Category Archives: History

Brayden on the 1925 launch of the Shannon scheme

Leave a reply

Irish-born journalist William H. Brayden in the summer of 1925 wrote a series of articles for US newspapers about the newly partitioned Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. This summer I am revisiting aspects of Brayden’s reporting. New post begins below the photo. MH

Construction on the Shannon scheme in 1928. Photo from siemens.com.

Brayden devoted one of his 16 dispatches to the development of the “Shannon scheme,” a massive civil works project to generate hydroelectric power from Ireland’s largest river. He reported:

It is not too much to say that the determination of the Free State government to proceed with such a scheme startled the public. It was a great idea to use in the perorations of speeches as a vague hope for the future. But to handle it as an immediate necessity and spend millions on it proved alarming to the timid. Everybody warned the government against the dangers of haste. Put it off and think it over, was the advice of every Irish newspaper. The civil war was too recent. Railways and bridges had been attacked and blown up. Was there not a risk that after millions had been spent on the project a charge of dynamite might destroy it? However, the government was fully willing to take the risk, and the work will be begun within the next few months.[1]Original dispatch:  “Power For Ireland From River Shannon”, Chicago Daily News, June 30. Booklet: William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the … Continue reading

Top of Brayden’s story as published in the Evening-World Herald, Omaha, Nebraska, July 18, 1925, three weeks after it ran in the Chicago Daily News. Note the dateline has been changed to make it seem timely.

In October 1924, the German firm Siemens-Schuckert submitted to the Free State government a detailed project plan for building a hydroelectric plant at Ardnacrusha, near Limerick. The company opened an office in Dublin in January 1925. By July, as Brayden’s series appeared in the Chicago Daily News and other papers, the Irish government enacted legislation to support the ambitious project. Contracts were signed in August and work began before the end of the year.[2]See Siemens celebrates 100 years in Ireland.

Behind the scenes, and likely unknown to Brayden, Irish officials were surprised the project had not attracted proposals from American electrical and engineering firms such as General Electric, Westinghouse, or Stone & Webster.[3]Lothar Schoen, “The Irish Free State and the Electricity Industry, 1922-1927” in The Shannon Scheme and the electrification of the Irish Free State, Andy Bielenberg, ed. [Dublin: The … Continue reading Brayden did report the completed project would use open air transformer stations “commonly used in America but only recently introduced into Europe.”

Brayden interviewed Dr. Thomas McLaughlin, a Siemens employee and “the real inventor of the scheme.”[4]Brayden misspelled the surname as MacLaughlin. See “McLaughlin, Thomas Anthony” (1896-1971) in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. The 59-year-old correspondent described the 29-year-old engineer as “a typical Irishman of the new generation” because he was persuasive and able to get things done. Brayden did not quote McLaughlin in the story, as he did with other people he interviewed for other installments of the series.

Brayden nodded to the cultural and environmental impacts of the project:

Fishing for salmon on the Shannon is a popular and profitable practice. It seems to be admitted that to some extent the salmon fishery must suffer, despite all precautions taken. It has been suggested that the salmon may not take kindly to being conveyed in lifts on their way to and from the spawning grounds. But salmon fishing is a sport and electricity is business, and the motto in the new Ireland is that play must give way to work.

But he focused on the scheme’s audaciousness:

It is a daring enterprise, or so Irishmen are told, to spend millions in supplying a demand for electricity which does not yet exist. The hope is that the demand will follow the supply. The government estimates of demand are very conservative. The expectation is that in five years the demand in Ireland may prove half as great as the consumption now is in Denmark, a country of somewhat similar characteristics.

Before the end of 1925, months after his series was completed, Brayden reported from Ireland about disputes over the wage rate for unskilled workers on the project. Éamon de Valera and his followers, still outside government after their defeat in the Irish Civil War, 1922-23, saw the labor issue and the disappointing outcome of the Irish Boundary Commission as “an opportunity to strengthen their position.”[5]“Irish Labor Fights Cabinet”, Chicago Daily News, Nov. 18, 1925; and “Sinn Fein Conclave Sounds Red Note”, Chicago Daily News, Nov. 21, 1925.

The hydroelectric damn’s sluice gates opened in the summer of 1929. Within eight years the power plant supplied 87 percent of Ireland’s electrical demand. The Shannon scheme was “not only a far-sighted and innovative move, but also the government’s most significant gesture in the direction of industrialization,” Irish historian Diarmaid Ferriter declared in his overview of the country’s twentieth century transformation. “It deservedly received huge media coverage, and became an important symbol of the potential for constructive use of Irish natural resources.”[6]Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland. [New York: Overlook Press, 2005], 316.

Advertisement in the Sept. 25, 1925, issue of the Irish Independent, Dublin, calls for laborers on the Shannon scheme. The wage rate soon became a matter of political dispute.

References

References
↑1 Original dispatch:  “Power For Ireland From River Shannon”, Chicago Daily News, June 30. Booklet: William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925], 19-21.
↑2 See Siemens celebrates 100 years in Ireland.
↑3 Lothar Schoen, “The Irish Free State and the Electricity Industry, 1922-1927” in The Shannon Scheme and the electrification of the Irish Free State, Andy Bielenberg, ed. [Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2002], 37.
↑4 Brayden misspelled the surname as MacLaughlin. See “McLaughlin, Thomas Anthony” (1896-1971) in the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
↑5 “Irish Labor Fights Cabinet”, Chicago Daily News, Nov. 18, 1925; and “Sinn Fein Conclave Sounds Red Note”, Chicago Daily News, Nov. 21, 1925.
↑6 Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland. [New York: Overlook Press, 2005], 316.

