This is part two of our series looking at the history of Vegetarianism in Dublin, primarily focusing on restaurants and cafes. Part One began in the 1860s and finished up in the early 1920s.

We pick up the story in the 1930s…

Frank Wyatt, editor of Vegetarian News and Secretary of the London Vegetarian Society, gave a talk in January 1933 on Vegetarianism in the Mansion House. The Irish Times (17 Jan) noted that the meeting was mostly made up of women. Wyatt, a vegetarian of twenty years standing, told the room that he was ‘satisfied that he was a healthier man than any flesh eater’.

The Irish Press, 5 March 1947

Moira Henry as one of the delegates at the 11th IVU World Vegetarian Congress 1947. Stonehouse, England. Credit – http://www.ivu.org

Moira Henry passed away in 1997. The Irish Times, 10 March 1997.

while Dublin had no purely vegetarian restaurant, hotels and restaurants generally were becoming more sympathetic towards their needs and could usually provide vegetarian meals if notice was given beforehand. Most of the members agree that a specialist restaurant would be a step forward but this would take time as well as a ‘lot of hard work and some capital’.

All changed the following year with the arrival of Good Karma at 4 Great Strand Street. As far as I can work out, this was the first purely vegetarian restaurant in the city since the College Vegetarian Restaurant closed its doors in 1922. It was opened by Jas Adams, Peter Lawson and Robert and Aaron Bartlett.

Site of Good Karma. 4 Great Strand Street as it looks today. Credit – infomatique

long room with wooden pillers and a cosily dim glow from candles and firelight. The table (made by the owners) are high if you like sitting up to your food: low if you prefer to loll across the tie-dyed cushions also made by the owners … Taj Mahal, Doctor Pepper and Crosby, Stills and Nash provided lush sounds in the background  … it makes a wholesome change from the stagnancy of Dublin eating.

John S Doyle writing in the Irish Independent in 2005 remembered Good Karma as a:

A ‘head’ restaurant not everyone knew about, with bare brick walls and no seats, only bean bags, and mellow ‘sounds’. Nice food, none of your macrobiotic stuff. The ‘staff’ were laidback types who said “all right man”, and you were to take it as a privilege to be served by them. This was 1974 (sic) or so. There were numerous Garda raids, and the restaurant didn’t last long.

…Dublin’s first macrobiotic restaurant back in the early seventies and it was filled with, run by and staffed with hippies …What made it a nice place, perhaps more than the food, was the amateur attitude of everyone involved. You never felt that it was a commercial enterprise. Sure, money changed hands, but somehow you felt you were part of a social and gastronomic experiment.

It’s pretty amazing that there are so many positive memories of a place that was open for little more than twelve months.

While the restaurant closed, the health food shop, Green Acres, in the basement remained open. Patrick Comerford in The Irish Times (39 July 1975) interviewed the owner, Philip Guiney. He told Comeford that ‘not all the staff, and only a quarter of (his) customers’ were vegetarian. Open for three years, an increasing number of older people were visiting the ship realising that it was ‘not just a place for young freaks’. These older people came to ‘supplement their diets with natural foods, and probably a small number had become vegetarian out of economic necessary‘.

The journalist also mentioned the Ormond Health Centre (run by a Mr. Evans) on Parliament Street which sold dandelion coffee, Honeyrose cigarettes and herbal tea and the Irish Health and Herbal Centre on Trinity Street (run by Ann Flood and Michael McDonald) which was ‘not vegetarian orientated by any means’ but sold a lot of products popular with the vegetarian community.

In the late 1970s, there were a number of whole-food restaurants in Dublin including Munchies at 60 Bolton Street, The Golden Dawn on Crow Street and the Supernatural Tearooms at 53 Harcourt Street.

Here is a short piece on Munchies from 1977:

The Irish Times, 6 December 1977

The Golden Dawn, established in 1976, was described by Christy Stapleton of the Vegetarian Society of Ireland in the late 1990s as ‘the closest thing to a vegetarian restaurant in Dublin’ at the time. Ran by showband singer Joe Fitzmaurice and his wife, it used to be a favourite of actors Gabriel Byrne, Vinny McCabe and Garrett Keogh while DJ Paul Webb worked there as an assistant cook and Golden Horde frontman Simon Carmody as dishwasher. Here is a link to a great 1978 RTE piece on the restaurant.

Screengrab from 1978 RTE piece on The Golden Dawn restaurant.

A vegetarian restaurant called The Harvest was operating in 1979 on the top of Harcourt Street and then at 1 Lincoln Place by early 1983. I assume they were connected. An Irish Times journalist visited the the Harcourt Street Harvest restaurant and wrote in the paper on 14 December 1979 that she enjoyed her meal of:

Chickpea pea (50p) .. a tasty and sustaining … starter. For main course there’s a wide choice but the aduki bean hamburger with rice, salad and a choice of sauce (£1.80) is something to linger over

Bananas, a self-service vegetarian restaurant, was opened at 15 Upper Stephens St by Muriel Goodwin and friends in late 1982. Lorraine Kennedy reviewed it for The Irish Times on 15 October 1983. She said she was more than happy with her ‘starter of celery soup sprinkled with watercres .. for 85p … (and) a vegetable pizza (£1.20) accompanied by a mixed salad of orange, celery and more watercress’.

