Come Here To Me!

Introduction

The social life of a gay man in Dublin in the early 1970s was summed up as such by one contributor in the book Coming Out (2003):

As for most of us, being gay in those days was a very lonely experience. There weren’t many opportunities to meet gay people, unless you knew of the one bar – two bars, actually, in Dublin at that time, Bartley Dunne’s and Rice’s … They were the two pubs and if you hadn’t met gay people, you wouldn’t have known about these pubs; there was no advertising in those days, and it was all through word-of mouth.

Bartley Dunne’s and Rice’s proved to be critical points of social interaction and first emerged as gay- friendly pubs in the late 1950s and early 1960s. George Fullerton, who emigrated to London in 1968, was quoted in Dermot Ferritier’s book Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (2009) as saying that:

In 1960s Dublin the [gay] scene basically consisted of 2 pubs – Rice’s and Bartley Dunne’s. I never experienced discrimination as such, probably because we were largely invisible.

There are no traces left of either establishment. Rice’s, at the corner of Stephen’s Green and South King Street, was demolished in 1986 to make way for the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre. While Bartley Dunne’s, on Stephen’s Street Lower beside the Mercer Hospital, was torn down in 1990 and replaced with the Break for the Border pub and nightclub.

On a side note, some people may be surprised to hear that gay taverns in England date back to the 1720s (Molly houses) while more ‘modern’ establishments like Café ‘t Mandje in Amsterdam have been open since 1927.

Many in both the gay and straight community have described Rice’s and Bartley Dunne’s as deserving the title of being the city’s first gay friendly pubs. Why these two particular pubs though?

Most people point to the fact that both were in close proximity to the Gaiety Theatre and St. Stephen’s Green which at the time was a popular gay cruising area.

Paul Candon in Gay Community News (February 1996) labeled Bartley Dunne’s as “the first gay pub as we know it in the city” and also referenced Rice’s. He said there was a total of five regular gay-friendly bars to choose from in the 1960s in the Stephen’s Green/Grafton Street area. The other three being the short-lived Kings (opposite the Gaiety Theatre), The Bailey and Davy Byrne’s, both on Duke Street.

Rosemary Flowers told me via Facebook (20 Oct 2015):

My memories are from the mid 1960s but my dad worked in Renshaw’s opposite Mercer’s Hospital from 1955 and he was aware of the gay clientele in Rices, Dunne’s and The Bailey. In Rice’s. when I knew it, most of the gay men were in the front part. The ‘arty’ crowd mostly stuck to Rice’s and the younger crowd to Dunne’s. The Gardaí for the most part left them alone as they included some very famous names. The odd time they hassled the younger men in Dunne’s. Bruxelles was also a gay -friendly place for soldiers & a recruiting ground for mercenaries who were thrown out of the army. It was a much ‘butcher’ crowd in the Bailey and Bruxelles. Rice’s and Dunne’s had a very middle-class clientele.

Kevin Myers wrote in The Irish Times (18 May 1995) of his student days in UCD in the late 1960s and how he discovered that “Rice’s … (was) in part a gay bar … Bartley Dunne’s was another”. Furthermore Bartley Dunne’s was described as “the most famous and oldest gay bar in Dublin'” by Victoria Freedman in The cities of David: the life of David Norris (1995).

One contributor to Coming out: Irish gay experiences (2003) talks about coming up to Dublin in the late 1970s from the country and spending “vast amounts of time in Rice’s, Bartley Dunne’s and the Hirschfield Centre”. Patrick Hennessy made a similar comment on an Irish Times article about the death of early LGBT campaigner in Christopher Robson in March of this year:

Yes farewell to one who fought the good fight back in the days when young and not so young men would come round to the Hirschfeld Centre nervously asking for info. Or sitting in circles exchanging their first tentative views in public about being gay. And then a few weeks later you might see one or two of them sipping a drink in a corner of Bartley Dunne’s or Bobby Rice’s.

The 1971 edition of ‘Fielding’s Travel Guide to Europe’ described “the historic Bailey, entirely reconstructed” as being full of “hippie types and Gay Boys”. It went onto say that neither it nor Davy Byrne’s would be “recommended for the “straight” traveller”.

