1916

Bob Z

I'm writing a short play about 1916 but I don't know my history well enough I have a broad overview but I was wondering if anyone knows any more obscure facts?

KingBrian2

He's an obscure fact the Rising began well before the GPO was seized by the Volunteers and Citizen's Army when a raid up at the Phoenix Park secured weapons and ammo. An explosion was heard commencing the beginning of hostilities.

LordSutch

de Valera was the only one of the rebel leaders not born in the UK (I think)?

That is to say, the UK as it then was in 1916.

convert

Have you had a look at the Irish Independent/UCD 1916 supplements that were issued before and after Christmas? The articles are written by academics and PhDs. They are pretty short and often focus on less common or prominent aspects/facts. They're available online on the UCD website. Lots of images, too, which gives a feeling for the events.

Bob Z

Cheers it's not just facts it's random stuff I don't really know what I'm looking but I've found a few things I can insert. I thought the part about the find and the swede was interesting. One of them couldn't even speak English

Niamhmg

Mcdiarmada was Irish, I'm pretty sure most were apart from connoly

Bob Z

Bob Z wrote: »

I'm writing a short play about 1916 but I don't know my history well enough I have a broad overview but I was wondering if anyone knows any more obscure facts?

The online Bureau of Military History archives has some really fantastic accounts from participants in the Rising. They should definitely inspire some characters.

kalergi

One day in 1916 a group of brave, well to do, middle class, well educated men decided to put on military uniforms and picked up their guns. They marched to the General Post Office in Dublin where they declared that Ireland was a republic. Then they took up station inside the GPO and waited for the might of the British Empire to descend upon them. The war dog Churchill ordered a gun a Royal Navy gunboat to sail up the river Liffey whereupon it began to pound the centre of Dublin city to rubble. This would not be the last time the war dog would be responsible for turning a European city to rubble, but I digress.

In any case after a week of siege the brave volunteers of 1916, who had not already been killed, surrendered and subsequently many of the leaders were executed.

Belfast

Weapons on sale in Dublin 1916 for irish volunteers.
Lee Enfields £5 5 shillings
Whelan and son
17 upper Ormond quay
Dublin

davidlimerick

Be different and approach 1916 from the eyes of John Devoy (IRB) from America who raised the money for 1916 to happen and Padraig Pearse described him as perhaps the greatest of all the Fenians.

Bob Z

davidlimerick wrote: »

Be different and approach 1916 from the eyes of John Devoy (IRB) from America who raised the money for 1916 to happen and Padraig Pearse described him as perhaps the greatest of all the Fenians.

Cheers will do that...

Bob Z

Belfast wrote: »

Weapons on sale in Dublin 1916 for irish volunteers.
Lee Enfields £5 5 shillings
Whelan and son
17 upper Ormond quay
Dublin

Where did you get that image?

Belfast

Bob Z wrote: »

Where did you get that image?

National Library of Ireland
https://localstudies.wordpress.com/2014/03/

Jellybaby1

Belfast wrote: »

National Library of Ireland
https://localstudies.wordpress.com/2014/03/

Looks like South Dublin Libraries archive.

whisky_galore

Belfast wrote: »

Weapons on sale in Dublin 1916 for irish volunteers.
Lee Enfields £5 5 shillings
Whelan and son
17 upper Ormond quay
Dublin

Pretty amazing that the authorities allowed sales of arms and freely advertised as 'Xmas presents'!
Were there gun licences back then??

Belfast

whisky_galore wrote: »

Pretty amazing that the authorities allowed sales of arms and freely advertised as 'Xmas presents'!
Were there gun licences back then??

Not as far as I know.
The interesting part where did the shop get the guns to selling during the war? British soldiers arriving in Ireland were know to have sold their rifles. This lead to soldier being banned for Bring their weapons with them to ireland.
Rifles were them issued to them when they got to their barracks.

