Come Here To Me!

Few days bring the same feelings of freedom and release to a youngster as the day you finish secondary school. Granted, you’ll be back in a few weeks afterwards to do your Leaving Cert, but when the bell goes you genuinely just want to chuck your uniform in the nearest bin and move on.

In 1975, a group of students made the national media for locking themselves in their class room, blasting pop records and just doing what they wanted on their last day of school. It’s a great innocent story, though at the time they evidently provoked the wrath of the nuns who ran the school!

Click to expand the newsreport and read it clearly.

The Irish Press, May 29 1975.

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Last Friday we posted this fantastic image below to our Facebook page. Taken by Wally Cassidy, it captures the legendary Dublin street performer Thom McGinty, better known as the Diceman, strolling down Grafton Street. It led to dozens of fantastic comments from Dubliners who remembered seeing the Diceman perform on the streets of the capital. It is worth sharing here for anyone who hasn’t connected with the Facebook page to see.

(c) Wally Cassidy Photography.

In 1991 the Irish Press wrote that:

It is interesting how the name of The Diceman stuck with street mime artist Thom McGinty. Years ago his first job was publicising The Diceman, a shop in Grafton Street selling games and novelties. the shop is long gone but Thom McGinty is still known by its name and the 40 year old Scotsman is now integral part of Dublin street life.

From the discussion the image sparked, I was directed towards this brilliant YouTube compilation of shots of McGinty, put together by the folks at the Gallery of Photography.

McGinty passed away in February 1995, and fittingly his coffin was carried down Grafton Street, where he had become a real fixture of Dublin life. He is remembered by Diceman’s Corner in Meeting House Square today.

Flickr user Informatique captured this image of the plaque which marks ‘Diceman’s Corner’ in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar.

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Frederick Douglass mural in West Belfast.

While it is well known that the American abolitionist and anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass visited Dublin in 1840s, something which Barack Obama focused on in his speech here last summer, what he made of Dublin is something many of us are perhaps unfamiliar with.

A letter Douglass wrote to William Lloyd Garrison in the United States, which was printed in The Liberator on 27 March 1846, is available in full to read online here. It is a truly grim account of Dublin in the 1840s. My thanks to James Moore for directing me to this great piece of social commentary.

I spent nearly six weeks in Dublin, and the scenes I there witnessed were such as to make me “blush, and hang my head to think myself a man.” I speak truly when I say, I dreaded to go out of the house. The streets were almost literally alive with beggars, displaying the greatest wretchedness—some of them mere stumps of men, without feet, without legs, without hands, without arms—and others still more horribly deformed

During my stay in Dublin, I took occasion to visit the huts of the poor in its vicinity—and of all places to witness human misery, ignorance, degradation, filth and wretchedness, an Irish hut is pre-eminent. It seems to be constructed to promote the very reverse of every thing like domestic comfort.

The immediate, and it may be the main cause of the extreme poverty and beggary in Ireland, is intemperance. This may be seen in the fact that most beggars drink whiskey. The third day after landing in Dublin, I met a man in one of the most public streets, with a white cloth on the upper part of his face. He was feeling his way with a cane in one hand, and the other hand was extended, soliciting aid. His feeble step and singular appearance led me to inquire into his history. I was informed that he had been a very intemperate man, and that on one occasion he was drunk, and lying in the street. While in this state of insensibility, a hog with its fangs tore off his nose, and a part of his face! I looked under the cloth, and saw the horrible spectacle of a living man with the face of a skeleton. Drunkenness is still rife in Ireland. The temperance cause has done much—is doing much—but there is much more to do, and, as yet, comparatively few to do it.

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Path leading down to the College Graveyard at Saint Patrick’s College. (Carax)

Just on the outskirts of Dublin lies the historic university town of Maynooth. It is the home of Ireland’s main Roman Catholic seminary, St Patrick’s College, which has been churning out priests since 1795.