Bartley Dunne’s, 32 Stephens St Lwr

In 1940, Hayden’s pub (“a well known seven-day licensed premises”) on Stephen’s Street Lower was put on the market after the owner James Bernard Hayden declared bankruptcy. In a related series of events, it was reported in the Irish Press (26 September 1940) that Gardaí had objected to renewing the pub’s licence on the grounds that the premises was not being conducted “in a peaceful and orderly manner'”. It had only closed one day the previous year.

The licence was taken over in August 1941 by Bartholomew ‘Bartley’ Dunne. A native Irish speaker from Kilconly, Tuam, County Galway, he had returned to Dublin after nearly 40 years of living and working in Manchester where had been prominent in the United Irish League and the Banba Branch of the Gaelic League. Bartley Dunne’s pub could “boast a distinguished clientele” in the mid 1940s according to the Nationalist and Leinster Times (23 Nov 1946). Popular with “cross-channel visitors, it frequently affords glimpses of such celebrities” as Dylan Thomas (Welsh poet); Sorley MacLean (Scottish Gaelic poet) and Valentine McEntee MP.

I assume Bartley Sr. retired sometime in the 1950s. He died on 25 June 1961 aged 85. His two sons – Bartley Jr. (known as Barry) and Gerard (known as Gerry) – had been working in the pub for sometime and took it over then. They built up a reputation for stocking exotic drinks from all over the world. Barry later recalled to The Irish Times (07 Sep 1985) that “there was a time when, if a customer wanted a particular drink and we didn’t have it in stock, he got something else for free”. We take it for the granted the range of drinks available in Dublin bars today but Bartley Dunne’s was really a trailblazer. It offered saki, tequila and ouzo before any other place in the city. Mary Frances Kennedy writing in The Irish Times (15 July 1960) was amazed at the range of wines available including Bull’s Blood of Eger (11s 6d a bottle); Balatoni Reisling (10s a bottle); Tokak Aszu (19s 6d a bottle) and Samos Muscatel (11 6d a bottle).

It would seem that Bartley Dunne’s (known to many as BD’s), which had already been attracting Dublin’s avant garde and theatre crowd, started to become gay-friendly by the late 1950s.

David Norris visited the pub as a schoolboy in his late teens circa 1961/62. In his 2012 autobiography ‘A Kick Against The Pricks’, he wrote:

Towards the end of my schooldays I started to explore a little. I had a kindred spirit in school and we occasionally visited a city centre bar called Bartley Dunne’s which was a notorious haunt of the homosexual demi-monde. It was an Aladdin’s cave to me, its wicker-clad Chianti bottles stiff with dribbled candlewax, tea chests covered in red and white chequered cloths, heavy scarlet velvet drapes and an immense collection of multi-coloured liqueurs glinting away in their bottles.

The place was (full) of theatrical old queens, with the barmen clad in bum-freezer uniforms. While not being gay themselves, as far as I know, the Dunne brothers were quite theatrical in their own way. Barry would hand out little cards, bearing the legend ‘Bartley Dunne’s, reminiscent of a left bank bistro, haunt of aristocrats, poets and artists’. Whatever about that, Saturday night certainly resembled an amateur opera in full swing. There only ever seemed to be two records played over the sound system: ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’ by Edith Piaf, and Ray Charles’ ‘Take These Chains From My Heart’.

Brian Lacey in his excellent book Terrible Queer Creatures: A History of Homosexuality in Ireland (2008) noted that among the many characters that frequented the bar was the then virtually unknown Norman Scott, whose 1960s affair with Jeremy Thorpe (later to become leader of the British Liberal Party) forced him to resign from the party in 1976. Scott lived in a flat near Leinster Road while in Dublin. Ulick O’Connor mentioned in his diaries that Scott also had a long relationship with an unidentified person prominent in an Irish political party.

It was noted in The Irish Times (22 March 1967) that Moscow journalist Lev Sedin, who has visited Dublin a number of times, had recently published a book on Ireland that dealt with politics and economics as well as more “frivolous subjects”. One of these was a lyrical poem about Bartley Dunne’s and his experience there of being consulted on the correct pronunciation of the Russian wines in stock. Sedin recommended the pub to anyone in Europe “who wished to imbibe true culture”.