History of Firearms Legislation in Ireland[edit]
Irish firearms law is based on several Firearms Acts, each of which amends those Acts which were issued previously. The initial Firearms (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1924[10] which was introduced as emergency legislation following the founding of the state, was replaced by the Firearms Act, 1925,[11] which laid the foundations of the system of licensing that has continued unaltered until quite recently. Relatively small modifications were introduced in the Firearms Act, 1964
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_legislation_in_Ireland#Overview_of_Law

Weapons of the Irish Revolution – part I 1914-16

The Volunteers borrowed, bought and stole Lee Enfields wherever they could in the months leading up the Rising. So many service rifles began to go missing in the months leading up to the Rising – mostly sold off by British ‘Tommies’ at Dublin port – that troops embarking at Hollyhead for Dublin were instructed to leave their rifles behind in Wales and pick up new ones at barracks in Dublin.
http://www.theirishstory.com/2015/05/09/weapons-of-the-irish-revolution-part-i-1914-16/#.WItRrPl_uLQ

Manach

Guns were more readily available, albeit expensive, as it was thought that this was a private concern. The writer Chesterton, in his autobiography, stopped off at a gun shop a few hours before his wedding to purchase a revolver. He mentioned it was a romantic gesture. His bride's reaction was not recorded.

Bob Z

ive put on the play and it got a good reception cheers for the info.

Thomas__

Manach wrote: »

Guns were more readily available, albeit expensive, as it was thought that this was a private concern. The writer Chesterton, in his autobiography, stopped off at a gun shop a few hours before his wedding to purchase a revolver. He mentioned it was a romantic gesture. His bride's reaction was not recorded.

I can imagine that her reaction wasn´t that pleased and it might rather had spoiled the whole wedding.

Thomas__

I watched parts of this. There are also some features from the 50th anniversary of 1966 in it.
http://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/watch/rte-the-year-of-the-rising

There are other topics on this page as well.

whisky_galore

Manach wrote: »

Guns were more readily available, albeit expensive, as it was thought that this was a private concern. The writer Chesterton, in his autobiography, stopped off at a gun shop a few hours before his wedding to purchase a revolver. He mentioned it was a romantic gesture. His bride's reaction was not recorded.

Thought a shotgun was more appropriate to a wedding?

tac foley

The famous author, Neville shute Norway, better known simply as Neville Shute, was a junior member of the Red Cross, and rode his bicycle around Dublin carrying first aid supplies to the injured of both sides during the conflict.

Obscure enough for yez?

tac

pinkypinky

I knew that. His father was something important in the civil service, wasn't he?

Great writer: much underappreciated now.

tac foley

Not wishing to diverge much from the thread on 1916, but I agree - his works have a little detachment from them that makes you think that he is always looking in on events, and much of his work is slightly autre monde. 'No Highway' and 'An old captivity' and a few others are quite eerie in their way.

'On the beach' is something else, having recently watched the original movie with Gregory Peck as well as the mini-series. Too moving for words and, at the time, very prescient/apposite.

Apologies for thread drift.

tac

pedroeibar1

Manach wrote: »

Guns were more readily available, albeit expensive, as it was thought that this was a private concern. The writer Chesterton, in his autobiography, stopped off at a gun shop a few hours before his wedding to purchase a revolver. He mentioned it was a romantic gesture. His bride's reaction was not recorded.

Today’s perception of guns exemplifies the mental divide between town and country, many city dwellers seeing them as inherently evil, whereas they are viewed as either a tool or a sporting item by country people. Guns were an everyday commodity in Ireland and most farmhouses had one; until recent years almost every farm kitchen had a gun standing near the range or in the nearby ‘hot press’.

There were controls of a sort on gun ownership but these primarily were based on protection of Game, rather than gun control. Gun licences are ‘modern’ in that they were not introduced in UK & Ireland until circa 1900 (’03?), when they were required only for handguns. That was extended to all guns in 1920, supposedly as a result of ‘crime’ (a false claim) but in reality the upsurge of Communism and the Russian Revolution frightened Westminster. Post-Independence Ireland was only slightly different, the Government wanting to reduce/control the number of guns in circulation after the ‘Troubles’. (Similar false claims on crime are used by the authorities today, but that is a different topic!)

