Come Here To Me!

George Desmond Hodnett (Image Credit)

Next Sunday marks the centenary of the birth of George Desmond Hodnett, a man who lived a colourful life on several fronts. A guest on the first ever edition of The Late Late Show, he was part of the Bohemian set of 1950s Dublin, primarily known as a pianist and composer at the popular Pike Theatre.  He was also a distinguished music critic with The Irish Times, with an unrivaled knowledge of jazz music. Known to many as Hoddy, a review of his appearance on The Late Late Show noted:

Hoddy brought to the show a splendid touch of almost baroque eccentricity. Now  living in London, he was snaffled for the Late Late Show at a few hours notice. He entertained both studio audience and the viewer at home with a delightful line of talk about everything from the proceeding vulgarisation of O’Connell Street  to his own view on copy-writing, a job he is currently doing in London.

A Dubliner by birth, he enjoyed a decidedly middle class youth, educated at the private Catholic University School on Leeson Street and Trinity College Dublin. He never finished his studies at Trinity, instead falling into the Dublin set of the day, frequently to be found in McDaid’s or the so-called Catacombs where drinking could continue into all hours.

Irish Times journalist Deaglan De Breadun remembered of him:

A talented composer and musician, he played jazz piano, trumpet and, of all things, zither. Perhaps he learnt to play it from his Swiss-born mother, Lauré. The instrument became briefly fashionable thanks to the Orson Welles movie, The Third Man and, at the time, George was probably the only zither-player in the country.

He cut a most unusual shape, and Frank Kilfeather recalled that “from his dress, to his conversation, to his peculiar habits, Hoddy was a character. If he hadn’t existed, the most brilliant fiction writer couldn’t invent him. He always wore two overcoats and two jumpers, even in the middle of summer.”

In the 1950s, Hoddy was a loved part of the repertoire of the Pike Theatre, penning and performing satirical tunes for revues at the venue, where he worked as resident pianist. I won’t say much about the Pike Theatre, because it will be returned to again on the blog, but it was a necessary institution in the Ireland of its day that pushed boundaries and offered a platform to sometimes sidelined voices. In the words of Brian Fallon, writing about the 1950s (a decade that is  often wrongly considered a grey one in Irish culture), “most of the laurels for the decade belong to the gallant little Pike: for its staging of Behan’s masterpiece, for mounting Beckett’s Waiting for Godot the following year and for its 1957 performance of Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo which led to its actors appearing in court under a police prosecution for indecency.” Located in Herbert Lane, the theatre was the great vision of Alan Simpson and Carolyn Swift. It was making an impact at a time when the mainstream theatre world was offering little. In Spiked: Church-State Intrigue and The Rose Tattoo, it’s noted wryly that “when the Abbey burned down in 1951, it was popularly joked that the fire was the first flame of any kind to light the place up for many years.”

One great Hoddy original was Monto, popularly known now as ‘Take Her Up To Monto’. In his own words, it was a satire of many folk songs of its day, though he noted in one interview that its popularity reached a point “when it has become the folk song it originally aimed at satirising.”

If you somehow haven’t heard it here it is in all of its glory:

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Jackie Carey, Liam Whelan, Johnny Giles, Tony Dunne, Paul McGrath.

What binds all of these men? They are all great Irish footballers who played for Manchester United, yes, but they were also all spotted by Billy Behan. As the primary talent scout for United in Ireland over several decades, Behan made no small contribution to the success of the Mancunian football giants, and no small contribution to youth football in Dublin. From a family steeped in association football, remarkably little has been written about a man who perhaps knew the game better than anyone else in the Irish capital.

Billy Behan as goalkeeper, Evening Herald.

Born in Dublin in 1911, Billy Behan was the son of William Behan, a founding member of Shamrock Rovers. Unsurprisingly, he and his siblings developed a love of the beautiful game, with Billy playing as goalkeeper for Westland Rovers, Shamrock Rovers and Shelbourne during his career in the domestic game. At 22 years of age, he signed for Manchester United in 1933, beginning an affiliation with the club which would last several decades.

A young Behan spent only one season at Manchester as a goalkeeper, though he met his wife Vera in the northern English city,  remembering that “although my star in Manchester was a brief one, it fashioned my future.” Returning to the familiar green and white hoops of Shamrock Rovers, Behan maintained strong contacts with United, and began informing the club scouts of players in the domestic Irish game he believed warranted a chance. When United scout Louis Rocca agreed to accompany Behan to watch St. James’s Gate and Cork in the Iveagh Grounds, Behan’s worth could not be doubted. Playing that day was a young Jackie Carey, destined to become a famed Manchester United player. There was a degree of luck in it all, as Rocca had actually come to Dublin to see Benny Gaughran, who had been snatched instead by Celtic. Still, Carey dominated the game and caught the eye of the visitor, and Behan recalled:

Through the co-operation of the Gate Secretary, Mr. Byrne, Louis Rocca was introduced to Jackie Carry that evening and after discussions agreed to join United for what was then regarded as a record fee for a Free State League player. That fee, believe it or not, was only three figures and Carey, who was to make for himself such an illustrious career with United, must be regarded as the greatest bargain of all time to come out of Ireland.

