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Brayden on the Irish Boundary Commission, Part 2

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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.

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.

New details on Ruth Russell in revolutionary Ireland

My ongoing research of American journalists in revolutionary Ireland, 1918-1923, has revealed new details about Ruth Russell, a Chicago correspondent who covered the early months of the war. I wrote a December 2019 series about Russell, linked below, and gave several history conference presentations about her before the Covid pandemic.

Ruth Russell, 1919.

The most significant new information is that Russell joined Chicago-area efforts to raise financial relief for Ireland after the April 1916 Easter Rising, then was denied permission to travel to Ireland to help distribute the aid. British diplomats in America raised objections about her association with The New World, Chicago’s pro-Irish Catholic weekly. The 27-year-old Russell came to the attention of some of the highest ranking officials in the U.S. and British government, according to digitized Dublin Castle records accessed through Harvard’s Widener Library. Three years later the Chicago Daily News supported Russell’s passport application and the U.S. State Department permitted her travel to Ireland in March 1919.

Separately, in January 1924, Russell wrote to Albert Jay Nock, libertarian author and editor of the Freeman magazine, about the publication’s imminent demise after four years of U.S. circulation. Referring to herself as an “unmoneyed schoolteacher,” Russell offered to send $100 to help keep the magazine afloat. She did not, however, mention her two 1920 stories about Ireland for the publication, based on her year-earlier reporting for the Daily News. I found the letter in the B.W. Huebsch Papers at the Library of Congress while researching Francis Hackett.

I have made other minor edits and updates to the five-part series, found here:

My 2020 update on Russell’s burial spot: Ruth Russell remembered in stone … 57 years later

My full series on journalists: American Reporting of Irish Independence

From Boycott to Biden: My 2020 freelance work

This year I had six freelance pieces published on four websites beyond this blog. I thank the editors who worked with me on these projects and hope my readers will explore their websites after enjoying the articles linked below. MH

Will Biden Shake Up a Century of US-Ireland Relations?
History News Network, Dec. 13, 2020

Joe Biden.

Though annual St. Patrick’s Day festivities at the White House have become a familiar tradition, Ireland hasn’t always fared well with U.S. presidents. Woodrow Wilson grew agitated with Irish activists, who helped scuttle the post-WWI League of Nations with war ally Britain. John F. Kennedy also was reluctant to jeopardize America’s “special relationship” with Britain during the Cold War. Now, Joe Biden’s presidency may be a boon to Irish politics, including new focus on the island’s century-old divided status.

Home at War, 1920: Diaspora Witness Statements to the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland
Irish Diaspora Histories Network, Nov. 15, 2020

Clare native Patrick J. Guilfoil returned to Ireland in 1920.

Half of the 18 American witnesses who testified a century ago about their experiences in Ireland during the War of Independence were natives of the country who returned home in 1920. Their first-person accounts of the period’s violence and unrest, totaling more than 160 pages of verbatim transcript, illustrate both Irish nationalist and American identities. Most of the nine witnesses said they returned to Ireland to visit family. Then they got caught in the crossfire of war.

The History of the Boycott Shows a Real Cancel Culture
History News Network, Aug. 2, 2020

Charles Boycott

Dozens of writers, artists and academics signed a letter in Harper’s Magazine that warned of growing “censoriousness” in our culture, including “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism.” While so-called “cancel culture” often deploys modern social media technology, it is hardly a new tactic. It most famously dates to 1880 in the west of Ireland, when English land agent Charles Boycott’s last name became a verb for the practice.

‘Likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty’, the Seizure of Irish newspapers
The Irish Story, May 17, 2020

The British government in Ireland wielded suppression powers over papers and printing works they deemed were “used in a way prejudicial to the public safety” or potentially bothersome to King George V, as quoted in the headline. On Sept. 20, 1919, authorities made simultaneous raids on three printing works that published six anti-establishment newspapers. An American journalist in Ireland later observed that among papers suppressed and then allowed to resume publication, “it is the custom to come out in the next issue with a blast against the government which makes the previous ‘libel’ read like a hymn of praise.”

When Irish Was Spoken in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Quarterly, March 16, 2020

Hyde’s travel journal was reissued in 2019.

Irish language scholar Douglas Hyde described Pittsburgh as “the dirtiest and blackest city in America” and complained “the wind would cut your nose off” during his January 1906 visit. But the 45-year-old Irishman hadn’t sailed across the Atlantic for mild weather or fine scenery. As with the other stops on an eight-month U.S. tour, Hyde came to raise awareness about the Gaelic League, the language revival organization he helped found in 1893 to nurture both cultural and political nationalism.

Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland
The Irish Story, Jan. 8, 2020

1919 passport photo of Ruth Russell.

