Come Here To Me!

James Spain was a 22-year-old Dubliner and member of the anti-Treaty IRA when he was shot dead by the Free State Army in November 1922. The killing took place in the area then known as Tenters Field off Donore Avenue, only minutes away from where Spain grew up. There is no plaque or monument to mark the spot of this incident. We have previously covered Noel Lemass and William Graham.

James was born on 18 November 1900 to Francis and Christina Spain, both originally from Dublin.

 

 

The 1901 census shows that the family were living at 63 Harty Place off Clanbrassil Street Lower. Francis (30) was a boot maker while his wife Christinia (24) looked after their three sons – Joseph (4) Francis Jr. (2) and James (4 months). All were Roman Catholic.

Ten years later the family had moved to 9 Geraldine Square off Donore Avenue. The 1911 census tells us that Francis (41), still a boot maker, and his wife Christina (35) were now living with their six sons and one daughter. These being Joseph (14), Francis Jr. (12), James (10), Annie (7) who were all at school along with Michael (5), John (3) and Patrick (1). Francis had Christina had been married for fifteen years.

At the time of his death in 1922, James Spain was listed as a upholster living at 9 Geraldine Square which corresponds with the census records. Relatives told the subsequent inquest that he had escaped from a military prison three weeks previously. His grave states that he was 1st lieutenant of A Company, 1st Batt. of the Dublin Brigade IRA.

Spain was a part of a 20-30 strong IRA team who launched a major military attack on Wellington Barracks (now Griffith Barracks) on the night of 8 November 1922. The principal attack was delivered at the rear of the barracks while shots were also fired from house-tops in the South Circular Road area.

The Irish Times, the following day, reported that the neighborhood was the:

” scene of a miniature battle. Thompson and Lewis guns answered each other with equal vigour, the sounds of the firing being heard all over the city … For nearly an hour ambulances were busy taking the wounded to hospital.

A total of 18 soldiers were hit. One was killed instantly and 17 were badly injured.

Republicans like Spain tried their best to flea the area and escape arrest. John Dorney writing in The Irish Story summarised that:

The Republicans made their escape across country, through the villages of Kimmage and Crumlin, pursued by Free State troops. They were seen carrying two badly wounded men of their own.

Spain ran north, possibly out of instinct, towards the Donore Avenue area and his home. Witnesses claim that he was dragged out of a house by soldiers and shot in Tenter Fields while the Army’s official version of events claim that he was shot in the Fields after he refused an order to stop running.

The Irish Times of 10 November 1922 reported on the events leading up to his death. Two hours after the attack on the barracks, Spain ran up to 22 Donore Road. Here a woman, Mrs. Doleman, was feeding her birds in the yard. He shouted “for god’s sake, let me in” and fell just as he got inside the gate but managed to make it the kitchen where he collapsed onto a sofa.  According to Dolenan, he was only there for a few minutes before a group of Free State soldiers ran into the house and grabbed Spain. Mrs. Doleman heard shots a few minutes after.

As often in these cases, this is where the story diverges slightly.

At the inquest, an unnamed member of the Free State Army reported that himself and five riflemen in a Lancia car came across one of the attackers (Spain) in Tenter Fields and “called on him to halt four or five times”. After this request was denied, they shot him and the man fell.

Either way, the body of this young 22 year old local was found at No. 7 Susan Terrace at the edge of Tenter Fields. He had been shot five times.

The Irish Independent on 11 November 1922 wrote:

The remains of Mr. James Spain … were last night removed from the Meath Hospital to the Carmelite Church, Whitefriar St. A man who was introduced at a previous protest meeting as Mr. O’Shea of Tipperary mounted the ruins in O’Connell St. last night and addressing those about him, asked that the meeting of protest against the treatment of prisoners be adjourned as a mark respect to the late Mr. Spain.