Jackie Carey (Image Credit: Manchester United Archive)

To English footballing fans, Jackie Carey became the great Johnny Carey. He was an integral part of the club from 1936 until 1953, captaining the team from 1946. The first Irishman to captain a winning side in an FA Cup Final and the English First Division, Carey became a household name both in England and at home, coming a long way from the youngster who had lined up in the blue and navy jersey of Dublin’s  Gaelic footballers at minor level. In the words of Eamon Dunphy, “to the Irish soccer community of the forties and fifties, Johnny Carey was more than a sporting hero. He was an iconic figure for reasons that had as much to do with national identity as sport.” During the Second World War, Carey lined-up in Dublin for a League of Ireland XI and made a guest appearance for Shamrock Rovers, drawing huge crowds eager to see the famed Dubliner.

Behan’s great love was junior football, where he nurtured and encouraged talent. In 1946 he managed Saint Patrick’s CYMS, who succeeded in winning the FAI Junior Cup in Dalymount Park, and several players from his side attracted the attention of British sides. Across the sea, things were about to change forever at Manchester United with the appointment of Matt Busby, a manager who, like Behan, believed firmly in the importance of a solid youth system in football. To Behan:

Matt Busby’s inheritance at Old Trafford in 1945 was bleak – the club had a bank overdraft of £15,000, and a crater in the middle of the ground from the Blitz which had also left the stands a shambles, forcing them to play their home games at Maine Road. Yet Matt, from the start, built up a network of contacts, throughout the home countries, which kept him briefed on available talent.

The incredible team that Matt Busby built became the ‘Busby Babes’, a name bestowed upon them by the Manchester Evening News but quickly adopted on the terraces. The team would dominate British football.  Giles Oakley, author of Red Matters: Fifty Years Supporting Manchester United, captures the essence of the Busby philosophy:

Youthful talent was supported, nurtured, trusted and encouraged at Old Trafford in a way that was strikingly unique and distinctive. Over 75 players from the youth ranks got their chance in the first team in the 25 years Sir Matt was manger. Even those who didn’t ultimately make the grade at United often had good careers elsewhere.

Cabra’s Liam Whelan, who perished in the Munich air disaster.

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(In a 2014 article, I looked at more generally Dublin’s historic drinking dens, early houses, kips, shebeens and bona-fide pubs.)

In the 1980s and 1990s, three self-proclaimed Irish republican and socialist political parties operated drinking clubs in Dublin city centre.

Official Sinn Féin (later The Workers Party) operated ‘Club Uí Chadhain’ in the basement of 28 Gardiner Place. Originally set up as a “cultural club” for Irish language enthusiasts, the venue was just a couple doors away from the party headquarters at no. 30.

The club was named after the Irish Language writer and 1940s IRA Volunteer Máirtín Ó Cadhain who died in 1970. The space hosted film-showings, trad music nights and social evenings. It was raided by the police in January 1975 with leading Official SF member Frank Ross (aka Proinsias De Rossa), the occupier of the premises, being fined £50 for keeping unlicensed alcohol for sale.

I’ve been told that it was very popular with non-political GAA fans when it opened on match days at Croke Park. In the early 70s,  they used have a stall outside it on match days selling Irish rebel LP’s and republican badges.

On 18 November 1984, career criminal Eamon Kelly stabbed and almost killed prominent WP member and (future general secretary) Patrick Quearney on the street outside. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail which was later reduced to 3 years following an appeal. Kelly was shot dead by the RIRA in 2012.

As far as I know, the basement club is still owned by the Workers Party but has not been open since around 2006.

Irish Independent, 5 June 1975

Irish Independent, 13 April 1990

Irish Press, 15 April 1993

Any stories, memories or insight? As always, please leave a comment.

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Wendy Wood (1892 -1981) was a remarkable woman. A committed Scottish nationalist and separatist, she was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland in 1928, which later became the Scottish National Party. Fond of a political stunt, she seized upon Bannockburn Day (the celebration of a Scottish military victory) in 1932 to lead a gang of protesting Scottish nationalists into Stirling Castle, tearing down its Union flag and raising a Scottish flag in its place. She later recalled how “I held the wad of red, white and blue in my hand….I thought of Gandhi facing death, of Connolly, of young Pearse, or Burmese driven to wander, of frightened Arabs, or broken faith with Egypt.”

