Hidden Dublin

by Frank Hopkins

  Faulkner’s Dublin Journal of 28 June 1800 gave some details of the escape. The report described the escapees as ‘fifty criminals’ who had gotten out of the prison ‘by undermining the wall and excavating a passage through the high bank of earth between the Barracks and Arbour Hill. Amongst those who escaped were the notorious villains and murderers Hughes and Shaughnessy …’ Faulkner’s Journal also reported that Hughes and Shaughnessy, who were ‘under sentence of death’, had escaped from prison twice before. No details of their crimes were given.

  Another newspaper report of 1 July reveals that three of the prisoners were recaptured in the Dublin Mountains by five soldiers of the Lower Talbotstown Cavalry.

  The Court of Inquiry recommended the closure of the old Provost Prison, and a new prison on the site of St Bricin’s Military Hospital was in place by 1803.

  James Clarence Mangan

  Many years ago, Lord Edward Street, opposite Christ Church, formed the upper part of Fishamble Street and number three, now occupied by the Castle Inn, was the birthplace of the poet James Clarence Mangan.

  Mangan, born on 1 May 1803, one of four children, was the son of a poor shopkeeper. He later blamed his parents for all of his shortcomings. In his autobiography he mentions ‘the honour or the disreputability of having been born the son of a grocer’. His father had originally been a schoolteacher from Shanagolden in Limerick and in 1801 he married Catherine Smith, owner of a small grocery shop in Fishamble Street. Throughout his life Mangan often referred to his father’s bullying ways and he once said that he had treated him and his siblings ‘as a huntsman would refractory hounds’.

  Mangan received his first schooling from a Jesuit priest, Father Austin, at a school in the nearby Saul’s Court where he is said to have studied the basics of Latin, French, Spanish and Italian. Mangan was forced to transfer to another school in Darby Square at the age of eleven when his father’s business went bust; and in 1818, when he was declared bankrupt for the eighth time, the younger Mangan was forced to become the family breadwinner.

  At the age of fifteen Mangan began work as an apprentice in a scrivener’s office in York Street. The work of a scrivener involved the tedious task of copying legal documents by hand and Mangan laboured long and hard at this profession for nearly seven years.

  Mangan took up writing as a pastime during his time in the scrivener’s office and he contributed poetry, puzzles and other items to a variety of publications. During the 1830s he wrote for The Comet , a weekly satirical newspaper. Some of his writings were so strange at that time that one of his contemporaries concluded that he had to be an opium-addict, even at that young age. He was also a regular contributor to the Dublin University Magazine.

  In 1838 Mangan was recommended for a position in the Ordnance Survey office by Dr George Petrie. He stayed there until 1842 when he began work as a clerk in the library at Trinity College and he supplemented his small income with contributions to the Nation and the Irish Penny Journal . By that time Mangan was drinking very heavily and his favourite haunts were The Bleeding Horse in Camden Street, The Star and Garter and The Phoenix Tavern in D’Olier Street. He was also fond of smoking opium but it’s not clear if he was actually addicted to the stuff. Mangan turned his hand to translations of Irish poetry and Dark Rosaleen , Mangan’s finest work, was published at that time

  Ireland was devastated by a cholera epidemic in 1849. Mangan contracted the deadly disease in May of that year and he was brought to a temporary hospital set up in Kilmainham known as the ‘cholera sheds’. Mangan left after a few days and made his way to what would be his last home – a run-down garret in Bride Street.

  Mangan was taken to the Meath Hospital on 13 June and he died there a week later. The poet knew that he was dying and he spent his last days in the Meath scribbling notes on any scrap of paper that he could find. Alas, Mangan’s last writings were burned by an attendant immediately after his death as she had been reprimanded earlier for not keeping the wards tidy.

  Cholera victims were supposed to be buried immediately after death but Mangan’s funeral didn’t take place until three days later. The cholera epidemic of 1849 had killed thousands and there weren’t enough coffins or hearses to go round. Mangan’s remains were interred at Glasnevin cemetery on 23 June 1849 and the funeral was attended by only five of his closest friends.

