Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland: Beginnings

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. This post was updated in October 2022 to add the “Easter Rising” section about Russell’s efforts to travel to Ireland in 1916, and other minor edits.  

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On Jan. 27, 1919, a Chicago Daily News editor urged the federal government to expedite a passport for one of his reporters, Ruth Russell. “Because of the news conditions in Ireland at the present time, it is hoped that she may leave as soon as possible,” News Editor Henry J. Smith wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing.[1]Henry J. Smith to Robert Lansing, Jan. 27, 1919, in Ruth Russell’s passport application. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Roll #: 699; Volume #: Roll 0699 – … Continue reading

Six days earlier, the separatist Sinn Féin party declared independence from Britain and established a breakaway government in Dublin, a move based on its near sweep of Irish parliamentary seats in the United Kingdom’s first election after the Great War. In County Tipperary, 125 miles southwest of the Irish capital, two policemen were killed in an ambush, the first shots of Ireland’s latest uprising against centuries of British rule. 

Russell’s 1919 passport photo.

Washington officials approved Russell’s passport and Chicago editors assigned her to answer this question: “What’s the matter with Ireland?” Russell recalled later, “This was the last injunction a fellow journalist, propagandized into testy impatience with Ireland, gave me before I sailed for that bit of Europe which lies closest to America.”[2]Ruth Russell, What’s the matter with Ireland? (New York: Devin-Adain, 1920), 13. Russell does not name the “fellow journalist.”

Nearly a year to the day after Smith’s State Department outreach, another letter was written on Russell’s behalf. This time the author was Éamon de Valera, president of the provisional Irish republic. Russell interviewed him in March 1919, shortly after her arrival in Dublin. 

“I congratulate you on the rapidity with which you succeeded in understanding Irish conditions and grasped the Irish viewpoint,” de Valera wrote in the Jan. 29, 1920, letter published as front matter in Russell’s new book, What’s the matter with Ireland?, based on her 1919 reporting. “I hope we shall have more impartial investigators, such as you, who will take the trouble to see things for themselves first hand, and who will not be imposed upon by half-truths.”[3]Ibid., 9–10.

Russell’s reporting from Ireland at times was insightful and compassionate, especially her sketches of women, children, and workers living in the shadows of the revolution. It is debatable whether she remained an impartial investigator. Her experiences in Ireland transformed her into a pro-Irish activist. She left the Daily News; joined at least one Washington, D.C., protest against British rule in Ireland; and testified before an American commission exploring conditions in Ireland. Russell’s 1919 reporting was soon dated by rapidly evolving events in Ireland, and her activism was fleeting. By 1921, she withdrew from journalism and public attention. 

BEGINNINGS 

Ruth Marie Russell was born March 24, 1889, in Chicago, the eighth child of Martin J. Russell, a 43-year-old Chicago Times editorial writer, and 39-year-old Cecilia [nee Walsh]. Both parents were the offspring of pre-Great Famine Irish immigrants. The couple lived in Hyde Park, just a few blocks from St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, where their newborn was baptized April 21, 1889.[4]Hyde Park, Illinois, City Directory, 1889, accessed via Ancestry.com, U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995; 1900 U.S. Federal Census: Chicago Ward 32, Cook, Illinois, 12; Enumeration District: 1035; … Continue reading A live-in cook and a household “servant” tended the family, which also included Russell’s paternal grandmother, 76-year-old Jane Lewis [nee Mulligan].[5]1900 U.S. Federal Census, and Note 6.

“Among my earliest recollections are long twilight hour discussions with my grandmother about early Chicago–she came here in 1835,” Russell recalled in a 1931 newspaper interview to promote her novel, Lake Front.[6]“Chicago’s First One Hundred Years Penned and Illustrated by Ruth Russell and Ruth Kellogg,” Hyde Park Herald , Sept. 18, 1931.

In the book, about Chicago’s first 100 years, the 42-year-old Russell described her hometown in the 1890s of her youth: “It was an ugly city. Its lines were hard and sharp. Its color, smoke. Its air, gritty. Its noises, strident. Its smell, salt with the blood of slaughterhouses. Its people, pale and hurried.”[7]Ruth Russell, Lake Front (Thomas S. Rockwell: Chicago, 1931), 280.

Postcard image of the Irish Village.

Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, developed near Russell’s Hyde Park neighborhood, included an Irish Village with a recreation of the Blarney Castle and white-washed, thatched-roof cottages. An organizer of the exhibit wrote that it would be a great mistake “if any who boast of Irish blood in their veins do not resort thither with their children in order to call to mind the stories told by parents of the scenes of their childhood, or muse over bygone days which they themselves can recall in the dear old home.”[8]Ishbel Maria Hamilton-Gordon (“Lady Aberdeen”), “Ireland at the World’s Fair,” North American Review, July 1893, 20.