American journalist Ruth Russell interviewed Éamon de Valera and other leading political and cultural figures of the Irish revolution, including Arthur Griffith, Maud Gonne McBride, Michael Collins, Constance Georgine Markievicz, and George William Russell (no relation) during her 1919 reporting trip. Russell also mixed with Ireland’s poorest citizens, people in the shadows of the revolution. Back in America, she protested outside the British embassy in Washington, D.C., and testified before the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland.

Three stories published beyond the blog

(I am currently working on long-term projects. The linked headlines below are from stories that I’ve freelanced this year beyond the blog. Please check back for occasional new posts over the summer. Enjoy. MH)

‘Likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty’, the Seizure of Irish newspapers
The Irish Story, May 17, 2020

At midday Sept. 20, 1919, as “squally,” unseasonably cold weather raked across Dublin, “armed soldiers wearing trench helmets” joined by “uniformed and plain clothes police” made simultaneous raids on three printing works that published six anti-establishment newspapers. (See “Secret” document related to the raids at bottom of this post.)

When Irish Was Spoken in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Quarterly, March 16, 2020

Douglas Hyde opened his 1906 speech in Gaelic, and many in the audience shouted back in Irish, according to the press reports: “It is doubtful if a more completely Irish assembly has ever been gathered together in Pittsburgh.”

Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland
The Irish Story, Jan. 8, 2020

The Chicago Daily News reporter interviewed leading Irish political and cultural figures. She also mixed with Ireland’s poorest citizens, people in the shadows of the revolution. Back in America, she joined a protest against British rule in Ireland, and testified favorably to the Irish republican cause before a special commission. 

See my American reporting of Irish independence series for more stories about journalists and newspaper coverage of the Irish revolution. See my Pittsburgh Irish archives for more on the city’s immigrants.

Memorandum outlining the September 1919 newspaper raids from the secret files of British authorities in Ireland. Army of Ireland, Administrative and Easter Rising Records, Subseries – Irish Situation, 1914-1922, WO 35/107, The National Archives, Kew.

Ruth Russell remembered in stone … 57 years later

On Oct. 2, 1961, former journalist and retired public school teacher Ruth Russell, “of sound and disposing mind and memory,” signed her Last Will and Testament in Chicago. Her first direction was to be buried in Fayetteville, Arkansas, “next to the grave of my sister, Cecilia Russell.” Her second direction called on the University of Arkansas to use the proceeds of the $10,000, 1960 U.S. Series H Bond she donated to establish a scholarship in Cecilia’s name to help “needy and worthwhile individuals” with the study of French.1

Ruth Russell, 1919 passport photo.

Ruth Russell, who reported from revolutionary Ireland in 1919 for the Chicago Daily News, died two years later, on Nov. 28, 1963, of heart disease.2 She was 74.

Headlines about the assassination and burial of U.S. President John F. Kennedy had dominated the news during the final week of her life. Irish President Éamon de Valera, 81, was among the international mourners who attended Kennedy’s funeral in Washington, D.C. Russell had interviewed de Valera 44 years earlier in Dublin. He provided a supportive letter that was published at the front of her 1920 book, What’s the matter with Ireland? “You succeeded in understanding Irish conditions and grasped the Irish viewpoint,” the revolutionary leader wrote.3

See my five-part monograph, “Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland“

Russell’s body was conveyed to Fayetteville, a 650-mile journey mostly likely accomplished by rail. She had moved there in 1954 after retiring from the Chicago public school system to join Cecilia, a romance languages teacher at the University of Arkansas since 1942.4 Ruth remained in Fayetteville after her sister died in October 1959. In August 1963, nearly two years after signing her will, she returned to Chicago and entered the Rosary Hill Convalescent Home, 16 miles southwest of the Hyde Park neighborhood of her childhood.5 She died in the care of Dominican Sisters.

Mourners prayed the rosary for Russell the evening of Dec. 2, 1963, at Moore’s Chapel, Fayetteville; followed the next morning by the funeral Mass at St. Joseph Catholic Church.6 Father Edward R. Maloy presided at the burial in the church cemetery on a clear, dry day as temperatures climbed to near 60.7 The priest prayed:

Eternal rest grant unto her, O’ Lord,
And let perpetual light shine upon her.
May her soul, and the soul of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen

Fr. Maloy and whatever number of mourners joined him at the graveside turned from the headstone Ruth Russell purchased after her sister’s death: the surname engraved slightly above center; Cecilia’s first name and birth and death years in the bottom left corner. The bottom right space for Ruth’s name and years to be similarly etched remained smooth that day … and for the next 57 years.

Russell grave, March 2019.