Also in 1982, Blazing Salads was established as a wholefood restaurant by the pioneering Fitzmaurice family after they decided to wind down The Golden Dawn. Based at the top floor of the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre until 2001, the family moved operations to a new deli-style premises on Drury Street where it is still open today.

The Well Fed Cafe was opened in 1983 at 6 Crow Street as part of the Dublin Resource Centre (DRC) and lasted until the at least mid 1990s. A Workers Co-Operative, it served delicious veggie food at a very cheap cost and won numerous award.

Around 1984, a veggie restaurant and wine bar called Rays opened in the premises of the former Golden Dawn in Crow Street.

Cornucopia Wholefood and Vegetarian Restaurant, the granddaddy of Dublin veggie restaurants, began trading on Wicklow Street in January 1986 and has been there ever since. It was established by Neil McCafferty (1952-1993) and Deirdre McCafferty, who is still the proprietor of the restaurant.

Some early shots of Cornucopia. Credit – cornucopia.ie

In the late 1980s, the Hare Krishnas opened a Veggie restaurant on Crow Street (where Tasty Zoes is now). It lasted for about a year. In 1998, they opened their first Govinda’s restaurant at 4 Aungier Street. That’s still open and they’ve a further two in the city, one on Middle Abbey Street and one on Merrion Row.

In 1987, a ‘demi-veg’ restaurant called It’s Natural opened up beside the Olympia Theatre on Dame Street. Also that year, a vegetarian restaurant called Second Nature opened its doors in Blackrock by sisters Fiona and Susan Bergin.

Piece on Vegetarianism.The Irish Press, 22 April 1988

Cranks, a UK vegetarian restaurant franchise, opened on the first floor of Bewley’s on Westmoreland Street in 1989. I’m not sure how long it lasted.

Opened in early 1996, Juice on South Great George’s Street was Dublin’s only sit-down vegetarian restaurant for many years. Open until midnight, it was a popular place until its closure in 2011

I’ll leave it that. It would take too much work trying to trace the various veggie restaurants that have come and gone in the city since the mid 1990s.

Appendix 1:

It seems there have been three different incarnations of Vegetarian Societies in Dublin:

Dublin Vegetarian Society, 1880s – mid 1910s

Dublin Vegetarian Society, 1946 – early 1960s

Vegetarian Society of Ireland, 1978 – Present

In a 1997 article for the Sunday Independent, Ulick O’Connor noted that this was a time when Wittgenstein had just resigned a Professorship in Cambridge, and that:

Wittgenstein had chosen Dublin because of his friendship with a consultant psychiatric at St. Patrick’s Hospital in James’ Street, Maurice O’Connor Drury. Before taking up medicine, Drury had been a philosophy student of Wittgenstein’s at Cambridge. But, in 1947, at the height of his fame, Wittgenstein had decided to resign his Cambridge Professorship and settle in Ireland.

Wittgenstein spent two years of his life writing in Dublin, and indeed these were among the most productive years of his life, as it was during this time he wrote much of his most influential work, Philosophical Investigations. From November 1948 into the summer of 1949, he lived in a small modest room at Ross’s Hotel, today known to Dubliners as the Ashling Hotel. A small plaque on the front of this hotel marks the fact that Wittgenstein boarded here. This plaque was unveiled in 1988, by John Wilson, who was then Minister for Transport and Tourism.

Interestingly, he had visited Ireland and Dublin prior to this for short periods, with the first visit occurring in 1934. It was during his extended stay at the Ross’s Hotel in the late 1940s however that he truly familiarised himself with the city, and as Brian Fallon has noted he was frequently to be found “walking in the Phoenix Park, lunching in Bewley’s or in the Members Dining Rooms at the Zoo, and sometimes, during the winter, sitting on the parapet in the Palm House of the Botanic Gardens, writing.”

Richard Wall’s study Wittgenstein in Ireland provides good detail of his time here. His love for Bewley’s is evidently clear from his own correspondence. He would always enjoy the same lunch of an omelette and coffee, and was said to be delighted by the fact the staff there would always remember his order without even needing to place it. Wall notes that while we know for certain he frequently visited Bewley’s, the question of whether the great intellect ever stepped inside a Dublin pub remains unanswered. We know on one occasion that Wittgenstein and his friend Drury bought cheap cameras in Woolworth’s and then photographed the city from the top of Admiral Horatio Nelson’s Pillar!

Nelson’s Pillar on O’Connell Street.

Another plaque to Wittgenstein is found in the Botanic Gardens, a place he was said to find not alone relaxing but ideal for the purpose of writing. So close to the monument to Socrates, it’s interesting to think that one of the great philosophical thinkers of human history sat deep in thought.

Interestingly, one thing Wittgenstein admired about Dublin was the bilingual nature of the city, and he remarked about signage here that:

One thing is achieved by putting these notices in Irish. It makes one realise that one is in a foreign country. Dublin is not just another English provincial town, it has the air of a real capital city.