Two days later, the same newspaper reported on the funeral:

A number of the Cumann na mBan marched behind the hearse and there was a large cortege. The remains were received in the mortuary chapel by Rev. J. Fitzgibbon. A large numbers of wreaths were placed on the grave and three volleys from firearms were fired over the grave. The chief mourners were – Mr. F. Spain (father), Mrs. Spain (mother), Joe, Frank, Mickie, Jack, Paddy and Peadar (brothers), Annie, Molly and Crissie (sisters), Maggie and Mickie Spain (cousins), Annie and Mary Spain (aunts) and Jack Spain (uncle)

Spain was buried in the family plot in Glasnevin. Thanks to Shane Mac Thomais (of the Glasnevin Museum) for getting in touch and sending me the image of the grave.

James Spain was just one of dozens of young anti-Treaty IRA men who were killed by the Free State in Dublin from August 1922 to August 1923. Of the 26 murders as far as I can work out, 16 are marked by small monuments where the bodies were found.

If you have anymore information about James Spain, please get in touch by leaving a comment or emailing me at matchgrams(at)gmail.com

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There is an enduring legend that during one game of cricket in Trinity College, a stray ball broke a window of the exclusive Kildare Street Club at the corner of Kildare Street and Nassau Street. The story is usually associated with the legendary British Cricket player W.G. Grace who did visit Dublin a number of times in the late 19th century.

In 1897, witnesses are on the record saying hit a ball from College Park in Trinity over the fence and onto Nassau Street. Since then however, the story has grown legs and numerous individuals have been credited with his achievement.

James Joyce was obviously a fan of the legend as he wrote in Ulysses (1922):

Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather. Sit around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can’t play it here. Duck for six wickets. Still Captain Buller broke a window in the Kildare street club with a slog to square leg.

An online Joyce website has done extensive research on trying to find out who this Bulller referenced could have been.

Stephen Gwynn in his Dublin Old And New book, published in 1938, makes reference to the incident :

(In Trinity) more than one lusty man has lifted a ball to leg and broken a window in Nassau Street: indeed it sticks in my memory that in one of the first Australian teams, when Spofforth was dreaded as a demon bowler, a handsome giant, Bonner, hit a ball off an Irish bowler, to a measured distance of 175 yards

Sports journalist MVC in the Irish Independent on 19 July 1945 wrote:

Famous Cork County cricketer Major Parry … often delighted my young heart with some mighty hitting at College Park. Parry may not have accomplished the legendary feat of breaking a window in the Kildare Street Club but more than once I remember having to duck to avoid being decapitated by fierce hooks that went straight from the bat to the Nassau Street wall without the touching the ground. By way of a chance, can anybody tell me if the Kildare Street Club ever did suffer such an assault and by whom – or is the story as apocryphal as the one about somebody hitting from Rathmines to break the Town Hall Clock

He received a reply from an Enniskerry-based reader the following week:

A window of the Kildare Street Club was broken by a bat but (so far as I know) not by a cricket ball from College Park. In May 1922, I was in Kildare St. when some Army footballers returning from a playing pitch to Oriel House (Westland Row) kicked their ball football  in the street. One kick resulted in the smashing of a Kildare St. Club window. The ball was kicked by Capt. Charlie McCable and I think that later McCabe defrayed the glazing expenses.

An Irish Times writer, on a bus home, was retold the Grace story by a friend.

In the paper on 16 September 1954, he recounted the conversation with his companion:

“We are now passing the Kildare Street Club. Nearly a century ago, W.G. Grace broke a window in it with a slog to square leg”. My correction was instantaneous and stern. “It was not W.G. Grace. The man’s name was Tyndall, he was an Irishman, and it didn’t happen nearly a century ago”.

In the 1956 book Cricket in Ireland William Patrick Hone quotes Captain Fowler, the oldest cricketer member of the Kildare Street Club, as saying that the only window he ever heard of being broken “was when a sniper had a shot at Lord Fermoy and missed”.

In The Irish Times on 10 July 1956, ‘Skipper’ suggested that the feat was actually accomplished by a Scottish student:

Scotland were meeting Dublin University … in College Park, and finding themselves a man short, invited “RH”, who was then a student at Edinburgh Veterinary College, to play for them. He accepted, and during his inning he hit two balls into Nassau Street, one of which smashed a window in a cab parked on the roadway, while the other rebounded from the wall of the Kildare street Club. The ‘cabby’ was amply recompensed for the broken window and the balls in question were retrieved in the ordinary way.

