Forgotten Graves of Irish Patriots

Later still in the same year two gallant young officers of Irish blood, shared the fate of Russell and M'Cracken. They sailed with Humbert from Rochelle; they fought at Castlebar and Ballinamuck; and when the swords of their French allies were sheathed, they passed into the power of their foes. Matthew Tone was one of them; the other was Bartholomew Teeling. The latter filled the rank of Etat-major in the French army; and a letter from his commanding officer, General Humbert, was read at his trial, in which the highest praise was given to the young officer for the humane exertions which he made throughout his last brief campaign in the interest of mercy. "His hand," he said, "was ever raised to stay the useless effusion of blood, and his protection was afforded to the prostrate and defenceless." But his military judges paid little heed to those extenuating circumstances, and Teeling was condemned to die on the day of his trial. He perished on the 24th September, 1798, being then in his twenty-fourth year. He marched with a proud step to the place of execution on Arbour Hill, Dublin, and he died, as a soldier might, with unshaken firmness and unquailing mien. No lettered slab marks the place of his interment; and his bones remain in unhallowed and unconsecrated ground. Hardly had his headless body ceased to palpitate, when it was flung into a hole at the rere of the Royal Barracks. A few days later the same unhonoured spot received the mortal remains of Matthew Tone. "He had a more enthusiastic nature than any of us," writes his brother, Theobald Wolfe Tone, "and was a sincere Republican, capable of sacrificing everything for his principles." His execution was conducted with infamous cruelty and brutality, and the life-blood was still gushing from his body when it was flung into "the Croppy's Hole." "The day will come," says Dr. Madden, "when that desecrated spot will be hallowed ground—consecrated by religion—trod lightly by pensive patriotism—and decorated by funeral trophies in honour of the dead whose bones lie there in graves that are now neglected and unhonoured."

Croppies' Acre desecration


A chairde,

Who fears to speak of `Ninety-eight?
Who blushes at the name?
When cowards mock the patriot's fate,
Who hangs his head for shame?

So goes the first few lines of ``The Memory of the Dead'' by John Kells Ingrams. Well, the National Museum directors should hang their collective heads in shame with their planned bus park on the graves of the ``unknown soldiers'' of the 1798 Rising.

The Esplanade or, as it is better known, Croppies' Acre (across from the museum's entrance) is currently a soccer pitch. The site was marked by a memorial column in 1985 by Soldiers of the Eastern Command.

It was to this site that many hundreds of soldiers of the Irish Republic who were defeated at Ballinamuck, County Longford, were brought, tortured, shot, put to the sword, or hanged. The identity of only 13 is known today, the most famous being Bartholomew Teeling and Wolfe Tone's brother Matthew.

Instead of demolishing the past, and running bus-loads of tourists over the graves of Ireland's patriot dead, the National Museum should be planning an appropriate memorial to them.

The Museum and the Office of Public Works have an opportunity to build a large-scale memorial which could encompass much of the local and national history of the area and link it to the Liffey.

Aengus O'Snodaigh,
Assistant Secretary,
Dublin 1798 Commemoration Committee,
c/o History Ireland,
P.O. Box 695,
Dublin 8.

Croppies' Acre lies in the Esplanade below the new National Museum (formerly Collins Barracks and the Royal Barracks) and between Benburb Street and Wolfe Tone Quay.

The laying out of the Military Esplanade in 1850, and the diversion and walling in of the river Liffey drastically altered the appearance of the Croppies' Acre and this lack of definition may have contributed to its neglect over the years. Prior to this the acre seems to have been marshy wasteground to the back and sides of a number of houses. It was into this marshy ground that the `Croppy Pit' or Croppy Hole' was dug and into which the lifeless bodies of captured, tortured and hanged bodies of United Irish soldiers or suspected sympathisers were flung.

Many of the ``unknown soldiers'' buried here had drifted leaderless into the city after the collapse of the 1798 risings around the country. Seeking the anonymity of the crowd, their cropped hair was a dead giveaway. They were hunted down and killed by marauding yeomen or captured, tortured and hanged by other crown forces. In order to help the rebels to evade capture, the city's Guild of Lamplighters refused to light the lamps on the bridges, quays and principal streets. For this act of compassion, several of the lamplighters were hanged and a curfew was imposed on the city.