During this period, Chicago’s 16 percent Irish-born population[9]Michael F. Funchion, Chicago Irish Nationalists (Arno Press: New York, 1976) 9, citing 1890 U.S. Census. read newspaper stories about the murder of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin, a member of the city’s Irish nationalist underground, and the divorce case downfall of Charles Stewart Parnell, Ireland’s “uncrowned king.” Irish immigrant Margaret F. Sullivan, who worked with Russell’s father at the Chicago Herald, wrote a popular book about the agrarian agitation in her native country.[10]Sullivan and Russell’s father from “Irish in Chicago” Illinois Catholic Historical Review, July 1920. 152. Margaret Sullivan, Ireland of to-day: the causes and aims of Irish agitation (J.C. … Continue reading

In June 1900, when Russell was 11, her popular father died of kidney disease at age 54. “All the newspaper reading public recognized Mr. Russell as an editorial writer of learning, caliber, force, and judgement,” the Chicago Tribune quoted one of his friends.[11]“Martin J. Russell Dead,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1900. At St. Thomas the Apostle Church, the Rev. Daniel Riordan described the deceased as “a conspicuous example of scrupulous integrity.”[12]Ibid. “Burial of Martin J. Russell”, June 28, 1900.

Russell attended nearby St. Xavier Academy, a Catholic girls school. Upon graduation in 1906, she enrolled at Chicago Normal College and for the next two years prepared for a teaching career.[13]Ruth Russell’s Chicago Public Schools (CPS) employment record obtained via author’s Freedom of Information Act request, received March 20, 2019. CPS redacted large portions of the record. … Continue reading In September 1909, Russell matriculated into the University of Chicago, where she was joined by her younger sister, Cecilia, in the activities of the Esoteric, a woman’s social club, and the Brownson Club, a campus Catholic group.[14]Cap & Gown, University of Chicago yearbook, Vol. XVII, 1912, p. 79 and 132. Ruth graduated in 1912 with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree.[15]Ruth Russell’s University of Chicago transcript obtained from Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Received April 10, 2019.

Her activities over the next four years are less clear. In June 1914 Russell sailed to France to study in Grenoble, but hurried home with the outbreak of the Great War.[16]“Certificate of Registration of American Citizen” letter dated Sept. 1, 1914, shows Russell left Chicago on June 28, 1914, and arrived at Grenoble, France, on July 16, 1914. “Ellis Island and … Continue reading On her return, Russell might have helped manage the St. Mary’s Campfire Girls program on Chicago’s south side.[17]Deborah Ann Skok, “Catholic Ladies Bountiful: Chicago’s Catholic Settlement Houses and Day Nurseries, 1892–1930, Vol. 1,” University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, August 2001, 441. In … Continue reading She would soon become fascinated by events in Ireland

EASTER RISING

In April 1916 Irish separatists seized government buildings in Dublin in a bold strike for independence. The British military quickly crushed the insurrection, which became known as the Easter Rising, and executed the rebel leaders. These events moved the Irish in America, where Catholic churches and other groups organized efforts to provide relief to the people of Dublin. Russell gravitated to the effort.

In November, the U.S. State Department notified the British government of Russell’s desire to visit Ireland to help distribute relief. The American government said it did so “without expressing any opinion as to her qualification for such a mission.”[18]Foreign Office cable, Nov. 1, 1916. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926 (CO 904, Boxes 30-35, 37-39, 45-47 And 180-189). Public Records Office, … Continue reading The British Foreign Office observed internally that such individuals, “even when recommended by trustworthy organizations, have been unable to avoid reference to political controversaries on their return to the United States of a nature inflame public opinion.”[19]Ibid.

Within a week Britain’s Consul General in Chicago telegrammed the Foreign Office to report that Russell’s real intention was to act as a correspondent for The New World, weekly organ of the Archdiocese of Chicago. The consul described the newspaper as featuring “anti-English articles about Ireland.” My review of the New World‘s archives from April 1916 through 1917 did not find Russell’s byline or any mention or her work for Irish relief.

More provocatively, however, the Consul General’s correspondence said that Russell’s request to visit Ireland was “indefinitely postponed as she is suffering a nervous breakdown.”[20]Nov. 6, 1916, telegram. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926. This psychological evaluation seems dubious; more likely the sexist and patronizing language of male authorities, in the U.S. and Great Britain, during the period. A Dec. 26, 1916, follow-up correspondence from British Ambassador to the United States Cecil Spring Rice to Arthur Balfour, then beginning his tenure as foreign secretary, says that Russell was informed by Joseph P. Tumulty, private secretary to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, “that entrance to Ireland would not be possible at the present time and that she cannot therefore have a passport.”[21]Cecil Spring Rice at British Embassy, Washington, D.C., to Arthur Balfour, Dec. 26, 1916. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926.

It is extraordinary that Russell, then 27, drew attention from such high-ranking U.S. and British officials. But the episode, documented in Dublin Castle records, remains murky. I have not located any correspondence with Russell in the Tumulty or Lansing papers at the Library of Congress.[22]Multiple searches in 2023 and 2024. It is unclear whether the U.S. State Department knew of Russell’s 1916 denial when it approved her passport in 1919.

REPORTER

By October 1917, Russell “decided to enter the family field” and followed her late father and an older brother, James Russell, into the newspaper business.[23]”Staff Changes” , The Fourth Estate, Oct. 6, 1917, 29. She began working as a reporter at the Daily News. 

Chicago Daily News Building, 15 North Wells St., circa 1903. Chicago History Museum.