An Irish Times article from 11 October 1972 adds even more elaborate details :

W.G. Grace hit a six from Trinity College Park which landed in the Earl of Meath’s custard, thus giving rise to the timeless saying “Waiter, there’s a cricket ball in my soup!”

But while a football and a snipers shot did break windows of the Kildare Street Club, it would seem that that the Cricket ball story is indeed just legend.

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On March 31st 1971, a small protest by activists from the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement grabbed nationwide media attention. Angered by the decision of the Seanad not to allow a reading for Senator Mary Robinson’s Contraceptive Bill which could have led to the legalisation of contraception, fifteen women who were accompanied by children made their way to the gates of Leinster House, forcing their way into the grounds. Shortly after 3pm, the women made their way through the Merrion Street gates, before a few of them snuck into the building through the open window of the male bathrooms!

Among the women who partook in the protest were the journalist Mary Kenny, Sinn Féin secretary Mairin de Burca and Margaret Gaj. Gaj was a fascinating character, born in Glasgow to Irish parents in the year 1919, she was a veteran of the women’s movement and many other progressive movements in Irish society. She also owned the popular restaurant and hangout Gaj’s on Baggot Street. In a 2011 obituary for Mrs. Gaj, Rosita Sweetman noted that ” trade unionists, aristocrats, lawyers, bank robbers, prostitutes, students, artists, prisoners, civil-rights activists and Women’s Libbers all rubbed shoulders around the scrubbed hardwood tables.”

The group made their way into the grounds of Leinster House singing ‘We Shall Not Conceive’ to the tune of ‘We Shall Overcome’, and were refused permission to speak to any Senators following the decision of the Seanad not to discuss the issue. One individual who did speak to the women was Joseph Leneghan, the Fianna Fáil T.D for West Mayo. The journalist Mary Kenny was among the protesting women, and raised the issue of his use of the term “whores knickers” in the Dáil with Leneghan. The Irish Times reported that “Mr Leneghan- he comes from Belmullet,said that knickers hadn’t come to his part of the country yet; they’d only reached Ballina.”

Leneghan went one better by offering to bring the women to the Dáil bar, and “he was preparing to lead them through the entrance but the attendant would only admit him and not the entourage.”

Three of the women (Mairin de Burca, Finn O’Connor and Hilary Orpen) noticed an open window they squeezed through, which led to the male toilets. Locking themselves in for some time, they succeeded in attracting the attention of several Senators who did come to speak to them. On being evicted from the premises, some of the protesters claimed to have been assaulted by Gardaí and registered complaints at Pearse Street Garda station.

While this invasion of Leinster House through the window of the toilets is a comical enough story, the women’s movement in the 1970s had serious teeth, and led many important progressive campaigns in Ireland, from opposing censorship (see this CHTM post on Spare Rib magazine) to the battle for contraception in Ireland. Not long after this event, the famed ‘Contraception Train’ action would follow, grabbing national and international attention.

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Glasnevin Museum are currently playing home to a beautiful old tramcar, which is on loan from the National Transport Museum in Howth. With this being the year of the centenary of the 1913 Lockout, which involved Dublin tram workers, there is no more fitting time for Dubliners to see this iconic form of public transport. The tram is at Glasnevin until this Saturday, and was on-site for the anniversary of Jim Larkin’s passing yesterday:

I couldn’t resist getting a snap with the tram, which is bedecked with slogans of the union movement from the period:

Jer O’Leary, the Dublin actor who performs the role of Jim Larkin with great passion, done the very same. Last year I saw Ger deliver one of Larkin’s speeches to a class of schoolchildren in Ringsend, one of the areas in Dublin which was caught up in the labour dispute. Anyone who hasn’t can see Jer in action here.

