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Was the GPO in 1916 Looted?
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Now, not doubting Mr Ferguson as he only published the accounts according to this link on the information the book is based on "The eye-witness accounts and official reports prepared by GPO staff within the days of the Rising"johnny_doyle wrote: »
Stephen Ferguson's book "GPO Staff in 1916" indicates that :
- money to the value of £185 was found in the GPO during the clear up and deposited in the Savings Bank.
- £149 10s was found on one of the prisoners arrested from the GPO.
- official cash lost at the GPO was estimated at £2792 18s 7d
No we all know how reliable "offical reports" are from the British military and the anti Rising papers of the day
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Max Caulfield's book 'The Easter Rebellion' is a pretty brilliant minute by minute account of the weeks up to and including the rising, and in it there are a good few accounts of Connolly having troops fire over the looters heads in order to deter them from looting, but gave strict instructions that nobody was to be shot, no matter what they were doing.
Connolly was beyond dismayed that the whole purpose of the endeavor was for these very people and yet they didn't realise at the time and continued looting and carrying on 'barborously'. It seems the inner city natives had quite the party and hoolie-lines featuring women in fine hats, sometimes wearing several fine hats at once, snaked around the street for a few days.
Caulfield's book also names the properties looted, the products they typically sold and the resultant retelling of stories of young boys with toys they could never afford and such makes you actually sympathise with them. (Well, i did anyways).
Good book, which if you have any interest in that week, you should really read, if you haven't already.0 -
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Well if jonniebgood1 hasn't been pedantic in the discussion my username isn't PatsytheNazi. I suppose it's possible that out of 1,250 Rebels one might have stuffed £149 10s. What gets me is the agenda of some here who are trying to protray the whole Rising as some sort of mass looting spree by the Irish Volunteers and the alleged taking of £149 10s by one individual is 'proof'.yes..I have a family member who was involved in the storming of San Sebastin in the peninsular wars..I dont think any of the posts have been pedantic..all the evidence of looting can only be described as second hand at the very least..not one Irishman was ever going to admit to being involved in looting in 1916.even the what I,ve heard is from a friend/workmate of my mother who was in the GPO.
I'm just wondering regarding the OP and the " the looting of gold in the GPO in 1916 ". Did they carry the extremely heavy gold bars away in their socks or butt pockets ? Did the British army not find any of the gold bars on them as they searched them before they marched them away to prision ?
Or was it like the plot out of the WW2 movie Kelly's Heros
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly's_Heroes0 -
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PatsytheNazi wrote: »Well if jonniebgood1 hasn't been pedantic in the discussion my username isn't PatsytheNazi. I suppose it's possible that out of 1,250 Rebels one might have stuffed £149 10s. What gets me is the agenda of some here who are trying to protray the whole Rising as some sort of mass looting spree by the Irish Volunteers and the alleged taking of £149 10s by one individual is 'proof'.
I'm just wondering regarding the OP and the " the looting of gold in the GPO in 1916 ". Did they carry the extremely heavy gold bars away in their socks or butt pockets ? Did the British army not find any of the gold bars on them as they searched them before they marched them away to prision ?
Or was it like the plot out of the WW2 movie Kelly's Heros
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly's_Heroes
well the OP did actually say hogwash regarding gold........so ya know rumour ,spoof and propaganda etc........wide scale looting ..who knows..0 -
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I doubt your name in real life is Patsythenazi so that would imply.......?????PatsytheNazi wrote: »Well if jonniebgood1 hasn't been pedantic in the discussion my username isn't PatsytheNazi.
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Not all people see the rising the same way.
“What was this Republic of which I now heard for the first time? Who were the leaders the British had executed after taking them prisoners, Tom Clarke, Padraic Pearse, James Connolly and all the others, none of whose names I had ever heard? What did it all mean?”
So wrote a young British soldier serving in Mesopotamia, or Iraq to you and me. Bemused by what had occured in Dublin, this one soldier had gone to war not lured by the recruitment posters featuring small nations (often personified in the form of female characters) but in his own words “..for no other reason than that I wanted to see what war was like, to get a gun, to see new countries and to feel like a grown man”. This young soldier would continue to serve that army afterwards, but in 1920 became a member of the 3rd Cork Brigade of the Irish Republican Army, rising through the ranks to become a flying column leader who inflicted terror on Auxiliary forces at Kilmichael and the Essex Regiment of the British Army and the Royal Irish Constabulary at Crossbarry. The young man, of course, was Tom Barry.