Brayden on the Irish Boundary Commission, Part 2

1 Reply

Irish-born journalist William H. Brayden in the summer of 1925 wrote a series of articles for US newspapers about the newly partitioned Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. This summer I am revisiting various aspects of his reporting. Read the introduction. Brayden’s coverage of the Irish Boundary Commission is divided into two posts. Part 2[1]Citation are not consecutive in the two posts. begins below the map. Read Part 1. MH

This map of the 1921 border between Northern Ireland (Ulster) and the Irish Free State also showed “probable” and “doubtful” changes proposed by the Irish Boundary Commission. It was leaked to the Morning Post, London, which published the map and narrative descriptions on Nov. 7, 1925.

After years of delay, the Irish Boundary Commission in spring 1925 was finally engaged with deciding whether to adjust the 1921 border that separated the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, then more often called Ulster.[2]One of the four provinces of Ireland, Ulster historically included nine counties. Only six were incorporated as Northern Ireland. Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan belonged to the Irish Free State, … Continue reading The three-member commission held hearings in several border towns. But the commission chairman quickly ruled out allowing these communities to decide by referendum if they wanted to remain under their present government or switch to the other side, as Free State nationalists hoped.

As the commission’s deliberations continued into summer 1925, Brayden opened his US newspaper series by explaining to American readers the differences in home rule government on each side of the border. The Free State could impose and collect taxes; levy tariffs; establish its own currency (that happened in 1928); send ambassadors to foreign states and make international agreements. Street signs and public documents now were written in Irish as well as English. A new police force, Garda Siochana, replaced the Royal Irish Constabulary. The judiciary was made over from the established British legal system and Sinn Fein courts of the revolutionary period.

US newspaper map of divided Ireland in 1925 … and today.

Dublin Castle, once the seat of the British administration in Ireland, was transformed into the home of the new court system. Leinster House, the former ducal palace and headquarters of the Royal Dublin Society, became the new legislative headquarters. The Irish tricolor waved above these and other buildings instead of the British Union Jack. On the streets below, postal pillar boxes were painted green instead of red.

The Free State’s “separation from England, apart from constitutional technicalities, is practically complete,” Brayden wrote. By contrast, Northern Ireland was “not a dominion,” like the Free State and Canada, and had “a subordinate and not a sovereign parliament.”[3]William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925], 3.

Postal, telegraph, and telephone services remained regulated by London. The northern legislature was prohibited from taking action on trade and foreign policy matters. “Nevertheless, home rule in north Ireland is very real and can be, and is, effectively used for the development of local prosperity,” Brayden wrote.

Irish republicans at the time, and historians today, would argue the Free State’s separation was not as “practically complete” as characterized by Brayden. Others could make the case that Northern Ireland, which retained representation in London, was not as subordinate as Brayden described. But there was no argument that the island of Ireland had been divided.

Religion, and money

Most Americans would have had at least general knowledge of the history and geography of division between Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics. Brayden mostly avoided the sectarian issue in his series. In one story he sought to minimize “the once familiar catch phrase that ‘home rule must mean Rome rule’ ” by informing readers that several Free State high court justices were Protestants, while the lord chief justice of Northern Ireland was a Catholic. In another story, however, he conceded the Irish educational system was “strictly denominational” on both sides of the border.[4]Ibid., 4, 11.

But something larger than religion or politics loomed over partition and the boundary commission–money. Specifically, how much of Great Britain’s war debt and war pensions the Free State was obligated to pay. Like the boundary commission, this was another aspect of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty that remained unsettled four years later. It was complicated by whether the Free State could offset the amount, or even be entitled to a refund, by considering historic over-taxation by London.

William Brayden, undated.

“The view widely held in [Free State] Ireland is that the Irish counterclaim will wipe out, and even more than wipe out, the British claim,” Brayden reported. He revealed that the late Michael Collins, killed in 1922, “was clearly of opinion that something was due. I heard him urge that the amount, when ascertained, be paid off in a lump sum, rather than by annual payment that would wear the appearance of tribute.”[5]Ibid., 27-28.

But it was impossible to resolve such financial questions until the boundary between the Free State and Northern Ireland was finalized. “Twenty-eight counties would pay, or receive, more than the present twenty-six,” Brayden wrote.

Referring back to his early 1922 reporting (See Part 1), Brayden speculated, “real trouble may arise” if the commission awarded the “storm centers” of Derry or Newry to the Free State. Nevertheless, officials in the south no longer believed “that any possible adjustment of the boundary would ever leave the northern government so hampered that it could not continue its separate existence and would be obliged at last to come into the Free State,” Brayden wrote.[6]Ibid., 42.

“The continued existence of the northern government is now regarded as certain. Wherever the boundary line is drawn it will still divide Ireland into two parts with two separate governments.”

As regrettable as partition was, Brayden continued, many Irish citizens were more concerned about poor trade, high unemployment, and insufficient housing. “Many causes have combined to make the boundary issue less critical than it was a year ago,” he wrote. “Active feeling regarding it will not revive until the commission has reported. Meanwhile, there is little or no protest against the delay which the commission is making.”

What happened

In early November 1925, the Morning Post, a conservative daily in London, published details and a map from the Irish Boundary Commission’s deliberations. The leaked documents showed the commission recommended only small transfers of territory, and in both directions. Though Brayden and others had reported the Free State abandoned the idea of making large land gains from the north, the Post story, once confirmed, embarrassed the southern government.

Details of the Irish Boundary Commission report were leaked to the Morning Post, London, which published this story on Nov. 7, 1925. (Library of Congress bound copies of the newspaper, thus the curve to the image.)

“The result is described as a bombshell to Irish hopes, and all agree that the establishment of the boundary line indicated by  the commission would make more trouble than by maintaining the present line,” Brayden reported in a regular dispatch, now four months after his series concluded. The Free State would receive only “barren parts of [County] Fermanagh” while Northern Ireland stood to gain “rich territory in [County] Donegal.” The Free State’s representative, Eoin MacNeill, quit the commission. “In the border districts passions are high” among nationalists who hoped to join the Free State.[7]”Boundaries Cause Turmoil In Ireland”, Chicago Daily News, Nov. 23, 1925.

