Was the GPO in 1916 Looted?

I found litte change in O'Connell Street next day. The GPO had been more thoroughly barricaded. Other shops had just been looted: Lawrence's toy store bazaar and some jewellers. Diamond rings and pockets full of gold watches were selling for sixpence and a shilling, and one was cursed if one did not buy. Women and girls, some clad in Russian leather boots, smart tweed skirts and a shawl, wore rings on every finger, throbbing rows of them, only the joints showing. Ragged boys wearing old boots, brown and back, tramped up and down with air rifles on their shoulders or played cowboys or Indians, armed with black pistols supplied with long rows of paper hats. Little girls hugged teddy bears and dolls as if they could hardly believe their good fortune. Kiddies carried golf-bags and acted as caddies to young gentlemen in bright football jerseys and tall hats, who hit golf-balls with their clubs, or indeed anything that came their way. This was a holiday. Some of the women with wispy greasy hair, and blousy figures, walked around in evening dress. Young girls wore long silk dresses. A saucy girl flipped a fan with a hand wristletted by a thick gold chain; she wore a sable fur coat, the pockets overhung with stockings and pale-pink drawers; on her head was a wide black hat towhich she had pinned streamers of blue silk ribbon. She strutted in larkish delight calling to others less splendid: 'How do yez like me now? Any chanst of yur washing ma'am?' In the backstreets men and women sprawled about, drunk, piles of empty and smashed bottles lying around.

At 4.10pm, Eamon Bulfin on the roof of the GPO, watched as children looted a photography and toy shop, Lawrence's, and came out with a large quantity of fireworks. They "made a huge pile of them in the middle of O'Connell Street, and set fire to them. That is one thing that will stick in my mind forever. We had our bombs on top of the Post Office, and these fireworks were shooting up in the sky. We were very nervous. There were Catherine wheels going up O'Connell Street and Catherine wheels coming down O'Connell Street." The looters then set Lawrence's on fire.

Elsewhere the Volunteers had occupied places of work and welfare (such as there were) of poor working class people.In several cases the rebels had to use force against the locals to occupy their positions. At Jacob’s factory, a Volunteer named Sean Murphy recalled, “some civilians had … attacked one of the Volunteers and in order to save his life they had to shoot one of the civilians”.

At South Dublin Union, the Volunteers found themselves involved in a riot with locals and had to “lay out” two with rifle butts before they got into the complex.[7] At Stephen’s Green, the Citizen Army had seized passing cars and carts at gunpoint to serve as barricades, James Stephens saw a carter try to remove his livelihood from the barricades, only to be shot dead by the insurgents. “At that moment the Volunteers were hated.

Three of the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police were shot on the first day of the Rising and their Commissioner pulled them off the streets. The decision, though understandable, unleashed an orgy of looting, especially around Sackville Street, as slum dwellers from the surrounding area took the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ransack the city’s shops and boutiques

MarchDub wrote: »

You must understand that newspaper reports on Easter week 1916 were very biased one way or another. Newspapers are not considered reliable sources for what actually happened.

What you are reading in these is likely propaganda one way or another.

MarchDub wrote: »

I have old copies of the Irish Times in my possession for Easter Week and one heading reads - THE DARKEST WEEK IN THE HISTORY OF DUBLIN with a subheading - "An Orgie of Fire and Slaughter". The article then proceeds to give a 'history' the 'Sinn Fein' [sic] rebels and their movements on Easter Monday morning. It's all fabrication written in the most sensational way and claiming that even the initial take over of the Post Office involved the willful killing of innocent civilians inside.

I am inclined to think that the OP has an agenda - discredit the 1916 rebels and pull out any negative stuff that you can find to support this thesis. I am open to being dissuaded on this but his posts read that way to me.