Tom Barry
Barry was not the only Republican leader who saw the Rising in an unusual manner. In Dublin,a young medical student named Ernie O’ Malley was taken aback by events, and vivdly described events on Sackville Street.
“Other shops had just been looted: Lawrence’s toy bazaar and some jewellers. Diamond rings and pocketsful of gold watches were selling for sixpence and a shilling, and one was cursed if one did not buy…. Ragged boys wearing old boots, brown and black, tramped up and down with air rifles on their shoulders or played cowboys and Indians, armed with black pistols supplied with long rows of paper caps. Little girls hugged teddy bears and dolls as if they could hardly believe their good fortune”
Ernie O' Malley
While literally seeing the outbreak of the rebellion, O’ Malley would also encounter a student he knew who told him they were arming themselves in case Trinity College would be attacked. O’ Malley informed the student that while he was off home, he would return later(The fact O’ Malley was a UCD Student would no doubt lead to cries of ‘Sacrilege!’ from some even today). Largely indifferent at first to what was occuring, O’ Malley would quickly turn towards the rebels, even making his way down Moore Street and towards Nelsons Pillar one night, where he discussed the rising so far with a uniformed officer of the Irish Citizen Army. Amazingly, O’ Malley and a schoolboy friend would take it upon themselves to assist the rebels, through taking potshots at soldiers with a rifle his friends father had been given “as a present by a soldier who brought it back from the Front”
http://comeheretome.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/how-they-saw-the-rising-the-words-of-british-soldiers-anarchists-novelists-poets-medical-students-and-daughters/
« Loves You
Liffey Swimming »Another unusual Dublin plaque, Captain Thomas Weafer.
June 4, 2010 by dfallon
On my recent walking tour of radical Dublin, one of the places I brought people was to the site of the Irish Farm Produce Company restaurant and shop on Henry Street. It was there that the 1916 Proclamation was signed, and indeed the premises was the ‘radical cafe’ of its time. Interestingly, most of the people on the tour had not noticed the plaque marking the location of the premises before. It truly is an unusual Dublin plaque.
The plaque to Captain Thomas Weafar on the corner of Lower Abbey Street is another prime example of a plaque many Dubliners are unaware of.
Captain Thomas Weafer ( The plaque reads Wafer, however as you will see below Weafer is more commonly found when discussing him) was shot and killed on Wednesday April 26 1916 while occupying the Hibernian Bank on the corner of Lower Abbey Street and Sackville Street. The strategic importance of the building is clear. It allowed Weafer and his men to control access to the street from Amiens Street Station for example, and members of the the GPO Garrison were occupying a number of buildings on each side of Sackville Street.
Meda Ryan wrote about the experiences of Leslie Price (who went on to marry Tom Barry), in her study of the famous Cork rebel leader entitled Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter.
Receiving no orders, like many Cumann na mBan activists, Leslie headed for the G.P.OInitially they cooked meals and helped the men in the Hibernian Bank. On Tuesday forenoon the building came under attack from British troops. Leslie was standing beside Capt. Tom Weafer, OC of the Hibernian Garrison, when a bullet whizzed past her and into his stomach. As she was about to attend to him another bullet lodged in the chest of the man who had gone to Capt. Weafer’s aid. She had just time to say a prayer in Weafer’s ear when he died.
From tropicalisland.de, the building on the corner of Lower Abbey Street and O' Connell Street is the old Hibernian Bank premises
The Rebellion Handbook published in 1916 by The Irish Times gives the following listing for Weafer:Weafer, Thomas, was a captain in the Irish Republican Army, and belonged to Enniscorthy, where he was born twenty-six years ago. He was killed in the Hibernian Bank at the corner of Sackville Street and Lower Abbey Street, on Wednesday 26th April.Weafer is refered to as Thomas Wafer in an entertaining piece from ‘Sceilg’, the pen name of choice for John Joseph O’Kelly. In his piece The GPO, now widely available within the recently republished Dublin’s Fighting Story, he wrote thatAt the Hibernian Bank, Lower Abbey Street, Captain Thomas Wafer of Enniscorthy died of terrible wounds, at the age of twenty-six, the place in which he fell being soon shrouded in flamesThe body of Thomas Weafer was never recovered, lost to the fire that destroyed the premises . Some idea of the ferocity of the fires that broke out on Sackville Street during the insurrection can be obtained from the Bureau of Military History Witness Statement of Oscar Traynor (W.S 340) who remarked thatSome time on Thursday a barricade which stretched from the Royal Hibernian Academy to a cycle shop- I think the name of it was Keating’s, on the opposite side of the street, took fire as a result of a direct shell hit. It was the firing of this barricade that caused the fire which wiped out the east side of O’ Connell St. I saw that happen myself. I saw the barricade being hit, I saw the fire consuming it and I saw Keating’s going up. Then Hoyt’s caught fire, and when Hoyt’s caught fire the whole block up to Earl St. became involved. Hoyt’s had a lot of turpentine and other inflammable stuff, and I saw the fire spread from there to Clery’s. Clery’s and the Imperial Hotel were one and the same building, and this building was ignited from the fire which consumed Hoyt’s (…..) I had the extraordinary experience of seeing the huge plate-glass windows of Clery’s stores run molten into the channel from the terrific heat.