A writer going by ‘Endymion’ in a 1968 Dublin guide book described Bartley Dunne’s as the city’s “most unusual pub'” Its clientele was an “an odd mixture of bohemians and down-to-earth Dubliners [that] creates an atmosphere which would have interested James Joyce.”

The pub was described by Roy Bulson in ‘Irish Pubs Of Character’ (1969) as:

one of Dublin’s most unusual pubs with its Continental atmosphere. Well worth a visit to mix with a variety of characters. Ask for the wine list which is one of the most reasonably priced and extensive in Dublin.

Bartley Dunne’s had a “French bistro ambience” with prints on the walls by Cezanne, Monet, and Picasso as well as Parisian theatre posters and photographs of film stars. It was also famous for its dimly lit nooks and crannies. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton drank there regularly in 1965 during the filming of ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ as did actors Kim Novak and Laurence Harvery when they took time off from filming Of Human Bondage at Ardmore Studios. Noël Coward was another visitor.

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‘Crime in the City: Crime & History’ is a series of upcoming talks being organised in the Central Library, inside of the Ilac Centre.

All of the talks are free to attend and I’m actually giving one myself, which will focus on the ‘Animal Gang’, anti-communism and gang violence in 1930s Dublin. Also speaking are some of my favourite authors and bloggers, including Finbar from the Irish History Podcast on the subject of crime in medieval Dublin, and Joe Joyce, author of a brilliant biography of the Guinness family and a regular contributor to The Irish Times.

All talks take place on Thursday’s, and kick off at 1pm. My talk is designed to tie-in with the recent release of Locked Out: A Century of Irish Working-Class Life, which includes a chapter from me on the ‘Animal Gang’. Feel free to attend, but also please inform others who you think may be interested.

Joe Joyce: 3rd October
Joe is author of ‘The Boss’, ‘The Trigger Man’, ‘The Guinnesses: the untold story of Ireland’s most successful family’ and ‘The Tower’. His most recent book ‘Echoland’ is set in a divided Dublin in June 1940.

Donal Fallon: 10th October
Donal is co-author of ‘Come Here To Me: Dublin’s Other History’ and a regular contributor to the ‘Come here to Me’ blog. He will speak on ‘The Animal Gangs’ and gang violence in 1930’s Dublin.

Michael Russell: 17th October
Michael is author of ‘City of Shadows’ and the sequel ‘City of Strangers’. Both books are set in 1930’s Dublin. ‘City of Strangers’ will be published in November 2013. ‘City of Shadows’ was longlisted for a (Crime Writers Association) John Creasey Award in the UK this year.

Finbar Dwyer: 24th October
Finbar is an historian and founder of http://www.irishhistorypodcast.ie. His forthcoming book is called ‘Witches, Heretics and Stockholm Syndrome: Stories from Medieval Ireland’.

Kevin McCarthy: 31st October
Kevin is the author of the historical crime novels ‘Peeler’ and ‘Irregulars’. ‘Irregulars’ was released in May and is a detective story centred in the Monto and set during the civil war in 1922.

Here is a very interesting account from the summer of 1982 of fifteen men and women from the gay community who visited a total of eight pubs in Dublin city centre and recorded their experiences.

I found it on the excellent Irish Queer Archive facebook page.

The eight pubs visited were The Viking, The Oak Tree, The Grannery (sic), The Clarence Hotel,  The Lord Edward, The Castle Inn, Rices and Fives.

I thought it would be interesting to collate the experiences  of the group in each pub and find out whether that particular establishment is still open 31 years later.

1. The Viking, 75 Dame Street.

Some of the group were allowed in, others were not. This did not seem to have been directly to with sexual orientation but apparently due to the fact that three of the women had gotten into an argument with the barman the previous evening. We have previously about how written how The Viking has been described as the first bar in the city to be owned by a gay proprietor and to be opened specifically as a gay bar.

Today it is known as Brogans.

2. The Oak Tree, 81 Dame Street

The group were served here without any issues but left after a few drinks as it was too noisy. A couple of older gay men have mentioned online (see here and here) that this bar was gay-friendly in the 1980s.