A series of emergency meetings between the Free State, Northern Ireland, and the British government were held in London through early December. The three parties quickly agreed the existing border should remain in place. The Free State’s obligation for war debt and pensions would be erased in exchange for dropping the taxation counterclaim. The Free State would have to assume liability for “malicious damage” during the war in Ireland since 1919.

“Maintenance of the existing Ulster boundary is welcomed as avoiding a grave danger to peace,” Brayden reported after the settlement. Northern nationalists “are advised by their newspapers in Belfast to make the best they can of their position in the northern state.” while “die-hard Ulster newspapers call the result a victory for President Cosgrave.”[8]“Irish Boundary Pact Praised, Condemned”, Chicago Daily News, Dec. 5, 1925.

The Morning Post, which detailed the leaked border proposal a month earlier, also criticized the settlement as “a surrender of a British interest with nothing to show for it but the hope of peace. … We think the British public would be appalled if they were to see arrayed in cold figures the price we have paid and are still paying for the somewhat questionable privilege of claiming our hitherto unfriendly neighbor has a Dominion when the substance and almost the pretense of allegiance have ceased to exist.”[9]”The Irish Settlement”, Morning Post, London, Dec. 5, 1925.

Cosgrave conceded that Northern nationalist Catholics would have to depend on the “goodwill” of the Belfast government and their Protestant neighbors. Similarly, Brayden quoted an unnamed unionist member of parliament as saying, “Good will should take the place of hate. North and south, though divided for parliamentary purposes, can be of assistance to each other and in the interest of both more cordial relations should exist.[10]”Boundary Pact”, Chicago Daily News, Dec. 5, 1921.

US Consul Charles Hathaway and other US officials were generally pleased by the outcome. The Americans believed the agreement stabilized the Free State financially and avoided potential irritation to US relations with Great Britain. They also realized that Éamon de Valera and Irish republican hardliners, as well as the always volatile sectarian issue, still threatened the peace in Ireland.[11]Bernadette Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland: From Empire to Independence, 1913-1929. [Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006], 530.

The “high explosives” that Hathaway had worried about in 1924 reemerged periodically throughout the twentieth century, especially during the last three decades. “Goodwill” in Northern Ireland turned out to be in short supply.

One final note: the public release of the commission’s work was suppressed by agreement of all three parties in December 1925. The documents remained under wraps until 1969, just as the Troubles began in Northern Ireland.

See all my work on American Reporting of Irish Independence, including previous installments of this series about Brayden.

References

References
↑1 Citation are not consecutive in the two posts.
↑2 One of the four provinces of Ireland, Ulster historically included nine counties. Only six were incorporated as Northern Ireland. Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan belonged to the Irish Free State, today’s Republic of Ireland.
↑3 William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925], 3.
↑4 Ibid., 4, 11.
↑5 Ibid., 27-28.
↑6 Ibid., 42.
↑7 ”Boundaries Cause Turmoil In Ireland”, Chicago Daily News, Nov. 23, 1925.
↑8 “Irish Boundary Pact Praised, Condemned”, Chicago Daily News, Dec. 5, 1925.
↑9 ”The Irish Settlement”, Morning Post, London, Dec. 5, 1925.
↑10 ”Boundary Pact”, Chicago Daily News, Dec. 5, 1921.
↑11 Bernadette Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland: From Empire to Independence, 1913-1929. [Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006], 530.

Brayden on the Irish Boundary Commission, Part 1

Leave a reply

Irish-born journalist William H. Brayden in the summer of 1925 wrote a series of articles for US newspapers about the newly partitioned Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. This summer I am revisiting various aspects of his reporting. Brayden’s coverage of the Irish Boundary Commission is divided into two posts. Part 1 begins below the map. Part 2 is linked at the bottom. MH

Map of partitioned Ireland from a 1920s US newspaper. Note the use of “Londonderry” for the county and town in Northern Ireland. Nationalists use the term “Derry.” In the Free State, vestiges of British rule remain in the names Kings County, not yet changed to County Offaly; and Queenstown, not yet renamed Cobh.

The partition of Ireland was less than five years old when Brayden’s series unfolded in US newspapers. The Irish Boundary Commission was considering whether to adjust the border separating the six-county Northern Ireland and the 26-county Irish Free State. The line emerged from the British government’s effort to mollify predominantly Protestant unionists, who wanted to remain in the United Kingdom, and majority Catholic nationalists who wanted independence.

“Now all sections of Ireland have obtained self-government in one form or another,” Brayden informed American readers.[1]William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925], 3. He used the term “home rule,” meaning each side of the border had more domestic autonomy than under the form of government in place since 1800. Northern Ireland had some control over local issues but remained subordinate to the Parliament in London. The Free State had obtained dominion status, like Canada; it was largely independent of London but remained within the British Empire. 

Whenever decision the boundary commission reached about the border line, Brayden continued, “every Irishman, no matter in which of the thirty-two counties he dwells will have an effective voice in shaping his own destiny.” He emphasized, “Ireland has hardly yet realized the magnitude of the change” brought by the implementation of the two home rule governments. Because of US immigration and trade laws, these changes also impacted Americans with family in Ireland, on either side of the border, or who traveled there as tourists or to conduct business.

Brayden could not have foreseen the surprise conclusion of the boundary commission’s work just a few months after his series appeared in the US press and then was republished as a booklet. But the correspondent did put his finger on a key element of the unexpected outcome.

Commission delayed

The Government of Ireland Act of December 1920 separated Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland; with each to have its own home rule parliament. Irish republicans in the south refused to accept the arrangement and continued to fight for independence. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 ended the war and created the Free State. The treaty contained a provision for the boundary commission to review and potentially change the border at a future date.