Like her sister, Ruth Russell never married or had children. Her will named two nephews, two young heirs of one of her late brothers, and a brother-in-law, as one-fifth beneficiaries to any funds that remained after her estate was settled, excluding the $10,000 bond for the university scholarship. None of these people, or her Fayetteville friends, engaged a monument company to inscribe Ruth’s name on the headstone. Such oversights are not unusual, as I detailed in a 2017 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story, “Life Without an End Date“.

I first learned that Ruth’s name was not on the gravestone through the Findagrave.com website, part of my research of Illinois and Arkansas newspaper obituaries that referenced her life in Chicago and Fayetteville. Paul A. Warren, operations director at St. Joseph’s, confirmed the oversight when he provided the photo above, and a copy of the church’s handwritten burial log that shows Ruth’s internment details.

With Paul’s help, and the excellent work of the Emerson Monument Company, Springdale, Ark., (Thank you Alison and Glenn), Ruth’s name was added to the gravestone in March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across America. It is a fitting memorial at the 100th anniversary of her reporting from Ireland and activism on behalf of Irish independence. It is a lasting remembrance … at last … like the Cecilia Russell Memorial Scholarship that Ruth endowed and that remains active at the university.

Rest in peace, Ruth.

Russell grave, March 2020.

1919 Revisited: American reporting of Irish independence

This year I explored 1919 U.S. mainstream and Irish-American newspaper coverage of events in the struggled for Irish freedom. I produced 32 stand-alone posts for my American Reporting of Irish Independence series about developments on both sides of the Atlantic, including:

  • Dáil Éireann, revolutionary parliament of the Irish Republic
  • Irish Race Convention
  • American Commission on Irish Independence
  • Éamon de Valera’s tour of America
  • News reporting and opinion pieces for and against the Irish cause

Many of my posts are focused on three Irish-American weeklies: The Irish Press, a short-lived (1918-1922) Philadelphia paper with direct political and financial ties to revolutionary Ireland; the Kentucky Irish American, published from 1898 to 1968 in Louisville; and The Irish Standard, circulated from 1886 to 1920 in Minneapolis, Minn. Since all three papers are digitized, my posts are laced with links to the original pages. The Irish American and Standard offered more moderate coverage of Ireland’s cause than the Press, reflecting a more conservative Irish America in the heartland, rather than the more activist immigrant pockets of the East Coast.

Ruth Russell’s 1919 passport photo.

I also produced a five-part monograph, Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland, about a young Chicago Daily News correspondent who reported from the early months of the revolution. Upon her return to America, Russell wrote a book about her experience, protested against British rule in Ireland; and testified before the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland.

“They were extremely cool-headed and intelligent,” Russell said of the Sinn Féin leaders. “[They were] the most brilliant crowd of people that I have met in my life, and as a newspaper person I have mixed in at a good many gatherings.”8

Here’s the full series:

Thanks to the American Journalism Historians Association and the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland for the opportunity to present my research at conferences in Dallas and Belfast, respectively.

Presenting at the NPHFI conference, Queens University Belfast, November 2019.

Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland: Witness

Chicago journalist Ruth Russell reported from revolutionary Ireland in 1919, followed by a year of activism for its independence. This five-part monograph is part of my American Reporting of Irish Independence series. © 2022

***

The Library of Congress received What’s the matter with Ireland?, Russell’s expansion of her 1919 Daily News reporting, on July 20, 1920, nearly a year after she returned from Ireland.9 The front page of that day’s Washington Post reported on a “night of terror” in Cork city, as civilians threw home-made bombs at two military lorries in reprisal for an earlier “boyonetting incident” and “indiscriminate firing” by British troops, the latest example of how violence had escalated since Russell’s departure.10

Publisher Devin-Adair Co. of New York does not appear to have aggressively marketed the 160-page book, which was not widely reviewed. Russell’s split from the Daily News and participation in the British Embassy protests11 are not mentioned in the reviews or advertising that I have located. The book’s title, which implies something is wrong with Ireland, may have soured ardent nationalists able to select other 1920 offerings with more uplifting names, such as The Invincible Irish and Why God Loves the Irish.

Original edition of Russell’s 1920 book at the Library of Congress. Digital versions of the book are widely available online.

The New York Tribune’s review suggested the title was “misleading since this little volume … offers not a solution but a statement of the problem.”12 It added: “Her volume is a forthright presentation of the situation as it offers itself to the inquiring sojourner, given in the journalist’s terms of first-hand observation and current statistics.”

The Tribune also found: “Not the least interesting actors in the Irish drama are the women leaders of the revolutionary party.” It pointed to Russell’s reporting of Countess Markievicz; Maud Gonne McBride; suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst; writer and activist Susan Langstaff Mitchell; and Countess Elizabeth Burke-Plunkett, president of the United Irishwomen.