Today it is known simply as The Oak

3. The Granary, 35-37 East Essex Street

Though quickly becoming “the largest and most conspicuous” group and “loudly discuss(ing) gay politics”, the service was “friendly and efficient”.

Today it is known as Bad Bob’s, before that it was called The Purty Kitchen.

4. The Clarence Hotel, 6-8 Wellington Quay (with an entrance on East Essex Street)

The group was refused service here being told by a bouncer that “this is not your kind of place”.

Today is still The Clarence. It was taken over by Bono, the Edge and Harry Crosby in 1992.

5. The Lord Edward, 23 Christchurch Place

Ushered upstairs where “there would be no room”, the group (who were wearing Pink Triangle badges) were then threatened that the police would be called. Presumably if they didn’t leave.

Today it is still known as The Lord Edward.

6. The Castle Inn, 5-7 Lord Edward Street

Fairly empty on arrival, the group were all served here though “not without a little resentment”. Three women left the pub when the gay group sat down in a table beside them.

Today it is known as The Bull & Castle.

7. Rice’s, 141 Stephens Green/1 South King Street

It was mentioned in the piece that a smaller group had tried to have a drink in Rices but were refused.

This is quite interesting as Rice’s has been widely described as being gay-friendly from as early as the 1960s to mid 1980s when it was demolished to make way for the Stephens Green Shopping Centre.

8. Fives, 55 Dame Street

A smaller number of the group were also refused here earlier in the evening.

After much searching, I cannot find anymore information about a pub in Dublin in the early 1980s called ‘Fives’.

(Edit: Facebook commenters Tommy Doran and Vince Donnelly have helped solve the mystery. Fives was the name of a indie club on Dame Street. It later became The Underground. It is now Club Lapello, “Dublin’s longest established Lapdancing club”)

The Spanish Civil War occurred at a time of intense political conflict between the Left and the Right across Europe, and many Irishmen would partake in the war, both in defence of the Spanish Republic and on the side of Franco and the fascist coup. The majority of those from this island who fought in the conflict fought with Eoin O’Duffy and the Irish Brigade, though in excess of 300 Irishmen did fight with the International Brigades. A quarter of those Irishmen who fought against fascism in this war would die on the battlefields of Spain.

Perhaps the most unusual group to travel to Spain were the St. Mary’s Pipe Band, who set off from Dublin for the frontiers of Spain on a mission: to ensure that O’Duffy’s men could march to and from the frontlines to the sound of Irish airs. At the time they were widely refered to as the ‘St. Mary’s Anti-Communist Pipe Band’. A contemporary newspaper report on the arrival of the band in Spain noted that their “kilts and bagpipes caused more excitement on their arrival than a bombardment by Government aeroplanes.”

The St. Mary’s band took their name from St.Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, at the heart of Dublin city centre. The church features prominently in anti-communist street agitation in 1930s Dublin. It was a particularly heated sermon in this church in March 1933 that would lead to hundreds of Dubliners laying siege to Connolly House on Great Strand Street, the headquarters of the communist movement in Ireland, starting three nights of anti-communist violence in the city. Bob Doyle, a young Dubliner who would later fight on the republican side of the Spanish Civil War, remembered being in the Pro-Cathedral on that night:

I had attended the evening mission on Monday 27 March 1933 at the Pro-Cathedral, during the period of Lent where the preacher was a Jesuit. The cathedral was full. He was standing in the pulpit talking about the state of the country, I remember him saying – which scared me – “Here in this holy Catholic city of Dublin, these vile creatures of Communism are within our midst.” Immediately after the sermon everybody then began leaving singing and gathered in a crowd outside, we must have been a thousand singing “To Jesus Heart All Burning” and “Faith of our Fathers, Holy Faith”. We marched down towards Great Strand Street, to the headquarters of the socialist and anti-Fascist groups in Connolly House. I was inspired, if you could use that expression, by the message of the Jesuit. There was no attempt by the police to stop us.