Michael Collins

The inclusion of the commission was a ploy to help smooth over other negotiating difficulties between Irish nationalists and the British government. Nationalist leaders such as Michael Collins believed the commission could be used to claw back significant territory from Northern Ireland, leaving it too small to remain viable and then have to join the Free State. Irish unionists, led by Sir James Craig, insisted the border remain fixed, neither losing territory to the Free State nor adding nationalist areas that threatened their domination.

The formation of the boundary commission was delayed by the Irish Civil War, June 1922-May 1923. It made no sense to convene the commission while Irish republicans waged a guerrilla war against supporters of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which had won the support of Irish lawmakers and Irish voters. Yet even after the republican “irregulars” laid down their arms against the Free State forces, the boundary commission remained in limbo.

By early 1924 the US State Department “considered the boundary question to be the most serious issue affecting Ireland as a whole,” the historian Bernadette Whelan has written.[2]Bernadette Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland: From Empire to Independence, 1913-1929. [Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006], 460. The commission remained unconstituted more than two years after the 1921 treaty and over six months after the end of the civil war. Faction fighting riddled the Free State cabinet, inflamed by the mutiny of army officers demobilized after the civil war. US officials worried about the outbreak of cross-border violence, which could also jeopardize their relations with Great Britain.[3]Ibid., 528.

Earlier reporting

Brayden referenced the boundary commission in his work prior to writing the 1925 series. In a March 1922 dispatch from the border region between counties Donegal and Londonderry, he reported on Irish republican threats within Northern Ireland. Majorities in the northern towns of Derry and Newry were “hostile to rule from Belfast” on religious and political grounds.[4]Londonderry is the proper name of the town and county. Derry is the formation favored by Irish nationalists. Brayden used Derry in his reports. Business interests in the two towns also expected less interference from Dublin in trade matters.

“If the boundary commission provided in the treaty ever sits, both towns will make a strong case for inclusion in southern Ireland, and as the arbiters are bound to regard the wishes and economic advantage of localities, Dublin feels certain of gaining these two towns and Belfast is nervous of the prospect of losing them,” Brayden reported.[5]”Ulster Is Confronted By Real Difficulties”, Wilkes-Berra (Pa.) Record via Chicago Daily News, March 30, 1922.

A few months later he wrote nationalist areas “are expected to be handed over to the south as the result of the work of the boundary commission,” despite Craig’s “determination to resist” such recommendations. But the erupting civil war in the Free State “played into the hands of the Belfast government” and “afforded an excuse” for British intervention. “They [southern nationalists] should have stood pat on the treaty,” Brayden concluded. (“Ulster Opens War On The Sinn Fein”, May 25, 1922; “Ulster Faces Ugly Situation”, May 27, 1922; and “Dublin Confident Of Agreement At London”, June 12, 1922, all in Wilkes-Berra (Pa.) Record via Chicago Daily News.)

Sir James Craig

Prior to Free State elections in August 1923, Brayden reported on Irish President William T Cosgrave’s renewed calls to form the boundary commission as “an electoral maneuver to placate the electors who hate the division of Ireland.” But Craig still refused to nominate a Northern Ireland representative to the commission. Brayden speculated, incorrectly as it turned out, that Britain and the Free State “would settle the boundaries in Ulster’s voluntary absence.” [6]“Irish To Hold Elections For 153 Seats”, Buffalo Evening News via Chicago Daily News, July 27, 1923.

US government concerns

Charles Hathaway, US consul general in Dublin, described the situation as “in the nature of high explosive” for the Free State. He worried further hesitation on the part of the British government to establish the boundary commission could destabilize the Free State to the point of collapse. Other US officials believed that forcing Craig and the Belfast government to participate in the commission could spark warfare between Northern Ireland and the Free State. At the least, the ongoing stalemate threatened to further undermine the poor economic conditions on both sides of the border.[7]Whelan, Foreign Policy, 528-29.

Hathaway had been “perhaps the only regular attender” of the Free State’s legislature, the Dáil, Brayden reported. The US diplomat “almost from day to day follows the proceedings with intent interest.”[8]Brayden, Survey, 5.

US officials also pondered how their consular offices served the Irish public. The six counties of Northern Ireland excluded three counties that historically belonged to the Irish province of Ulster. Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan now were part of the Free State. A fourth county, Leitrim, also was part of the Free State. All four had been served by the US consular office in Belfast before partition. Now, citizens from these four counties complained about the inconvenience of having to cross the border for passport visas and other business with the US government. US officials fretted that any adjustments to their consular districts would be viewed as favoring one side or the other of the Irish partition.[9]Whelan, Foreign Policy, 460.

Commission begins

Brayden reported on opposition to the boundary commission by Craig and Irish republican leader Éamon de Valera through early October 1924.[10] “De Valera Won’t Give Up Inch Of Territory”, Buffalo Evening News via Chicago Daily News, Oct. 9, 1924. At the end of that month, however, the British government finally appointed unionist newspaper editor and lawyer Joseph R. Fisher as the Northern Ireland representative, since Craig refused to make a selection. The commission at last got to work in November 1924.

By the early spring 1925, Brayden reported that Belfast officials were “willing to consider slight rectifications of the border line,” but maintained strong opposition to relinquishing Derry or Newry, a nod back to his 1922 reporting. [11]“Craig To Be Returned As Prime Minister”, Buffalo Evening News via Chicago Daily News, March 27, 1925. He also described the “vagaries of the Ulster boundary,” such as being unable to take a train from Belfast to Derry without crossing into the Free State in a dozen places. He told the story, perhaps apocryphal, of a farmer whose land was in the north but whose home straddled the border.

“He sleeps with this head in the south and his feet in the north,” Brayden explained. “The south has no jurisdictions over his lands, and the north cannot serve him with a process because his head is over the border. … The result is the famer cannot be brought within the jurisdiction of any court.”[12]“ ’Round the World With News Correspondents”, Birmingham (Ala.) News, May 30, 1925, and other papers.

