Come Here To Me!

Firefighter Frank Brennan saving the pram from Sean O’Casey’s ‘The Plough and the Stars’ following a fire which gutted the Abbey Theatre.

Over the years I’ve dipped into some amazing items in my fathers collection for the blog. A serving firefighter with the Dublin Fire Brigade, he’s built up an impressive collection of items relevant to the history of firefighting in Dublin historically. He has also completed a book which is forthcoming on the Brigade entitled ‘Dublin Fire Brigade and the Irish Revolution.’ It will be launched in early September. The Dublin Fire Brigade were the first unionised fire service in Europe, and interestingly his research has uncovered that many men within the job were active in republican and trade union politics during the Irish revolutionary period, with the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army and later the Irish Republican Army.

To coincide with the book, which is published by South Dublin County Council, an exhibition on the history of firefighting in Dublin will be hosted in the County Library in Tallaght. It’s a Heritage Week project with the South Dublin County Council, and in conjunction with the Fire Service Trust.

The exhibition will offer new insight to a lot of people on issues like the early days of firefighting in Dublin. One thing we’ve looked at in the past on the site here for example is the days of the old ‘Parish Pump’, , like when in 1711 the Lord Mayor of Dublin ordered that each Parish within Dublin hold two water fire engines, for the purpose of combating fires which broke out in the city.

In 1862, Dublin got its municipal fire service, with the remarkable Captain James Robert Ingram at its head. Ingram was a veteran of the New York Fire Department, not to mention a Freemason and a man who applied some unusual methods to the job of firefighting. He once dealt with a ship drifting into Dublin Port ablaze by ordering the Royal Navy to open fire on it and sink it into the bay, for example!

Fireman Robert Malone, who died in the Pearse Street blaze of 1936, the worst disaster in the history of the Dublin Fire Brigade. A veteran of the 1916 Rising who had served as a Lieutenant with “D” Company 3rd Battalion at Bolands Mills Garrison, under Eamon de Valera. Malone was awarded full IRA honours at his funeral.

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LIFE Magazine, a leading U.S magazine of the day, ran an interesting feature on Dublin in their 24 July 1939 edition. The magazine frequently gave coverage to events on the island of Ireland, and the article in this particular edition was titled ‘Ireland: A new flag brings hope to an old and pious land.’

The magazine heaped praise on Eamon de Valera, noting that the ‘long-lipped Spanish-Irishman’ had run the country single-handed since 1932, and noting that ‘he has dealt drastically with the ex-overlords of England.’

Written at a time of conflict in Europe, the magazine felt compelled to note that ‘Ireland is very hospitable to Nazis. Their leader in Ireland is Doctor Adolph Mahr, president of the Éire National Museum whose staff supplies him with complete air views of Ireland’. It goes on to note that newsreels of Hitler were warmly greeted in Dublin picture houses.

Pro-IRA graffiti on Kilmainham Jail (LIFE Magazine, 24 July 1939)

the magazine included this fantastic image of an ‘IRA speaker’ addressing a crowd in Dublin, and noted that the IRA’s bombing campaign in mainland Britain enjoyed a degree of public support from the Irish public.

IRA speaker in Dublin (LIFE Magazine 24 July 1939)

Trinity College is noted to be the cultural heart of the city, but we are told it is still an almost exclusively Protestant institution.

Trinity College Dublin (LIFE Magazine, 24 July 1939)

The article includes a wide variety of images from across the island of Ireland, in terms of Dublin images I think this one is striking, taking during a farmers march in the capital.

Farmers protest in Dublin (LIFE Magazine, 24 July 1939)

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Horatio Nelson, who gazed over Dubliners from 1808 until 1966.

At several times during the course of its existence on O’Connell Street, the removal of Nelson’s Pillar from its location was proposed by different sections of Irish society. Interestingly, in some cases it was argued that the monument should be moved rather than permanently removed from the streets of Dublin. In 1925, it was proposed to move the Pillar to the Hill of Howth, an idea which seemed to enjoy strong support from some of the City Commissioners of the day.

A poem entitled ‘Dublin’s Doggerels’ from 1886 shows that debate on moving the Pillar had long existed prior to 1925. In one verse it was noted that:

Some say the Phoenix Park would do
That won’t go down with me.
There’s one commander there; the two
Perhaps would disagree

A postcard image of the Nelson Pillar (Fallon collection)

By the mid 1920s a wide variety of people and organisations were calling for its removal of the monument with even the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland wading in on the debate, noting that in their opinion the monument “though possessing definite architectural merit, is so wrongly placed in its present position that it ought to be removed to a more suitable site.”

