Category Archives: History

Reading Devoy’s “Recollections” at the library, and online

Recollections Of An Irish Rebel, John Devoy’s “personal narrative” of his life as an Irish nationalist from the 1850s to the 1916 Rising, was first published in 1929, a year after his death. “A few days before his death,” however, Devoy signed 100 copies of the book’s dedication page.

Irish University Press published a facsimile of the original in 1969. That’s the edition I sat down with recently at Catholic University of America’s Mullen Library. Here is the dedication page, followed below by one of my favorite quotes from Devoy:

“The strong individuality of the Irishman is his best quality, but it often turns out to be his most dangerous one. He is always inclined to ‘butt in,’ convinced that he could do things better than those entrusted with the task. Old members of the Clan-na- Gael were mostly free from this defect of a fine national quality. They were like soldiers, trained in habits of discipline and respect for authority, and they had confidence that the Executive would properly take care of the interests of the organization and the Cause. There were some exceptions, but these were mostly comparatively new members. But the Clan-na-Gael was only a very small part of the Irish population of the United States, and large numbers who belonged to no organization were keenly alive to the opportunity presented to Ireland by the war and were anxious to ‘do something.’ ”

Here is a digital version of Devoy’s Recollections.

Devoy’s grave at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

 

Polling closed in Northern Ireland Assembly elections

UPDATES:

  • The election is set to deliver a significant boost to Irish nationalism at the expense of unionists, RTE reports. Sinn Féin could come within a seat or two of the DUP, which held a 10 seat advantage in the previous Stormont government.
  • The nearly 65 percent turnout was higher than first anticipated and the strongest since the vote that followed the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
  • Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt announced his resignation.

ORIGINAL POST:

Polling stations have closed across the six counties of Northern Ireland, and counting will take place throughout the day 3 March. Results should be completed by the following day.

The Electoral Office for Northern Ireland has told media outlets that the turnout was higher than last May’s 55 percent participation rate. The BBC reported 80 percent turnout in new Sinn Féin leader Michelle O”Neill’s Mid Ulster constituency, and more than 75 percent in DUP leader Arlene Foster’s district of Fermanagh South Tyrone.

Could these two women share power at Stormont? Or will there be a return to direct rule from London? Check back for updates, and I’ll wrap up the results by 5 March.

BBC photo

Detailing Irish prisoners in Western Pennsylvania

In 1917, 220 Irish immigrants were incarcerated for minor offenses at the Allegheny County Workhouse and Inebriate Asylum near Blawnox, Pennsylvania, about 10 miles east of downtown Pittsburgh.

The Irish were 4.5 percent of the 4,826 people taken to the workhouse throughout the year as the United States entered World War I. They probably emigrated from most of the 32 counties of pre-partition Ireland under British rule.

I came across these details while researching a long-deceased Irish-Catholic relation from Kerry who I thought might have spent time in the workhouse. The prisoner turned out to be a black Baptist from Ohio with the same first and last name.

Old postcard image of the Allegheny County Workhouse.

The Irish incarcerated during 1917 were third behind U.S. citizens (74.32 percent) and Austrians (7.56 percent). Strong Irish immigration to Western Pennsylvania in the 19th and early 20th century probably means the U.S. total included a significant number of first generation Irish Americans. Assuming just 10 percent of the U.S.-born prisoners had such heritage, the Irish total would increase to 14 percent of the workhouse population.

That’s more in line with the 12.32 percent of Irish natives incarcerated at the workhouse from the time it opened in 1869, according to the institution’s 1917 annual report.

Men and women who committed more serious crimes were usually sentenced to Western Penitentiary, about 15 miles west of the workhouse along the Allegheny/Ohio rivers. The original “Western Pen” opened in 1826. It was replaced in 1882 by the building now being closed after more than a century. (Allegheny County Workhouse closed in 1971.)

I’ve found only spotty historical records for Western Pen that detail prisoners’ nation of origin. Irish natives averaged 3.5 percent of those incarcerated in 1881, 1884, 1886, 1888, 1890, 1895 and 1896.

Of course, the workhouse and Western Pen statistical reports lack many details, and historical and social context, including the percentages of Irish living in the general population of Pittsburgh and surrounding counties. Other questions: What types of crimes did the Irish commit? How often was their arrest the direct or indirect result of anti-Irish or anti-Catholic prejudice? How many had been criminals in Ireland? What impacts did Irish penetration of law enforcement and the legal system have on criminal justice? How about other upward social mobility for the Irish?

One small detail is available. About 15 percent of all prisoners who entered the workhouse during its first 48 years of operation could not read or write. Among the Irish, illiteracy was nearly 18 percent over the same period. In 1917, however, only 20 native Irish were illiterate, less than 0.5 percent of all those incarcerated.