Wittgenstein died in April 1951, and at that time in life he was once more living in Cambridge. On death, he famously wrote that:

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.

So, what of the Dublin he knew? The Ross’s Hotel has since been replaced, the Pillar he climbed has been transformed into the Spire, Bewley’s on Grafton Street proudly remains despite its sister-branch on Westmoreland Street being transformed into a hideous Starbucks, and the Botanic Gardens have changed little.

Vegetarian Restaurants in Dublin date back to the late 19th century while groups of Vegetarians have been organising events in the city since at least the 1860s.

In September 1866, a public meeting on Vegetarianism in the Exhibition Rooms, Rotunda Hospital was heckled by several members of the public. The meeting was held ‘for the purpose of affording an opportunity to several prominent vegetarians (to) explain … the principles and practices of the Vegetarian Society’.

The Freemans Journal of 28 September 1866 noted that:

There was a large attendance of respectably dressed persons, but there were many amongst the audience who evidently attended the meeting more for the purpose of disturbing the proceedings and amusing themselves in a very disorderly manner.

Amongst those speaking were Carlow-born social reformer and temperance activist James Haughton (who had become Vegetarian in 1846); Rev. James Clarke of Salford (who had helped establish the American Vegetarian Society in 1850); ‘acknowledged statistician of the British temperance movement’ William Hoyle from Bury and writer and campaigner James A Mowatt from Dublin.

The newspaper concluded:

The last question put was directed to the Rev. Mr. Clarke, who was asked, amid much laughter what he should do at the North Pole, where there were no vegetables. The reverend gentleman said he should not go there at all. The proceedings then terminated.

The first Vegetarian restaurant in Dublin, the ‘Sunshine Vegetarian Dining Rooms‘, was located at 48 Grafton Street (now Vodafone) and was opened in March 1891 by the Dublin Vegetarian Society.

The Irish Times, 28 August 1891

Consisting of a ‘pair of the most elegantly-decorated and tastefully-fitted apartments’, the restaurant served ‘toothsome food, free from the slightest suspicion of animal matter … at a surprisingly moderate rate’.

The same article from The Irish Times noted that the ‘question of vegetarianism has not to any great extent excited public discussion in Dublin’ but the journalist wondered if this might change as the ‘restaurant has been extremely patrionised’ since opening. It is unclear how long the restaurant was in business. I would guess for for a few months or maybe a year at most.

In July 1899, the ‘The College Vegetarian Restaurant‘ was established at 3-4 College Street by Antrim man Leonard McCaughey. This hotel and restaurant is the present location of The Westin (as far as I can work out).

The Irish Times, 11 September 1900

DIT food historian Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire, in his excellent ‘Searching for Chefs, Waiters and Restaurateurs in Edwardian Dublin’, has written that McCaughey:

…had built a chain of successful vegetarian restaurants in Glasgow, Leeds, Belfast and in Dublin … (and that he) owned the Ivanhoe Hotel in Harcourt Street, Dublin, and the Princess Restaurant on Grafton Street.

The 1911 census lists Leonard Mccaughey as a 70-year-old hotel proprietor from Antrim living in 72.1 Harcourt Street with a wife, three children, a cook and two servants.

An advertisement in The Irish Times on 2 February 1900 proclaimed that ‘Vegetarian food is the coming diet’ and suggested that ‘every man and woman that has suffered from influenza should dine at the College Restaurant as the use of a pure diet is the simplest and surest cure for this woeful disease’ and another on 27 April of the same year noted that ‘The College Vegetarian Restaurant is the seat of learning in the science of food. In it all can learn how to get the best food in the easiest digestible form, at the lowest cost’.

The Irish Times (11 May 1912) reported that a foreign chef at the restaurant on College Street, Leon Cromblin, was discovered in the cellar of the premises with his throat badly cut and a razor by his side. He was taken to Jervis Street hospital where he was said to have been in a critical condition. It is not known if he survived.

The Freemans Journal, 07 March 1913

The restaurant at College Street is mentioned a number of times in the Bureau of Military Witness Statements.

Dr. Seamus O’Ceallaugh (BMH WS471) notes that just before the Easter Rising he was invited to a meeting in the Vegetarian Restaurant by Fenian Rory O’Connor where there was discussion about the upcoming rebellion and attempts made to decode the forged ‘Castle Document’. At least four such meetings took place. In addition to O’Ceallaigh and O’Connor, those present included republican solicitor PJ Little, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, writer Andrew E. Malone (LP Byrne), IRB poet Charles Kickham and playwright Dr. Seamus O’Kelly.

Dublin Brigade IRA member Michael Lynch (BMH WS511) speaks about a waiter in the restaurant who had overheard a group of Trinity College students talking about plans to set fire to the headquarters of Sinn Fein at no. 6 Harcourt Street on Armistice Night 1918. This waiter informed Sean MacMahon, Vice Commandment of the 3rd Brigade IRA, who managed to mobilise republicans at the last minute to defend it and other buildings. In the end, a motley group of ‘British soldiers, British ex. soldiers … young men of the tramp class and a proportion of students of Trinity College’ did launch some minor attacks on the Sinn Fein HQ, the Mansion House, St. Teresa’s Hall on Clarendon Street and Liberty Hall but thanks to the waiter in the Vegetarian Restaurant, local republicans were able to call up men to help fight off these attackers.