  An obituary penned by his friend Joseph Brennan appeared in the Irishman on the day of his funeral. It said of him: ‘His genius was a Midas-gift, which came saddled with a curse … It is enough to say that he was the greatest of our modern poets; that he was unrivalled as a translator … that a truer bard, in nature, as in genius, never lived than our poor friend Mangan …’

  Hibernian Marine School

  On 28 June 1766, the Freeman’s Journal announced that: ‘the Governors of the new charitable institution of an Hibernian Nursery for the Marine have taken a house at Ringsend, which is now fitting up, where they propose to lodge, diet, clothe and instruct 20 Boys, the Orphans or Children only of decayed Masters of Ships, or of Mariners, unable to support their families, who are to be received from the Age of seven to ten years and apprenticed at thirteen or fourteen or sooner (according to the fitness and constitution of the Boys) to Masters of Ships.’

  Earlier that year, a group of Dublin merchants, ship owners and others had banded together to provide a boarding school in Ringsend for the education of young boys whose fathers had been lost at sea and for the sons of sailors who were unable to afford to educate them.

  The scheme was initially funded by private donations and a levy of three pence per month on the wages of Dublin sailors. By the end of September 1766 the school, called the Hibernian Marine School, was providing food, shelter and instruction in seamanship, navigation, gunnery, tailoring and shoe-making for seventeen young boys, the majority being orphans. A year later there were forty boys in the institution.

  In 1769 the governors decided that the house at Irishtown was too small for its purposes and they managed to lease a plot of land at John Rogerson’s Quay from the developer Luke Gardiner for an annual rent of £70. The board then petitioned the government for funds to build a new school between Cardiff ’s Lane and Lime Street at John Rogerson’s Quay that would be capable of accommodating 200 children.

  The new and improved school, designed by either Thomas Cooley or Thomas Ivory, was described in a Government report of 1809 as a ‘plain substantial building, seventy-two feet by forty-six, with two wings, each thirty feet in front by sixty feet in depth …’

  There were rooms for the master, chaplain, usher and house-keeper, an infirmary, laundry, mess-room and dormitories at the school. The boys were entitled to three meals each day and a typical day’s rations consisted of burgoo (watery porridge) and bread for breakfast; dinner was usually a bowl of ox-head soup with peas and bread, and for supper each boy received three ounces of bread and a mug of milk. Sunday dinner was the highlight of the week with boiled beef, potatoes, vegetables and beer being served.

  Rules were strictly enforced and any breaches of discipline were punishable with expulsion. Minor crimes and misdemeanours were punished with a liberal dose of the cat-o’-three-tails (presumably a junior version of the cato’-nine-tails).

  In 1809 the school’s governors and staff were criticised for the inefficient running of the school and there was a rise in the numbers of children absconding from it. Since 1800 an average of twelve boys per annum had absconded, but in 1807 and 1808, forty boys had gone missing. There were also complaints from ships’ captains about the poor quality of instruction in navigation and general education given to the boys and both the master and usher were fired during that year.

  By the mid 1850s there were less than thirty boys in the school and it was destroyed by fire in 1872. The Marine School moved to a new house at Upper Merrion Street in 1900. It was again relocated to a house in Rathmines. In 1904 the school found a more permanent home across the bay at Seafield Road in Clontarf where it was in use un
til 1968 under the name of the Mountjoy Marine School.

  The Marine School eventually amalgamated with the Bertrand Russell School and subsequently formed Mount Temple Comprehensive School in 1970.

  Dublin Oil

  The 14 February edition of the Evening Herald in 1903 contained a story concerning an oil well discovered in the cellar of a house in the north inner city of Dublin near Mountjoy Square.

  The oil well had been discovered five weeks earlier in the basement of a dwelling house at 100 Summerhill and was causing ripples of excitement among the ranks of the British oil industry. The house had been built on ground reclaimed from bogland. One hundred years ago many ‘experts’ believed that oil was to be readily found in Irish bogs.