The farmer story appeared on both the news pages and the humor columns of many US newspapers over several months. Brayden’s series about partitioned Ireland debuted in June 1925 as the boundary commission continued its deliberations.

PART 2: Brayden’s 1925 descriptions of the two Irish states and the surprise conclusion of the boundary commission.

References

References
↑1 William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925], 3.
↑2 Bernadette Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland: From Empire to Independence, 1913-1929. [Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006], 460.
↑3 Ibid., 528.
↑4 Londonderry is the proper name of the town and county. Derry is the formation favored by Irish nationalists. Brayden used Derry in his reports.
↑5 ”Ulster Is Confronted By Real Difficulties”, Wilkes-Berra (Pa.) Record via Chicago Daily News, March 30, 1922.
↑6 “Irish To Hold Elections For 153 Seats”, Buffalo Evening News via Chicago Daily News, July 27, 1923.
↑7 Whelan, Foreign Policy, 528-29.
↑8 Brayden, Survey, 5.
↑9 Whelan, Foreign Policy, 460.
↑10 “De Valera Won’t Give Up Inch Of Territory”, Buffalo Evening News via Chicago Daily News, Oct. 9, 1924.
↑11 “Craig To Be Returned As Prime Minister”, Buffalo Evening News via Chicago Daily News, March 27, 1925.
↑12 “ ’Round the World With News Correspondents”, Birmingham (Ala.) News, May 30, 1925, and other papers.

Reporting Matt Talbot’s life and death, then and now

Leave a reply

Matt Talbot, a role model for many people battling alcoholism and addiction, died June 7, 1925, in a Dublin alleyway. He was on his way to Mass; an austere Catholicism being key to his sobriety. Then an anonymous ascetic, today Talbot is considered for sainthood.

The only known image of Matt Talbot.

The Dublin press missed Talbot’s public passing; no one- or two-sentence brief under a headline such as “Laborer Collapses Near Church.” There was no obituary–“Talbot, Matthew, 1856-1925.” This seems fitting given Talbot’s determined avoidance of newspapers, lest the headlines “violate the interior space of his soul” and distract from his prayer life. [1]James F. Cassidy, Matt Talbot: The Irish Worker’s Glory. [Westminster, Maryland: Newsman Press, 1934],4.

But details of Talbot’s death, and life, began to emerge in the Irish press before the end of 1925. A small pamphlet written by Sir Joseph A. Glynn of the Catholic Truth Society, Dublin, gained popular attention.[2]”Catholic Outlook: Dublin Laborer’s Remarkable Life of Penance”, The Nationalist and Munster Advertiser, Dec. 5, 1925. Talbot’s story of self-denial spread to the United States, then five years into a 13-year period of federally-enforced prohibition. In 1928 Glynn published a more detailed, 116-page account about Talbot.

Catholic faithful and the recovery community have kept Talbot in the press ever since. There’s a Wikipedia page, and plenty of other online content. A docudrama about Talbot’s life is in production. Press accounts of the 1879 Marian apparition at Knock, County Mayo, also were delayed until believers similarly promoted the event through literature and pilgrimages. It is now a tourist stop.

People stand where Matt Talbot died in Granby Lane, Dublin, in June 1925. The large building in center background is St. Saviour’s Church, where he attended Mass. Image from Glynn’s 1928 book about Talbot.

Talbot mirrored–as in reflected but reversed–another Irishman, Father Theobald Mathew (1790-1856). The Tipperary-born Capuchin priest became widely known as the “apostle of temperance.” From 1849-1951 he administered his famous abstinence pledge in the United States. Talbot, as noted above, was an unknown laborer who probably never ventured beyond Dublin’s Grand and Royal canals. He kept his piety and his 41 years of sobriety to himself.

“Perhaps no two men in history led such dissimilar lives, but with such similar and effective application of purpose,” a Catholic journalist observed in a 1956 article that marked the centenary of Talbot’s birth, seven months before Mathews’ death.[3]”1956 Centenary Year of Father Mathew, Matt Talbot”, The Catholic Northwest Progress, April 20, 1956.

The Catholic Church declared Talbot venerable in 1973. The early step toward sainthood seems to have stalled since then, but the Knights of St Columbanus are using the centenary of his death to renew the effort. Talbot is still a step ahead of Father Mathew. Both men are remembered with statues and other markers in Dublin and other parts of Ireland.

As other writers have noted, Talbot’s aversion to newspapers appears to have been inspired by Bishop John Hedley, an English Benedictine and editor of the Dublin Review. Talbot is said to have underlined this passage of Hedley’s book, On Reading:

Even when the newspaper is free from objection, it is easy to lose a good deal of time over it. It may be necessary and convenient to know what is going on in the world. But there can be no need of our observing all the rumors, all the guesses and gossip, all the petty incidents, all the innumerable paragraphs in which the solid news appears half-drowned, like the houses and hedges when the floods are out. This is idle and is absolutely bad for the brain and character.

Hedley’s view certainly applies to much of today’s online content, just as it did to early twentieth century Dublin newspapers. I leave to readers’ judgement whether it applies to Talbot’s story, or to this post.

Headline of 1926 profile of Matt Talbot in the Tablet, a Catholic newspaper in Brooklyn, NY.

References

References
↑1 James F. Cassidy, Matt Talbot: The Irish Worker’s Glory. [Westminster, Maryland: Newsman Press, 1934],4.
↑2 ”Catholic Outlook: Dublin Laborer’s Remarkable Life of Penance”, The Nationalist and Munster Advertiser, Dec. 5, 1925.
↑3 ”1956 Centenary Year of Father Mathew, Matt Talbot”, The Catholic Northwest Progress, April 20, 1956.