The St. Mary’s band were a feature at several anti-communist demonstrations in Dublin, appearing for example at a huge Irish Christian Front demonstration at College Green in October 1936. At that meeting Desmond Bell told the crowd that “if Spain fell to communism today, Europe would fall to it tomorrow” and that “the frontiers for Irish Christianity today are the trenches around Madrid”. The St. Mary’s band were joined by several others at that meeting including the Postal Workers’ Band, O’Connell Fife and Drum and a band from Maynooth.

In February 1937 it was reported in the Irish Independent that “a chaplain, two nurses and the members of the St.Mary’s Pipers Band, Dublin, left Dublin last night for Spain, via London. In Spain they will join the Irish Brigade, of which General O’Duffy is the leader.” The paper also named the members of the band who had gone to Spain as follows:

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On 27 September 1913, the S.S Hare arrived in Dublin from Salford, loaded with food and supplies intended to assist the families of those locked-out by William Martin Murphy and other Dublin employers.

The food ship provided desperately needed relief to many Dublin families, and the “60,000 packages of butter, sugar, jam, potatoes, fish and biscuits” were very welcome assistance. As Joseph O’Brien noted in the classic Dear,Dirty Dublin, this ship would be “the first of a dozen or so such T.U.C [Trade Union Congress] sponsored operations over the next four months.”

Dublin was a city of intense poverty even prior to the Lockout, as the precarious jobs situation ensured that for many families labour was often casual and irregular, thus creating uncertainty for families with regards income. Johnston Birchall, in his history of the Co-op movement in Britain, states rightly that Dublin was a city “that was already the poorest and most slum-ridden in the kingdom”, and with the dispute having begun in late August, by the end of September people were in dire need of assistance.

The Co-operative Wholesale Society in Britain celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in September 1913, and it was thanks to the sizeable financial backing of the Trade Union Congress, to the tune of £5,000, that it began the task of making up thirty thousand food parcels for the Dublin poor.

The S.S Hare was built in Glasgow in 1886, but was owned by George Lowen of Manchester at the time of the Dublin dispute. Ironically, the Hare was involved in a labour dispute of its own at the time, and as Padraig Yeates notes in his study of the Lockout, the Pomona Docks where the ship sat ready to sail to Dublin was entangled in a dispute involving the right to union recognition. The ship had just arrived from Dublin carrying a consignment of Guinness stout. Guinness feature in the story of the 1913 Lockout, as the company sent £500 to the employers’ fund during the dispute. While refusing to ‘lock out’ unionised workers initially, it did take action against certain workers who did engage in sympathetic strike action.

Incredibly, trade union leaders in Manchester convinced the men at the docks to break their own strike temporarily, and “a deal was struck: the ship would be released with its return consignment of empty Guinness tasks, provided it also took the food for the city’s strikers. By 5 p.m. on Friday the Hare had left Salford on its historic voyage.” Shortly after noon, she would arrive along the south wall of the River Liffey. Huge crowds had gathered by that point, believing the ship would arrive earlier, but weather conditions had delayed its journey. On board were leading British trade unionists, one of whom would inform the crowd that “we recognise that your fight is your fight and we are going to stand by you until it is won.”

On the day following the arrival of the foodship, a disgusting report in the Sunday Independent attacked the “unfortunate dupes” of Larkinism who had gathered at the South Wall for the food distribution. The paper claimed that the scenes “sounded a note of degradation that must always ring in the ears of Dublin”, and went on to claim that the scenes made “a pitiable sight.” A journalist with The Irish Times noted that there were varying degrees of poverty evident in the crowd, ranging from “the wan dweller in some noisome tenement” to “the carter’s wide, who had a bonnet as well as a shawl.” Food was distributed to all who had union issued vouchers, and sadly many poor Dubliners who were not entitled to any assistance had come down to the ship too, perhaps in the expectation or hope there would be additional food.

Padraig Yeates has noted that this vital assistance was not alone important for those living in Dublin city centre, but those beyond the city, writing that:

It took until 8 p.m to unload the Hare and until 9 p.m to finish distribution at the South Wall. More workers’ families were supplied from carts that took consignments of food for distribution in Kingstown, Clondalkin, Swords, Lucan and other parts of County Dublin. By the end of the day nine thousand workers and their dependants had received provisions.