The Catholic World was tougher on Russell: “She succeeds in rousing our sympathy for the poor working girls of Dublin, and other unfortunate people of the city and the bog-field. But when she takes up the political she seems unable to do justice to her subject. … There is no doubt Miss Russell’s intentions are good, but it is doubtful if such books as this will help Ireland’s cause.”13

The Chicago-based Illinois Catholic Historical Review supported the hometown author. It described Russell as a “brilliant young writer” whose “powerful book, in language simple and direct, and yet at times dramatic or poetic” was worthwhile for anyone “interested in knowing the truth about the Irish question.”14 By coincidence, the same issue of the Review featured a story on “The Irish of Chicago,” which mentioned Russell’s editor father and referred readers to the review of his daughter’s “most interesting book.”15

An advertisement for the book16 declared: “Only a determined woman can get at the bottom of the facts,” and Russell “saw Ireland, its people, and its problems as no one else has seen them.” It quoted Eamon de Valera’s January 1920 letter from the front matter, and a testimonial from Frank P. Walsh, a member of the American Commission on Irish Independence, whom Russell met in Ireland. He wrote:

“It is a most valuable contribution to the literature of Ireland. It is a breezy, well-told narrative of Irish life, is more human and charming than anything which I have read, while the economic background is presented in a way that should bring home with terrific force to the reader the real heart of the Irish controversy.”

Here’s the full ad:

On a personal level, Russell dedicated the book to her widowed mother, who she lived with in Chicago. As the year drew to a close, the reporter received one more opportunity to publicly address her experiences in Ireland and her views on its struggle for independence.

COMMISSION TESTIMONY

Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of The Nation, in 1920 organized the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland. He invited U.S. senators, state governors, big city mayors, college presidents and professors, religious leaders, newspaper editors, and other prominent citizens to establish a “Committee of One Hundred” to form and oversee the eight-member
commission of inquiry.

“The situation in Ireland was a proper subject of concern for all peoples claiming either humanity or civilization,” the commission summarized. “It seemed to us that we could best serve the cause of peace by placing before English, Irish and American public opinion the facts of the situation, free from both agonized exaggeration and merciless understatement; for a knowledge of the facts might reveal their cause, and recognition of that cause might permit its cure, by those whose purpose was not to slay but to heal.”17

The commission held six hearings from November 1920 through January 1921, with 18 witnesses from Ireland; two from England (others were invited, but declined); and 18 Americans. The opening session came three weeks after the hunger-strike death of Irish nationalist and Cork Mayor Terance MacSwiney generated international headlines. His widow and sister testified in early December; Russell appeared a week later, Dec. 15, 1920, at the Lafayette Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Mary MacSwiney, sister of the late Cork mayor, testified Dec. 8, 1920, at the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, a week before Ruth Russell. Library of Congress.

Commission Chairman Frederic Howe called the session to order at 10:05 a.m.18 After stating her name for the record, Russell told the commission she “was employed” by the Daily News “when I went to Ireland … as foreign correspondent studying special economic, social, and political conditions.” She was not asked why she no longer worked at the paper. Questioned about her investigative methods, Russell answered she “used both interviews and personal experiences,” including living in the Dublin slums.

And her views about the Irish republican leaders she met?

“They were extremely cool-headed and intelligent,” Russell replied. “The crowd of Sinn Féin leaders … were, I think, the most brilliant crowd of people that I have met in my life, and as a newspaper person I have mixed in at a good many gatherings.”19 In Russell’s opinion “it would have been impossible for these brilliant young leaders to rally the forces in Ireland behind them unless the people were driven to revolt by the economic conditions that are pressing into them.” She blamed Protestant politicians in the province of Ulster, today’s Northern Ireland, who “work on the religious prejudices of the people, so that the rich mill owners profit by the division of the people, especially the laboring people.”20

For more than two hours,21 Russell answered the commission’s questions about political, economic,  social, educational, and religious conditions. Jane Addams, the Chicago-based progressive social reformer referenced in one of Russell’s Daily News stories, was one of the eight commissioners. She asked Russell about Irish schools, labor laws, and housing conditions.

Near the end of session commission attorney Basil M. Manly asked Russell how conditions in Ireland compared to the streets of New York, Chicago, or other American cities.

“I felt perfectly safe,” Russell replied. “I walked from the telegraph office in Limerick at two o’clock in the morning through perfectly black streets to my hotel. I inquired the direction several times, and was finally assisted to my hotel by a member of the Black Watch (an ancient form of civilian night guard). But there was no interference with my progress at all. … I only had one unpleasant experience while I was in Ireland. It was about three o’clock in the morning in [the Galway] railroad station; but that was all.”22

Manly did not ask her for details.

PRESS COVERAGE

Associated Press coverage of Russell’s testimony identified her 1919 Irish reporting trip for the Daily News,23, and this detail was repeated by newspapers that used the wire service across the country. These reports did not identify Russell with the April 1920 demonstrations at the British Embassy, which also was absent in her testimony. The Daily News did not publish a story about that day’s commission hearing.