Scottish nationalism, much like its Irish equivalent, produced a wide variety of ideologies. Even the SNP, today a social democratic party, produced a pamphlet in the 1930s which warned of the ‘Green Terror’ of Irish migration. Still, Wood was firmly of the left, and was arrested for protesting against Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirt movement in the 1930s. She remained politically active into subsequent decades, even going on hungerstrike in 1972 to demand Home Rule for Scotland.

Wendy Wood, by Florence St John Cadell, National Galleries of Scotland.

Not long after her escapades at Stirling Castle, Wood arrived in Dublin, something she details in her autobiography I Like Life. Boarding a ship in Glasgow, she was captivated by Dublin from the very beginning, though she viewed the island through rose-tinted glasses:

The names of the streets, the public notices and the advertisements in Gaelic thrilled me and I never read the bracketed translations any more than I would spoil a visit to France by searching for English. The indefinable feeling of a ‘capital’ centre of direction, the core of a genuine working culture as reflected in Dublin,  made the memory of Edinburgh, even with its beauty, seem insipid in comparison.

On a brief visit to the capital, Wood appears to have visited the Dáil, the St. Enda’s School of Pearse and attended a meeting of Cumann na mBan. The beautiful St. Enda’s school remained as a model to the ideas of Patrick Pearse, though it struggled financially to sustain itself and would not make it to the end of the decade. Wood recounted an encounter with a sister of Pearse, who murmured that “one must try to forgive.” She was struck by the artifacts on display, including “the block on which a patriot had been executed by the Saxon”, this being the block on which Robert Emmet’s head was reputed to have been severed from his body, and at which Michael Collins sold ‘Dáil Bonds’ to prominent republicans during the War of Independence.

Of the Dáil, Wood writes of the body as if it was still the revolutionary gathering of the Mansion House and not the considerably more timid Leinster House assembly. She found it to be “a dignified but simple and business-like gathering which even with its limited powers, made the London House of Commons appear like a mad hatters’ tea party.” She was struck by how “the artistry and skill of the Celt showed in all printed matter, in decoration and in fabrics, and in the patterned carpets in the Dáil.” The monument of Queen Victoria outside the parliament (today sitting outside a shopping centre in Australia) was a surprise,though she joked of how “an Irishman explained that it was such an insult to the Queen that it seemed a pity to blow it up.”

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(In terms of crime and Dublin, we’ve previously looked at 18th century gang violence; Joy-riding in Dublin from 1918-39; War of Independence bank-robberies; the 1920s ‘Sons of Dawn‘ who were rounded up by the IRA; Animal Gang violence in 1942; vigilante violence in Dublin (1970 – 1984); Bugsy Malone gangs of the 1970s and Triad gang violence in 1979) 

Introduction

The 1950s and 1960s are interesting decades in relation to crime in Dublin. They are the bridgeway between the Animal Gang street violence and bookmaking rackets of the early/mid 1940s and the emergence of modern organised crime from the mid/late 1960s onwards.

One individual who was active through both eras was Charles ‘Charlie’ Ainscough. He was better known by his nickname ‘Henchico’. A relation of his explained to me via email that the name ‘Henchico’ derived “from the mispronunciation of Liberties people of the name Ainscough”. It is pronounced ‘Ainscow’ in its correct form.

His nom-de-guerre ‘Henchicho’ has been variously spelled as ‘Henseco’, ‘Henshcough’ and ‘Hinchito’ in contemporary newspapers. As well as ‘Henchicoe’, ‘Henchekow’, ‘Henchecote’ and ‘Henchcoat’ on different online platforms by reminiscing Dubliners. “The Hench” or “Charlie the hatchet man” are other nicknames remembered by others on Facebook.

Throughout his 25+ year criminal career, Henchico was involved in street-fights, shootings, stabbings, hatchet-attacks, house-robberies, larceny, pimping and various other illegal enterprises. He was in and out of prison his whole life. A feared figure, Henchico’s life of crime only came to end with a sudden fatal heart attack in 1968.

Family Background

The surname Ainscough is of “Old Norse, Scandinavian origin” and is a “locational surname deriving from a now ‘lost’ place in Lancashire, England.”

Henchico’s ancestors moved from England to Dublin in the 1860s to take up employment as coopers in the Guinness Brewery, St. James’s Gate, Dublin 8. At its height, Guinness employed up to 300 coopers who made a thousand new wooden casks a week and repaired thousands more. It took a seven-year apprentice to become a qualified cooper and they were the most highly skilled tradesmen in the brewery.