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We’ve recently had some posts on the history of football hooliganism in Dublin, which have attracted considerable interest. It’s the tip of the iceberg with a lot more study to be done in the area, but over the course of my research I came across this pretty comical article from the Sunday Independent, of a Benny Hill like operation at Milltown which resulted in a mob attacking a bus in a case of mistaken identity.I’m a bit confused by the report though, as Miltown was the home of Shamrock Rovers at the time. Anyone know more about this one?

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January 30th marks the anniversary of Jim Larkin, who died in 1947. The Irish Press reported on the day after his passing that it marked the end of an epoch in Irish history, and that “with him to the grave goes the turbulence and tumult of 1913.” Larkin was 72 years old at the time of his passing, and to this day remains a giant of not only trade union history in the city of Dublin but also the collective memory of the capital. On the day following his death, Sean O’Casey paid tribute to ‘Big Jim’ in the pages of the national media, where he was quoted as saying:

It is hard to believe that this great man is dead; that this lion of the Irish Labour movement will roar no more. When it seemed that every man’s hand was against him the time he led workers through the tremendous days of 1913 he wrested tribute of Ireland’s greatest and most prominent men.

O’Casey noted that Larkin was far and away above the orthodox labour leader, “for he combined within himself the imagination of the artist, with the fire and determination of a leader of the downtrodden class.”

To deny that Larkin was an at-times difficult character is to deny the truth, and many biographies of Larkin give insight into what was at times a dangerously sharp tongue and what historian Emmet O’Connor perfectly described in his biography of Jim as a “brash personality.” His clashes with others in the union movement like William O’Brien on occasion quite literally divided the movement, yet he remains the most inspirational figure to arise from the pages of Irish labour history, on par with the Edinburgh born James Connolly.

The funeral of the Liverpool born agitator brought thousands of Dubliners onto the street. The removal alone witnessed thousands coming out to see the body removed to St Mary’s Church, draped in the Plough and the Stars, the flag of the Irish Citizen Army of which Larkin had been a founding member. Prior to this the body had been at Thomas Ashe Hall, and The Irish Times noted that “the guard of honour who kept watch beside the coffin throughout Saturday were drawn from members of the Irish Citizen Army and veterans of the 1913 labour struggle.” Among the messages of sympathy received was one from Archbishop McQuaid, along with others from the international trade union movement. George Bernard Shaw told the media that “we all have to go. He done many a good days work.”

Thousands lined the route of the funeral procession from St Mary’s Church to Glasnevin Cemetery, and the scale of the turnout is obvious from reports, which noted for example that at Liberty Hall 1,200 Dublin dockers formed a guard of honour. The mass itself had been celebrated by John Charles McQuaid, and John Cooney notes in his biography of McQuaid that “while the poor poured out their grief at Larkin’s death, McQuaid thanked God that the man long feared as the anti-Christ had died with Rosary beads wrapped around his hands. Larkin’s pious death was McQuaid’s most treasured conversion.”

At Glasnevin Cemetery the oration was delivered by William Norton, Labour T.D. Norton told the crowd that: “If each of us here would resolve to reunite our movement, to eliminate the bickering, the pettiness and the trivialities which divide and impede us, our success in achieving a united movement is assured.” It was not until 1990 that SIPTU was formed from a merger of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union and the Federated Workers’ Union of Ireland.

Multitext, UCC’s remarkable online project in Irish history, contains fantastic images of Larkin’s removal and funeral. We have reproduced them below. Larkin remains a giant of Dublin history and the story of the Irish working class, and he should be remembered with pride on this year in particular, which marks the centenary of the 1913 dispute.

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On Wednesday 23 January, RTE’s Nationwide programme had a special feature on the Jewish community in Dublin. It can be watched, anytime over the next sixteen days, on the RTE Player here.

It includes:

– Elaine Brown and her daughter Melaine taking Mary Kennedy on a tour of Clanbrassil Street and helping to identify Jewish shops from a 1965 RTE documentary.

– A feature on the originally Jewish Bretzel Bakery (estd. 1870) in Portobello which has had its Kosher status re-established since William Despard and Cormac Keenan took over in 2000. Also includes interview with Cantor Shulman whose job is to inspect the bakery and make sure it is following the Kosher rules.