One particular room in the college has been associated with demonic apparitions, suicide and paranormal activity for over 150 years.

In the mid 19th century in Room Two of Rhetoric House, two young seminarists took their own lives, nineteen years apart, and the room has been the source of many tales ever since.

Rhetoric House in the South Campus, built in 1834, was formerly a residential house for trainee priests. It now hosts the Department of History.

Rhetoric House, Maynooth (http://bogwarrior.com)

On 1 March 1841, a young student from Limerick by the name of Sean O’Grady (b. 1820) jumped out of room and fell to his death. (1) It is not known as to what possessed O’Grady to do such a thing but the common legend suggests that a ‘diabolic presence‘ had something to do with it.

Nineteen years later student Thomas McGinn (b. 16 June 1833) from Kilmore, Co. Wexford came up to college in a week early to take his matriculation tests. (2) During this time he stayed in Room No. 2. When term began, he was moved to a different room and was subsequently told that he had spent a week in a room where a previous student had killed himself. It preyed on his mind night and day. On a Friday morning after mass, McGinn went into Room No. 2 cut himself with a razor and then threw himself out of the window.

Dr. McCarthy, the former Vice-President of the college, visited him in the infirmary before he succumbed to his injuries. Apparently he gave them an account of the demonic occurrences that happened in the room that led to his actions. His grave marking state states that he died on April 21 1860.

After this, the tale goes on, a priest spent the night in the room and was so terrified by whatever he saw – he refused to speak about it – that his hair turned bright white.

Obviously shaken by all the events that had just taken took place, Dr. McCarthy  urged the Trustees to take action, and the result was the resolution in the Trustees’ Journal which reads:

“October 23rd 1860. The President is authorised to convert room No. 2 on the top corridor of Rhetoric House into an Oratory of St. Joseph and to fit up an oratory of St. Aloysius in the prayer hall of the Junior Students”.

St. Joseph is the Patron of a Peaceful Death.

View of the room in 1978. (Irish Independent, June 25 1978)

The dead students are buried in unconsecrated ground on the fringe of the college cemetery, but the graves are marked.
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There have been numerous excellent books produced on the Irish Republican and Socialist movements in the 1930s. The below is a brief post on two days of interesting Anti-Communist violence in April 1936, when the Left was attacked firstly on a broad republican march to Glasnevin Cemetery, and then the following day at a rally on College Green. It is intended as a brief insight into Anti-Communism in Dublin in the 1930s.

Willie Gallacher, a Scottish Communist MP present on the March to Glasnevin on April 12th 1936 and who was to speak at College Green the following day.

On 12th April 1936 Communists and left Republicans attending an Easter commemoration at Glasnevin Cemetery came under attack at various points along the route to Glasnevin from the city centre, during an event which was plagued by violence. It was not the last anti-Communist violence in April 1936, and just who was responsible for the violence was unclear, though the left-wing Republican Congress laid the blame at the feet of the far-right, the ‘Animal Gang’ and “other such defenders and faith and morals”.

The procession marched from the Carmelite Church on Whitefriars’ Street, following a mass for the requiem of the souls of fallen comrades, and made its way for Glasnevin. Within the sizeable procession was a contingent of a few dozen members of the Communist Party, who the Irish Press noted “wore red tabs attached to Easter Lillies.” Led by Sean Murray and Captain Jack White (a founding member of the Irish Citizen Army), this contingent included Willie Gallacher, the Scottish Communist M.P. In addition to the Communist Party, members of the Republican Congress marched in the procession. There were five bands in total in the march, and all shades of Republican opinion were represented.

The Communist contingent in the march, though small in the context of the demonstration, came under attack firstly on Westmoreland Street when about 20 people attempted to rush the crowd, and, newspapers reported by the time O’Connell Bridge had been reached a sizeable crowd were shouting “We want no Communists in Ireland!” at their targets. By the General Post Office, the attacking crowd was said to number 200 people, and police were forced to draw their batons. A hostile crowd tailed the Communists all the way to Glasnevin, and some leading left-wing activists of the day sustained injuries, with George Gilmore receiving nasty wounds as a result of the crowds stone throwing.