Cooper in the Guinness brewery, late 19th century. Credit – http://3.bp.blogspot.com/.

Henchico’s father, Charles Ainscough Sr., was born on 29 November 1892 at 3 Wyle’s Cottages to James Ainscough and Mary-Ellen Ainscough (neé Deane). Wylie’s Cottages, later known as Behan’s Cottages, were situated off Lower Basin Street and James Street in the shadows of the Guinness brewery. 

In 1901, the Ainscough family living in Dublin 8 were the only Ainscough family on the whole of the island. The head of the family James Ainscough (38), a London-born Cooper, lived with his Liverpool-born wife Mary-Ellen Ainscough (36) and four sons and four daughters including Charles Sr.

1901 Census Return. Ainscough family, 3 Behan’s Cottages.

James Ainscough died on 1 February 1904 according to the online Guinness archive. The same resource reveals that his son Charles Ainscough Sr. joined Guinness as a ‘Tariff Cooper’ on 16 August 1909 aged 17.

At the time of the 1911 census, the Ainscough family were still living at 3 Behan’s Cottages. Widow Mary-Ellen (46) lived in the home with three daughters, one daughter-in-law and three sons including Charles Sr.

1911 Census Returns. Ainscough family, 3 Behan’s Cottages.

Henchico’s uncle Henry Ainscough was listed as the main inhabitant householder in the 1913 Electoral Register:

1913 Electoral Roll. Henry Ainscough, 3 Wylie’s Cottages (aka Behan’s Cottages).

Henchico’s parents Charles Ainscough Sr., of 3 Behan’s Cottages, and Christina Ainscough (neé McCann), of 32 Usher’s Quay, married on 7 November 1915 at St. Audoen’s Church, Dublin 8.

1915 marriage cert of Henchico’s parents

Their son Henchico (Charles Jr.) was born around in mid/late 1925.

Here is a Google Map illustrating the various addresses in the city connected to Henchico throughout his life.

• Purple – Friends/Family/Hang-out spots
• Green – Enemies/Rival Gang Members
• Black – Sites of robberies and incidents

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In Dublin 12, the John F. Kennedy Industrial Estate street signs remind southsiders of the June 1963 visit of JFK to this island. Across the River Liffey, and a different series of Americans are remembered in Coolock, where street names like Aldrin Walk, Armstrong Walk, Apollo Way and even Tranquility Grove honour (most of) the heroes of the 1969 Moon landing. This was total news to me until today, when I found it mentioned in both the print edition of the Dublin Inquirer and a lovely piece on thejournal.ie, complete with photos of street signs.

Digging into the archives, it’s easy to see how the street names came to be. Dublin, like the rest of the world, was fascinated by the journey of man into space. On the day after the great event, the Irish Press went out onto the streets to get the views of the ‘Plain People of Ireland’. All Patricia of Donnybrook could say was “We didn’t watch it on television because we don’t have a television”, and Susannah “couldn’t see any point in the whole exercise.” Thank God for Ballymun taxi man Gerard, who believed “a person would have to be very dense not to be interested in this fantastic achievement.”

When a tiny fragment of moon rock was put on display in the city in February 1970, more than 4,000 people showed up in just a few hours at the United States embassy building in Ballsbridge for a gawk. The tiny fragment was described by one journalist as being “about an-inch-and-a-half in diameter, or roughly the size of a walnut”. Still, it all had the feel of a great occasion about it, always enough for Dubliners.

When the Moon came to Ballsbridge, Irish Independent.

When Captain Eugene Cernan, Commander of Apollo 17, arrived in Ireland in 1973, he brought with him a fragment of moon rock for President Childers, which he presented in Aras an Uachtarain. As pieces made appearances north and south in universities and at conferences, they continued to draw impressive crowds throughout the 1970s.

The street names in the Woodville Estate of Coolock were controversial from the beginning, leading the Evening Herald in the summer of 1977 to report that some residents at Woodville Estate were “slightly moon-sick”, calling for more “down-to-earth” names like Woodville Way and Woodville Avenue. Armstrong Walk, Aldrin Walk, and Collins Rendezvous honoured the men of the moon landing, while there was even a Tranquility Grove, in honour of the Statio Tranquillitatis where Apollo 11 landed.

Voting in a plebiscite on changing the names, residents rejected Collins Rendezvous for Woodville Court, but held onto the others. Thus, one member of the team was destined to be forgotten, in Coolock at least.

We eagerly await a Yuri Gagarin Avenue.

Google Maps showing Apollo Way, Tranquility Grove, Armstrong Walk and Aldrin Walk.