Here are more general details about the workhouse:

  • In 1917, the average daily population was 843. It cost an average of 74 cents per day to confine each inmate, but earnings from their labor reduced the expense to 19 cents per prisoner per day.
  • Prisoners worked on a 1,100-acre farm, which was expanded in 1917 to help feed the troops in Europe. Inmates also produced brushes, brooms, carpets, chairs, and blacksmithed goods. They provided laundry services and other hired labor.
  • Of the 4,826 people incarcerated during 1917, 92 percent were men, and about 70 percent of the prison population was white. The most common occupation of the prisoners was laborer. There were 26 butchers, 27 bakers and 19 boilermakers … five soldiers, three sailors and three police.
  • The most cited offense was “suspicious person” (1,317), followed by disorderly conduct (977) and vagrancy (736). A total of 602 offences were related to consuming and selling alcohol. The most frequent sentence was 30 days (2,721 prisoners,) while 27 received terms of two years or longer.

See the 1917 statistical report for the Allegheny County Workhouse, with annual updates through 1922. Here are Western Pen reports for 1881 to 1890. Workhouse prisoner names can be searched on Ancestry.com.

St. Valentine rests at Carmelite church in Dublin

Saint Valentine rests at the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Whitefriar Street, Dublin. It’s a popular pilgrimage site at the Feb. 14 holiday. I’ve made regular stops at the church, which is near the National Archives of Ireland.

The third century saint’s mortal remains were gifted by Pope Gregory XVI to Irish Carmelite Fr. John Spratt in November 1836. Spratt built the Whitefriar Street church in 1825 and also enjoyed a good reputation in Rome for his stirring homilies.

Read more at the Whitefriar Street Church website; or watch this video from The Irish Independent:

Protestant memories enhance Irish folklore collection

Last summer, the National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin made this public admission: “Irish Protestant cultural history is not as well represented in the archives … as that of the Catholic community.”

To address the imbalance, the special library launched the “Irish Protestant Folk Memory Project.” The effort was partially linked to the decade of centennial remembrances of the turbulent years leading to the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, with the majority Protestant province of Ulster partitioned as Northern Ireland.

In the 26 counties of southern Ireland, “the social and political upheavals of this period profoundly affected the lives of many [minority Protestant] families, presenting challenges with respect to their sense of national identity and historic allegiance,” the NFC said.

So far, the NFC has interviewed over 50 people and been inundated with correspondence from Protestants who are keen to tell their stories and to record their history, The Irish Times reports under the headline, The Secret Lives of Ireland’s Protestants.

A lead researcher says there is compelling evidence that while most Protestants in the Republic saw themselves as completely separate from those in Northern Ireland, this was not always the case for those in Border areas. Also, although the Protestant community is comprised mainly of Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians, it was never homogenous.

For more political background, read the concluding chapter of the 1983 book “Protestants in a Catholic State: Ireland’s Privileged Minority,” by Kurt Bowen.

Kenny urged to skip St. Paddy’s Day visit to Trump

You know global politics have entered uncharted territory when the Irish leader is urged to boycott the annual St. Patrick’s Day visit to the White House. But that’s how toxic U.S. President Donald Trump has become in the wake of slapping travel restrictions on immigrants and other visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the order.

Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny “will need the luck of the Irish if he is to pull off this year’s visit without significant criticism,” the Washington Post said in a wave of coverage on both side of the Atlantic about the scheduled visit. So far, Kenny insists he will fly to Washington in mid-March.

An online poll in the Dublin-based TheJournal.ie measured 34 percent of respondents saying Kenny should make the trip, compared to 33 percent believing he should dump Trump. Another 28 percent said Kenny should make the trip but voice displeasure with the policy. At New York-based Irish Central, online polling showed 47 percent support for Kenny meeting with Trump, with 27 percent opposed and 23 percent in favor of the Irish leader visiting the U.S. but not the White House. (Both poll results as of 4 February.)

Kenny was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Trump shortly after the American’s victory in November. “He is looking forward to doing business with Ireland and I asked him specifically about Patrick’s Day, he is looking forward to continuing that tradition over many years,” Kenny said.

The Irish Times editorialized that the annual visit “is not just a hooley.”

The celebrations express publicly on the part of both the Irish and the U.S. sides a commonality of interests, values, and heritage, of interconnectedness. And, importantly, a shared commitment to the North’s peace process and political reconciliation, to which this annual jamboree has made a significant contribution. …

There are other ways [than boycotting the visit] to convey to Donald Trump the conviction of our people that he has broken with some of the noblest traditions and values of his country and ours , and our determination that we will not be party internationally to his narrow “America First” unilateralist project.”

Saturday in the stacks: ‘set-piece eviction’ timeline

Irish history stacks at Catholic University of America.

I spent a few hours in the main Mullen Library at Catholic University of America, browsing the Irish history collection in the open stacks. I selected from one of the shelves “A New History of Ireland, Volume VI: Ireland Under the Union: 1870-1921,” edited by W. E. Vaughan. I settled into a chair to read the chapter, The Parnell Era, 1883-91, by R. V. Comerford.