The Irish Independent reported that on reaching Glasnevin, the shout was raised that “this is a Catholic grave yard. Don’t let the Communists in!” The great irony of Glasnevin being non-denominational was lost on someone! Outside, sellers of the English Communist paper the Daily Worker found themselves attacked by the hostile crowd. In a letter to the Irish Press days after the violence, one member of the public noted that while such violence was unfortunate, it was the natural outcome of an attempt to stage an “anti-God display” at Glasnevin.

Patrick Byrne, a leading activist with the Republican Congress, recalled years later that:

The main target of the mob was Captain Jack White. He had been injured with a blow of an iron cross wrenched from a grave. It was necessary to get him away quickly. Fortunately, the Rosary had started and this caused a lull during which Tom O’Brien and myself got him away. Captain White wrote afterwards: “By the aid of two Republican Congress comrades, who knew the geography, we left by an inconspicuous back door. Slipping under a barbed wire fence, the Congress comrades and I dropped on to the railway and soon emerged into safety and a Glasnevin tram.”

Newspaper report on the chaos described below at College Green.

The following day, on the 13th April, a left-wing meeting at College Green came under siege when thousands gathered for a rally featuring speakers from the left including Peadar O’Donnell and Willie Gallacher. Garda reports estimated that the crowd numbered between four and five thousand. They estimated that 98% of this crowd were hostile to the left-wing speakers at College Green. Prior to this meeting even beginning, newspaper reports noted that Gardaí lined College Green 100 strong. Peadar O’Donnell would be the only speaker on the night, addressing the crowd from a lamppost. In an obituary printed at the time of O’Donnell’s passing at the fine old age of 93, it was claimed that O’Donnell was met by “potatoes (with razor blades embedded in them), bottles and stones.”

Historian Fearghal McGarry has noted that following this event an anti-Communist mob laid siege to targets in the city centre, attacking the offices of the left wing Republican Congress and also attempting to attack other buildings associated with the left, although police prevented this. Interestingly, McGarry notes that targets included Trinity College Dublin and the Masonic Hall, and this indicates a spirit of militant Catholicism among the crowd.

Peadar O’Donnell would later comment that

After all it wasn’t the tycoons of Dublin who tried to lynch me in College Green during a Red Scare but poor folk who had been driven out of their minds by a month’s rabid Lenten Lectures.

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There is an enduring urban legend that suggests that Irish actor, and manager of the Smock Alley Theatre and afterwards the Theatre Royal in Dublin, Richard Daly (1758 – 1813) invented the word ‘Quiz’ to settle a bet in 1791.

The story goes that there was a gathering of the Dublin Volunteers to celebrate the birth of an heir to the Duke of Leinster in the Eagle Tavern in Eustache Street on August 21 1791. Present were ‘many of the wits and men of fashions of the day’ (1) as well as Daly who ‘had an extraordinary propensity for making wagers in reference to incidental maters, however unimportant’ (2).

Smock Alley Theatre today. (Templebar.ie)

During the evening a dispute arose about the exact meaning of a French phrase used by one of the volunteers named Delahoyde. In the following discussion, Daly made a bet that he could add a new word to the English language that ‘within forty-eight hours … (would) be on the mouths of the Dublin public, of all classes and sexes, young and old’. In order to win the wager, the word had to be ” altogether new and an unconnected by derivation from any wold in any other language’

As the legend goes, Daly sent all of his Theatre stage-hands and call-boys to chalk the letters ‘Q U I Z’ on the doors of shops, warehouses and people’s houses all over the city. People woke up on Sunday morning to be greeted with the word every where they looked. It soon became the talk of the town with neighbour asking neighbour what the word meant. After initial speculation that the word had something to do with politics or perhaps religion, the public of Dublin accepted that it had been successfully duped and the word became synonymous with the idea of a ‘hoax’ or something ‘strange’.