The National Graves Association unveiled a plaque to Captain Thomas Weafer on Easter Sunday 1936. Notice the Weafer spelling is used on the contemporary site, while the plaque reads Wafer.
Weafer was a married man who was living in North Dublin at the time of the insurrection. Today, a street in his hometown of Enniscorthy is named after him (Weafer Street) and the plaque to his memory remains. While partially obstructed by a newspaper stall, this plaque remains readable to the passing public. It is, like the earlier linked-to plaque marking the spot of the Irish Farm Produce Company premises, an important site of the 1916 Rising marked.
http://comeheretome.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/1916-and-after/0 -
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Its not all bad and there are some alternative views on it and criticisms of how the history of the period is handled.PDF Signaler ce document
1To speak of pre-independence Ireland and criminal justice in the one breath could once mean only one thing – the uses of state power in defence of the authority of the ascendancy. Ireland under the Union was more often ruled in a state of emergency than of normality. The political conflict of the period and the social catastrophes of famine and mass emigration suggested a context in which agents of criminal justice played a role largely focussed on the maintenance of social order in the interest of the Ascendancy. Such a conception still dominates the popular historiography of modern Ireland, imprint or on television. Talk of police and we are likely to be shown a picture of an eviction or gunfire in the streets of Dublin in 1916.
2Social historians over the last thirty years have largely overturned such views. There are two stories about Ireland under the Union, and they are not incompatible. On the one hand, it was frequently a disordered society in which sovereign authority was (usually ineffectively) challenged and the forces of order marshalled to respond: occasionally this meant the use of the armed forces in aid of the civil power. On the other, there is a story about Ireland as a modernising society, in which urban and rural changes commonly experienced throughout Europe were accompanied by the development of the modern institutions of criminal justice and other instruments of government. Some have brought these two stories together – recognising that the particular conditions of Ireland (its jurisdictional separateness within a political union, and a seemingly intractable social condition) allowed a peculiar degree of governmental innovation. Hence Ireland developed a prisons administration, police, a paid magistracy, a state system of prosecutions, a national system of lunatic asylums in advance of such developments in England itself.
Ian O’Donnell and Finbarr McAuley, Criminal Justice History: themes and controversies from pre-Independence Ireland
Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003, 256 pp. (hb), ISBN 1 85182 768 4
http://chs.revues.org/index531.html
So what if there was organised criminal looting accompanying the rising - it would be a cameo or sub-plot to an interesting subject that is already badly researched and presented.
Of course, there was no such looting during the burning of Cork
EDIT - There is an inference floating around that public opinion shifted towards the Rebels/Sinn Fein on account of the British Army's treatment of civilians during the Rising.
There popular press does not seem to have been on their side.How The Irish Times covered this 'desperate episode'
Joe Carroll on how this newspaper reported on what it then described as a 'record of crime, horror and destruction'
For the early days of the Easter Rising, The Irish Times had the field all to itself thanks to having its office south of the Liffey. The rival Irish Independent and the Freeman's Journal were in the thick of the action beside the GPO and could not publish. The Freeman's Journal premises on Prince's Street was burned down. The Daily Express office in Cork Street opposite City Hall was actually occupied on Easter Monday by the rebels, and 26 of them eventually died there.