What became of the Hare? In December 1917, as the ship was sailing from Manchester to Dublin once more, it was torpedoed and sunk seven miles east of the Kish lighthouse. This attack was carried out by the German submarine, U62. Sadly, twelve lives were lost in this attack. Five of those killed were born in Dublin.

All of the following posters are from the Dutch International Institute of Social History (IISH) website.

They are related to the international defence campaign to save the Murrays from death penalty in the late 1970s. Noel and Marie Murray, former members of Official Sinn Fein, were sentenced to death in June 1976 for the killing of an off-duty Garda during a bank raid as part of a group called the armed ‘anarchist’ group.

From Cedar Lounge Revolution:

Noel Murray had been a member of Sinn Féin from 1966 and had gone with Official Sinn Féin in 1970. Marie Murray had been active in the Housing Action Committee in Dublin in 1969 from which she had joined OSF the following year. Both had left OSF in 1973 but remained politically active…

On appeal and retrial they were convicted of murder and received the lesser sentence of life imprisonment.

Posters from the Irish campaign:

Posters from the English campaign:

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Meeting Room is a recent and powerful documentary concerning the Concerned Parents Against Drugs movement, looking at those who stood up to drug dealers in the inner-city in the early 1980s. The film includes interviews with the late Tony Gregory, John ‘Whacker’ Humphries, Bernie Howard, Mick Rafferty, Padraig Yeates, Chris McCarthy and Fr Jim Smyth. This is a very important historical documentary which deserves a larger audience.

Christy Moore also features in the documentary, performing his song in honour of ‘Whacker’ Humphries.

Whacker Humphries took the dealers on
And he fought them tooth and nail
A squad of well armed soldiers brought him to the Portlaoise Jail
He tried to protect his children, found guilty of a crime
One man gets a pension, another man gets time

Merrion Square Park, surrounded by beautiful Georgian houses, is one of my favourite of Dublin’s city centre parks. Known until recently as Archbishop Ryan Park, the heavy criticism of that Archbishop in a recent report on the abuse of children by the Catholic Church led to the renaming of the park.

This park was historically open only on a private basis to residents of the square, much like St. Stephen’s Green was prior to its opening to the public in 1880, at the expense of Lord Ardilaun of the Guinness family.

In the 1920s Merrion Square Park was considered as a location for the construction of the War Memorial Gardens, in honour of Irishmen who had died fighting in the First World War. Its proximity to the Dáil was one factor that stood in the way of any such plan however, with one Senator asking at the time if ‘the very heart of Dublin, under the very walls of the seat of Government’ was a suitable location for such a memorial, in the still-volatile political environment of the day. The site was later considered as a location for the construction of a new Catholic Cathedral in Dublin. It was reported in the media in May 1938 that the site had been “taken over” by the Archbishop of Dublin, with the Irish Independent referring to it in a report as “the site of Dublin’s new Catholic Cathedral”. It had been purchased some years previously by the church, for the tidy sum of £100,000. The Cathedral project never materialised however, leading to decades of debate on the future of the park. In 1944 for example Jim Larkin Jnr, son of the 1913 leader, asked in the Dáil in the park could be “made available for the use and enjoyment of the public or as a children’s playground”, but no attempts were made by the government to bring about such a situation.

In 1970, Sinn Féin and others launched protests against the status of the park, claiming that it was still open only to residents of the square who rented keys at the price of £10 per annum from Archbishop John Charles McQuaid. This fee was later disputed by the Catholic Church, who claimed the fee was just over £4 per annum. Archbishop McQuaid had strongly backed the original proposals to build a Cathedral on the site, but with that plan long scrapped and the park still in the ownership of the Catholic Church, the Archbishop’s decision to grant access only to those willing to pay for the pleasure of strolling through the park proved controversial. The first occupation of the park saw over 50 activists, including residents from the nearby Fenian Street and Merrion Square, breaching the gates of the park and proclaiming it a “People’s Park”. Boldly, Sinn Féin also distributed keys to the park from their offices at 30 Gardiner Place, leading to the locks of Merrion Square being changed on occasion, a costly annoyance for authorities as new keys had to be distributed.