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Irish Independent, 12 February 1958.

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Munich Air Disaster which claimed the lives of twenty-three people. On 6 February 1958, British European Airways Flight 609 crashed while attempting to take off in poor conditions at Munich-Riem Airport. Among the dead were eight of the Busby Babes, the remarkable young football side built by manager Matt Busby. It was a team that commentator Eamon Dunphy has recalled as being “proud, young and fearless.” The heartbreak in Manchester led to thousands taking to the streets there when bodies returned, with the Irish Examiner noting how “more than 100,000 people – men, women and children – lined the streets of the route from the airport to the ground in the biggest ever tribute paid by the people of Manchester.” The grief was not restricted to the red side of that city either, as Manchester City legend Frank Swift was also killed in the disaster.

One of the lives lost that day was Liam Whelan, a twenty-two year old from Cabra who had previously played with Home Farm in Whitehall. The return of his body to Ireland and subsequent funeral was a phenomenal spectacle, bringing Dublin’s northside to a halt. Bertie Ahern recalls the event in his autobiography:

Manchester United meant nothing to me as a six-year-old, but we were all brought out on the day of the funeral when it was on its way back in from the Christ the King in Cabra. We’re all very proud round here that he played for Home Farm longer than he played for United. He’s very much a local hero.It was a few years later before Manchester United started to reckon with me. At that stage, I was more interested in Drumcondra in the League of Ireland because they were the local side.

In signing for Manchester United in 1953, Whelan had followed in a long Irish tradition that began with Dubliner Patrick O’Connell in 1914. In a more contemporary sense, he followed the great Johnny Carey, who amassed more than 400 appearances for the club between 1936 and 1953, and whose escapades were closely followed in the Irish press.

Liam Whelan (Image Credit: Manchester United Football Club Archive)

The success of Busby’s United side – and the wonderful football they played – excited many in Ireland. More than forty thousand fans crammed into Dalymount Park in September 1957 to watch the side take on Shamrock Rovers in a competitive European clash. A hopeful sports reporter noted that “though a Dublin man and a Six-County man are in the visiting party, a good display will mean a lot to the prestige of Irish football.” Matt Busby – treating Rovers with a respect some in the English press felt they didn’t deserve – traveled to Dublin the week before the clash to watch the side, telling readers of his Evening Chronicle column in Manchester that “the Shamrock boys played some really grand football – no kick and rush and no unfair tactics. They showed good team work and a confidence born of a long run of success.” In the end, United ran out clear winners, with Whelan scoring twice in a six-nil victory. Rovers player Gerry Mackey remembered that there wasn’t much of a contest in the end, as “we ran ourselves into the ground. They scored three of their goals when we just couldn’t stand up anymore.” Mackey’s fellow Hoop Jimmy McCann recalled:

I can remember the crowds trying to get up the lane at Dalymount to get into the changing rooms. You had to almost beat your way up.

‘The whole country went bananas when Shamrock Rovers were drawn to play Manchester United. They had lots of great players such as David Pegg, Johnny Berry, and, of course, Duncan Edwards and Liam.

There was no shame in the defeat against such a superior side. United’s strikers just couldn’t stop scoring, leading the Sunday Independent to quip that “next to petrol, the most valuable commodity in England today is probably the Manchester United forward line.”

Evening Herald front page following the disaster,

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This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of Dublin’s Millennium celebrations. The milk bottles remain, and so do the memories.

Among the most enduring images from 1988 are those of the giant Gulliver who was beached on Dollymount Strand, before floating on the River Liffey. An impressive “fibreglass, aluminium and plywood” tribute to the central character of Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver was the work of Macnas, the much-loved Galway street performance company. It was a fitting tribute to one of Dublin’s finest writers, the great satirist Jonathan Swift, in a year that celebrated all things Dublin.

Gulliver on the Liffey (Image Credit: Dublin City Photographic Collection, Dublin City Council)

In January 1988, it was reported that the relatively new Macnas (they were founded two years earlier) intended to “travel to Dublin in March and liaise with different communities to capture volunteers all willing to help build the massive Gulliver model.” In keeping with the spirit of the year, they hoped that “the different parts of his body will be assembled at workshops throughout the city, with the help of 35 young craftspeople on a Fás scheme.”

The primary funding for Gulliver came from the National Lottery, who put an impressive £50,000 towards the project. The giant made his way onto the front of almost every daily newspaper in the country when he finally arrived on Dollymount Strand in July, with journalists getting into the spirit of things. The Evening Herald reported that “chaos broke out on Dollymount Strand this afternoon when a giant was spotted floating in the sea off the north Dublin beach…Experts called to the scene finally revealed that the huge man was in fact Dr. Lemuel Gulliver, direct from Dean Swift’s masterpiece story.”