The AP highlighted Russell’s comment that religious differences between Catholics and Protestants in Ulster were “artificially worked up.”24 The Irish News and Chicago Citizen quoted her more localized remark that “in some of the southern towns of my own state there is more religious intolerance than there is in Ireland.”25 The Irish Press, Philadelphia, reported Russell’s testimony that blamed British authorities for economic distress in Ireland by turning small farms to gazing land and exporting cattle on the hoof, thus idling farm laborers and industries dependent on agriculture.26 

Coverage of that day’s commission testimony appeared two weeks later in Irish newspapers and focused more on the testimony of nationalist legislator Laurence Ginnell. The Evening Herald of Dublin reported that Russell “gave a terrible picture of poverty in Ireland, and on sweating in mills and factories in the North of Ireland.”27

In spring 1921 the commission released a 152-page interim report. It quoted Russell only once: “On the whole, testified Miss Ruth Russell of Chicago, ‘I think there is possibly the greatest unanimity there that has ever existed in any country of the world.’ “28 Her response had been to a question from U.S. Sen. David I. Walsh, a Massachusetts Democrat, who asked Russell if she had ever known “unanimity of opinion upon any great question anywhere in the world?”29

Iconic image of an IRA patrol on Grafton Street in Dublin during the Irish Civil War.

Russell was mentioned in some press coverage of the report, which British officials dismissed as biased toward the revolutionaries. Fast-moving developments in Ireland continued to eclipse Russell’s 1919 reporting, as violence escalated up until a July 1921 truce. Five months later, Irish and British authorities agreed to treaty that created the 26-county, majority Catholic, Irish Free State, while the 6-county, predominantly Protestant, Northern Ireland remained part of Britain. The dominion status of southern Ireland fell short of the full republic sought by Sinn Féin leaders.

Bitter disappointment about this outcome in 1922 erupted in a bloody civil war in the Free State that lasted for the next two years. By then, Russell had slipped from the spotlight of Irish politics and returned to a quieter life in Chicago.

NEXT:  The rest of Russell’s life, and my personal thoughts

Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland: Activist

Chicago journalist Ruth Russell reported from revolutionary Ireland in 1919, followed by a year of activism for its independence. This five-part monograph is part of my American Reporting of Irish Independence series. © 2022

***

After six months overseas, Russell returned to America in August 1919, back to her widowed mother and two sisters in Chicago.30 In January 1920, her story of being “broke” in England during a two-week wait for her ship appeared in The Ladies Home Journal.31 Determined to pass the time as inexpensively as possible, Russell reported that she walked more than 100 of the 234 miles from London to Liverpool. She detailed sights and adventures along the way and concluded: “There was one thing lacking to make the trip a complete success. But that was not a motor [car]; it was a friend.”32

Russell’s penny-pinching departure from England appears contrary to the January 1919 promise her Daily News editor made to the U.S. State Department, that she “would continue to be on a salary basis”33 while outside of America. The magazine story never mentions the Daily News or says why Russell was in England or Ireland. My research of the Daily News archives, including the 1919-1920 papers of Victor Lawson, the publisher; Charles Dennis, the editor; and Henry J. Smith, the news editor who wrote to the State Department; did not yield any documentation of her work or relationship with the paper.34

It is unclear whether her “special correspondent” relationship with the newspaper was so informal35 that it didn’t warrant any discussion, or because such records are lost or undiscovered. There are a few clues about what might have happened.

FOREIGN NEWS

As discussed in Part 1 of this series, the Daily News enhanced its reputation through the aggressive pursuit of foreign news. It excelled during the Great War and 1919 Paris peace conference. This coverage wasn’t cheap.

Chicago Daily News Publisher Victor F. Lawson, 1920. (Photo of a photo.) Chicago History Museum.

In March 1919, as Russell reported from Ireland, Lawson explained to outside newspaper executives that his paper’s foreign news service cost $260,585 in 191836, nearly double the $148,419 in 1915, the first full year of the war. Syndicate papers contributed $76,265 in 1918, Lawson revealed, leaving the Daily News to cover the $184,320 balance.37

By September 1919, less than a year after the war ended, the paper began to shift emphasis. Dennis wrote to Lawson: “I heartily agree with all you say about the enormous importance of making The Daily News a stronger local paper in every possible way. … I can see immense gain in circulation if we could be markedly stronger and more interesting locally.”38

In December 1919, Dennis outlined to Lawson 11 important issues facing the paper, including the return of its chief correspondent from the Paris peace conference; plans for an anthology book of its war coverage; discovery that a recently purchased 14-story feature package had previously appeared in the Saturday Evening Post; and the latest fundraising details for the “Chicago’s 100 Poorest Families” Christmas charity drive.39