Irish writer James Cousins and wife Mary Cousins (co-founder of the Irish Women’s Franchise League and All India Women’s Conference) in their joint autobiography, We Two Together (1950), described the restaurant on College Street as a:

rendezvous for the literary set, of whom AE was the leader. We frequently joined these idealists for lunch, and later met a number of Hindu vegetarians who had come to Dublin

George William Russell (AE). Credit – cultured.com

Similarly poet and editor of The Dublin Magazine Seamus O’Sullivan wrote (IT, 16 Oct 1943) about being brought to this ‘famous and well-conducted vegetarian restaurant’ by his father in 1901 where they used to see ‘the bearded and spectacled features of A.E. and with him, Harry Norman, Paul Gregan … and others of that small, but distinguished, group of workers and writers connected with the Irish Agricultural Organisation’.

Piaras Beaslai. Irish Press, 20 November 1963

Recognition awarded to those who had served with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, issued at the time of their disbanding.

While much has been written about the attempts by the Irish Citizen Army to dig trenches in St. Stephen’s Green during the Easter Rising, another series of WWI era Dublin trenches have been largely forgotten. According to one website dedicated to the memory of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers:

The 6th and 7th Dublins were stationed at the Curragh and later at The Royal (Collins) Barracks in Dublin. They trained in trench warfare in the Phoenix Park. Today, there is an outline of one of the trenches in the Park, as a dip in the land running east/west in front of the Papal Cross.

Kevin Myers has written about the trenches in the park in the pages of The Irish Times, noting that:

In the broad green acres of Phoenix Park across the road from Aras an Uachtarain, one can see strange undulations and surface scars beneath the grass. Soon those undulations will vanish as the summer returns, and one might even believe that the scars do not exist and whatever happened to the earth is now gone, past, extinct.

One user on the dublin.ie forum has pinpointed the area they believe to be the location of the trenches, which is inkeeping with the claim on the specialist website quoted above. Below I have shown the same area in Google Maps.

Google Earth View of area.

Are there visible remains to be seen in the two aerial images above of WWI training trenches? I’m not entirely sure. I’d rather doubt it, giving the form of the lines. One comment below notes “They’re on Chesterfield Avenue across from the main road running parallel to the visitors centre”.

Area around Visitor Centre

Damian Sheils, who has done research in this field and is a conflict archaeologist has noted that it is unclear just where the Phoenix Park trenches were, but that:

Trenches were constructed in places like the Phoenix Park, Finner Camp (Donegal), Kilworth Camp (Cork) and the Curragh. The latter survive in incredible condition and look like a section of the Western Front. One account of a soldier from the Leinsters described in a letter home that these training trenches were ‘not the simple holes in the ground you might imagine.’ It is past time the Phoenix Park ones were firmly pinned down and explored- an ideal project for the decade of commemorations I think.

I’d welcome more information on these trenches as I’m very curious now.

- Precious few heroes: With his politically charged songs Dick Gaughan has inspired generations of Left activists, Kevin Brannigan caught up with the veteran Scottish folk singer during his spring tour of Ireland

- - Calling the bigots bluff: Do anti-choicers want follow through the with the logic of their argument and imprison women, asks Katie Garrett.

- Requiem for a Tory: Brian Hanley’s reflections on Margret Thatcher

- Debate: Immigration – concern or opportunity? Stephen Nolan/Gavan Titley

- Gonna shoot you down: Sam McGrath looks at the politics behind Madchester band The Stone Roses

- What foot does he kick with?: Kevin Brannigan examines the role players from the Republic had in the modern history of one of Loyalism’s footballing bastions.

It’s well worth a look.

Look Left 15 cover. Design – Claire Davey.

Below is an image of the banner I mentioned in the piece above. Rosie and other female trade unionists took it upon themselves to raise this banner on Liberty Hall on May 12th 1917, a year after the killing of James Connolly. While James Connolly is also in the running for the naming of the bridge, as a man who never feared to put women at the front of his movement, one wonders would he be happier to see the Rosie Hackett Bridge?

Rosie herself later remembered this event, and told the Bureau of Military History:

Of course, if it took four hundred policemen to take four women, what would the newspapers say? We enjoyed it at the time- all the trouble they were put to. They just took the script away and we never heard any more….

Historically, Liberty Hall is the most important building that we have in the city. Yet, it is not thought of at all by most people. More things happened there, in connection with the Rising, than in any other place. It really started from there.