While it’s a splendid anecdote, the word ‘Quiz’ was certainly used pre 1791. It can found, for example, in Fanny Burney’s diary entry for 24 June 1782.

While this poem from Finns Leinster Journal predates the Daly story by two months:

Finns Leinster Journal. May 21, 1791.

While the word may not have been invented by Daly, it is true to say that it was not a commonly known word at the time, so it is possible (and quite nice to think) that Daly may have played some part in spreading the use of the word world-wide from little old Dublin.

The American website Museum of Hoaxes incidentally featured the story recently enough.

–

(1) Kazlitt Arvine, The cyclopaedia of anecdotes of literature and the fine arts (Boston, 1853), 694
(2) Frank Thorpe Porter, Gleanings and reminiscences (Dublin, 1875), 32

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We’ve had a long running series on the site looking at the statues in Dublin city centre, but it got me thinking what Dubliners are remembered with statues abroad? I came up with a few, asked jaycarax who could think of one or two others, and this is the list to start:

Arthur Wellesley,The Duke of Wellington.

A two-time Tory Prime Minister, and the man who oversaw the passage of the Catholic Relief Act in 1829, Wellesley was born in Dublin on 1 May 1769. Wellington is perhaps best remembered for his decisive victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.He is remembered by the Wellington testimonial in Dublin’s Phoenix Park today, and the Ha’penny Bridge was originally christened the Wellington Bridge in his honour. Wellington is remembered with numerous statues across the UK, for example in Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and London. The Glasgow statue is rarely found without a traffic cone on its head.

Duke of Wellington, Glasgow. Image via http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2456051

Robert Emmet

Robert Emmet, born at St. Stephen’s Green in March 1778, led the uprising of 1803 against British rule and was executed as a result. Remembered primarily for his excellent speech from the dock, Emmet has become one of the more romantic figures of Irish nationalism. There are four identical examples of Jerome Connor’s monument to Emmet to be found, located in Washington (on ‘Embassy Row’), San Francisco, Iowa and here in Dublin at Stephen’s Green.

Robert Emmet, San Francisco. Taken by Flickr user monikalel4

Bram Stoker

Born in Clontarf in November 1847, Stoker is of course best remembered for his work Dracula. Today, he is remembered with a statue in Bistrita-Nasaud county in northern Romania, a region closely associated with Stoker’s masterpiece. Recently, the Stoker family have come forward as saying they are willing to finance the costs which would need to be met to place a statue to Bram Stoker here in Dublin.

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Dublin’s first traffic lights, as shown in The Irish Press.

Recently I began attempting to establish when the first traffic lights in Dublin came into being. Many sources hinted at the Clontarf Road being able to claim the honour, with a set of lights placed there in 1893 by Fergus Mitchell, said to be the owner of the first car in Ireland. Why a single car would justify the presence of a traffic light is beyond me.

Newspaper reports show that the first traffic lights in Dublin city centre were erected over the second half of the 1930s, with the first set of traffic lights placed at the junction of Merrion Square and Clare Street in August 1937. There had been calls for traffic lights in Dublin in the years prior to this, as Belfast could already boast such a system, and the Irish Independent noted in 1936 that traffic signals in Dublin would “permit the public to cross with the hearts in the right place instead of their mouths”. It was reported in July 1937 that contracts had been signed with a London firm for the traffic lights and they would be on Dublin streets within a month.

The Irish Press reported on the unveiling of the first lights that:

Dubliners, ready at all times to stand and stare, had a regular field day yesterday when the new system of traffic lights, automatically controlled, came into operation at the junction of Merrion Street, Upper and Lower, Clare Street and Merrion Square.