From the mid 1800’s guns were production line items, the UK trade being centred in Birmingham. With just a few exceptions they were assembled from different specialist suppliers, the barrels from one, the wood stocks from another, etc. Dublin gunmakers such as Garnett, Kavanagh, Keegan, Trulock, etc. imported guns ‘in the white’ i.e. unfinished and completed them in their own workshops. While some guns were expensive relative to an ordinary worker’s income, many were affordable as they were made in several different grades, ranging from a ‘farmer’s gun’ to ‘best grade’, the latter mainly presentation for display and bought by/given to kings and maharajahs. All fulfilled the same function, the difference being the aesthetics and the complexity of the mechanisms. For example a very good shotgun cost 25 guineas in 1910. (e.g. Empire model by W.W. Greener & Co.). The £5 quoted for a Lee Enfield is not a fortune. Tac is more expert on this topic than I.

Whelan and Son whose advert is shown above were primarily outfitters, selling uniforms, etc. later expanding into sportswear, hurleys, etc. They had a nationalist outlook and AFAIK were the first to publish (in 1908) ‘A Soldier’s Song’ which became Amhran na bFhiann.

Peregrinus

The ends of major wars are typically followed by a spike in the crime rate, as you have a large number of demobilised soldiers who are suffering economic dislocation and, in some instances, what we now recognise as a degree of trauma. The British Vagrancy Acts were passed after the Napoleonic wars; they provided for the arrest of anyone in possession of a firearm "with felonious intent" but, as the title suggests, they were mainly directed at (and enforced against) homeless people, travellers, itinerants and the landless poor.

Throughout the nineteenth century manufacturing methods improved, making guns cheaper, and wages for the working classes rose, making guns more affordable, so that by the end of the nineteenth century even the poorest classes of society (who commit the most crimes, naturally) could afford guns. Much of the political discourse about firearms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries revolved around the right of the citizen/subject to defend himself against tyranny (in the US) or the desirability of an armed population from which a militia could be raised to defeat those damned Frenchies, should they invade (in the UK). But by the turn of the twentieth century, certainly in the UK, guns were seen as desirable to defend oneself from crime because, increasingly, petty criminals might be armed.

The restrictions on pistols that pedroeibar1 mentions were introduced in 1903. I note that this is just about the end of the Boer Wars. I don't know if there's any definite connection there, but it wouldn't amaze me. The 1920 legislation did arise out of a concern about unrest - Republican unrest in Ireland as much as fears of Bolshevik unrest in Britain - but it was also a response to the rising rates of "ordinary decent crime" that followed from the huge demobilisation of 1918. The truth was that the increase was more in crimes against property - burglary, robbery - than in crimes against the person - murder, manslaughter, assault - but what caught the public imagination was the increase in the use of firearms in housebreaking, burglary, robbery, etc. There were also a number of prominent cases that came before the courts in which ex-soldiers charged with lurid crimes pleaded shell-shock in mitigation of their behaviour; relative to the crime wave as a whole these cases weren't that significant, but they also caught the public imagination.

The truth is that as long as guns were something that only middle-class people could afford in significant numbers, the UK had a relatively relaxed gun access regime. But once they became affordable to the masses that situation was liable to change, and the kind of disruption and insecurity that followed the Great War was sufficient to bring about a change, which has never really been rolled back.

tac foley

Great post, Sir, full of interesting facts about the wheres and whys of quite how we've ended up in Ireland and UK with some of the most draconian firearms control laws in existence anywhere on the planet.

tac

Peregrinus

Well, an interesting point is that, under the 1920 regime, it was accepted that a good reason for wanting to have a gun was "self-defence" - i.e. to defend your home/wife/little ones against the hordes of shell-shocked ex-soldiers presumed to be rampaging across the countryside. So if you (were a nice middle-class person who) applied for a gun licence because you were worried about crime, you would generally get one. But by the 1930s this was no longer seen as a good reason for wanting a gun. Whether it was the effect of the 1920s gun control legislation or just a coincidence, armed crime was at extremely low rates, and it was believed that having low rates of gun ownership in society was more effective in maintaining peace, order and law than having an armed citizenry ready to defend themselves against the marauding proletariat. And that's pretty much been the view ever since.

pedroeibar1

Peregrinus wrote: »

......... The truth was that the increase was more in crimes against property - burglary, robbery - than in crimes against the person - murder, manslaughter, assault - but what caught the public imagination was the increase in the use of firearms in housebreaking, burglary, robbery, etc........... .