  When the oil was first discovered, it was said to have flowed in abundance for three days and then slowed down for two weeks and then flowed strongly ever since.

  A geologist, Professor Grenville Cole, sent a sample of the oil to London for analysis and was eagerly awaiting the results. Cole believed that the liquid bubbling in the basement at Summerhill was crude petroleum and that the amount of oil already produced from the well would justify it being worked as a commercial venture. Cole was confident that further investigation of the basement would yield positive results.

  Another report in the Evening Herald a week later, on 20 February, was just as optimistic but added a noted of caution: ‘That it is a genuine strike appears beyond doubt, but whether the yield will justify all the expense of boring and development remains to be seen.’

  The editor of the Petroleum magazine described the oil as a white substance that smelled strongly of paraffin. The magazine was said to have great faith in the find. When asked if he thought that the Summerhill find was significant he predicted that large quantities of the oil would be found, ‘such as will surprise the good people of Dublin who probably have no idea of the immense profits made out of a fairly good oil-well’. However, the story of the Summerhill oil well was quickly forgotten about when the oil was found to have little or no commercial value.

  Another oil story appeared in a newspaper report of

  24 February under the bizarre heading of ‘The Evil One In Ireland’s Eye’. Apparently the Summerhill oil-well story had strengthened the belief in British circles that oil was to be found in great quantities in Ireland. The newspaper reported that the British government was about to look for oil in several different parts of the country and geologists were very hopeful of success.

  Ireland’s Eye was one of these places mentioned. One night, ten years earlier during a severe storm, blue flames were seen shooting up from the island and some Howth locals on the mainland attributed the phenomenon to the presence of the devil on the island.

  However, a geologist who visited the island to find out what had caused the flames had a different explanation. Earlier that year a group of day-trippers had lit a fire on the island to boil a kettle and reported afterwards that the fire had eaten its way well into the ground.

  The geologist claimed that the fire lit by the tourists had been kept alive by oil underground and he recommended that test-drilling be undertaken, but this was never done.

  Portobello Gardens

  Long before the construction of the Grand Canal or Portobello Harbour or the adjacent hotel, that general area on the road to Rathmines was known as Portobello. The district was generally believed to have been named to commemorate a battle which took place in Puerto Bello in the Gulf of Mexico in 1739 although some say that it was so named because Francis Drake had died in the same place in 1596.

  Portobello House was one of five hotels built by the Grand Canal Company to accommodate passengers travelling to and from various locations along the canal. The hotel, which opened in July 1807, was taken over by the Sisters of Charity in 1860 and converted into a hospital for the blind until they moved to their present location at Merrion. Portobello House functioned as a private nursing home until 1971 and it now forms part of Portobello College.

  Portobello Harbour was constructed in 1801 in order to provide moorings for the many ‘fly boats’ and barges using the canal. This picturesque little harbour was filled in in 1948 and a factory was built on the site.

  Another feature of the district that has long since disappeared was the Royal Portobello Gardens, situated between Victoria Street off the South Circular Road and the Grand Canal. The gardens, wh ich were then located in the suburbs of Dublin were a popular place of recreation with the local residents.

  The park was opened in 1839 and throughout the course of the nineteenth century many events were held there, including fireworks displays, concerts, archery tournaments and sporting events. Other popular attractions included performing dogs, gymnastics and a group called the Hibernian Bell-ringers. The gardens even had their own horse-racing track and, on Easter Monday and Tuesday in 1859, Dublin newspapers gave notice of a race meeting to be held there followed by a fireworks display. The entrance fee was one shilling.

  One of the last major events held in the Portobello gardens before its closure was a tightrope walk performed by the ‘Great Blondin’ in front of a huge crowd in 1861.

  The gardens were sold soon afterwards to a property developer who built houses there in 1867.