—–

Other “Writings on the wall” sets:

http://comeheretome.com/2012/11/01/the-writings-on-the-wall/

http://comeheretome.com/2012/11/07/the-writings-on-the-wall-part-ii/

http://comeheretome.com/2012/11/22/the-writings-on-the-wall-part-iii/

http://comeheretome.com/2013/04/26/the-writings-on-the-wall-iv/

The first Indian restaurant was opened in Dublin in August 1908. This enterprise, which seemed to have only lasted a few months, predated by three years the first restaurant of its kind to open in London, the ‘Salut e Hind’. ‘The India Restaurant and Tea Rooms’ was opened by Karim Khan at 20 Upper Sackville Street and offered ‘real Indian curries’ served by ‘native waiters in costume’.

Dublin’s first Indian restaurant. The Irish Times, 17 August 1908.

It would be another 31 years until Dubliners and the Indian community could sample food like this again in a restaurant. Michael Kennedy points to the ‘India Restaurant’ (later ‘Mahomets’) opening in 1939 at 50 Lower Baggot Street. It closed its doors in 1943. It is safe to say that this must be the restaurant referred to this An Irishman’s Diary in September 1939.

Reference to a Indian restaurant being opened in Dublin. The Irish Times, 02 September 1939.

A year later, the same column, offered a fascinating (but brief) insight into the shape of ethnic restaurants (i.e. Indian) in Dublin at the time. The writer wrote that he had seen ‘several white students from Trinity ‘ dining while he was there.

The Irish Times, 17 August 1940.

1956 was the next big milestone in the Indian restaurant timeline with the opening of the ‘Goldien Orient’ at 27 Lower Leeson Street. This was the brainchild of Mohammed ‘Mike’ Butt, a Kenyan of Kashmiri descent and his Dublin-born wife Terry, a graduate of Cathal Brugha Street College of Catering. It served generations of journalists, students and Indians until 1984.  (A biography of the pioneering Butt can be read here)

Mike Butt pictured outside the Golden Orient. The Irish Times, 21 March 1986.

In 1966, the ‘Taj Mahal’ restaurant was opened by Mohinder Singh Gill (aka Mark Gill) at the corner of Lincoln Place and Clare Street. Gill, originally from the Jalandhar district in the Punjab, came to Ireland after spending a couple of years in Britain. In business to the mid-1990s, the ‘Taj Mahal’ became one of Dublin’s longest-lived Indian restaurants.

The Taj Mahal (Lincoln Place side) in 1979. Credit – Dublin City Photographic Collection

While the Irish Sikh and Hindu community now numbers a few thousand, many of the  first were brought over by Gill to work in the Taj Mahal in the early 1970s. A total of 10 families, some Hindu and some Sikh but all from the same Jalandhar region, made the move to Ireland in 1972 to work as chefs in Gill’s ‘Taj Mahal’ and another restaurant of his in Cork.

In the late 1980s,the restaurant gained fame through Larry Gogan’s ‘Just a minute’ quiz on RTE Radio 2. When asked ‘Where’s the Taj Mahal?’, a contestant famously replied ‘opposite the Dental Hospital’.

The Taj Mahal (Clare Street side) in 1979. Credit – Dublin City Photographic Collection

The ‘Taj Mahal’ was taken over by Sikander Khan, a retired major in the Pakistani army, in 1987. It closed its doors in the mid 1990s. Khan’s son Nasir opened the ‘Royal Tandoori’ on South King Street in 1991 and in 1997 moved out to Donnybrook where he established the ‘Khan’s Balti House’ which is still popular today.

Thom’s Directory for 1973 shows nine Indian restaurants in Dublin, including a cluster from South Richmond Street to Camden Street, including ‘Bombay Grill’ (South Richmond Street), ‘Calcutta’ (Camden Street), ‘New Delhi’ (Lower Camden Street) and ‘Punjab One’ (Upper Camden Street).

Punjab One Indian Take Away. St. Stephen’s Green, 1972. Dublin City Photographic Collection

As Michael Kennedy has written:

By the late-1980s Irish tastes in food had become more adventurous. Foreign travel, emigration, the rising popularity of vegetarianism, increased disposable income, urbanisation and reasonably priced ethnic restaurants all explained the development.

The opening of ‘Saagar’ (Harcourt Street, 1995) and ‘Jaipur’ (South Great Georges Street, 1998) was seen as the new dawn of top end, Indian restaurants in the city.

Dubliners love of Indian food and curries has continued to grow and we now have an abundant supply of top-class restaurants, take aways and late night eateries.

What was your first experience of eating Indian food in Dublin? Where do you rate in the city today?

Dublin Newsboy illutration: Luke Fallon.

Last night I read a piece on The History Show on RTE Radio One looking at childhood in Dublin in 1913. Interestingly, the piece focused on life in the city for children before the lockout. It was great fun to put it together, I particularly enjoyed the story of the young chancer who talked his way into an expenses paid trip abroad!

You can listen to the piece by clicking on the link above. It’s interesting to contrast the plight of working class and upper class children at the time. My thanks to the people at The History Show for the invitation to contribute something.

Connolly’s paper, The Workers Republic, was suppressed by the authorities in December 1914 and O’Cathain writes that it was the “Glasgow Anarchist Group that took over the printing of the paper … and smuggled it into Ireland”. Apparently, the police in Britain raided several anarchist printing presses, including London’s Freedom Press, but never caught the Glasgow group.