The paper reported that Dubliners “thronged the pavements” to see the lights, but newspaper reports noted there was difficulties in the flow of traffic owing to tendency of Dubs to take no notice of the amber light, telling them to prepare to start.

A guide to the lights was printed in all daily newspapers at the time:

A guide to Dublin’s new traffic lights.

Following on from the success of the lights at Merrion Square, others followed around the city quickly, with the Clanbrassil Street junction and the junction of Northumberland Road and Haddington Road among others being identified as suitable locations. Interestingly, it was around this point that the Lord Mayor (Alife Byrne) first raised the idea of a specialist cyle lane in Dublin.

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I’ve got a few emails over the years from people looking for information on where they can buy Bernard Neary’s biography of famous Dublin Garda James ‘Lugs’ Branigan. It’s been an invaluable resource for me in researching Dublin youth criminality in the 1930s and 40s, and while very sympathetic overall, it does offer great insight into things like the Animal Gangs, Teddy Boys and other youth groups which have come and gone in the city.

Lugs Branigan illustration by Luke Fallon for Rabble magazine.

It seems the Gardaí have uploaded the now years out of print book as a PDF, which can be read and downloaded from here. It lacks the fantastic pictures in the original, and the introduction from a certain Mr.Haughey, but the bones of the work is there.

Nobody in Ireland would have believed, in the last days of the nineteen forties, that the next decade would produce the King of Rock and Roll, the film (or movie) Rock Around the Clock and the Teddy Boy cult, and that the new and exciting young social scene would make Jim ‘Lugs’ Branigan a household name throughout the country and a legend in his own lifetime.

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Behan reflects. (Image: Paul Reynolds)

John Coll’s monument to Brendan Behan is one of the most popular in the city, showing a young Behan sitting at the Royal Canal, with an inviting space next to him for passers by to join him. You often see everyone from down and outs to children sitting next to Brendan, and I’ve always thought it the perfect monument for such a man. A number of triangles appear in the bench, a reference to The Auld Triangle, a song written by Brendan’s talented brother Dominic for his brothers play The Quare Fellow. John Coll said at the time that such a monument, a bench that could be used by the public, was perfect as Behan was always “a man of the people and didn’t want to be on a pedestal.”

In 1980, when the idea of a monument to Brendan was first discussed by Dublin Corporation, Tony Gregory had suggested that perhaps an inner-city housing development should be named in his honour, which would be fitting given his families background in Russell Street prior to their moving to Crumlin (or ‘Siberia’ as the Behan brothers knew it!). Pat Carroll from Labour made the point Behan would “laugh to scorn” at the idea of a plaque in his honour in a city that had treated him in a “scandalous fashion”.

Rather oddly, when the fine monument was unveiled in 2003, it was man of the people Bertie Ahern that unveiled it, which caused significant controversy on the day. Paudge Behan, son of Behan’s widow Beatrice and the republican Cathal Goulding, took exception to Bertie’s presence at the event and noted that there was “nobody further removed” from the spirit of Brendan, when asked to follow up Ahern’s speech with a few words.

He went on to tell journalists “what has Bertie Ahern in common with Brendan Behan, other than they are both Irish? When you see what is happening with the fat cats in this country, with Bertie Ahern and his Government, I can’t think of anyone further from the spirit of Brendan Behan. Shannon being used as an American air base for waging war on another country, was that in the spirit of Brendan Behan?”

The event was an embarrasing day out for Fianna Fáil, with Bertie (who was joined by Royston Brady, the then Lord Mayor of Dublin) on the wrong side of an Anti Bin Tax picket, and the following days newspaper reports may have disproven Behan’s classic remark that “there’s no bad publicity except an obituary.”

Lucian Freud and Brendan Behan, at the Mansion House in 1952

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For anyone just stumbling across CHTM!, once a month or so the three writers behind this blog, joined by a small group of friends, visit five Dublin pubs and then write about our experiences. A different person each month picks the five pubs and makes sure not to give away any details beforehand. The reviews are often as varied as the pubs with the three different writing styles giving three very different narratives.