At the time of Russell’s newspaper debut, fast-growing Chicago was the second-largest city in America and “home to some of the most influential and dynamic journalists, editors, and newspaper owners in the United States.”[24]Gillian O’Brien, “Patriotism, professionalism and the press: the Chicago press and Irish journalists, 1875–1900,” Irish Journalism Before Independence: More a Disease Than A Profession, ed. … Continue reading Investigative efforts and literary styles flourished in the city’s newsrooms. Carl Sandburg joined the Daily News staff the same year as Russell and would bolster his reputation through coverage of Chicago’s 1919 race riots and profiles of the city’s African-American population.[25]Field Enterprise Records, 1858–2007; Chicago Daily News, 1882–2007; Administrations and Operations, 1891–1978, Box 6, Folder 76: Herman Kogan, “Literary Tradition,” Centennial Insight … Continue reading Russell was hired as a “special writer”[26]”Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13.,typically an ad hoc or freelance arrangement that was one of the best ways for women to enter the newsroom.[27]Carolyn M. Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, The U.S. Military, and The Press 1846-1947 (Lexington Books: New York, 2017), 17-18, citing Edwin Llewellyn Shuman, Steps Into Journalism: Helps and Hints … Continue reading

For two weeks in 1918, the 5-foot, 9-inch reporter[28]Height: From Jan. 27, 1919, U.S. passport application. See Note 1. Assignment: “Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13. hauled heavy steel tools to shell turners inside a Chicago munitions factory for an undercover series about women in war work. She profiled the manual laborers, including “a big woman whose straggly blond hair was stuck to the side of her wide, flat face with perspiration” as she pushed a 200-pound load. The reporter strained and “blushed at my little loads.” Russell estimated that she “walked about four miles, trucked approximately 900 pounds of steel, shouldered less heavy tools and earned $2 in an eight-hour night.” At the end of the shift, “I threw myself on a restroom cot.”[29]“Women’s Task Too Heavy. Experience in Chicago Munitions Factory Recorded.”, Morning Oregonian, Jan. 2, 1919.

In addition to such domestic coverage, the Daily News aggressively pursued foreign news. Publisher Victor F. Lawson established bureaus in London, Paris, and Berlin “on the best sites in town, with big signs, to lure in Chicago tourists,” foreign correspondent Paul Scott Mowrer recalled.[30]Field Enterprise Records, Box 34, Folder 424, Lou Pryor correspondence with Paul Scott Mowrer, 1964. But Lawson was interested in more than good publicity. In the paper’s handbook for foreign correspondents, he wrote: 

The key words of the service are significance and interpretation. Generally speaking, we aim to chronicle only what is significant, and we aim to show the significance of everything we chronicle … how and why it happened, and what it means. We have therefore to be clearer, more analytical, more thorough, less superficial, more cautious and generally more accurate, and perhaps more conscientious than our competitors.[31]Ibid., Folder 424, Lou Pryor foreign service research.

Lawson advised his correspondents to stay close to the native people, report on their styles and customs, fads and fancies, including business, education, science, religion, art, sports, and social problems. As the United States entered the Great War, his reporters fanned across Europe, including poetess Eunice Tietjens, sent to cover the conflict “from a woman’s perspective.”[32]Ibid., Folder 74, Foreign correspondents.

More than three dozen female journalists filed dispatches from the war in Europe for U.S. newspapers and magazines; more than doubling the number of women foreign correspondents since the Mexican-American War of the mid-19th century.[33]Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, Appendix 1, “American Women War Correspondents through World War I” lists 73 journalists; 44 during WWI, including Tietjens. Russell is not listed. Russell joined this still-small and under-appreciated sorority soon after the armistice.

The revolution erupting in Ireland was a story of particular interest to Chicago readers. 

NEXT: Russell’s reporting from Ireland

 