Evening Herald, 12 July 1988.

This RTÉ report likewise played along, asking the children of Dublin where they felt the giant had come from. One child believed ‘Heaven’ to be the answer, and all were transfixed by the model and the pageantry that surrounded it. The captured Gulliver was freed and given a civic reception by Lord Mayor Ben Briscoe, before being placed in the Liffey between the Ha’penny Bridge and O’Connell Bridge, drawing huge crowds of the bemused and curious for a look.

The episode is recalled in recent literature, thanks to Frankie Gaffney’s novel Dublin Seven:

It only seems like yesterday ye were born, said his ma, getting misty-eyes. 1988…Dublin was a kip back then.But the week you were born, they’d big celebrations on for Dublin’s Millennium. They made these…special 50p pieces, cause Dublin was a thousand years old or somethin’, and when we were bringing ye back from the Rotunda they had a big huge giant floatin in the Liffey! Something to do with yer man Gullible’s travels it was!

Fittingly, Macnas also displayed Gulliver in their home city, where he drew big crowds on Grattan Beach. It was one of the first acts by a street performance company who have been captivating audiences ever since.

Gulliver in Galway (Image Credit: Macnas)

See the forthcoming Dublin Inquirer for an article examining the Millennium in more detail.

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Poster for the 1922 film Nosferatu.

In December 1878, Bram Stoker married Florence Balcombe in St Anne’s Church on Dublin’s Dawson Street. Once pursued romantically by Oscar Wilde, the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel James Balcombe of Clontarf was instead smitten by the future author of Dracula. A bust of the author can be found in the church today, celebrating the connections between the historic church and one of the most celebrated writers this city has produced. During a memorial service to mark the centenary of Stoker’s death, a copy of Dracula was carried to the altar of the church. I doubt that’s happened anywhere else!

Florence would outlive her husband by some twenty-five years, and lived to see Dracula become something of a classic. She also became entangled in a very bitter legal battle in 1922 over Nosferatu, the ground-breaking German Expressionist horror film. An unauthorised adaptation of  Stoker’s work, Florence achieved a court ruling which ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. Thankfully, this didn’t quite happen.

Nosferatu is a pioneering work of cinema, described by screenprism as “a film historian’s dream movie. It is a foreboding and influential picture that helped define German Expressionism and set a precedent for a century of horror cinema.” The work was directed by F.W Murnau, who would be responsible for an impressive twenty-one films over his career. The production company, Prana Films, was established in 1921 by the Occultist Albin Grau, who intended to produce many films centered on themes of the supernatural and the occult.

Promotional material for Nosferatu openly admitted that the work was “freely adapted” from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It premiered in the beautiful Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Gardens, and a review in the Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger reported on how “the room darkened as the projectors began to whir and a title announced that a symphony of horror should roll across the screen.” The launch was lavish, a little too much so. As Nosferatu scholar Cristina Massaccesi has noted, “the launch of the film had cost Prana more than the feature itself”. Another problem was that nobody from Prana had sought any permissions from Florence and the Stoker Estate to utilise Dracula in the manner in which they had.

In April 1922, Florence received a programme and promotional material for Nosferatu in the post. Approaching the British Incorporated Society of Authors, they then commenced legal action against Prana. When Florence sued for copyright infringement, Prana believed the best course of action was to proclaim bankruptcy.  Rather than financial compensation, her legal team sought the handing over of all copies of the film, and in July 1925 a Berlin court ordered the very same. Florence had never actually seen the film, but that mattered little to her. As David J. Skal has noted:

…in the case of Nosferatu we have one of the few instances in film history, and perhaps the only one, in which an obliterating capital punishment is sought for a work of cinematic art, strictly on legalistic ground, by a person with no knowledge of the work’s specific contents or artistic merit.

Florence Balcombe (1858-1937)

Thankfully for cinema lovers, Florence’s demand that the film be destroyed was not carried out entirely. A print of the film had already made its way out of Germany, and Massaccesi notes that “the German court did not provide any concrete evidence of the film’s obliteration and, although the original negative never resurfaced, Nosferatu reappeared almost immediately in England.” Skal has asked an intriguing question, “did Florence Stoker ever actually see Nosferatu? After seven long years of doing battle, and finally capturing the enemy, it would be strange indeed if she didn’t insist on looking the thing in the face.” By 1929, the film was even being screened in New York City.