The Irish Independent noted in 1925 that:

One wonders why the proposal to remove the Nelson Pillar should be made now. We are told it has no political significance. The cost of taking down the Pillar would be considerable and it would be so much public money wasted at a time when the rates are very high and every penny the Commissioners can spare is urgently needed for constructive work.

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My friend Angela snapped this image of a rather odd sign in the window of a Capel Street adult shop. I forgot to ask if it was the same shop which recently featured this duck in its window display. Back in February, we featured a piece on the history of the adult shops of Dublin.

When Utopia made the short journey into the Irish capital in 1993, it arrived on Capel Street, today home to more sex shops than any other street in Dublin. Utopia however, was about to become Utophia. While the signwriting tradition is sadly dying out in Dublin today, and hand painted shop fronts are few and far between, a painter was given the honour of putting the name above the door of Dubin’s first sex shop. Incredibly, and in the spirit of a good Dublin story, he spelt it wrong and Utophia was born, as it was to remain.

CHTM’s take on the classic ‘Doors of Dublin’/’Pubs of Dublin’/’Cliches of Dublin’ posters.

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These fantastic advertisements have all been taken from the April 1933 edition of Dublin Opinion magazine. I’ve always had a fascination with old advertisements, and these are some of the more interesting ones in the pages of the magazine.

Some have been chosen for their illustrations, others for the product being sold.

Electricity Supply Board

Irish Hospital Sweeps

Clerys, O’Connell Street.

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Previously, I’ve looked at what I consider some classic Dublin books on the site, with G.Ivan Morris’ In Dublin’s Fair City (1947) and John Harvey’s Dublin (1949) featuring in the past.

This post deals with the excellent book The Heart of the City, released in 1988. The book was a collaboration between Ronan Sheehan, who wrote the text, and photographer Brendan Walsh. It is a book I stumbled across by chance, but which I consider one of the finest studies of inner-city Dublin produced to date.

‘The Heart Of The City’ (Brandon Books, 1988)

Divided into chapters like ‘The New Deal’, ‘The 1930s’, ‘Heroin’, and ‘Moral Issues of the Catholic Church’, it’s fair to say the book isn’t setting out to paint some sort of idyllic picture of life in inner-city Dublin, but at the same time it neither sets out to paint a truly grim picture. It shows the real community of the inner-city, and the good and the bad that comes with life there. The introduction from Peter Sheridan is a good an introduction as I’ve seen in any book.

The city centre is a barometer of how we measure ourselves: ‘inner city’ has become media shorthand for all things negative and I propose its abolition. The city centre is the heart that pumps life to the outer limbs. It is tradition. It is our past. It is now, the living city, and it is intimately concerned with what we are and how. It is collectively owned in a way that Raheny, or Churchtown, Howth or Dalkey could never be. It must be the concern of all when the city is subjected to, at best, atrocious planning, at worst, willful destruction.

‘The Heart Of The City’ (Brandon Books, 1988)

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A screengrab of the cover page of Oscar Traynor’s statement to the Bureau of Military History.

I’m over the moon to see the Bureau of Military History statements from the revolutionary period have gone online as PDFs, making them accessible to the general public at the click of a button. You can access them by clicking here. Previously, you had to travel to the National Archives of the Military History Archives to view these priceless documents. They recall the recollections of participants in the revolutionary period, and were collected by the state between 1947 and 1957. As a primary source they are priceless, though it should be noted they are by no means the only such source, with Ernie O’Malley for example interviewing men and women about their involvement in the period too. Focusing on the period 1913-21, the BMH statements stop just short of the civil war in 1922, whereas O’Malley and others who have carried out such research tended to ask about that period of history too.

The statements can be searched for key words, or you can browse alphabetically. In addition to the Witness Statements, the BMH website has uploaded priceless audio interviews with some participants in the revolutionary period, including Maud Gonne McBride, William O’Brien and others. They can be heard here.

The site is also home to some rare images from the period, available to view in great detail. This image below shows a raid on Sinn Féin HQ on Harcourt Street in September 1919.

‘P11: (a) Raid by British Military on Sinn Fein H. Q., Harcourt St., Dublin, September 1919.’ (BMH)

The hosting of these statements online for the general public, making them accessible to people far and wide, is a great achievement and the BMH deserve credit for their efforts. In the run up to the centenaries of the Lockout, the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, these files are now where they belong at last.

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