The Irish “Land War” period of tenant-landlord agitation is typically framed as 1879-1882. But agrarian unrest on the island began during the Great Famine of the mid-19th century and lasted throughout the 1880s. In reading about British administration of Ireland during the year 1887, Comerford makes this statement that caught my eye:

“This was the great era of the transportable battering-ram and of the set-piece eviction scene, producing images that have been frequently superimposed on earlier times.” (My emphasis.)

Eviction scene with battering-ram in County Clare, July 1888.

Irish history professor Ronan Fanning dies

Ronan Fanning, professor emeritus of modern Irish history at University College Dublin and the author of several books, died 18 January at age 75.

In 2015, Fanning published A Will to Power, a biography of Éamon de Valera, one of the most complicated and controversial figures of Irish revolutionary history. His Introduction included this anecdote:

By a strange coincidence my father died on the same day as Éamon de Valera, 29 August 1975, some hours before him. He was buried in Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery, again on the same day, less than one hundred yards away from where de Valera was buried an hour later in the republican plot. I was reminded on that morning that de Valera would remain as divisive a figure in death as in life. A family friend, who knew that my father was never an admirer of de Valera … said to me at his graveside as the undertaker was hurrying us out to make way for the state funeral, ‘What’s the first thing your father will say to St. Peter when he sees him? “There’s another Irishman, a long fellow, coming up after me and he’ll cause havoc if you let him in!”

Ronan Fanning is to be cremated at Glasnevin. Below, he speaks about British policy in Ireland after the 1916 Easter Rising.

T. K. Whitaker, Irish economist, dies at 100

Thomas Kenneth Whitaker, described as “the most influential public servant” in the history of the Republic of Ireland, died 9 January, a month and a day after his 100th birthday. Born eight months after the Easter Rising, a boy at the time of partition, the County Down native also was involved in Northern Ireland issues.

Read The Irish Times obituary, and “supreme mandarin and good citizen” column by Fintan O’Toole. Video below released for his 100th birthday.

Ellis Island, Annie Moore and other Irish news of 1892

Happy New Year!  Today is the 125th anniversary of the opening of the Ellis Island immigration center in New York. Cork teenager Annie Moore, joined by two younger brothers, was the first immigrant to enter this busy portal to America. She stepped off a steamship gangplank and into the massive building, where she was greeted by U.S. government officials.

The “rosy-cheeked Irish girl” was handed a $10 gold piece in a brief ceremony scaled back from earlier plans for a “pretentious opening,” The New York Times reported. Her arrival in America also was noted a few days later in a one-paragraph brief on page 2 of the Irish Examiner.

The attention didn’t last long.

“Annie may have stepped off the boat and into American legend—the first of 12 million to pass through Ellis Island in its 62 years of operation—but as an actual person she seemed to dissolve the minute she reached Manhattan,” Jesse Green wrote in this 2010 New York magazine piece that explores the fact and fiction of the popular immigration story.

The Times story that helped make Annie a legend also reported that Ellen King, “on her way from Waterford, Ireland, to a small town in Minnesota,” was the first to purchase a railroad ticket at Ellis Island. And it hinted ominously of detained immigrants placed “in a wire-screened inclosure (sic).”

The arrival of these immigrants at Ellis Island was not the only Ireland-related news reported by the Times in the first days of January 1892. Other stories included:

  • The  wreck of the schooner Catherine Richards off the coast of county Kerry on 29 December 1891, killing six crew.  The sailing vessel was carrying a cargo of grain from Africa to Limerick.
  • The 31 December 1891, explosion at Dublin Castle, two months after the death of Charles Stuart Parnell, which stirred “whisperings that the ‘physical force’ party were tired of their enforced inactivity and had given up all hope of Ireland gaining her independence through Parliamentary agitation.”
  • The pending U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn the Supreme Court of Nebraska and allow James E. Boyd to become governor of the state. Boyd was born county Tyrone in 1834 and emigrated to America 10 years later with his family. Boyd’s father applied for U.S. citizenship in Ohio but never completed the process, later moving the family to Nebraska, where his son become involved in business and politics. Once Boyd won the 1890 governor’s contest, outgoing Gov. John M. Thayer challenged his citizenship and refused to yield the office. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Boyd and other residents of Nebraska gained citizenship when the state joined the union in 1867.

Five years after opening, the Ellis Island center that welcomed Annie Moore burned to the ground in a massive fire that also consumed 40 year of federal and state immigration records. It is the replacement building opened in December 1900 that became the iconic symbol of U.S. immigration through 1954. This is where my Kerry-born maternal grandmother and grandfather arrived in 1912 and 1913, respectively. Today, it operates as the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration.

The original immigration center at Ellis Island, top, opened New Year’s Day, 1892. It burned to the ground five years later. It was replaced by the iconic building, below, that is now a national museum of immigration.