Easter Rising: "editors shot without trial"

gaiscioch

I came across the following on the Weekly Irish Times (29 April 1916) as a footnote to an article entitled 'Execution of Thirteen of the rebel leaders: sixty others sentenced to penal servitude. Countess Markievicz gets a life sentence' :

"'Editors shot without trial. Mr Tim Healy asked the Prime Minister if he was aware that the editors of two newspapers opposed to the revolt were shot without trial in Portobello Barracks without any time being given to say their prayers'
It is believed in Dublin that the men referred to by Mr Healy were P.J.McIntyre, editor of the Toiler, and Jas Dickson, editor of the Eye-Opener."

/end

I had never heard of these two people. Does anybody know anything about why McIntyre and Dickson were executed if, as Healy claimed, they opposed the Rising?

Qualitymark

The two were gutter press journalists who were picked up in JJ Kelly's shop by John Bowen-Colthurst and his merry men when they raided it with Frank Sheehy Skeffington as a hostage. (That is, B-C had Skeffy as a hostage.)
They were customers in the shop. B-C et al had raided the wrong shop; they were looking for the nearby shop of Alderman Tom Kelly, a labour Alderman on Rathmines Urban District Council, and misdirected themselves to the shop of JJ Kelly, an Irish Parliamentary Party Alderman on the council. (Alderman JJ Kelly was subsequently interned - here's a piece about it http://thecricketbatthatdiedforireland.com/2013/09/07/16-days-of-internment-alderman-james-j-kelly-1916/)

The two journalists and Sheehy Skeffington were brought back to the Portobello Barracks (now Cathal Brugha Barracks in Rathmines), and next morning Bowen-Colthurst decided to shoot them all. They were shot and buried in shallow graves in the barracks. When Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and two of her sisters, Margaret Culhane and Mary Kettle, got word that Frank had been arrested and went to the barracks, they were told, in tones of studied contempt, that he was not there. (They'd thought that one of them being the wife of an MP might mean they got some information.) A couple of days later David Sheehy, also a longtime MP, went to the barracks and succeeded in getting his son-in-law's body for burial - as long as Frank's wife didn't get to know about it…

What happened to the bodies of Dickson, (editor of the creepily blackmailing Eye-Opener), and McIntyre (currently editor not of the Toiler but of the Searchlight, reputedly a loyalist rag but I've never been able to find a copy), I don't know; Hanna Sheehy Skeffington brought the question of her husband's murder into the British House of Commons, but I don't think the discussion treated much on the two journalists. (Or rather, the two other journalists; Frank Sheehy Skeffington was also a journalist.)

johnny_doyle

touched on in a previous thread re the treatment of civilians in the Rising the report on the shooting of FSS carries some info re the arrest and murder of the 2 editors in question

http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview/?pi=nla.aus-vn427856-s1-v

Qualitymark

If you search Hansard for their names you may find more; but I don't think the Commission of Enquiry was read into the record… however, I have a feeling that it's online and searchable. Here's one example of the stuff from Hansard (the record of debates in the House of Commons); Mr Ginnell, who's asking the question, was an Irish MP:

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1916/may/18/mr-sheehy-skeffington

69. Mr. GINNELL asked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that Mr. Sheehy-Skeffington, pacifist, when shot fatally by the military at the Dublin barrack, did not die immediately, but continued to crawl about the barrack yard in his death-agony for more than an hour, while several officers looked on amused; whether one of those officers kicked his body before life was extinct; whether, after burying his body in the barrack yard, the military visited his house, terrified his wife and child, refused to give her any information about her husband and, although he had acted as a pacifist throughout, looted his house under pretence of searching it, smashed furniture and windows, and left it a wreck as it now is; whether the promised trial of those responsible will be such as to admit oath and evidence of these facts; and what in the nature of amends will be made to widow Skeffington and her little boy?

§Mr. TENNANT All the facts which have been reported and which have been alleged in reference to this matter are the subject of close investigation at present.

§Mr. GINNELL Will the right hon. Gentleman say by what tribunal the investigation is carried on?

§Mr. TENNANT It is carried on under the orders of the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief.