Sinn Féin were heavily involved in the Dublin Housing Action Committee, active in the same period, a militant campaign against the inadequate housing on offer to working class Dubliners at the time. This movement had been involved in many political occupations, as well as squatting actions. The action around Merrion Square can be seen as part of a broader campaign over the ownership of the city. In July 1970, the same month the actions at Merrion Square Park began, 500 people attended a protest at the G.P.O on O’Connell Street against proposed legislation which would aim to tackle “forcible entry and occupation”. There was a widespread belief that the actions of housing activists in the city motivated the government to consider such legislation.

One resident of the park complained in a newspaper after the protest that “When Sinn Féin entered Merrion Square…they immediately began to play football across the tennis courts, thereby destroying the surface which has taken months of preparation for the tennis season.”

Beyond Sinn Féin, the private nature of the park attracted protest from others, including young messenger boys employed by the nearby E.S.B, who claimed that a letter had been sent by MacQuaid to their employer informing them they were no longer permitted to play football in the park! The boys mounted a protest outside of the park. The Labour Party also succeeded in gathering thousands of signatures for a petition calling for the parks opening.

A year on from the protests, it was reported that An Taisce were in discussion with the Archbishop of Dublin regarding the parks future, and the possibility of opening it to the broader public. The Catholic Church went to great lengths to insist this was of their own deciding, and not influenced by any protest.

Merrion Square itself saw very significant political violence in 1972 when a crowd laid siege to the British Embassy following Bloody Sunday. In The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party, a story is recounted by one OIRA member at the time who remembered attempting to blow the doors off the building, by placing explosives inside of coffins that students had carried to the embassy. After two further days of protest and disturbances outside the embassy, it was eventually burnt on 2 February 1972.

In April 1974 the park was handed over, and it was reported in the newspapers on the day after the opening of the park that “hundreds of children cheered when, for the first time in 200 years, the padlocks were removed from the gates of Merrion Square Park yesterday.” Today, the park is open to the public throughout the year, with several festivals hosted within it annually for the public to enjoy.

The Tholsel was an important administrative building in Dublin historically, which stood on the junction of Skinner’s Row, Nicholas Street and High Street. It occupied the site where Jury’s Hotel stands today, opposite Christchurch Cathedral. The building was demolished in 1820, with no trace of it remaining at its original location. Essentially, its name meant ‘toll-gatherer’s stall’, and it would have served as a sort of City Hall, meeting chamber and exchange. The initial Tholsel was built in the fourteenth century, though the building portrayed in the illustration above was constructed between 1673 and 1683. While the building is long gone, this post will look at a piece of it which remains on public view, below the city.

In his study of Protestant Dublin in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Robin Usher writes that ‘the building was roughly square in plan and abutted on one side by houses. The elevations consisted of an arcaded ground storey, open to the elements on the north and western sides’, and that ‘The city assembly and the board of alderman met in richly ornamented rooms over the ground floor loggia, itself fitted out as the merchants’ exchange.’ Upon the building were two statues, honouring King Charles II., and his brother, James Duke of York, along with the Royal Coat of Arms. J.T Gilbert in his classic history of the city noted:

The two statues above referred to were executed by William De Keysar, and in the Acts of Assembly for 1684 appears his petition for payment of ” twenty-nine pounds, due him on contract for cutting the statues set upon the front of the Tholsel, and for finishing the pedestals under the said statues.

This statues are clearly visible in an image from The History and Antiquities of the City of Dublin (1776), hosted online by Dublin City Public Libraries.

Gilbert notes in his history of Dublin that following the victory of King William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne ‘the Roman Catholic citizens were obliged, by proclamation, to deposit their arms in the Tholsel’. Dublin historian Frank Hopkins has stated that the Tholsel had also hosted a huge banquet in honour of General Ginkel, an officer of King William of Orange, following the Siege of Limerick. On occasion, the festivities were not limited to the wealthy and powerful, and ‘at certain times of the year, the exterior of the building was lit with candles, and free beer was dispensed to the citizens, who gathered outside around large bonfires.’ In 1718 the absolutely huge sum of £1,000 was offered to anyone who could detect and identify those who had broken into the Tholsel and defaced and cut the portrait of King George I. that was on display inside of it. The Tholsel also featured in the punishment of criminals, who were ‘whipped at a cart’s tail from the Tholsel to the Parliament House’, the distance between Jury’s Hotel and College Green today.