After Christmas, Dennis advised the paper’s London bureau: “Now that the war is over war expenses must be lopped off. Some of our correspondents have spent money altogether too freely, having full regard of war conditions. They have wasted money on loosely constructed and overwritten dispatches, and dispatches telegraphed and cabled when they should have been mailed.”40

WOMEN PICKETS

As Russell’s Ladies Home Journal story circulated in January 1920, an “advance copy” of her book was provided to Éamon de Valera, according to his letter to her, published later that year as front matter in What’s the matter with Ireland?41 The Irish leader had slipped into America in June 1919 to raise money and build U.S. political support for the fledgling Irish republic. His 18-month tour of the country included several stops in Chicago.

Russell or her publisher likely provided the book to de Valera’s entourage, which must have believed it could be useful propaganda. Support staff probably drafted the letter for de Valera, who was in Washington, D.C., on the date of the published facsimile. Charles N. Wheeler, who reported from Ireland in spring 1918 for the Chicago Tribune, published his own book about Ireland in August 1919, then joined de Valera’s tour as an advance man and press spokesmen, might have assisted his fellow Chicago journalist. De Valera’s diary and related papers from the U.S. tour do not mention his March 1919 Dublin interview with Russell, any exchanges with her in America, or providing the letter for her book.42

At the start of April 1920, days before Easter, Russell joined a few dozen other women at a protest in front of the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. The demonstration was organized to increase support for the Irish republic as the war there grew more brutal. Irish and Irish-American activists disagreed on the strategy, however, with opponents worried it would undermine de Valera’s mission in America.43

Mainstream newspapers accounts identified many of the women demonstrators, including “Miss Ruth Russell of Chicago”. The coverage did not associate her 1919 reporting from Ireland for the Daily News. The Daily News published a front-page brief about the embassy protest, but it did not name any of the women.

Ruth Russell was in the crowd of women protesters, or “Irish pickets,” outside the British Embassy on April 1, 1920. Library of Congress.

The Irish News and Chicago Citizen, a pro-nationalist weekly, did connect Russell to the Daily News; her late father, a well-regarding editor; and an older brother who worked as a journalist.44 The front-page story described her as “one of the most indefatigable of these vigilante sentinels” outside the embassy. Moreover, it suggested the Daily News sent Russell to Ireland “with a pot of the blackest paint, with, perhaps, a big order to besmirch the character and objects of the Sinn Féiners.”

The overheated, but unsourced, report continued: “…on investigation, [Russell] discovered the odious and detestable nature of the services expected of her and in disgust renounced and repudiated them. She is now engaged, with her devoted associates, in shaking the tottering stronghold of British tyranny like a heroine in Joshua’s besieging army at the fall of Jericho.”

Russell was “among other women connected to journalism” at the protests.45 Perhaps she participated only in the role of undercover reporter. It does not appear Russell was among several women who were arrested, or who participated in subsequent demonstrations in the following months.

WIDE OUTLOOK

Longer and more detailed versions of her Ireland reporting soon appeared in The Freeman46, a monthly magazine edited by libertarian author and social critic Albert Jay Nock. Its editorial, “The Recognized Irish Republic,” was circulated by the women outside the British Embassy a week in advance of publication.47

Russell’s Freeman profiles of Dungloe community organizer Paddy Gallagher and Dublin political celebrity Countess Markievicz are similar in style and substance to her Daily News dispatches and passages in What’s the matter with Ireland? There is more narrative in the book and magazine pieces, but no new ground. This undercuts the Irish News’ suggestion of bias by
the Daily News, notwithstanding Russell’s comment about her former colleague’s “testy impatience with Ireland.”48

Russell’s 1919 passport photo was used on one of the pages of her Life and Labor magazine coverage about evictions in a West Virginia coal mining “hollar.”

In 1920, Russell also reported for Life and Labor magazine about women being evicted from their homes in the coal-mining “hollar” of Williamson, West Virginia. An editor’s note described her as having “the wide outlook on life which is the natural accompaniment of a journalistic career.”49

It is curious that none of the three magazines that published Russell’s work in 1920 referenced her former association with the Daily News; likewise that it was ignored in newspaper coverage of the British Embassy protest, the Irish News and Chicago Citizen excepted. Her writing and comments about Ireland would continue to gain attention through the end of the year.

NEXT: Russell’s book and public testimony about Ireland

Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland: Correspondent

Chicago journalist Ruth Russell reported from revolutionary Ireland in 1919, followed by a year of activism for its independence. This five-part monograph is part of my American Reporting of Irish Independence series. © 2024

***

Russell arrived in Ireland the day before St. Patrick’s Day, 1919, a week before her 30th birthday. Over the next few months she reported from Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Belfast, and rural Dungloe in County Donegal.50 At least two dozen of her dispatches appeared in the Chicago Daily News, and other U.S. and Canadian newspapers that subscribed to its foreign news service. 