Florence believed that Dracula had a life away from the printed word. She would grant the right for a stage adaption to Hamilton Deane, a Dubliner and a neighbour once upon a time in Clontarf. Actor,playwright and director, Deane first brought Dracula to the stage in June 1924. Much of the popular image of Dracula today – down to cape and evening clothes – is owed to Deane’s interpretation.

Nosferatu refused to die. In time, it would even make its way to the big screen in Bram Stoker’s home city, playing to packed crowds at the Irish Film Institute’s Horrorthon. It thankfully escaped the dustbin of history, and a place among the ‘lost films’ of the past.

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IRA men, including Tom Barry, pose with ‘The Mutineer’ at the Four Courts, 1922 (Image Credit)

There is a growing body  of excellent scholarship on the Civil War, including Gavin M. Foster’s masterful The Irish Civil War and Society: Politics, Class, and Conflict and John Dorney’s recent The Civil War in Dublin: The Fight for the Irish Capital 1922-1924. The floodgates of research may open now in the run up to the centenary of the disastrous event, but the bar has been set very high indeed by these and other works.

While the majority of the IRA’s General Headquarters staff supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 which gave birth to the Irish Free State, the opposition of the majority of IRA fighters across the country ensured an inevitable confrontation. Still, beyond men, there was a phenomenal disparity in weaponry between both sides. A tiring volunteer guerrilla army could never compete with the forces of a new state that was – quite literally – backed by Empire. Without the (often reluctant) military assistance of London, the forces of the new Free State would have faced a much sterner military struggle. As Dorney has noted:

Between January and June 1922, when the Pro-Treaty authorities were trying to build up an army, principally from their supporters in the IRA, the British supplied them with nearly 12,000 Lee Enfield rifles, 80 Lewis machine guns 4,000 revolvers and 3,500 grenades.

Correspondence between Dublin and London was often tense in the early stages of the Civil War. Winston Churchill questioned the need of the Free State for mills bombs and rifle grenades, on the basis that “these are the weapons far more of revolution than of Government. If they fall into bad hands they become a most terrible means of aggression on the civil population.” Tellingly, Churchill also alluded to how “we have already issued you one armoured car, which has unhappily fallen into bad hands.” That car, which sat defiantly in the grounds of the occupied Four Courts, became known as ‘The Mutineer’.

The term ‘Mutineer’ was, like ‘Irregular’ or ‘Trucileer’, leveled against those who opposed the Treaty. The later stemmed from a believe that the ranks of the IRA had been swollen by men who were absent during the 1919-21 fight, but joined amidst the relative calm of the Truce period for glory. Sometimes, these terms were utilised in Republican propaganda too:

Republican handbill from Civil War (Dublin City Library and Archive, Birth of the Republic Collection)

Acquiring ‘The Mutineer’:

Ernie O’Malley’s memoir of the Civil War, The Singing Flame, remains one of the definitive first-hand accounts of the conflict. O’Malley perfectly captures the confusion in the months leading up to the outbreak of Civil War,as both Republican forces and Pro-Treaty forces sought to seize upon the chaos of the British evacuation, taking control of abandoned barracks positions across the country.  On an inspection tour of Munster, he recalled visiting Templemore Barracks in Tipperary, finding men with divided loyalties who “courted the Beggar’s Bush Headquarters one minute, the Four Courts the next.”

O’Malley was informed of the arrival of an armoured car which had been sent by the Free State forces in Beggar’s Bush, but sensing the loyalties of the men he requested it for the Republicans in the Four Courts:

We inspected the car.  It was covered with heavy plates of bullet-roof steel. The engine was long, a Rolls Royce. On top was a revolving steel turret which contained a Vickers gun, capable of long sustained fire without overheating; the ammunition was in strips, side by side, in narrow belts.

The morale boost of such a vehicle arriving into the grounds of the occupied Four Courts must have been tremendous; O’Malley remembered how it “was a piece of luck. To think I would return in an armoured car, the only one our men possessed. The car was stuffy at first, but the day was cold. We were soon warm and cosy.” The day after its arrival, O’Malley watched as one of the garrison painted “a name below the turret with white enamel”, and ‘The Mutineer’ was born.

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There are few things as magical about Dublin as a New Year announcing itself through the bells of Christchurch Cathedral. Ideally, you have a pint from the Lord Edward in your hand or someone in your arms as you take it in.

A visit to the belfry is possible, and is an experience we Dubliners shouldn’t leave entirely to visitors. The oldest of the bells in usage today dates from 1738, with a number coming from the time of the Roe whiskey distillery funded restoration of the cathedral in the nineteenth century.