References

References
↑1 Henry J. Smith to Robert Lansing, Jan. 27, 1919, in Ruth Russell’s passport application. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Roll #: 699; Volume #: Roll 0699 – Certificates: 63000–63249, Accessed via Ancestry.com. U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925.
↑2 Ruth Russell, What’s the matter with Ireland? (New York: Devin-Adain, 1920), 13. Russell does not name the “fellow journalist.”
↑3 Ibid., 9–10.
↑4 Hyde Park, Illinois, City Directory, 1889, accessed via Ancestry.com, U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995; 1900 U.S. Federal Census: Chicago Ward 32, Cook, Illinois, 12; Enumeration District: 1035; FHL microfilm: 1240287; accessed via Ancestry.com; Baptismal record with address and mother’s maiden name accessed accessed via FindMyPast.com; and “New map of Chicago showing location of schools, streetcar lines in colors and street numbers in even hundreds,” Rufus Blanchard, 1897, accessed via The University of Chicago Map Collection.
↑5 1900 U.S. Federal Census, and Note 6.
↑6 “Chicago’s First One Hundred Years Penned and Illustrated by Ruth Russell and Ruth Kellogg,” Hyde Park Herald , Sept. 18, 1931.
↑7 Ruth Russell, Lake Front (Thomas S. Rockwell: Chicago, 1931), 280.
↑8 Ishbel Maria Hamilton-Gordon (“Lady Aberdeen”), “Ireland at the World’s Fair,” North American Review, July 1893, 20.
↑9 Michael F. Funchion, Chicago Irish Nationalists (Arno Press: New York, 1976) 9, citing 1890 U.S. Census.
↑10 Sullivan and Russell’s father from “Irish in Chicago” Illinois Catholic Historical Review, July 1920. 152. Margaret Sullivan, Ireland of to-day: the causes and aims of Irish agitation (J.C. McCurdy & Co.: Chicago, 1881).
↑11 “Martin J. Russell Dead,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1900.
↑12 Ibid. “Burial of Martin J. Russell”, June 28, 1900.
↑13 Ruth Russell’s Chicago Public Schools (CPS) employment record obtained via author’s Freedom of Information Act request, received March 20, 2019. CPS redacted large portions of the record. Author appealed to the Public Access Counselor, Illinois Office of Attorney General, for review and prevailed in having the full record released.
↑14 Cap & Gown, University of Chicago yearbook, Vol. XVII, 1912, p. 79 and 132.
↑15 Ruth Russell’s University of Chicago transcript obtained from Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Received April 10, 2019.
↑16 “Certificate of Registration of American Citizen” letter dated Sept. 1, 1914, shows Russell left Chicago on June 28, 1914, and arrived at Grenoble, France, on July 16, 1914. “Ellis Island and Other New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957” shows Russell left France Aug. 22, 1914, and arrived in New York on Aug. 30, 1914. Both via MyHerage.com.
↑17 Deborah Ann Skok, “Catholic Ladies Bountiful: Chicago’s Catholic Settlement Houses and Day Nurseries, 1892–1930, Vol. 1,” University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, August 2001, 441. In this paper, “Ruth Russell” is described as a downtown office clerk, but there is no further identification to confirm she is the subject of this paper.
↑18 Foreign Office cable, Nov. 1, 1916. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926 (CO 904, Boxes 30-35, 37-39, 45-47 And 180-189). Public Records Office, London, England. 1917 CO 904/184; Miscellaneous: Copies Of Correspondence Between The Foreign Office And The British Embassy In Washington: 3. Matters Relating To Foreign Affairs.
↑19 Ibid.
↑20 Nov. 6, 1916, telegram. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926.
↑21 Cecil Spring Rice at British Embassy, Washington, D.C., to Arthur Balfour, Dec. 26, 1916. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926.
↑22 Multiple searches in 2023 and 2024.
↑23 ”Staff Changes” , The Fourth Estate, Oct. 6, 1917, 29.
↑24 Gillian O’Brien, “Patriotism, professionalism and the press: the Chicago press and Irish journalists, 1875–1900,” Irish Journalism Before Independence: More a Disease Than A Profession, ed. Kevin Rafter (Manchester University Press: New York, 2011), 123.
↑25 Field Enterprise Records, 1858–2007; Chicago Daily News, 1882–2007; Administrations and Operations, 1891–1978, Box 6, Folder 76: Herman Kogan, “Literary Tradition,” Centennial Insight (Newberry Library: Chicago, 1976).
↑26 ”Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13.
↑27 Carolyn M. Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, The U.S. Military, and The Press 1846-1947 (Lexington Books: New York, 2017), 17-18, citing Edwin Llewellyn Shuman, Steps Into Journalism: Helps and Hints for Young Writers (Evanston Press Co.: Evanston, Ill., 1894.) 149.
↑28 Height: From Jan. 27, 1919, U.S. passport application. See Note 1. Assignment: “Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13.
↑29 “Women’s Task Too Heavy. Experience in Chicago Munitions Factory Recorded.”, Morning Oregonian, Jan. 2, 1919.
↑30 Field Enterprise Records, Box 34, Folder 424, Lou Pryor correspondence with Paul Scott Mowrer, 1964.
↑31 Ibid., Folder 424, Lou Pryor foreign service research.
↑32 Ibid., Folder 74, Foreign correspondents.
↑33 Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, Appendix 1, “American Women War Correspondents through World War I” lists 73 journalists; 44 during WWI, including Tietjens. Russell is not listed.

Catching up with modern Ireland: November

November began with more than 1,000 people from the academic, arts, business, community, education, health, labor, law, media, and sports sectors; on both sides of the Irish border, and the diaspora in America, Canada, and Australia; signing an open letter calling for a “new conversation” about the constitutional future of the island of Ireland. The “Ireland’s Future” group urged Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to establish a citizens’ assembly to pave the way for a united Ireland. By the month’s end, Varadkar and opposition party leader Micheál Martin had rebuffed the request.

“In recent decades Irish nationalism has moved beyond slogans like ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity’ into an appreciation that co-operation rather than conflict is a far better route to an agreed Ireland. Attempting to take advantage of the Brexit confusion to pursue a united Ireland is little more than a reworking of that tired old cliché,” Irish Times columnist Stephen Collins wrote.

Other News 

  • A new round of talks to reopen the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly, dormant since January 2017, is scheduled for Dec. 16, four days after U.K. elections that will impact the fate of Brexit.
  • Results of four by-elections in the Republic of Ireland were still being determined as I publish. Turnout was low. A national election is expected before May.
  • The Republic launched a Rural Broadband Plan to address the lack of digital coverage in black spots that cover 80 percent of its land mass. Varadkar hailed the project as the “most important since rural electrification.”
  • U.S. President Donald Trump’s Doonbeg golf course reported a $1.7 million loss for 2018, the fifth-straight year the County Clare club has failed to make a profit, The Washington Post reported, citing Irish government filings. In October, the Clare County Council approved the Trump Organization’s request to build 53 homes on the site; but a request to build a rock barrier to shield the seaside resort from erosion remains pending with Ireland’s national planning board. 
  • Irish and U.K. media outlets have reported more anti-immigrant, alt-right activity in the Republic, which previously prided (or fooled) itself that it avoided the racism and xenophobia that plagues Europe and America.