She was not the only Daily News reporter in Ireland, which had attracted scores of American and other foreign correspondents after Dáil Éireann, the break away parliament of the Irish Republic, was established Jan. 21, 1919. As Maurice Walsh notes, “The Irish revolution became an international media event … The way in which visiting correspondents wrote up the Irish revolution was crucial to its outcome, both in the sense that they affected perceptions of the war and that they connected Ireland to the world.”51

Russell’s 1919 passport photo.

Russell’s first story from Ireland appeared in the Daily News on March 18, 1919, a day after the newspaper recognized St. Patrick’s Day with a full page of “greetings from noted Irish writers to their compatriots in Chicago.”52 She covered the prison release and triumphal Dublin return of Constance Georgine Markievicz, known as “Countess” Markievicz, who in December 1918 became the first woman elected to the British Parliament. As a separatist Sinn Féin candidate, Markievicz won a Dublin constituency while incarcerated for her role in Ireland’s anti-conscription protests earlier that year, months before the armistice.

Markievicz’s election and the Sinn Féin route of old guard Irish parliamentary nationalists received considerable press coverage in America. Her release from prison and decision to join the revolutionary parliament in Dublin was largely ignored by U.S. newspapers, giving Russell a scoop. Her story53 did not contrast Markievicz’s historic election win to American women still struggling for the vote. Her home state of Illinois would not ratify the 19th amendment until June, and U.S. suffrage waited until August 1920. 

Instead, Russell offered a narrative, scene-setting approach to the homecoming that differed from most straight-news reporting of the day. She even placed herself in the action, close enough for Markievicz to whisper an aside. Listen to a lightly edited passage of the story, read by my wife, and reproduced below:

Down one curb of the Eden quay uniformed boys with coat buttons glittering in arc lights were ranged in soldier formations. Up the other curb squads of girls were blocked. All were members of the citizens’ army of the Transport Workers union. … Up in the bare front room of the Liberty hall headquarters, where dim yellow electric bulbs were threaded from the ceiling, the countess welcomed her friends of the days of the revolution of 1916. … With her eyes slight behind her metal rimmed glasses, the countess marched to the big central window and flung it wide open to the spring night. Before she addressed the crowd below, she said to me: “Our fate all depends on your president [Woodrow Wilson] now.” 

Russell interviewed other leading political and cultural figures of the Irish revolutionary movement, including: 

  • Sinn Féin leader Éamon de Valera, describing his “white, ascetic, young–he is thirty-seven–face lined with determination”54;
  • “sharp-mustached, sardonic little”55 Arthur Griffith, the Sinn Féin founder;
  • Maud Gonne McBride, widow of an Irish revolutionary leader, “tall and slim in her deep mourning”56;
  •  “keen, boyish” Michael Collins57, the revolution’s guerrilla warfare strategist; and
  • George William Russell [no relation], “the famous AE, poet, painter and philosopher, the ‘north star of Ireland.’ ”58

Russell witnessed the Dublin arrival of the American Commission on Irish Independence, a non-U.S. government delegation of three prominent Irish Americans sent to the 1919 Paris peace conference to lobby for Ireland. She reported on a failed effort in the international race to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight. 

The three members of the Irish-American delegation, at right, receive an address written in Irish from Cumann na mBan Photo: Irish Life, 16 May 1919. From the National Library of Ireland collection, via Century Ireland.

As in her Markievicz piece, Russell was self-referential in other reporting, in both first and third person, such as her March 1919 interview with de Valera, then hiding from British authorities: “In a small white room where reddish tapestry and draperies concealed closed doors and shaded windows Mr. de Valera was talking to me as a representative of the Chicago Daily News,” she wrote. Later in the same story, Russell described being escorted from the secret meeting location: “In the darkness the correspondent was guided along a narrow garden walled to a waiting car.”59

IN THE SHADOWS

Russell’s reporting was at its best when she mixed with Ireland’s poorest citizens, those in the shadow of the revolution. She lived in the Dublin slums with families crammed into one-room tenements. She applied for hard-to-find jobs with other women, many caring for children and supporting unemployed husbands and brothers. “Their constant toil makes the women of Ireland something less than well-cared for slaves,” Russell wrote.60

Checkpoint in Limerick, April 1919.