Incorrigible malefactors or offenders were usually sentenced in the Lord Mayor’s Court to be whipped at a cart’s tail from the Tholsel to the Parliament House, to be placed in the stocks, or to be scourged at the “whipping post” erected here for the purpose. Libellous publications condemned by Parliament, gaming tables, and fraudulent goods seized by the Lord Mayor, were publicly burned at the Tholsel

Those who wish to see a piece of the Tholsel for themselves do not have to go far in Dublin. In the crypt of Christchurch Cathedral the statues that once adorned the building are still on public display, along with the Royal Coat of Arms. They serve as a brilliant and often overlooked reminder of what was once a central building in the running of the city.

These brilliant scans below are a selection of pages from a 1921 autograph book belonging to Andrew O’Neill. Born in Dublin in 1897, O’Neill hailed from Asylum Yard, in the heart of working class Dublin. Andrew would see action during the Easter Rising at Boland’s Mills as a member of the Irish Volunteers, serving with the 3rd Battalion. Andrew would also partake in the War of Independence which followed the rebellion, and was interned during this period. Later, with the foundation of the Irish Free State, O’Neill would join its new emerging armed forces, although he would leave the Free State Army in 1924, going on to work a number of other jobs including a period as a porter in the Customs House, one of the symbols of the Irish revolution owing to the IRA attack upon it during the War of Independence.O’Neill left a wife and three children behind him at the time of his death, and among his personal items was a priceless collection of autographs from other republicans he had been interned with.

The entries I have posted here are a selection of entries from fellow republican internees. Some have penned poems in tribute, while others have drawn illustrations of life inside and outside of the camp. The most striking entry in the autograph book for me is this one, showing prisoners and guards inside of the camp. It appears to be signed ‘P.C’:

This scan shows another drawn illustration, this time showing two figures in discussion about the status of the prisoners. On the other page Liam O’Reilly, giving an address in Tuam, has signed Andrew’s book:

One further drawing appears in the autograph book, this time coming from “P.Byrne”.

In addition to the drawings, the autograph book contains several poems, including a poem in honour of Irish republicans who were executed at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.

Man do you hear them shooting
The women moan and sigh
But the lads themselves are laughing
God that’s the way to die

In another poem, one fellow Dublin republican writes

You ask me to write in your album
But I don’t know where to begin
There is nothing original within me
Not even original sin

These kind of brilliant family mementos are to be found across Dublin, and with so much emphasis on historical commemoration and the business of centenaries, these are the kind of items that have great value to young historians and those with an interest in the past.

My sincere thanks to the O’Neill family, Una Wogan, Tom Geraghty and others who have assisted with getting this selection of pages from Andrew’s autograph book here online. The book remains in family ownership.

Last night was an absolutely huge night in Irish football terms, at both ends of the table. Saint Patrick’s Athletic managed to go three points clear of a seemingly unstoppable Dundalk, while at the other end, Bohs took a very vital three points from Shelbourne, in a game many saw as a northside relegation scrap between the two. There were massive travelling supports in both Inchicore and Tolka Park, and these two images below capture the colour and the passion of the night differently.

In Inchicore, both sets of supporters lit up Emmet Road, with Dundalk squeezed into the shed behind the goal. In a brilliant coincidence, the Dundalk banner featured Jigsaw from the film series ‘Saw’ asking Saint Patrick’s if they “want to play a game”. The Patrick’s banner invited Dundalk to “come and play”. The game was at times lacklustre but at other times thrilling, regardless however I think the colour and noise made it a good one for the television cameras.

At Tolka Park, Bohs captured the importance of the clash with a banner on the importance of remaining in the top tier ‘by any means neccessary’.

While Giovanni Trapattoni stating that Ireland had no football league may have been a case of something getting lost in translation,and was deeply ironic giving the fact so many of his own starting eleven have played in the domestic league, the next five weeks will see some brilliant battles at both ends of the table, in a league which deserves the support of Irish people.