Book News

  • Laying it on the Line – The Border and Brexit, a collection of 26 essays by “informed voices” (Only one woman!) from the Republic, Northern Ireland, the U.K., and the USA was released late in the month.
  • Caitríona Perry, RTÉ’s former Washington correspondent, published, The Tribe: The Inside Story of Irish Power and Influence in US Politics. My friend Felix M. Larkin’s review in The Irish Catholic.
  • Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland was selected for The Washington Post‘s “10 Best Books of 2019,” and The New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2019.” It was not included in The Irish Times‘ “What Irish Writers are Reading” list.

NOTE: I’ll publish my seventh annual “Best of the Blog” near the end of December. The monthly roundup will resume in the new year. MH

From my morning walk through the Belfast Botanic Gardens in early November.

Some unusual maps of Ireland

The anthropomorphic maps of Ireland shown below were drawn by Lilian Lancaster (1852-1939 … also known under her married name, Tennant) in the mid-19th century. They are part of the “Purpose and Portrayal: Early Irish Maps and Mapmaking” exhibit at the Ulster Museum, Belfast, which I viewed earlier this month. The exhibit continues through 26 January 2020. Lancaster produced similar treatments of other countries, including the United States.

Below, note the discrepancy in the two maps of the former Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland on the spine of David Cannadine’s Victorious Century, which I found next to each other on the shelf of a Barnes & Nobel store in Pittsburgh. The 2018 hardcover at left shows only Northern Ireland (under the “KI” of Kingdom), though the island’s political partition didn’t occur until 15 years after the 1800-1906 period assessed in the book. The 2019 softcover at right corrects the error. “Yes, it was an oversight, which was later put right!,” Cannadine replied to my email outreach.

Map images of the U.K. and/or the Republic of Ireland typically shade the north and south differently to make the distinction, keeping whole the island’s physical geography. Less-used maps showing only the 6-county North, or 26-county Republic, floating between the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea must make cartographers crazy, and surely enrage # united Ireland supporters.

I can hardly wait to see the post-Brexit maps of Europe.

De Valera’s bad headline day in L.A.

On Nov. 19, 1919, a year and a week after the armistice ending World War I, the U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and American participation in the League of Nations. The same day, 2,670 miles west of Washington, D.C., Éamon de Valera was hammered by negative headlines in the Los Angeles Times as he arrived in the California city.

These seven headlines appeared below that day’s nameplate, taking half the available front page space:

Sims Denounces De Valera and Sinn Fein Plotters
Vice-Admiral William S. Sims, commander of the U.S. overseas fleet, said “this brotherhood is attempting to stir up hatred against our allies in the war.”

Irishman Near Collapse
“According to physicians, the Irish leader suffered a near-collapse that may necessitate his cancelling” other stops in California. Doctors in San Francisco had ordered de Valera to rest, but he pressed on to L.A.1

De Valera Unwelcome: Protest Against the Sinn Fein Leader by Societies Shows City’s Stand
“American Legion posts, church bodies and British societies have been particularly active in denouncing the Sinn Fein leader and have adopted resolutions declaring him a traitor to the cause of the Allies in the war and charging him with attempting to stir up enmity between the United States and England.”

San Diego Blow for De Valera
The city’s mayor said he would not greet the visitor on his next stop. “I am part Irish myself and he does not represent that part of me at all.”

Shriners Protest Use of Hall by De Valera
The philanthropic arm of the Masons cashed a rental deposit check from Irish supporters, then claimed they were unaware the event featured de Valera. Their change of mind appeared to be prompted by the Times’ amplified harangue against him.

Great Citrus Belt Hits Hard at Sinn Feiner
The Associated Chambers of Commerce of the San Gabriel Valley, representing 17 smaller towns, passed a resolution denouncing de Valera as a traitor.

No Music for Paraders: Pasadena and Long Beach Bands Refuse to Play for De Valera Today
The decision was driven in part by protests from a group of U.S. Civil War veterans, who compared de Valera and Sinn Fein to the Copperheads of the 1860s.

As Dave Hannigan explains:

The degree of vitriol directed toward de Valera can be traced to the publisher Harry Chandler, who a couple of months earlier had described his interest in the Versailles Treaty thus: “as far as the Los Angeles Times is concerned, the League [of Nations] is not our politics now but our religion.” Chandler obviously believed this Irishman was preaching a blasphemous doctrine against the League and had to be dealt with accordingly; not to mention that his visit was being sponsored, at least in part, by a rival paper, the Los Angeles Examiner.2

That night, the crowd gathered outside the Shrine Auditorium to see de Valera was prohibited from entering the building. The Irish leader, who gave a speech earlier in day at his hotel, avoided the scene and departed the next morning for San Diego, despite the expected snub by the city’s mayor.

De Valera before a Los Angeles crowd, a few days later than planned in November 1919.

