week. Clarke tells his wife during his final night that he is relieved he is going to be executed because his greatest dread is that he would be sent back to prison.
Thomas MacDonagh is a native of Tipperary, born in 1878. He spends the early part of his career as a teacher. He moves to Dublin to study and is the first teacher on the staff at St. Enda’s School, the school he helps to found with Patrick Pearse. MacDonagh is well versed in literature, his enthusiasm and erudition earning him a position in the English department at University College Dublin. His play When the Dawn is Come is produced at the Abbey Theatre. He is appointed director of training for the Irish Volunteers in 1914, later joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). MacDonagh is appointed to the IRB military committee in 1916. He is commander of the Second Battalion of Volunteers that occupies Jacob’s Biscuit Factory and surrounding houses during the Rising.
seamus dubhghaill 