A trio of Irish miscellany from May

Leave a reply

Here are three unrelated items about Ireland during the merry, merry month:

  • UCC exhibit

I was delighted to contribute some research and materials to “The Irish Revolution in the African American Press” exhibition at University College Cork. It is focused on how the US black press covered three key events:

  • De Valera’s tour of America (1919–20)
  • MacSwiney’s hunger strike death (1920)
  • The Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921-22)

Dr. Jemima Hodgkinson, a Research Ireland postdoctoral fellow specializing in the history of anti-slavery and anti-colonial movements, curated the exhibit. It is open until July 14 at the Boole Library, ground floor.

  • Irish couture 

The dress at the left forefront was created by Dublin designer Jennifer Rothwell for Irish Ambassador to the United States Geraldine Byrne Nason. It was featured in the “Fashioning Power, Fashioning Peace” Exhibition and Gala at the President Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C. Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the honoree of the annual fundraiser. The silk dress is a tribute to St. Brigid, whose reflected image can be seen extending from each shoulder. To the right are pieces from Singapore and Chez Republic. This display was in the library of the house where Wilson–seen in the portrait–lived from the end of his presidency in March 1921 until his death in February 1924. I work at the museum as a part-time guide. 

  • Times letter

Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote about the numerical decline and lay distrust of the priesthood. He suggested Ireland has become “mentally ditched from Catholic history as a lost cause that is best forgotten.” My letter to the Times editor disagreed.

Revisiting William Brayden’s 1925 ‘survey’ of Ireland

Journalist William H. Brayden produced in the summer of 1925 what he called “a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people.” The country’s violent revolutionary period had ended two years earlier. As Brayden set about his assessment, an intergovernmental commission considered whether to adjust the border that partitioned the six-county Northern Ireland from the 26-county Irish Free State, today’s Republic of Ireland.

Cover of booklet that collected Brayden’s 16-part series.

Brayden’s reporting appeared in 16 dispatches to the Chicago Daily News[1]“Ireland No Longer Distressful Country”, June 16; “Tenants In Ireland Now Owners of Land”, June 18; “Irish System Of Law Rules in Free State”, June 20; “Make Irish Schools Fit Needs Of … Continue reading and other US papers that subscribed to its foreign news service. The Chicago daily republished the completed series as a 45-page booklet.[2]William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925]

This summer I will explore various aspects of Brayden’s reporting from Ireland, including the Irish Boundary Commission and other political issues. He detailed economic, social, and cultural conditions as he traveled from Dublin to Kilkenny, Cork, Limerick and Belfast. I am working from this digitized copy of Brayden’s booklet, but also reviewed the original Daily News series on microfilm. The Roman numeral section headings in the booklet correspond to the 16 installments in the series. The booklet was lightly edited to remove teases to upcoming subjects and publication notes.

I will collect my posts about Brayden on the site’s American reporting of Irish independence landing page. Reader input is welcomed. Now, let’s begin with a look at Brayden.

William John Henry Brayden (1865-1933)

Brayden was born in Armagh city (County Armagh, Northern Ireland). He worked briefly on the Ulster Gazette and then on the Leinster Leader in Naas, County Kildare, before joining the national Freeman’s Journal in Dublin in 1883. He eventually became the FJ’s editor, and in that role makes a brief appearance in James Joyce’s Ulysses.[3]See “Brayden, William John Henry” by Felix Larkin, Dictionary of Irish Biography, October 2009.

Brayden was born into a Church of Ireland and unionist family. He converted to Catholicism as a young man and supported Irish home rule. He briefly assisted Dublin Castle, the British administration in Ireland, with anti-Sinn Féin propaganda at the end of the world war.

William Brayden, undated image published at the time of his death in December 1933.

Brayden began working as a correspondent for the US-based Associated Press and the Chicago Daily News during Ireland’s revolutionary period, 1912-1923. His byline appeared regularly in US newspapers. Notably, he reported the May 1919 arrival of the American Commission on Irish Independence in Dublin.

Their “oratory of the American pattern outclasse[d] the home product” and made a strong impression on the locals, Brayden reported. None of the Sinn Féin republicans or Irish Parliamentary Party moderates who welcomed the trio could match “the ringing eloquence and the modulated rise and fall of striking appeal which the Americans displayed to the crowds that listened to them spellbound.”[4]“American Orator Beat Irish Brand”, (Baltimore) Evening Sun, May 15, 1919.

It does not appear that Brayden ever visited the United States, at least according to limited biographical material. He is not profiled in several early twentieth century “who’s who” collections of American journalists. Brayden’s name does not surface in digitized US arriving passenger manifests or passport application lists.

In this regard Brayden is similar to his peer James Mark Tuohy (1857–1923), another Irish-born, former Freeman’s Journal journalist who became a correspondent for the New York World at the turn of the twentieth century. “Although he never set foot in the United States, he was dean of the corps of American newspaper correspondents in London,” the New York Times declared in its obituary of Tuohy. Other Irish-born journalists who covered their country’s revolutionary period spent significant time in the United States, including John Steele (1887-1947) of the Chicago Tribune and Francis Hackett (1883-1962) of the New Republic.

In December 1931, Brayden began writing for the Washington, DC-based National Catholic Welfare Conference News Service. He died two years later, just three days after filing what appears to have been his last story.[5]“590 Are Registered at Peking Cath. Univ.” The Catholic Transcript, Dec. 14, 1933.

Series opening

The Daily News did not advertise Brayden’s series before its June 16, 1925, debut, unlike the promotional treatments US papers gave to similar work by correspondents sent to Ireland during the revolution. Chicago’s Irish immigrant population had peaked at 74,000 in 1900 and dropped to 57,000 by 1920, tied for third largest with Boston. The US Immigration Act of 1924 further slowed new arrivals, but Chicago retained a robust American Irish Catholic identity.