Four days later, de Valera returned to Los Angeles for a rescheduled appearance at a minor league baseball stadium. The outdoor event drew a larger crowd than would have seen him at the indoor venue. The Times’ page 13 story described de Valera as “the mythical ‘president’ of a mythical Irish ‘republic.’ “3 The Irish Standard of Minneapolis, Minnesota, months earlier complained about the demeaning device of using quotes around the words such as president and republic.

The same day’s Times front page declared: “Sinn Fein Terrorist Rule Ireland With Hate“. The story by American correspondent George Seldes opened with this quote from a British military officer:

“Ireland is terrorized. It is seething with crime. Let me tell you one thing, it is no longer safe to go about in the King’s uniform.”

The generally negative portrait of Irish republican efforts nevertheless recognized the arrests and imprisonment without trial of members of Dáil Éireann. Seldes concluded: “Despite all this crime, a stranger in Ireland goes about freely and safely.”

Irish-American press reaction

Irish-American newspapers, though slowed by their weekly publication schedules and commitments to other news content, responded vehemently to the Times‘ L.A. coverage.

The Friends of Irish Freedom’s News Letter said the Times “certainly is more English than American” and had “done its utmost to stir up an un-American sentiment against” de Valera and the Irish Republic. “The American Newspaper Publishers Association, a body of sturdy Americans, might do well if it undertook a little Americanization work amidst its own ranks, for the benefit of its few anti-American members.”4  

The Irish Press of Philadelphia, with its direct links de Valera and the separatist government in Dublin, described the daily as “the best-known labor-hating and pro-British sheet in the west.” The Press continued:

The Times engaged for four weeks in the bitterest and most malignant campaign of misrepresentation and hatred that has been witnessed in this country in years. Lies–on several occasions six columns of them in one edition–were hurled at de Valera and the Irish people. Editorially and in news columns deliberately incited to mob violence.5

The Kentucky Irish American headlined “Notorious Sheet Exposed” (the Times) and noted the Hearst-owned Examiner “made a special fight in favor of a fair hearing and the other papers of that district were friendly to the lecture.”6

The Irish Standard barely mentioned the Times, except that “de Valera made only one reference to the newspaper which boasted of having prevented his appearance at the Shrine Auditorium, when he said, speaking of the Irish movement:

It is not racial, it is not religious. You are told it is religious. Now, it is very easy to see that it is not, and so difficult would it be to prove it religious that even the Los Angeles Times admits it is not a religious issue.7

The Gaelic American of New York City ignored the Times, but described the city’s negative reception in a brief story headlined: Los Angeles Bigots Show Their Ugly Fangs.8

De Valera and his supporters returned to New York from California, taking a short break from the coast-to-coast tour that began in June before tackling other problems. Hannigan writes:

By any standard of measurement, this extended cross-country jaunt was the most successful aspect of de Valera’s stay in America. In terms of raising awareness and drawing the attention of newspapers and the public alike, it was a fantastic achievement. For the duration of the tour and a good while after, coverage of all things Irish, especially in regional press, exploded.9

New book explores role of Catholic Church in The Troubles

Dr. Margaret M. Scull, (@MaggieMScull) the Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the National University of Ireland, Galway, is the author of a new book, The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968-1998.

The 256-page book evaluates the Irish and English churches role in mediating the conflict, including new perspectives on religious institutions as such mediators in the 20th century. In additional to church and state archival research, Scull interviewed bishops, priests, religious women, former paramilitaries, community organizers, and politicians.

Scull gave Nov. 18 talks in Washington, D.C., at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at George Washington University, and the Global Irish Studies program at Georgetown University. Some office obligations and late-afternoon D.C. traffic made me late for the latter, so instead of my own reporting, I’m posting a Nov. 11 interview Scull did with Barry Sheppard (@barry_shep), presenter on NVTV’s “History Now” program, and a friend from the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland.

One quick note: Scull is expanding her work to explore the role of the American Catholic Church during the Troubles, specifically the dioceses of Boston and Chicago. A follow up journal article is expected in 2020.

History Now: The Catholic Church and the Troubles – Ep 48 from Northern Visions NvTv on Vimeo.

Remembering Belfast’s war dead, before the war ended

On a wall of a side entry into the ornate St. Malachy’s Catholic Church in Belfast, a modest plaque speaks to a troubled time, and not the period most would associate with the city. The brass-on-wood message reads, in part:

“Pray for the repose of the souls of the sailors and soldiers who have fallen in this war.”

In this case, “this war” is the Great War, “the war to end all wars.” The plaque is dated August 1917 … 15 months before the November 1918 armistice.

Praying for the dead of any period or place is encouraged in Catholic belief, particularly during the month of November, and the priests of this parish have never removed this reminder of early 20th century sacrifice. They are still talking about it at Mass.

The plaque at St. Malachy’s Catholic Church in Belfast. Yes, that’s me reflected in the brass after the Nov. 9, 2019, Vigil Mass.

Ireland’s Memorial Records, a digital archive of the Flanders Field Museum in Belgium, lists 2,268 fatalities who were born in Belfast among 49,000 Irish soldiers killed in the war. The archive does not record their faith affiliation, let alone their home church.