After twenty-one pub crawls many of us, including myself, believed that the days of crawls “between the canals” were perhaps over and that we’d permanently have to relocate to the suburbs. This crawl was designed to prove myself wrong.

A small but dedicated group of us met at Portobello Bridge on Sunday 1 July, the day of the UEFA Euro 2012 final.

Ushering people back across the bridge away from Portobello, I led them up Mountpleasant Avenue Lower which acts like a dividing point between Ranelagh and Rathmines. The residential area is host to a lovely pub by the name of Corrigans (aka The Mountpleasant Inn) which rests beside a little shop and surrounded by nothing else but houses and flats. A proper ‘local’. You’d have to know exactly where you were going in order to find it.

Corrigans (Rate My Area)

Coming in through the last door, we found ourselves in a spacious bar area. Certainly bigger from what it looks like from the outside. Its large windows ushered a lot of light into the room.  We had the place to ourselves and so nestled ourselves down at the back in the comfy seats. The friendly bartender who greeted us took our orders and dropped the pints down to us. We were all on Guinness and everyone agreed they were delicious. There was an overall ‘old-school’ feel about the place. “Green tiled walls and dark wooden floors” as Annie L. summed up on Yelp.ie

Established around 1914, the pub is still in the hands of Corrigan family after all these years. Obviously big sports fans there’s GAA and particularly Rugby memorabilia cover the walls.

Corrigans (Built Dublin)

Its main claim to fame is that it was used for the movie Young Cassidy (1964), a biographical drama based upon the life of the playwright Sean O’Casey directed by Jack Cardiff and John Ford and starring Rod Taylor, Julie Christie, and Maggie Smith. The pub, which was selected along with Mullligans of Poolbeg St and Fox’s in Glencullen, was chosen because it still had ‘its gaslights intact and its counter is divided up into cosy booths by the presence of ‘baffle-blinds’ mirrors’. A trailer for the film can be seen here.

All in all Corrigans is a stand up pub. Perfect location, nice interior, pleasant barstaff and decent pints at a reasonable price. Definitely up there with O’Connells on South Richmond St as the best pubs in the area.

Leading people back towards the canal, I took them down the scenic Charlemont Place and down to Leeson Street bridge. Our second pub of the day was The Leeson Lounge.

Leeson Lounge (Rate My Area)

I had been only once before. In September 2010 to see legendary guitarist Wilko Johnson (Dr. Feelgood) and bassist Norman Watt-Roy (Ian Dury & The Blockheads) play a very intimate gig.

A popular spot for Kilkenny GAA fans as former proprietor Paddy Morrisey was a proud Kilkenny man, the pub stands at the busy corner of Leeson St. Upper and Sussex Terrace. 46As and 145s whizz past it every couple of minutes.  Morrisey ran The Leeson Lounge from 1977 until his death in 2006. The walls are still lined with magnificent photographs from the past 100 years of GAA activity, mainly of the Kilkenny Cats.

The interior is quite bizarre. In a good way. A massive fish tank takes over a quite a lot of space while on the walls GAA photos and rockabilly gig posters fight for space. Open plan and spacious, an open door onto the road brought in cool air and light into the usually dark and slightly seedy room. A couple of regulars were propped up at the bar. There was no music  whats so sever and only a very quiet TV in the corner. A nice change to the blaring rubbish that some pubs force its customers to listen to.

Interior, Leeson Lounge. (Flickr User – Mark Waldron)

The pints, which were dropped down by the well-dressed, stylish barman, were ok. Nothing special but it is a cool little pub and I hope to check some more live gigs there soon. I’ve also heard the toasted sandwiches are excellent.

Next up was M.O’Briens which is situated immediately next door to The Leeson Lounge.

View of M.O’Briens from Sussex Rd. Leeson Lounge be can seen on the left. (M.O’Brien FB)

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