Brayden’s first story appeared on the front page above the fold; a box of baseball scores and horse racing results to the left, a lurid tale about the shooting deaths of two Chicago gangsters who also were big opera supporters on the right. The single-column headlines declared:

Ireland No Longer
Distressful Country
—

Remarkable Changes Effect-
ed by New Governments
Under Home Rule.
—
Many Signs of Progress

An italicized editor’s note described Brayden as the paper’s “capable and experienced Dublin correspondent.” It said the series would detail “how the people of Ulster [Northern Ireland] and those of the Free State are improving their opportunity to govern themselves.” Brayden’s opening sentence posed this question:  “What is Ireland doing with the home rule that, after long conflict, it has won?”

His series sought to answer this question as it unspooled in Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday installments through July 23. The stories were not accompanied by any photographs, though the Daily News and other papers by then regularly featured black and white images of events and places, including overseas, and “head shots” of individual news makers.

Other papers that subscribed to the foreign news service either published the full series, such as the Buffalo (NY) News, or only select stories. The Kansas City Star described Brayden’s series as “a very illuminating analysis of the many problems which have confronted the new governments, and of the thoroughly practical ways, considering Ireland’s unique adventure, in which these problems are being met and solved.”[6]“ ‘More Business, Less Politics’ is the Slogan of the Irish Nation”, Kansas City Star, Aug. 10, 1925.

Considering Brayden’s long experience in Irish journalism and the critical post-revolutionary period that he detailed, his 1925 “survey” is worthy of revisiting a century later.

References

References
↑1 “Ireland No Longer Distressful Country”, June 16; “Tenants In Ireland Now Owners of Land”, June 18; “Irish System Of Law Rules in Free State”, June 20; “Make Irish Schools Fit Needs Of People”, June 23;  “Show Irish Capacity For Efficient Rule”, June 25; “Building Industries In Irish Free State”, June 27; “Power For Ireland From River Shannon”, June 30; “Ireland Now Deals With Other Nations”, July 2; “Irish Free State Is Able To Pay Its Way”, July 7; “Kilkenny Busy Spot In Ireland’s Trade”, July 9; “Cork Is Recovering From Its War Wounds”; July 11; “Limerick Is Lively: Its Outlook Bright”, July 14; “Irish Bank Deposits Mark of Prosperity”, July 16; “Home Rule In Ulster Unlike Free State’s”, July 18; “Belfast Is Hard Hit By Business Slump”, July 21; “New Ireland’s Place In Arts And Letters”, July 23. The first story began on the front page; all others on page 2.
↑2 William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925]
↑3 See “Brayden, William John Henry” by Felix Larkin, Dictionary of Irish Biography, October 2009.
↑4 “American Orator Beat Irish Brand”, (Baltimore) Evening Sun, May 15, 1919.
↑5 “590 Are Registered at Peking Cath. Univ.” The Catholic Transcript, Dec. 14, 1933.
↑6 “ ‘More Business, Less Politics’ is the Slogan of the Irish Nation”, Kansas City Star, Aug. 10, 1925.

Leo XIV recalls Leo XIII’s 1888 intrigues in Ireland

Pope Leo XIII

The elevation of American-born Robert Francis Prevost as the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, and his decision to take the name Leo XIV, has prompted coverage about his namesake predecessor, Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 until his death in 1903.

And that’s reason enough to reprise two stories about the former pope’s 19th century intrigues in Ireland. Each story linked below covers the same episode from different perspectives.

Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: Pope’s decree: American journalist William Henry Hurlbert was in Ireland when Pope Leo XIII issued a decree that condemned the “mode of warfare called the Plan of Campaign” and the associated violence of “a form of proscription … known as boycotting.”

The troubled foundation of St. Patrick’s in Rome, 1888: Construction of St. Patrick’s Church in the Eternal City began the same year as Leo XIII issued his decree, which created friction with his Irish flock.

As prior general of the Augustine order from 2001 to 2013, Prevost made numerous visits to Ireland. It will be interest to see if he returns to the country, which this century has turned radically secular, as Leo XIV.

Remembering CUA library donor John K. Mullen of Galway

John Kernan Mullen of Ballinasloe, County Galway, helped to fund the Catholic University of America (CUA) library that bears his name. The cornerstone was laid April 25, 1925, on the Washington, D.C., campus.

Mullen emigrated to America in 1847, when he was nine. “He began working in a flour mill in Oriskany Falls, N.Y.,” according to a CUA profile. “At 20, Mullen went West, leasing a flour mill in Denver, Colo., and soon after buying several more mills. By 1911 he had built the first grain elevator in the state, established the Colorado Milling and Elevator Company, and operated 91 elevators, warehouses and mills in Colorado, Kansas, Utah and Oregon.”

He became a millionaire.

In 1924, Mullen pledged $500,000 to CUA to build a library, which opened as the John K. Mullen of Denver Memorial Library in September 1928. Since then the library has been open to the public. My work has benefited from access to the Mullen Library and CUA’s Special Collections, which are held in a different building. See the library’s online centenary exhibition.

There is no doubt of Mullen’s business success and generous philanthropy, especially to the Catholic church. He might have been motivated by having escaped the Great Famine.

His political views about Ireland’s struggle for independence are more of a mystery. He surely knew that Rev. Thomas J. Shahan, CUA’s rector from 1909 to 1928, had been an ardent Irish nationalist and national vice president of the Friends of Irish Freedom during the country’s revolutionary years. Exiled Fenian John Devoy attended the 1925 cornerstone ceremony. Coverage of the event in his Gaelic American newspaper mentioned only Mullen’s financial gift.[1]”Cardinal Lays Cornerstone Of Library, Gaelic American, May 2, 1925.

Mullen died in August 1929 in Denver. US Catholic newspapers and secular press obituaries also were silent as to Mullen’s views about his homeland. The digital Irish Newspaper Archive contains no coverage of his death or funding the library.