One place you can hear the bells is The Chieftains remarkable Christmas album, The Bells of Dublin. Released in 1991, it both begins and ends with the sound of the church bells ringing. As John Glatt writes in his biography of the band, “intrepid sound engineer Brian Masterson crawled out on to the roof of Christchurch and set up various microphones to record the majestic peels of the bells. For the recording Moloney [Paddy Moloney of the band] joined the bell ringers in the belfry to play his part.”

The Bells of Dublin cover (RCA Victor)

Coming four years after The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl gifted the world Fairytale of New York, it once again demonstrated that Irish traditional music could hold its own when it came to Christmas magic. The Chieftains had been a mainstay of the Irish music scene since the 1960s, though unlike The Pogues who followed they were much more about the tradition. Paddy Moloney would recall:

I had great faith that one day what we did best– playing traditional Irish music– was going to soar, and I wasn’t going to be stepping down the ladder by changing the style. Our first concert in the Albert Hall was just music– no flashing lights or smoke screens, and we didn’t have dancers or singers– so to see the crowd dance around the theatre, coming back for encore after encore, was just magic. There were tears in our eyes that night. We didn’t realize that people from the rock world were listening to us, like The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull and Paul McCartney, so the whole social thing started to develop and word got out. We were taking our time and gradually creeping in. Then in ’75, we were on the front page of Melody Maker as Group of the Year. That was huge!

The album included guest appearances from Elvis Costello, Marianne Faithfull,  Kate and Anna McGarrigle and Jackson Browne among others. Browne’s contribution, which he wrote, is a rejection of the crass commercialisation of Christmas as he sees it, and a reminder of what he feels Jesus stood for:

Well we guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

The St. Stephen’s Day Murders, on which Elvis Costello appears, captures the cabin fever of the season with great wit:

I knew of two sisters whose name it was Christmas
And one was named Dawn, of course the other one was named Eve
I wonder if they grew up hating the season
Of the good will that lasts till the Feat of St. Stephen
For that is the time to eat, drink and be merry
Until the beer is all spilled and the whiskey has flowed
And the whole family tree you neglected to bury
Are feeding their faces until they explode.

The album was recorded primarily at the Windmill Lane Studios. Though primarily associated with U2, ,acts as diverse as David Bowie, New Order, Erasure and Sinead O’Connor have also recorded there.

The Chieftains output includes an acclaimed collaboration with Van Morrison, a tribute to the heroic fighting men of the San Patricio Battalion and the story of the 1798 rebellion. For me, The Bells of Dublin remains their finest hour, and it should be essential listening this week.

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Evening Herald, 2 October 1920.

In the early twentieth century, some of the most interesting voices in Irish public life, including Socialist leader James Connolly, expressed their support for the idea of an international language.

A constructed international auxiliary language (differing from natural languages, which develop over time), Esperanto was the brainchild of Polish inventor L. L. Zamenhof. In 1887, under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto (Doctor Hopeful) he published Unua Libro, in which he introduced and described this new international language. Zamenhof did not believe that his constructed language would replace existing national tongues, but that it could exist alongside them and make human communication easier. The father of this ambitious project was twelve times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and there are streets named in his honour all over the world, including in Israel, Italy, Brazil, Catalonia, the UK and Poland. Zamenhof’s vision of international parity was certainly a romantic one, telling one gathering in 1905:

In our meeting there are no strong or weak nations, privileged or unfavoured ones, nobody is humiliated, nobody is harassed; we all support one another upon a neutral foundation, we all have the same rights, we all feel ourselves the members of the same nation, like the members of the same family, and for the first time in the history of human race, we -the members of different peoples- are one beside the other not as strangers, not like competitors, but like brothers who do not enforce their language, but who understand one another, trustfully, conceitedly, and we shake our hands with no hypocrisy like strangers, but sincerely, like people.

Writing to the Freeman’s Journal in 1902, E.E Fournier expressed a belief that “it is high time that the attention of the Irish people should be directed to a language which appears to have completely solved the problem of providing an international means of communication without prejudice to the use and study of an existing national language.”  Anyone curious about “a movement so full of possibilities for good” was encouraged to attend classes at the offices of the Celtic Association, 97 Stephen’s Green. Fournier, a distinguished intellectual and physicist, was at the very forefront of the Celtic Revival in Ireland and an early champion of Esperanto.

James Connolly

Even earlier that this in 1899, James Connolly used the pages of his weekly The Workers’ Republic to outline his own belief in the need for a universal language, though not one that stood in conflict with existing languages:

I believe the establishment of a universal language to facilitate communication between the peoples is highly to be desired. But I incline also to the belief that this desirable result would be attained sooner as the result of a free agreement which would accept one language to be taught in all primary schools, in addition to the national language, than by the attempt to crush out the existing national vehicles of expression.

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