– Detailed story of Ettie Steinberg, the only Irish born victim of the Holocaust. She grew up on Raymond Terrace off the South Circular Road and was educated in St. Catherine’s School on Donore Avenue. Ettie was murdered with her German husband in Auschwitz. Includes interviews with Dubliner and Irish-Jewish genealogist Stuart Rosenblatt and Yvonne Altman O’Connor of the Irish Jewish Museum

 

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Lord Edward Fitzgerald is one of the most romantic figures in Irish history, a rebel aristocrat associated with the failed revolution of 1798, known as the ‘Citizen Lord’. He is today buried in Saint Werburgh’s Church near to Dublin Castle, an institution he hoped to overthrow by force. A small plaque on the front of the church marks this fact, and it’s one of the great ironies of the city that Major Henry C. Sirr who captured him is buried in the graveyard at the back of the church.

One figure associated with Edward Fitzgerald I’ve been fascinated by for a while now is Tony Small, an escaped slave Fitzgerald encountered in the United States who he later employed as a personal assistant. Small became a frequent sight around Dublin in the 1780s and 1790s, in a city where coloured men were few and far between. Fitzgerald commissioned a portrait of Small in 1786 by the artist Thomas Roberts:

In her brilliant biography of Fitzgerald, Stella Tillyard noted that “If Lord Edward’s mother was his great love, his constant companion was Tony Small, the runaway slave who saved his life in North America in 1781”, and she went on to note that “Tony embodied and brought to life his master’s commitment to freedom and equality for all men.”

Small had witnessed the British and Americans at war firsthand in 1781, as when his owners had fled South Carolina with their possessions and slaves, Tony had escaped and stayed on. On the 8th September 1781, Tony wandered onto a battlefield, and as Tillyard has noted he stumbled across “the blood-soaked uniform of a British officer of the 19th Regiment of Foot. The man was alive but unconscious, overlooked by the search parties of both sides.” The man was Edward Fitzgerald, and when he next awoke he was in the small hut Tony Small knew as his home. Fitzgerald offered Small liberty, and a new life working as his servant, in return for wages. An incredible and unlikely friendship had been born.

Kevin Whelan discusses the friendship between the two in his entry on Lord Edward Fitzgerald for the Dictionary of Irish Biography, noting that “The best-documented Irish example of imaginative sympathy between a white and a black man is the subsequent relationship between Fitzgerald and Small. Until his death in 1798, in a sprawling career that took him across much of Europe, America, and Canada, Fitzgerald never subsequently parted from his ‘faithful Tony’.”

In time, this one-time British soldier and darling of the Ascendancy class was converted towards the ideas of republicanism, the influence of writers such as Thomas Paine and personal observation on the streets of France inspiring this total shift in identity and politics. It was not until 1796 that Fitzgerald joined the United Irishmen, but the seeds had long been planted.

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William Graham was a 23-year-old Dubliner and member of the anti-Treaty IRA when he was shot dead by the Free State Army in November 1922 at Leeson Street Bridge. There is no plaque or monument to mark the spot of his incident.

William was born in 1900 to William Sr. and Mary Graham, both originally from Wexford. The 1901 census shows that the family were living at 5.3 Cornmarket, the road that links High Street (by St. Audoen’s Church) and Thomas Street. William Sr (43) was a Stationery Engine Driver while his wife Mary (39) looked after their four sons and three daughters. All were Roman Catholic. Myles (15) was a messenger at the GPO and Alice (14) was an apprentice in a shirt factory. John (10), Katie (7), James (5) and Bridget (3) were at school while young William (1) was only a baby.

Ten years later the family had moved around the corner to 4.5 Ross Road, part of the Corporation Buildings. This road connects High Street with Winetavern Street.

The 1911 census tells us William Sr. had died sometime during the last decade. He left his widow Mary (50)  along with his children Alice (26), a Cake Packer, John (20), a Van Driver, Cathrine/Katie (17), no occupation listed, and James (15), a Telegraph Messenger. Myles had left the family home by this stage. Bridget (13) and William (11) were both at school. Denis Lennon (54), an illterate single man from Wexford listed as Mary’s brother in law, also lived with the family.