I’m not convinced by that argument – are there any figures to back up the claimed use of firearms in housebreaking?


I agree there was an upsurge in crime (but not armed crime) after for e.g. the Napoleonic Wars but the blame for that can be attributed to a dead post-war economy with no hope of absorbing several hundred thousand fit young men. Look at the Transportation record books to NSW – most of those convicted were ‘done’ for petty theft, not armed robbery. (And in that era highway robbery was a capital offence, a big deterrent!)
Although I’ve not researched criminal history post 1900, I have done so in Famine era Ireland, when there was a huge surge in crime rates yet no ‘anti-gun’ legislation was introduced. For example, in comparing two six-month periods in 1846 and 1847 (*) the homicide rate increased by almost 50% (68 to 96 cases, attempts on life by gunfire more than doubled (55 to 126); robberies of arms went from 207 to 530 and ‘firing into dwellings’ went from 51 to 116. Yet with 530 guns robbed in just six months of 1847 there was no introduction of gun licencing/control.


I recall being told that during WW2 it was a military offence to import a souvenir firearm and one’s leave was automatically cancelled if caught. The fear in the UK & Ireland was one of an armed civilian force, guns were the bogeyman and then as now false claims were made as propaganda. For example, armed crimes today involve illegal guns smuggled in with drugs, and not by use of guns that are/have been legally held. Crimes involving guns are invariably drug or terrorist related, and not committed by ‘ordinary decent criminals’.



(*) House of Commons debate on CRIME AND OUTRAGE (IRELAND). 29 November 1847 reported Hansard vol 95 cc270-366 (online version)

Peregrinus

A shocking proportion of crimes are committed by young men between the ages of 15 and 25, or thereabouts. It’s a developmental stage that men go through, a combination of strength, aggression, poor risk appreciation, inability to defer gratification. Regardless of how you treat offenders of this age, most of them will come right with maturity. Having minor criminal convictions before age 25 is not a good predictor of a life of crime but if you’re still offending at age 30, that’s a bad sign.

Right. In a big war, a large proportion of the men between 15 and 25 are in the army, where (a) their aggression/violence is channelled in ways that we consider non-criminal, and even admirable/heroic, and (b) in any event they are much more closely supervised and controlled than in civilian life. The result is typically a large drop in the crime rate . . .

. . . . which is reversed when the war ends and large-scale demobilisation occurs. You’ve got a bunch of young men who are now just as impulsive and aggressive as ever, and some of them are more so, and the discipline/supervision/morale which controlled and channelled them has been taken away. Plus, they’re suffering significant familial and economic dislocation. Crime-statistics-wise, it’s the perfect storm.

None of this, the brighter student will note, has anything to do with the availability of firearms. That may also be a factor - the men concerned have been taught to shoot, many of them may have “souvenired” weapons and in any event there are large amounts of military surplus floating around. But, I think it’s a relatively minor factor; guns or no guns, you have this phenomenon.

In the online statistic available from this period (from here), offences involving firearms are not broken out from those not involving firearms. Here are the relevant figures for total crimes of violence against the person:

1912 2,117
1913 2,004
1914 1,729
1915 1,367
1916 1,219
1917 1,030
1918 1,042
1919 1,483
1920 1,546

OK. The steady decline during the war and the sharp rise afterwards are obvious. There’s a similar trend in the robbery offences. It’s notable that the post-war rise in crime doesn’t reach pre-war levels (at least, not by 1920; the trend does continue after that) but that wouldn’t have prevented popular perceptions of a crime wave.