Some 4,000 Catholic men from Belfast enlisted in the nine Irish regiments of the British Army, many joining the 6th Connaught Rangers, “the regiment of choice for Belfast Catholics,” historian Eamon Phoenix of Strainmillis University College says in a 2014 BBC podcast about the plaque. Many of these men supported pro-Home Rule nationalist John Redmond’s Irish National Volunteers and probably worshiped at St. Malachy’s, Phoenix says.

Of nearly 63,000 war recruits from the then nine-county province of Ulster, about 27 percent (17,092) were Catholics, at the time 44 percent of the region’s population. Overall, however, more Catholics than Protestants joined the war from Ireland in the years just before the island’s 1921 partition. More on faith affiliation and “the numbers involved,” from the Queen’s University Belfast Irish History Live blog.  

At this time, British officer Major Charles Blakiston Houston, a Protestant, was married to Norah Emily Persse, a Catholic woman and benefactor of St. Malachy’s Church. (Such “mixed marriages” were less than 1 percent of all unions in early 20th century Ireland, even more rare in Ulster, according to a 2015 study.) Norah convinced her parish priest, Fr. Dan McCashen, to install the plaque while the outcome of the war remained unresolved, Phoenix says.

“This must be very unique across the British Isles, a plaque that went up before the end of the war to remember soldiers; usually they went up afterward about 1920 or 1922,” he adds.

Why the early memorial? Phoenix speculates Norah sensed the shift from Redmond’s Home Rule nationalism to the post-Easter Rising surge of separatist Irish republicanism. If she anticipated the Sinn Féin election triumph of December 1918, she wanted to be sure the Redmond nationalists were remembered and respected.

“Many veterans returning to nationalist areas met grudging acceptance, hostility, or even physical violence,” the Queen’s History blog says. “For all of them the high public honor and celebration with which they had departed contrasted sharply with the changed circumstances of their return.”

A July 1919 press report of a Belfast event to honor veterans, however, included “a notable demonstration of the part played by Belfast nationalists” in the war. But it took until the approaching centenary of the Great War for it to become more widely acceptable, even expected, to recognize the sacrifices of Irish soldiers, especially nationalist Catholics.  

At St. Malachy’s, they have never stopped remembering and praying for the war dead, including at the Vigil Mass I attended Nov. 9. The priest noted the plaque during his homily. Otherwise, I would have missed it, since this feature is not described in the history section or other parts of the church’s website.

I sent an email to the church after returning to America and finding the Phoenix account. I’ll update the post if I receive new information.

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Related: An Irish-American’s most perilous summer, 1918 Kerryman John Ware immigrated to Pittsburgh in 1910. Eight years later, he was shipped to France.

The Belfast Cenotaph commemorating World War I opened in 1929 at Belfast City Hall. July 2019 photo.

Belfast Botanic Gardens in photos

Nearing its 2028 bicentenary, the Belfast Botanic Gardens and Palm House are a popular gathering place for the city’s residents, like Central Park in New York City or the National Mall in Washington, D.C. While my early November walk was hardly peak time for blooms, it was a lovely and quiet morning as the overnight frost steamed off these historic grounds.

Back to Ireland for history conference talk

I am returning to Ireland–my tenth visit since 2000, my fifth since 2016–to make a presentation at the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland’s annual conference at Queens University Belfast. I am speaking about pioneering woman journalist Ruth Russell, who in 1919 reported on the early months of the Irish revolution for the Chicago Daily News. Watch for updates and tweets from @markaholan.

 

Catching up with modern Ireland: October

Brexit was supposed to happen by Oct. 31. It hasn’t. The departure deadline is now Jan. 31, 2020, but could happen sooner, depending on the outcome of a Dec. 12 election in the U.K., including 18 constituencies in Northern Ireland of 650 seats in the Commons. In the Republic, there are divergent opinions whether to call elections this month, or wait until May 2020.

More news and views:

  • Abortion was decriminalized and same-sex marriage legalized in Northern Ireland on Oct. 21 as the London parliament passed legislation while the Northern Ireland Assembly remains dormant.
  • It is hard to overstate how remarkable it is that the end of partition on the island of Ireland is being seriously considered, yet it is difficult to understate how ill-prepared everyone is for it to actually happen, Ed O’Loughlin wrote in the Atlantic: The ‘Messy and Angry’ Prospect of Ireland Reunifying
  • As if Brexit wasn’t confusing enough, an E.U. plan to eliminate daylight savings time in 2021 could put post-departure Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in different time zones, creating a new form of partition on the island.
  • Veteran IRA man Ivor Bell was acquitted of any involvement in the 1972 abduction, murder, and disappearance of mother-of-10 Jean McConville. The event is at the core of Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2019 book, Say Nothing.
  •  John Henry Newman, the founding rector/president of Ireland’s only Catholic university, precursor of University College Dublin (UCD), was canonized as a saint. UCD was criticized for originally saying it would not send a representative to Rome, citing its modern secular nature, a move some interpreted as anti-Catholic.
  • ” … few Irish Americans know any Irish history at all. … Ireland’s War of Independence need not be celebrated, but it should at least be remembered, above all by the Irish-American community,” John Rodden and John P. Rossi wrote in Commonweal: Why the Irish War of Independence Still Matters

Old buildings on a farm at Fairhead, County Antrim, August 2019.