At the time of his death in 1922, William Graham was listed as living at 4 Ross Road which corresponds with the census records. Interestingly, 4 Ross Road is the address given by two insurgents who were arrested after the Easter Rising in 1916. These were Peter Kavanagh, a plumber’s assistant, and Patrick Kavanagh, a fitter’s assistant. The 1911 census shows that there were two Kavanagh families living in the Ross Road Corporation Buildings, however, only one matches the above names.

‘Cristíona Ní Fhearghaill bean Seáin Uí Caomhánaigh’ which translates as ‘Christina Farrell, wife of John Kavanagh’ was living at 2.2 Ross Road in 1911 with her three sons and two daughters –  Máire (22), Peadar (16), Padraig (13), Samuel (10) and Cáitlín (7). Mary were listed as working as a ‘bean fuaghala’ (seamstress) while Peter is down as a ‘buachaill oiffige’ (office boy). Patrick, Samuel and Kathleen were at school.

Irish Volunteer William Christian from Inchicore recorded in his witness statement that:

On Easter Monday I was mobilised by Peter Kavanagh. He was then living in Ross Road and he desired me to pass on the news to any of the other volunteers who might be perhaps living in the neighborhood. I knew of nobody save my pal, James Daly, so I called fro him and both of us proceeded to Earlsfort Terrace…” (BMH WS 646)

IRA officer Seamus Kavanagh from Clanbrassil Street records in his Witness Statement (No. 1053) that Peader Kavanagh was a member of ‘C’ Company who fought in Bolands Bakery. It is not known where Padraig fought.

It is interesting that the two Kavanagh brothers, living at 2 Ross Road in 1911, would give their address as 4 Ross Road after the Rising in 1916. While I can’t find any evidence that the 16 year old William Graham played any role in the Rising, there is no doubt that he would have been politicalised by the event and, in particular, the arrests of his two neighbors. Or perhaps they were actually living with the Graham family in 1916?

The only reference that I can find of Graham in the Witness Statements from Stephen Keys who was Section Commander of ‘A’ Company, 3rd Batt. Dublin Brigade IRA from 1918-23. Quite bizarrely, he calls him ‘Kruger Graham’ and I haven’t yet been able to find out why. (Kruger seems to be a name associated with South Africa)

Stephen Keys gives a first hand account of the events, that himself and Graham were involved in during the winter of 1922, leading up to his death:

At the next attempt to blow up Oriel House, my job was to take away the men and cover the retreat … I commandeered a car from Leeson St. I was not able to crank the motor and I always had to leave the engines running. The mine went off with such force that you would be blown off your feet … The lads ran by … The last to come was Kruger Graham … (he) jumped into the back of the car and said, “Drive Steve. They are all out. I am the last”

Oriel House, at the intersection of Westland Row and Fenian Street, was the HQ of the feared and hated Free State Intelligence Department. Today, it is owned by TCD and is the headquarters for CTVR, The Telecommunications Research Centre.

Stephen Keys goes on to say that after the aformentioned attempt on Oriel House, their next engagement was “…sticking up an armed guard at Harcourt St. railway.”. He describes this as “a battalion job (with) mostly ‘A’ Company men” involved. We can come to the conclusion that William Greham was a member of the 3rd Batt. of the IRA and quite possibly ‘A’ Company.

Keys writes:

I had another car on this occasion, an open car. They were to bring down the rifles from the railway and load them into the car. Willie Rower was on this job and he shot someone, which disorganised the plan and spoiled the job. I drove around, thinking I would pick up some men who might be straggling around the place.

The Irish Independent of 28 November 1922 wrote that a Lt. Comdt. of the Free State Army was “on duty in the vicinity of Harcourt St … with 3 whippet cars and a tender (when) shortly after 9pm … he heard shooting.”. This patrol rushed to Harcourt Station and found one of the guards there had been disarmed.

After finding out what had happened, he collected his men and proceeded along Hatch Street to Leeson Street. Here, three men were spotted by the bridge. The Free State soldiers called on them to halt. Searching the trio, they found nothing on the first man but they discovered that Graham had a fully loaded Webley revolver tucked down his trousers.