Was there a disproportionate rise in armed crime? (Presumably, there was at least a proportionate rise.) As noted, I don’t have figures on that. It’s plausible, for the reasons already stated, but I can’t go beyond that. But was their public perception of/concern about/fear of a rise in armed crime? I imagine there was. A staple of the 1920s detective novel is the dastardly housebreaker/con man/other petty criminal armed with a revolver (foiled by the gentlemanly amateur detective, similarly equipped). (And, as you point out, the bolshevist agent usually carried a revolver as well.) This, of course, doesn’t tell us anything about the reality of crime in the 1920s, but I think it does tell us something about people’s impressions and perceptions of crime - which, when it comes to “get tough with crime” legislation, is at least as important and the reality.

As for the state of the country in 1847 and the legislative response, your researches may have overlooked the Constabulary (Ireland) Act 1846 which gave a power to proclaim curfews and which made it an offence to have firearms or ammunition in your home or in your possession in a district subject to curfew, “unless duly authorised to keep the same”. And then you’ve got your Crime and Outrage (Ireland) Act 1847, which conferred much more sweeping powers, making it a crime to possess or carry arms or ammunition in a proclaimed district (unless licensed); giving a power of arrest of anyone carrying arms; conferring powers to search for and seize arms, or components of arms, or ammunition; conferring a power to call in arms.

True, these powers and restrictions didn’t apply generally; they only applied in proclaimed districts, but the executive could proclaim any district, of any size, at any time. There was obviously a concern about armed crime, and a perceived need to have the legislative tools to deal vigorously with it, not by punishing the crimes themselves, but by restricting or preventing access to arms in the first place.

pedroeibar1

Peregrinus wrote: »

A shocking proportion of crimes are committed by young men between the ages of 15 and 25, or thereabouts. ...........
Was there a disproportionate rise in armed crime? (Presumably, there was at least a proportionate rise.) As noted, I don’t have figures on that. It’s plausible, for the reasons already stated, but I can’t go beyond that. But was their public perception of/concern about/fear of a rise in armed crime? I imagine there was.......As for the state of the country in 1847 and the legislative response, your researches may have overlooked the Constabulary (Ireland) Act 1846 which gave a power to proclaim curfews and which made it an offence to have firearms or ammunition in your home or in your possession in a district subject to curfew, “unless duly authorised to keep the same”. And then you’ve got your Crime and Outrage (Ireland) Act 1847, which conferred much more sweeping powers, making it a crime to possess or carry arms or ammunition in a proclaimed district (unless licensed); giving a power of arrest of anyone carrying arms; conferring powers to search for and seize arms, or components of arms, or ammunition; conferring a power to call in arms.

True, these powers and restrictions didn’t apply generally; they only applied in proclaimed districts, ......

As I’ve already said, there is no issue with accepting the increase in ordinary crime after a war. My point remains unanswered – I have yet to find proof that there was a huge increase in armed crime, yet the Authorities used (and use) fear and misinformation as a means of introducing gun control. Today there is a perfect example of similar misinformation – the news this week of what the DoJ has done with falsified Pulse/breathalyser/crime figures, all carried out to achieve other ends.

I am fully aware of the ‘47 Act and point out that the Proclaimed districts legislation actually was enabled in 1833 by the ‘Act for the more effectual Suppression of local Disturbances and dangerous Associations in Ireland’. This allowed the Lord Lieutenant to issue a proclamation declaring any county or district to be so disturbed as to require the onerous strictures of the act to apply. However, in the Famine period only Clare, Limerick and Tipperary, were ‘proclaimed’. In those counties robberies of arms accounted for 75 per cent of the total for all the robberies of arms in Ireland; in Limerick it was 42 per cent of the total, in a county that had a population of only 4 per cent of the entire population of Ireland. Yet there was no clampdown / gun control and the thrust under the legislation was to enforce the then principle of ‘distraint’, to bring people (who were starving) into line and not to reduce firearm possession. I am not aware of any general searches for arms.
In that year Justice took a holiday, not only were juries ‘packed’ but large sums were paid to famished ‘witnesses’ who were quite happy to perjure themselves for a ticket to America and a cash sum which for them was a small fortune and survival. The Chief Justice Lord Blackburne sat at the opening assizes (in Clonmel), a tendentious individual whose pompous pronouncements throughout the trials are cringe-worthy even at this remove.


We are off topic but if you ever do find some armed crime figures I’d welcome them.