Picture of the Glasgow Anarchist Group in 1915. Credit – ibcom.org

In Donal Nevin’s fantastic biography of Connolly, ‘A Full Life’, there is a mention of Glasgow comrades taking over the printing of The Workers Republic. However, Nevin points to Connolly’s old colleagues in the Socialist Labour Party.  More specifically, Arthur MacManus who was the one who did the setting, composing, printing and then smuggled the copies to Dublin using the pseudonym ‘Glass’. (Belfast-born MacManus, son of an Irish fenian, later became the first chairman of the Communist Party of Great Britain and was buried in Red Square, Moscow after his death in 1927.)

As Nevin backs up his claim with a reference to C.Desond Greave’s book ‘The Life and Times of James Connolly’, the evidence stacks in his favour.

Speaking of Connolly, I’ve always liked the story of Antrim-born Anarchist and Irish Citizen Army founder Jack White traveling to the Rhondda and Aberdare valleys in South Wales to try bring the miners out on strike to save his life.

Jack White in ICA uniform, 1914.

On 25 May, thirteen days after Connolly’s execution, White was charged with trying to ‘sow the seeds of sedition in an area which had nothing to do with the grievances of Ireland either real or imaginary’ and at a time when ‘a peaceful settlement was being arrived at’. He was sentenced to two sentences of three months.

Perhaps the most famous example of an individual falling victim to a tarring and feathering. Boston Commissioner of Customs John Malcolm in 1774.

The process of tarring and feathering can be traced right back through history, as an often unofficial means of punishment or revenge, designed to shame the victim. Wikipedia notes that the first mention of the punishment appears in the orders of King Richard I in 1189. Looking in the archives, I decided to search for some examples of the use of the punishment form in Dublin over time.

While I expected to find many examples of people getting tarred and feathered in the revolutionary period of the early twentieth century, the late-eighteenth century also produced much, a time when there was massive political agitation in the city. Indeed, in a letter to the Prime Minister in 1785, the Duke of Rutland (then Viceroy of Ireland) complained that:

This City of Dublin is in a great measure under the dominion and tyranny of the mob. Persons are daily marked for the operation of tarring and feathering, the magistrates neglect their duty, and none of the rioters – till to-day, when one man was seized in the fact, have been taken…

Much of the tarring and feathering being done in Dublin at this time was, as Neal Garnham has noted, the work of “gangs of tradesmen and artisans” who targeted “importers of foreign goods, workers prepared to undercut the wages of their fellows, and those who informed on the actions of vigilantes.”

There was evidently a degree of popular support for the practice in Dublin. Padhraig Higgins has noted in his study of Irish politics in the late-eighteenth century that when Alexandar Clarke, a master tailor from Chancery Lane, fell victim to a tarring and feathering mob in June 1784 “a crowd of about three hundred from the Liberties” attacked his house, before dragging him almost naked to the Tenters’ Fields for the humiliating ritual.

The practice appears to have become much less common place throughout nineteenth century life in Dublin, or at least much less reported. Tarring and feathering in Dublin was not always restricted to just living people, as the hugely controversial monument of King William of Orange on College Green also fell victim. One publication wrote in 1898 of that statue, noting that “It has been insulted, mutilated and blown up so many times, that the original figure, never particularly graceful, is now a battered wreck, pieced and patched together, like an old, worn out garment.”

King William of Orange sits on College Green.

The Bureau of Military History statements (first hand recollections of those involved in the 1913-21 period) give insight into the use of the tactic by republicans, and it was reported in the media in May 1920 that “the houses of two newspaper editors were raided and one anti-Sinn Féin editor was tarred and feathered.”

In most cases of tarring and feathering in the subsequent decades, republican involvement seems clear. In December 1934 J.P McEnery, a barrister living in Killiney, was driven to Arbour Hill and left there tied to the railings at the church. He had acted as prosecuting council during recent cases before the Military Tribunal, and McEnery claimed to have been told that this actions had displeased the Irish Republican Army. If McEnery’s case was clearcut, just why William Flood was targeted for the same treatment in October 1935 is less clear. Flood, a former celebrated footballer with Bohemian F.C, was also connected with the Abbey Theatre historically. The attack on Flood occurred in Phibsborough not far from Dalymount Park, and baffled media at the time. Flood had recently returned from holidays to Germany, and a placard was placed upon him that read “DEFAMED IRELAND IN GERMANY.” Flood claimed not to be a political person, and believed that “local jealousy” was at the root of the assault.

The newspaper archives show a massive spike in incidents like this in Ireland in the early 1970s, most of which occurred in the north of Ireland and were related to the troubles. Yet Dublin also saw an increase in this activity, with claims by republican groups that such attacks were a direct response to anti-social behaviour. When two 17 year old teenagers from the north inner-city were tarred and feathered in April 1972, The Irish Times claimed that an anonymous call to the newspaper had claimed this to be the work of the Provisional IRA, as the youths had been “found guilty of violence and other crimes.” There were several such cases throughout the 1970s, and they continued into the following decade, when it was reported that a woman described by a judge as being involved in the Heroin trade “in a big way” was tarred and feathered in the Phoenix Park.