This is when the story diverges slightly.

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Isolde’s Tower on Exchange Street Lower was discovered in 1993, during work on the renovation of the Temple Bar area. During excavations on the site of five demolished Georgian houses, archaeologists found the base of the Tower, which served as the north-east corner tower of the 13th century city wall of Dublin. Prior to the demolition of the Georgian houses, they had been occupied for a period by a group calling itself the Society against the Destruction of Dublin, joined by Green Party Councillor Ciaran Cuffe. The find below the Georgian homes sparked huge media interest, and it was estimated by historians and archaeologists that the tower had once stood at 30-40ft, prior to being demolished sometime in the 17th century.

The firm of architects responsible for demolishing the Georgian houses and building apartment blocks in the location, Gilroy and McMahon, promised to incorporate the archaeologists findings into their project. This fantastic video from the Dublin City Walls App gives some idea of how the incredible tower may have appeared.

True to their word, the remains of the tower were incorporated into the apartment complex of the same name. However one of my pet hates about this part of town is the manner in which they are almost always covered up by bins connected to the complex, as this image shows. It seems a real pity that such a gem of an archaeological find is blocked from view.

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Last Sunday, nine of us made the trek from the car park of Montpelier Hill to the Captain Noel Lemmas memorial deep in the Dublin Mountains. While Ciaran is due to post up some pictures from this memorable journey, I thought it would be no harm to talk a little about Captain Noel Lemass and his isolated monument

Captain Noel Lemass (1897-1923) of the  3rd Battalion, Dublin Brigade IRA fought in the General Post Office (GPO) during the Easter Rising of 1916, took an active part in the War of Independence (1919-1921) and joined the occupation of the Four Courts after taking the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War. His younger brother Sean, who had a similar military career, would go on to become Ireland’s fourth Taoiseach.

After the fall of the Four Courts, Noel was imprisoned but managed to escape and make his way to England. He returned to Ireland during the summer of 1923 when the ceasefire was declared. Returning to work at Dublin Corporation, he asked the town clerk John J. Murphy if he would forward a letter to the authorities that he planned to write “stating that he had no intention of armed resistance to the Government”. (1)

In July 1923, two months after the Civil War ended, Noel was kidnapped in broad daylight by Free State agents outside MacNeils Hardware shop, at the corner of Exchequer and Drury Street.

Three months later, on 13th October, his mutilated body was found on the Featherbed Mountain twenty yards from the Glencree Road, in an area known locally as ‘The Shoots’. It was likely that he was killed elsewhere and dumped at this spot.

The Leitrim Observer of 20 October 1923 described that Civic Guards found his body:

clothed in a dark tweed suit, light shirt, silk socks, spats and a knitted tie. The pockets contained a Rosary beads, a watch-glass, a rimless glass, a tobacco pouch and an empty cigarette case. The trousers’ pockets were turned inside out, as if they had been rifled. There was what appeared to be an entrance bullet wound on the left temple, and the top of the skull was broken, suggesting an exit wound.

Noel was shot at least three times in the head and his left arm was fractured. His right foot was never found.

Meeting two days later, Dublin Council passed a strongly worded vote of sympathy with his family. Describing their fellow employee as an “esteemed and worthy officer of the Council who had been foully and diabolically murdered”, the Council adjourned for one week as a mark or respect.  (2)

It was believed that many that a Free Stater Captain James Murray was behind the murder.

His funeral was described by The Irish Times on 17 October 1923 as “ranking with some of the largest seen in the city in recent years”. The hearse was preceded by the Connolly Pipers’ Band and followed by members of the Cumann na mBan, Women’s Citizens Army, Sinn Fein Clubs, Prisoners’ Defence League, many recently released prisoners, representatives of various  bodies and numerous well-known Republicans including George Noble Plunkett (father of Joseph Plunkett), Constance Markievicz and Maud Gonne.

A year later, a memorial cross was erected at the spot where his body was found.