The Irish Times office was at 31 Westmoreland Street, near Trinity College and the Bank of Ireland. The paper had an independent power supply from its suction gas plant. The coverage of the fighting in Dublin was a tribute to the reporters who had to work under very dangerous conditions. The trade paper, Newspaper World, later paid tribute to The Irish Times for its coverage "of the memorable week when the continuing rifle and Maxim gunfire in the Westmoreland Street area made it impossible to venture around. Members of the several departments in the office were in attendance on each day but the paper was not published on the Friday and Saturday." The paper made up for this temporary gap with a Special Extra edition on May 1st.
On the Tuesday after the Rising, the paper reported on how the insurgents had occupied strategic buildings around the city, the resistance they met, the number of casualties and the beginning of the looting in O'Connell Street by what was termed the "Dublin underworld".
A "most shocking" event for the paper was the attack on the unarmed "Veterans' Corps" coming back from a route march in the Dublin mountains to Beggar's Bush barracks, where they were shot down by the insurgents stationed on the railway bridge and in houses around. The reporters and sub-editors were unsure how to describe the insurgents who were referred to variously as "volunteers", "rebels", "Sinn Féiners" and "revolutionists".
Editorially, the newspaper had no doubt where it stood. On the Tuesday, the editorial, entitled "The Outbreak" (see below), thundered that "an attempt has been made to overthrow the constitutional Government of Ireland". This "desperate episode in Irish history can have only one end", and the editor was trusting firmly on a "speedy triumph of the forces of law and order".
At this early stage, before Sackville Street (later O'Connell Street) had been partially demolished, the paper tried to show that normal life in Dublin was carrying on. The main news item was the opening of the Spring Show at the Royal Dublin Society in Ballsbridge and readers were also told about the latest production of the D'Oyly Carte company and the opening of the Feis Ceoil.
MORE SPACE WAS devoted in the first days to the conduct of the first World War in Europe, the Middle East and Africa than to the Rising. The Irish casualties in these battles were highlighted.
The restrictions on non-combatants in Dublin following the imposition of martial law prompted an Irish Times reporter to suggest to readers how to cope with having to stay at home instead of promenading around the streets in the evening. The father could "cultivate a habit of easy conversation with his family" or "put his little garden into a state of decency", do some "useful painting and mending about the house" or "acquire or re-acquire the art of reading", and who better then Shakespeare given that it was the tercentenary of his death?
As the fighting and destruction intensified, the reporters tried to stay detached and factual but there was no denying where their sympathies lay. Thus "Trinity College, Dublin, in the crisis, proved true to its traditions . . . the spirit of the few collegians who happened to be within the gates was indomitable . . . every graduate who could be rounded up answered the call." It was "surely a sign that Trinity had given itself wholly over to the military when one found soldiers playing football on the tennis courts."
Some Trinity students helped prepare the artillery for the shelling of Liberty Hall which the newspaper described as being "for many years a thorn in the side of the Dublin police and the Irish government. It was the centre of social anarchy in Ireland, the brain of every riot and disturbance". The students also captured a "Larkinite" spy who had infiltrated the campus.
There was also praise for the behaviour of the volunteers in the area of the Adelaide Hospital, where some of their wounded had been brought for treatment. "The insurgents in that part of the city seemed to be of a good type. No sign of liquor was ever observed on them and they were invariably courteous, while they refrained from abusing the convalescent soldiers in the hospital."
By the time of the Special Extra edition on the Monday after the Rising, the insurgents had surrendered the previous Saturday, so the editorial, entitled "The Insurrection" (see below), got down to analysing what it called "a record of crime, horror and destruction" by one side but "shot with many gleams of the highest valour and devotion" on the side of the "gallant soldiers". The editorial did "not deny a certain desperate courage to many of the wretched men who today are in their graves or awaiting the sentence of their country's laws."
For this last category, "The State has struck but its work is not yet finished. The surgeon's knife has been put to the corruption in the body of Ireland and its course must not be stayed until the whole malignant growth has been removed." Was this a call for the execution of those the paper called the "ring-leaders" and the "arch-conspirators"?
THE RIVAL Freeman's Journal, when it re-appeared on May 5th, saw it as a "bloodthirsty incitement" to the government. The Irish Times rejected this charge but later in the week made clear it supported the British prime minister, Herbert Asquith, when he refused to call for a stop to the executions while the last two signatories of the Proclamation still alive, James Connolly and Seán MacDermott, were awaiting their fate.
Across the river, the Irish Independent was back on the streets after a 10-day break, and in its editorial of May 10th pleaded for leniency for those who filled "only minor parts".