She interviewed workers and labor leaders in the short-lived Limerick soviet, at Belfast textile mills, and outside a soon to open Ford-owned tractor plant:  “On the edge of the sidewalks in Cork there is a human curbing of idle men,” she reported. “Just now most of them are sons of farmers or farm hands, for the farmer of the south is turning his acres back to grazing and extra hands are not needed.”61

Most of Russell’s stories were published on inside pages of the Daily News with dispatches of its other foreign correspondents. A few times the paper promoted her by name in secondary headlines, such as “Ruth Russell Describes Barring of Workers from Home Town” (Limerick), and “Ruth Russell Tells Pathetic Story of Why Women Go to England”.62 It is unclear if this was an attempt by the Daily News to market her as a “stunt girl” reporter, or leverage the reputation of her late father, Martin J. Russell, one of Chicago’s pioneering newspaper editors.

In this reading from “Why Women Go to England”, Russell describes looking for work in Dublin with recently unemployed female munitions workers, like those she had labored with two years earlier in a Chicago armament plant.63:

Down a puddly, straw-strewn lane we were blown by the wind to a candy factory. It was next in factory size to the biscuit plant. Dublin considers a 50 to 100 hand plant very large. At this place, it was possible to earn $4.50 a week, but the thumbed sign on the door read: No hands wanted. … Up the narrow wooden treaded stairs we mounted to a big room where girls sitting sideways on a long table nailed yellow wooden candy containers together. Through a crack between the planks of the floor we could see hard red candies swirling below. As the melting sleet was pooling off our hats, the ticking aproned manager came out to sputter: Can’t you read? … That night along Gloucester Street, past the Georgian mansions built before the union of Ireland and England, flat uprising structures from behind whose verdigrised brass trimmed doors came the mummers of many membered tenement families–I walked until I came to a shining brass plated door. “Why don’t you go to England?” was the first question the matron of the working girls home put to me when I told her I could get no work. “All the girls are.”  

Note how this story was published on June 3 but has a May 5 dateline.

IRISH CHILDREN, CHICAGO CONNECTIONS

Russell detailed malnourishment, mental illness, and other social problems in Ireland’s cities and rural western counties. She reported about children, teachers, and schools, likely drawing on her own earlier classroom training. Perhaps 175,000 of 500,000 enrolled children did not attend school; and only 3,820 of 13,538 teachers were efficient because their pay was low, $405 to $1,440 per year, she reported from government data.64

“Dead, mentally dead, teachers are frequent in Ireland,” Russell wrote.

Russell followed Daily News Publisher Victor F. Lawson’s advice about the paper’s correspondents to stay close to the native people. Here is an example from her stay in the Dublin slums65:

Then as a lodger I was given the only chair at the breakfast table. The mother and girl sat at a plank bench and supped their tea from their saucerless cups. As there was no place else to sit, the children took their bread and jam as they perched on the bed, and when they finished, surreptitiously wiped their fingers on the brown-covered hay mattress. Before we were through they had run to the streets to warm their cold legs inside the fender till the floor was tracked with mud from the street, ashes from the grate, and bits of crumbling bread.

Russell named other children in her reporting, detailing their young ages and harsh circumstances:

  • Six-year-old Mary Casey “has some difficulty curling her arm about the papers she carries” as the youngest member of the Dublin Newsgirls’ Club.
  • “Eight-year-old Michael Mallin drags kelp out of a rush basket and packs it down for fertilizer between the brown ridges of the little hand-spaded field in Donegal.”
  • “Nine-year-old Patrick Gallagher may go to the Letterkenny Hiring Fair to sell his baby services to a farmer.”
  • “Ten-year-old Margaret Duncan can be found sitting hunched up on a doorstep in a back street in Belfast.”66 

And like any good reporter, Russell found Chicago connections in Ireland to relay back to her hometown readers: 

  • Fr. J. P. Flannigan at St. Mary’s procathedral in Dublin, who led a committee of Catholic priests trying to quell Irish labor unrest, had studied in Rome with Archbishop George William Mundelein of Chicago.67
  • Progressive social reformer Jane Addams of Chicago helped send rubber boots to war-torn Germany through the Women’s International League.68
  • “Chicago girl” Stella M. Franklin, former secretary-treasurer of the city’s Woman’s Trade Union League, worked to improve housing conditions throughout the British Isles.69
  • Russell’s story on the Irish economy questioned whether England prevented Ireland from developing “all the Chicago side industries that can be established in connection with the cattle trade.” Money was lost shipping the animals across the Irish Sea for slaughter and processing. Russell reported that a London firm “has just issued a prospectus for a plant designed for slaughtering, tanning, chandlery, glue making, and which is intended to transform Drogheda in Ireland into a Chicago.”70 

Some of Russell’s stories published up to two months after their dateline. Her byline from Ireland appeared in American newspapers at least through October 1919, though she returned home in August.71

In 1920, Russell would expand her reporting into magazine articles and her book, What’s the matter with Ireland? She also would take on a new role of publicly speaking out for Irish independence beyond the printed page.

NEXT: Russell’s Irish activism in America