MJ Freeney, on a hill walking trip, wrote in the Sunday Independent on 24 July 1927:

Our road wound to the right and soon we a met sharp turn on our left. Having negotiated this, we found ourselves on the wild Featherbed Pass. Civilisation had been left far behind. Our only companions were rough mountain sheep and strange wild birds. Truly no lonelier spit could be found. And then a glance to our left. There in the wilderness was a cross. What strange object in such a place. We read the name – Captain Noel Lemass

The Irish Times of 12 September 1932 reported on the “first public commemoration” of the late Captain Noel Lemass which saw:

Omnibuses and motor cars .. (bring) hundreds to the scene, whilst still greater numbers made the journey on foot

The Chairman of the Noel Lemass Cumann of Fianna Fail (Mansion House Ward), George White, laid a wreath at the foot of the cross while The Last Post was sounded by Owen Somers. Joseph O’Connor of the 3rd Battalion delivered the oration:

Noel Lemass… joined the movement in 1916 and was wounded in O’Connell Street in that year, and in 1917 he assisted in reforming the organisation and served in it right up to the time of his death .. He was one of the typical young men in the Republican movement, animated by one great motive – the desire for freedom

In 1932, Sean Leamass (then Minister for Trade and Commerce) led the pilgrimage to the monument. Four years later, several hundred people traveled by bus and motor car to the ‘sequestered spot in the Dublin Mountains’ where the body of Noel Lemass was found.

As far as I can work out, there were annual pilgrimages to the spot in Featherfed mountain from 1932 until at least 1977.

Every year saw hundreds descend on the remote spot to pay their respects.

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While Dublin is a city of many plaques which mark historic locations, there are still a few missing which would help tell the story of the capital to natives and visitors alike. One of these locations to me is Vaughan’s Hotel on Parnell Square, a premises which had a strong connection to the Irish revolutionary period and Michael Collins in particular. Parnell Square plays a crucial role in Irish republican history. It was there that the decision to stage an uprising was reached prior to 1916, it was there that the occupation of the Rotunda occurred in 1922, it was there that An Phoblacht did (and does) have its headquarters, and it was even there that the Blueshirt movement had their offices in the 1930s.

Vaughan’s Hotel was acquired in 1953 by the Workers Union of Ireland, and remains a home of the trade union movement to this day. The sale of the building in 1953 attracted some controversy, owing to the strong connection between the premises and the War of Independence. The Irish Times reported on an auction of the hotels contents in November 1953, writing that:

Just how did a Hotel in the centre of the city come to be so closely associated with Michael Collins and the republican movement? Writing in one of his popular Irish Press columns, ‘Down Dublin Streets’, Eamonn MacThomais noted that Vaughan’s had first opened at no.29, at the corner on Granby Row and Lane, next to a premises owned by a surgeon doctor, and next to it was the Civil Service Institute. When Vaughan’s grew, it acquired the premises next to the Civil Service Institute, and both of these premises nestled between the two ends of Vaughan’s gave the cover or the impression of a respectable and law-abiding square! The Hotel had the added advantage of a long back garden running parallel with Granby Lane, and a system was developed whereby a “flowerpot in the back window told Michael Collins and his men to keep away from Vaughan’s Hotel.”

Many veterans of the revolutionary period discussed Vaughan’s Hotel in their statements to the Bureau of Military History. Frank Henderson told the Bureau how Vaughan’s was just one of a number of premises in the area republicans used, noting that: “As well as Vaughan’s Hotel there were James Kirwan’s publichouse in Parnell Street and Flynn’s in Moore Street, where I sometimes contacted the Director of Organisation and where I used see at the same time Michael Collins, Piaras Beasley and other G.H.Q. officers.”

Piaras Beaslaí wrote an article on the Hotel for the Irish Independent in 1966, writing that:

From the beginning of 1920 until November 21st – “Bloody Sunday”- hardly a night passed when some Directors and officers of the G.H.Q did not meet in the smoke room of Vaughan’s Hotel in Parnell Square, Dublin, partly to transact business, partly to relax and indulge in general conversation, which however, seldom lasted long without bringing in topics concerned with the struggle with which we were engaged.

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