Bust of John K. Mullen on the main stairway landing between the library’s lobby and second floor.

This plaque is located inside the library’s front door.

References

References
↑1 ”Cardinal Lays Cornerstone Of Library, Gaelic American, May 2, 1925.

Following US correspondents in Ireland, Part 3

My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to explore several places visited by American journalists in their late 19th or early 20th century travels to the country. Below are a few more of my travel photos of these places, plus some of the correspondents’ original reporting and my work about them. This is the last post of this series. MH

My travel to County Donegal allowed me not only to follow the 1888 journey of American correspondent William Henry Hurlbert  (See Part 1), but also three other US journalists who trekked to Dungloe during Ireland’s revolutionary period. Ruth Russell of the Chicago Daily News, 1919; Savel Zimand of Survey Graphic magazine, 1921; and Redfern Mason of the San Francisco Examiner, 1922, came to interview Patrick Gallagher, leader of the successful Templecrone Co-operative Agricultural Society Ltd. See “When three American journalists visited ‘Paddy the Cope’ in Dungloe, 1919-1922,” published earlier this year in The Irish Story.

Dunleavy, Holan, McGarvey, and Sharkey. 

“The Cope” today remains a thriving enterprise, with 12 retail businesses in four locations: Dungloe, Annagry, Kincasslagh, and Falcarragh. I was welcomed to Dungloe by Patrick J. Dunleavy, chairman of the Cope’s board of directors, who gave me a detailed driving tour of the Rosses region. Mark Sharkey, CEO; and Emma McGarvey, business support manager, hosted us for a lovey lunch at the Caisleain Oir Hotel, Annagry. Our wonderful meal came from award-winning chef Cathal Armstrong, who also owns Restaurant Eve in greater Washington, D.C. The warm hospitality of all these people matched the fine April weather. It was a highlight of my trip. Thank you.

***

“I arrived at Dungloe on a cold and rainy morning. And as the station is about three miles from the center of the village, I sent my luggage up by donkey cart and set out walking. Wild beauty was all around me. In ten minutes the rain stopped. The sky cleared and the wind freshened over the blue and golden hills.” — Savel Zimand, from  “The Romance of Templecrone”, Survey Graphic, November 26, 1921.

The Letterkenny and Burtonport railway extension opened in 1903 and closed in the 1940s. The Dungloe station has been converted into a private residence, seen at right from a small bridge over the former railroad right-of-way, at left, now used as a hike and bike trail.

“… If [Gallagher] had not been a co-operationist for Ireland he might have been a capitalist in America. He took me up the main street, making plain the signs of growing industry: the bacon cured in Dungloe, the egg-weighing, the rentable farm machinery. After viewing the orchard and beehives behind the cooperative store, I remarked on the size of the plant and its suitability for the purpose. — Ruth Russell, “Building The Commonwealth”, The Freeman, May 26, 1920. Magazine story based on 1919 reporting for the Chicago Daily News.

Early 20th century view, looking down Main Street in Dungloe.

Looking up Main Street, Dungloe, April 2025.

“[Gallagher] rises. ‘Come down to the harbor with me. I want to show you something.’ We stroll to the waterfront. From the rocks juts a pier on which men are working. ‘We have to thank America for that,’ says Gallagher.” — Redfern Mason, Rebel Ireland. Self-published booklet based on his 1922 reporting for the San Francisco Examiner.

These two storage buildings were erected as part of the cooperative in the early 20th century. They are located on the Dungloe waterfront, seen on the right at low tide. The pier related to this enterprise was erected in 1923 with funding from the American Committee for Relief in Ireland. The pier was destroyed by several storms in the 1990s. It has since been replaced, seen below at left.

Following US correspondents in Ireland, Part 2

My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to visit several places that American journalists wrote about during their late 19th or early 20th century travels to the country. Below are more of my travel photos, plus some of the correspondents’ original reporting and my work about them. MH

***

“It is seldom that reporters can sit in a hotel room and by peeping through drawn blinds see revolutionary history being made, as I am doing today and did yesterday.” — Arthur S. Draper of the New York Tribune, “Fierce Fighting Rages in Fire-Swept Dublin” in the Tribune, April 30, 1916 (Dateline April 29, 1916)

London & North Western Railway (LNWR) logo on the facade of the former hotel. Click image to enlarge.

“We watched the bombardment from a window on the third floor of a hotel. Naval boats, swinging in close to (the Liffey) shore, sent shells screaming into the city, bringing the rebel strongholds crashing down with loud roars. … Soldiers were posted in large force along the quays and in the warehouses across the street from our hotel, answering the sharp volleys of the sniping rebels.” — Wilbur S. Forrest of United Press, ”Shells Rout Rebels” in the Washington Post, April 30, 1916. (Dateline April 29, 1916)

Draper and Forrest were among the 14 correspondents embedded on a British naval destroyer that steamed for Dublin in April 1916 at the outbreak of the Rising. The the London and North Western Hotel is the lookout referenced in their stories. It was located on the Liffey riverfront next to the London and North Western Railway Company train station and steam packet terminal. After a long dormancy, the hotel property was reopened in 2022 as part of the Salesforce Tower campus, seen below. The station and terminal remains vacant.

Read “When a boatload of reporters steamed to the Easter Rising.”

The former London and North Western Hotel seen in April 2025. The red brick structure at left is part of the former railway and steam packet terminal, now abandoned. The dark glass at right is part of the Salesforce Tower, which incorporates the former hotel. The building faces the River Liffey across the street.

Looking upward to a rooftop skylight from the main stairwell of the former hotel lobby. I was unable to access the upper floors, where reporters watched the fighting in 1916.

Note stained glass designs at top of the arched windows, seen from the exterior.

West side of the former hotel. Note that a large arched window bricked over above the door.