Guest post: The slow death of the Freeman’s Journal

Historian Felix M. Larkin specializes in the study of Irish newspapers, especially the Freeman’s Journal, the prominent Dublin daily published from 1763 to 1924. (See his website and our 2017 Q&A.) In October 1919, Irish writer Seumas MacManus noted the Freeman’s troubles in a U.S. newspaper column, excerpted in my Oct. 13 post. I asked Felix to write this guest post after he rightly corrected one of my notes at this centenary of a key moment in the Freeman’s history. MH

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On Oct. 27, 1919, Dublin’s Freeman’s Journal newspaper was sold to a prominent local businessman, Martin Fitzgerald, and a former English journalist now living in Ireland, Robert Hamilton Edwards. The Freeman had been associated with the Irish home rule movement for the previous four decades– back to Charles Stewart Parnell’s time – and its sale represented the final step in the fall of that movement, which began with the 1916 Rising and culminated in the victory of Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election.10

Founded in 1763, the Freeman had become an important newspaper under the ownership of the Gray family from 1841 to 1892. Though more moderately nationalist in editorial policy than Parnell, it had eventually accepted his leadership and had remained loyal to him at the outset of the Parnell ‘split’ in 1890.11 However, when the anti-Parnellites launched their own daily newspaper, the National Press, in March 1891 and the Freeman began to lose circulation and revenue as a result, it switched sides. The Freeman and the National Press later merged in March 1892. There followed a long and bitter struggle for control of the paper between rival anti-Parnell factions led by Tim Healy and John Dillon, both MPs; this struggle was ultimately resolved in the latter’s favor in 1896.

Thomas Sexton, another prominent anti-Parnell MP, became chairman of the Freeman company in 1893. He remained chairman until 1912. The period of Sexton’s chairmanship was one of relentless decline in the Freeman’s fortunes. The National Press had inflicted grave damage on it, and it continued to face strong competition from the Irish Daily Independent – established as a pro-Parnell organ when the Freeman changed sides in the ‘split’, but purchased by William Martin Murphy in 1900 after the ‘split’ was healed. The Freeman thus lacked funds for investment and was unable to respond to the greatly increased demand for newspapers nationally at this time.

In contrast, Murphy transformed the Independent into a modern, mass-circulation organ. It soaked up the increased demand for newspapers and became the market leader. The Freeman began as a result to incur trading losses, and no dividends were paid by the company after 1908. The home rule leaders eventually acted to save it and forced Sexton’s resignation in 1912. It was subsequently run by a group of party stalwarts and subsidized from party sources, and its parlous condition was exacerbated by the destruction of its premises during the 1916 Rising. After the Rising, money was raised from home rule supporters in Britain and in the United States, as well as in Ireland, in a desperate effort to keep it afloat.12

Following the 1918 general election, the company – without the financial support of the now defunct home rule party –collapsed and went into liquidation.13 It was then purchased by Fitzgerald and Edwards as a commercial venture. Fitzgerald – a wholesale wine and spirit merchant – had been a home ruler and the Freeman’s new management soon committed itself to a policy of advocating dominion status for Ireland.

Martin FItzgerald

It was an inauspicious time to attempt to revive an ailing Irish newspaper of moderate nationalist sympathies. The difficulties that the new owners encountered were extraordinary. The Freeman was suppressed by the British military authorities for seven weeks from December 1919 to January 1920; Fitzgerald, Edwards and the editor, Patrick Hooper, were imprisoned in Mountjoy Jail for a month at Christmas 1920 following publication by the Freeman of a story about army brutality; and after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which was strongly supported by the Freeman, its printing presses were smashed in March 1922 by a raiding party of 200 anti-Treatyites.

Fitzgerald played a role in the process leading up to the 1921 Treaty. Once the Government decided to explore settlement possibilities, he was able to use his standing as a newspaper proprietor to act as an intermediary between Sinn Féin and Dublin Castle.14 He was in regular contact both with Michael Collins and with Alfred Cope, Assistant Under-Secretary at the Castle. Cope, adopting the nom de guerre ‘Mr. Clements’, frequently visited Fitzgerald’s home. Their relationship took on a further dimension when, during the Treaty negotiations, Cope sought to influence the shapers of public opinion in Ireland to support the emerging settlement. Through Fitzgerald, Cope gained a measure of control over the contents of the Freeman’s Journal at that time.

The Freeman’s campaign in favor of the Treaty was generally regarded, even by many on the pro-Treaty side, as unduly partisan. However, the new administration in Dublin came increasingly to rely upon it for propaganda. In recognition of this, Fitzgerald was nominated to the first Senate of the Irish Free State in 1922. He served in that forum until his death in 1927. By then, the Freeman had succumbed to its many tribulations. The main factor in its eventual demise was that the partnership of Fitzgerald and Edwards had ended in grief when the latter tried unsuccessfully to corner the market in newsprint and then absconded, leaving debts which the enfeebled Freeman could not meet. The last issue appeared on Dec. 19, 1924.15 The Freeman’s assets, including the title, were later bought by the Independent. It was a sad end for a distinguished newspaper.

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For more on the Freeman’s Journal, see Larkin’s Aug. 21, 2012 guest blog for the National Library of Ireland, and May/June 2006 piece in History Ireland.