"When, however, we come to some of the ringleaders, instigators and fomentors not yet dealt with, we must make an exception." It was clear to readers that Connolly, who had been a bugbear to the proprietor of the Independent and of the Dublin tramway company, William Martin Murphy, was being referred to. "Let the worst of the ringleaders be singled out and dealt with as they deserve." Whether this reflected the views of the mainly Catholic business class and clerical readers of the paper is hard to know. Connolly and MacDermott were shot two days later.
The editor of The Irish Times must have been gratified by the letter in the edition of May 12th in which a reader wished "to express my recognition of, and gratitude for, the fearless way in which you are daily giving correct expression to the views of all loyal Irish people in this deplorable crisis".
The demand for The Irish Times was so great that it reprinted the issues of Easter Week when it was the only newspaper to be had. The Weekly Irish Times came out with a triple issue dated April 29th, May 6th and 13th. This issue contained a complete record of the Rising with full details of the fighting, lists of casualties and prisoners, sentences and deportations and pictures of the main personalities. The paper boasted that the issue was "enormously popular and had a colossal circulation which far exceeded anything ever previously claimed by any Dublin newspaper, morning, evening or weekly". (The Weekly Irish Times was a companion to the daily title, taking a longer look at the events of the week gone by. Often bought to send to family members abroad, it continued to be published until 1941, when it was replaced by the Times Pictorial.)
A year later, in 1917, the Weekly Irish Times published the 286-page Sinn Féin Rebellion Handbook, which reproduced the contemporary reports of the Rising and its aftermath with maps. But it also included later accounts of the courts martial, Roger Casement's landing, capture, trial and execution, two commissions of enquiry, full lists of those killed, taken prisoner, honours and promotions. It is an amazingly comprehensive account of every aspect of the Rising. It was republished in 1988 in facsimile form and is now a collector's item.
http://www.irishtimes.com/focus/easterrising/theirishtimes/0 -
Really enjoying this thread despite some provocative posts. For me 1916 is too close to be history , in the way that I regard 1798, and for that reason I find it difficult to contribute to this discussion but do keep it going! Am I correct in thinking that a lot of the Lawrence photographic collection was destroyed in the fire at their O'Connell Street shop?
I have a pass issued to my Grandfather to travel across the city during the Rising - I'll post a pic when I dig it out - should have sent it to Whyte's recent auction. 0 -
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Originally Posted by MarchDub
Well as per my previous post - so what? This is typical of any war situation and the expression of "wartime necessity" comes from the so called accepted actions of armies and governments engaged in war.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PatsytheNazi
Well if jonniebgood1 hasn't been pedantic in the discussion my username isn't PatsytheNazi. I suppose it's possible that out of 1,250 Rebels one might have stuffed £149 10s.So off topic, the thread isn't about the source of De Nile :rolleyes:
What???0 -
Judgement Day wrote: »Really enjoying this thread despite some provocative posts. For me 1916 is too close to be history , in the way that I regard 1798, and for that reason I find it difficult to contribute to this discussion but do keep it going! Am I correct in thinking that a lot of the Lawrence photographic collection was destroyed in the fire at their O'Connell Street shop?
I have a pass issued to my Grandfather to travel across the city during the Rising - I'll post a pic when I dig it out - should have sent it to Whyte's recent auction. this pass,..was it a looters pass by chance ? 0 -
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchDub
Well as per my previous post - so what? This is typical of any war situation and the expression of "wartime necessity" comes from the so called accepted actions of armies and governments engaged in war.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PatsytheNazi
Well if jonniebgood1 hasn't been pedantic in the discussion my username isn't PatsytheNazi. I suppose it's possible that out of 1,250 Rebels one might have stuffed £149 10s.
What???
It was a rebellion where the Rebels went out not expecting either a military success or popular revolt.So why the looting ?
We know that the tactics of the West Cork Brigade was much more militarily sucessful than Easter 1916.
We also know that Hanna Sheehy's publicity of the British Army's "Wartime Nesscessity" lecture tour of the USA
Hanna Sheehy capitalised on the atrocities to great effect even getting an audience with the US President but her role is buried behind a lot of non sequiturs.
Skeffingtons Widow was the Hero of the Hour and it is hardly right that her role gets buried. Thats what happens when you mess with the facts.
Where are her memorials , parks and streets ????? this pass,..was it a looters pass by chance ?
The thought had crossed my mind but I am far too polite to suggest it.0 -
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