The shocking images of a alleged drug dealer tarred and feathered in Belfast in more recent times put this article idea in my head. For every incident of the kind that was reported, I wonder how many weren’t?

One incident that bypassed me until recently was the death of 78-year-old Anna-Maria Fitzsimons in June 1897 at an anti-Jubilee event in Rutland (Parnell) Square.

On 19 June, James Connolly and his Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP) organised an anti-Jubilee meeting, under the slogan ‘Down with the Monarchy: long live the Republic, in Foster Place which was addressed by Maud Gonne. She told the crowd that the queen’s reign “had brought more ruin, misery and death” than any other period. Students from Trinity attacked the meeting singing ‘God Save The Queen’ but were repelled by the crowd.

The following evening, the day of the Jubilee itself, Connolly and Gonne organised a funeral procession through the streets of the city as the United Labourers’ Union band played the Dead March. They carried a coffin marked ‘British Empire and a black flag inscriptions giving the numbers who had perished in the Famine and the numbers who had emigrated and been evicted during Victoria’s reign.

A convention of the ’98 Commemoration Committee was being held in City at the same time and the chairman, veteran Fenian John O’Leary, suspended the meeting so delegates could watch the procession. Some of them, including WB Yeates, joined in.

 George Hyde-Lees and WB Yeates, nd (Credit – coreopsis.org)

By this stage, several hundred people were following the procession and there was a small confrontation with police at College Green, where the statue of William III was wrapped with a green flag.

Mounted police reinforcements arrived from Dublin Castle and the DMP tried to disperse the crowd. Afraid that it would be taken by the police, Connolly ordered the coffin to be cast into the Liffey, shouting: “Here goes the coffin of the British Empire. To hell with the British Empire!”. At one stage, Trinity students tried to grab the crowd’s black flag but, as reported in the New York left-wing Daily People, ‘the proletariat drove the bourgeoisie home in disorder’. Connolly was arrested and taken to the Bridewell.

Afterwards, Gonne conducted an open air-slide show of scenes of evictions from a window in the National Club, Rutland Square onto a specially erected large screen opposite.

The Royal Procession passing through Rutland (Parnell) Square, 14 years later. Credit – NAI

A large group of women and children watched the show. Maud Gonne wrote in her memoirs, A Servant of the Queen:

We were having tea [in the club] when suddenly we heard outside and cries of the ‘The police!’. I rushed to the window. Some twenty policemen with batons drawn a few people, mostly women and children, were running in all directions; a woman lay on the ground quite still; a girl was bending over her; someone called out ‘The police have killed her’.

The dead woman was Anna-Maria Fitzsimons from Cabra Road.

At the City Coroner in Jervis Street Hospital the following Saturday, her daughter told the inquest that herself and her mother came into town to see the ‘illuminations’ at Rutland Square. They walked up from Nelson’s Pillar, crossed at Cavendish Row and up to Rutland Square. They saw a number of people carrying flags and coming up from the direction of Sackville Street. The police baton charged the crowd and Anna-Maria was knocked down in the disorder that followed. She died later in hospital.

Does anyone know of any other deaths at political demonstrations in the 19th or 20th centuries in Dublin?

Refs:
The Irish Times (3 July 1897)
Donal Nevin, James Connolly A Full Life (Dublin, 2005)
James H Murphy, Abject loyalty: nationalism and monarchy in Ireland during the reign of Queen Victoria (Cork, 2001)

This cartoon from the month of February focused on the issue of pay for DMP men. The role of the DMP in the dispute, and in particular the events of Bloody Sunday in August 1913, ensured that their place in Dublin folk memory would not be as a revered force. The paper staunchly defended the actions of Dublin policemen during the months of strife.

1 February 1914

In the same edition of the paper, this cartoon appeared, which called for a tough approach to be taken against the mob’s darling. This sinister cartoon draws parallels with the labour situation in South Africa, where military force had been used against the union movement there. A contemporary newspaper report on events in South Africa can be read here.

1 February 1914

The paper routinely attacked Larkin and other ITGWU leadership figures as leading dupes into battle. A cartoon posted in the last series we ran here showed a worker awakening from the nightmare of socialism, while here the ‘Wellvpaid Socialist Leader’ is seen directing the vote of a blindfolded worker.

11 January 1914

The theme of workers realising the error of their way and returning to work was commonplace in the paper. This cartoon shows a rather sinister looking fella, Syndicalism, looking on in astonishment at a Dublin worrker who has returned to work!

25 January 1914

The paper also looked at Irish nationalist questions in its cartoons. It should be remembered that William Martin Murphy, owner of the publication and several others, was a vocal Home Rule campaigner, and this was reflected in the cartoons of the paper even during the dispute. This cartoon showed John Bull and Pat in discussion, noting that 1914 would be the year when Home Rule became a reality for Ireland. The slaughter of WWI would kill that plan of course, and lead to a split in Irish nationalism. We will definitely return to these cartoons as a post of their own in the near future.