  Portobello Bridge built in 1791 was the scene of an appalling tragedy on the evening of 6 April 1861 when a horse-drawn omnibus toppled over into the locks drowning six passengers and two horses. The bus, which was travelling from Rathgar to Nelson’s Pillar, had stopped on the steep bridge to allow two passengers to get off. When the driver tried to get the horses to resume the journey one of them became entangled in the reins. The horses were unable to move forward and the bus gradually pulled them back down the hill and into the lock dragging all six passengers and the two horses into the water below. A report from the Freeman’s Journal of 8 April described what happened next:

  When the water was let off from the lock, so as to expose the top of the bus, Police Constable Gaffney and Private Smith of the 4 th Light Dragoons got hatchets and with the aid of a ladder got on to the roof of the bus, broke a hole in the roof and took out the bodies. The lock depth was twenty-five feet, including ten of water. All the six passengers and the horses lost their lives. Any hopes of rescuing any of the passengers alive evaporated when in the confusion and panic, the lock-keeper opened the upper sluice-gates rather than the lower ones, filling the lock with even more water.

  Fighting Fitz

  One of the most active and violent men on the Dublin duelling scene in the eighteenth century was the Mayo-born Merrion Square resident, George Robert Fitzgerald, otherwise known as ‘Mad, Fighting Fitzgerald’.

  Fitzgerald, described by a contemporary as a ‘reckless duellist’ and ‘a bold calculating murderer’, loved to duel and he was said to have taken part in twenty-six showdowns before he had reached his twenty-sixth birthday. If a duelling partner wasn’t readily available, George would prowl the streets of Dublin until he found one. He went out of his way to provoke fights, and he would often lash out at innocent passers-by in order to get a reaction. On one occasion he even shot off a man’s wig in an attempt to get him to fight. He fought duels with Lord Norbury and Lord Clare and he once narrowly missed killing Denis Browne, a brother of Lord Altamont, when he fired a shot at him in the middle of Sackville Street.

  Fitzgerald married Jane Connolly of Castletown in Kildare and helped her to spend her fortune while on an extended honeymoon of nearly three years, taking in Paris, Rome, Florence and Brussels. Fitz returned ‘completely broke’ and alone to his house at Merrion Square.

  Fitzgerald was often at loggerheads with his own father over money matters and on one occasion he decided to teach the elder Fitzgerald a lesson by handcuffing him to a dancing bear for an entire day. Fitzgerald was later fined £500 and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment at Castlebar Gaol for this incident and for imprisoning the old man in a cave at the family home in Turlough.

  He managed to obtain an early release
from Castlebar when his friends rioted outside the gaol, but he was soon recaptured and thrown into Newgate Gaol in Dublin. He was pardoned after a few months, but he still suffered as a result of his confinement and it took him some time to recuperate at his house in Merrion Square.

  Soon afterwards, Fitzgerald went to a play in the Crow Street Theatre in Temple Bar. Crow Street had a reputation for rowdiness and two soldiers with muskets and bayonets were deployed on both sides of the stage to keep order . Fitzgerald spotted one of his Mayo neighbours, ‘Hair-Trigger Dick’ Martin who had prosecuted him at his recent trial. Fitzgerald attacked Martin in the lobby of the theatre and the two had to be forcibly separated. Shortly afterwards, Martin sent a messenger over to Fitzgerald’s house at Merrion Square to challenge him to a duel but Fitzgerald gave him an unmerciful beating with a large club. The duel eventually went ahead in Castlebar with both protagonists receiving only minor injuries. Martin refused to take part in a rematch, alleging that Fitzgerald had been wearing body armour during the first duel.

  Fitzgerald was eventually tried and convicted for the murder of one of his neighbours and he was hanged at Castlebar for the crime on 12 June 1786. Before he was executed he drank a whole bottle of port and he threw himself off the scaffold. However, the rope snapped in two and Fitz fell onto the ground. He instructed the sheriff to go and get another rope – but not from the same shop. By the time a new rope had been procured, the effects of the port had begun to wear off and Fitzgerald lost his nerve and he spent his last moments on earth crying and praying for forgiveness for his crimes.