§Mr. GINNELL A military tribunal.

johnny_doyle

Another "writer" superficially involved in the arrests and murders was Joseph Edelstein, accused by Tim Healy of being a spotter for the British and pointing out Thomas Dickson for arrest. Healy later apologised and admitted this accusation was totally incorrect.

Prior to the Rising Edelstein had been mentally assessed and given a certificate of sanity. Bowen-Colthurst was to receive a convenient certification of insanity after the Rising.

Maoltuile

Qualitymark wrote: »

The two were gutter press journalists who were picked up in JJ Kelly's shop by John Bowen-Colthurst and his merry men when they raided it with Frank Sheehy Skeffington as a hostage. (That is, B-C had Skeffy as a hostage.)
They were customers in the shop. B-C et al had raided the wrong shop; they were looking for the nearby shop of Alderman Tom Kelly, a labour Alderman on Rathmines Urban District Council, and misdirected themselves to the shop of JJ Kelly, an Irish Parliamentary Party Alderman on the council. (Alderman JJ Kelly was subsequently interned - here's a piece about it http://thecricketbatthatdiedforireland.com/2013/09/07/16-days-of-internment-alderman-james-j-kelly-1916/)

The two journalists and Sheehy Skeffington were brought back to the Portobello Barracks (now Cathal Brugha Barracks in Rathmines), and next morning Bowen-Colthurst decided to shoot them all. They were shot and buried in shallow graves in the barracks. When Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and two of her sisters, Margaret Culhane and Mary Kettle, got word that Frank had been arrested and went to the barracks, they were told, in tones of studied contempt, that he was not there. (They'd thought that one of them being the wife of an MP might mean they got some information.) A couple of days later David Sheehy, also a longtime MP, went to the barracks and succeeded in getting his son-in-law's body for burial - as long as Frank's wife didn't get to know about it…

What happened to the bodies of Dickson, (editor of the creepily blackmailing Eye-Opener), and McIntyre (currently editor not of the Toiler but of the Searchlight, reputedly a loyalist rag but I've never been able to find a copy), I don't know; Hanna Sheehy Skeffington brought the question of her husband's murder into the British House of Commons, but I don't think the discussion treated much on the two journalists. (Or rather, the two other journalists; Frank Sheehy Skeffington was also a journalist.)

Bowen-Colthurst and his patrol also shot a boy on their jaunt around the locality. Ironically, both Sheehy-Skeffingtons were 'rebels' but part of the civil administration that Connolly had some responsibility for trying to create.

By the way, contemporary accounts have Bowen-Colthurst bringing in bricklayers in his efforts to hide what they had done, by removing bullet-damaged brickwork from where they'd murdered the three (some 'insanity'). A Major Vane in that barracks reputedly sacrificed his own career in the British Army by going on leave in order to travel to London and tell Kitchener what had been done (his own chain of command was in on the cover-up).

Qualitymark

Maoltuile wrote: »

Bowen-Colthurst and his patrol also shot a boy on their jaunt around the locality.

He shot several people; here's two: one kid, called Coade if my memory serves, was coming out of Rathmines church after devotions and turned to walk away; Bowen-Colthurst told a soldier to knock him to the ground with the butt of his rifle, then Bowen-Colthurst took out his revolver and shot the boy dead; in searching houses in Camden Street on the Wednesday of Easter Week he came across the Labour councillor Richard O'Carroll, secretary of the Bricklayers Union, and asked him was he Sinn Féin. "To the spine," replied O'Carroll, and Bowen-Colthurst shot him through the lung. Someone driving a bread van picked up O'Carroll from where he was left lying in the street, but O'Carroll was taken from the van by soldiers from Portobello and brought back to the barracks, where he died, apparently without medical treatment, some days later.

This Bowen-Colthurst was a dedicated loyalist from the Cork family centred on Blarney Castle; Monk Gibbon's book Inglorious Soldier has a description of him in Portobello Barracks during the Rising, about six foot four (taller then than now, in terms of average height), reading the Bible all night and muttering verses relating to rebellion to himself, his face completely white but his eyes surrounded by black like a panda.