4 January 1914

From the organisers:

Seen by many as the first act of the Second World War, the Spanish conflict pitted the majority of Spaniards and their democratically-elected government against their own military, backed by troops, aviation and materiel from Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. A non-intervention pact arranged between the European democracies forced the Spanish government to rely on the assistance of the Soviet Union, however tensions between the disparate elements supporting the government and increasing military assistance from international fascism and global capital ensured the victory of Franco’s armies and the subjection of the Spanish people. The repression continued until the dictator’s death in 1975.

Inchicore is unusual because of its development around the railway works and for the multiplicity of religious faiths (and none) represented in its workforce. Perhaps as a result of this mixture of socialism and non-conformity, Inchicore had a unique concentration of volunteers in the ranks of the International Brigades. Of the six men commemorated, two came from a protestant background and all had republican or communist connections. Three died in Spain and one survivor was to write perhaps the most significant first-hand account of the early fighting (Joe Monks, With the Reds in Andulusia, London, 1985).

Those being commemorated are:

Tony Fox (1914-28.12.1936). From Goldenbridge Avenue, Fox was a member of A. Coy., 4th Batt., Dublin Brigade, IRA and was with the first organised detachment of Irish volunteers to join the International Brigades. He crossed the Pyrenees with Frank Ryan and his school friend and neighbour Mick May on 15 December 1936 and was killed in action at Lopera on the Córdoba front less than two weeks later. Fox had just finished dressing the wounds of two friends, John Gough and Seamus Cummings, when he himself was fatally wounded. His body was never recovered.

Mick May (1916-28.12.1936). Michael May from Connolly Avenue was also a member of Fox’s IRA unit. He was additionally a member of the Communist Party of Ireland. He died close to Tony Fox at Lopera on 28 December 1936 and was last seen alive, single-handedly covering the retreat of comrades, armed with a rifle.

Liam ‘Bill’ McGregor (d. 22.09.1938). McGregor was the Dublin secretary of the Communist Party of Ireland and the son of Esther McGregor, president of the Municipal Tenants’ Association. He attended the Lenin International School in Moscow and on his return volunteered to fight in Spain. He was killed on the very last day the XV Brigade saw action on the Ebro front, alongside fellow Dubliner Jack Nalty.

Joe Monks (1915-1988). Joe Monks came from Park Street and went to school in James’s Street with Tony Fox and Mick May. A member of the Communist Party he was one of the initial volunteers along with his two school friends. He was one of the defenders of Connolly House, headquarters of the Revolutionary Workers’ Group (forerunner of the Communist Party of Ireland) when it was attacked in March 1933 by a hymn-singing mob. Author of With the Reds in Andulusia, Monks was wounded in the chest at Lopera but was to see further action in March 1937 at the little known battle of Almadén. He was repatriated later in 1937 and was active with the Republican Congress before immigrating to the UK where he remained involved in radical politics until his death in 1988.

Paddy McElroy (b.1911). Paddy McElroy came from 20 Nash Street. His brother Christopher had taken part in the 1916 Rising. A mechanic with the TE&FU, he joined the XV International Brigade on 7 January 1937 and was seriously wounded at the battle of Jarama outside Madrid in February. He was repatriated on account of his wounds and after a brief stay in Dublin he appeared again in Cairo in 1939. Returning to Liverpool via Durban, he was curiously listed as a government official with an address in Southampton. He was subsequently involved in a wages hold-up at Amiens Street in March 1943 and was defended by Sean MacBride. From this point onwards McElroy disappears from the historical record.

Bill Scott (1908-1980). Bill Scott came from Ring Street and was a member of the Communist Party of Ireland. One of the Irish Citizen Army’s earliest recruits was his father, William Scott, a member of the Church of Ireland and an activist in the Bricklayers’ Trade Union. During the 1916 Rising, Scott fought alongside William Partridge in the College of Surgeons garrison, under the command of Michael Mallin and his deputy Constance Markievicz. His son was possibly the very first Irish International Brigade volunteer to fight in defence of the Spanish Republic, finding himself in Barcelona at the Workers’ Olympics when the coup broke out. He was elected political commissar for the English Tom Mann Centuria in September 1936, before joining with the German Thaelmann Battalion in the defence of Madrid. Bill went back to Ireland where he was withdrawn as a CPI candidate in a Dublin by election in favour of Frank Ryan. He returned to Spain with Ryan and received a serious leg wound and was sent back to England. Disillusioned with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, he left the CP for a period before re-joining in 1941. He then became a member of the Essential Construction Corps, building infrastructure throughout the UK. After the war he continued his trades union activities until his death in 1980.

 

I opened with a moody sunshine snap, so I’ll close with a moody night-time one. O’Connell Street came to a stand-still, with the backdrop of a near full-moon peeking out from the clouds behind the Spire.

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Other “Writings on the wall” sets:

http://comeheretome.com/2012/11/01/the-writings-on-the-wall/

http://comeheretome.com/2012/11/07/the-writings-on-the-wall-part-ii/

http://comeheretome.com/2012/11/22/the-writings-on-the-wall-part-iii/