During the latter part of the eighteenth century the state coach was only used sporadically and it made a rare appearance at the Eucharistic Congress in 1932. The coach reappeared in 1976 after it was completely restored by Dublin Corporation and it has remained an annual feature of the St Patrick’s Day parade ever since.
Lundy Foot
Today, the remains of Lundy Foot, a well-known Dublin snuff and tobacco manufacturer, lie buried in St Matthew’s churchyard in Irishtown. Foot’s tobacco shop stood at the junction of Westmoreland Street and D’Olier Street facing O’Connell Bridge and he also had a factory at the corner of Parliament Street and Essex Gate.
Foot lived in a house called Footmount at the bottom of Mount Pelier just below the Hell Fire Club and he built the house, which is now an Augustinian retreat centre, in 1790.
Foot came from an extremely wealthy family and, in addition to working in the family business, he also studied law. He was called to the bar in 1788 at the age of twenty-four and he later became a magistrate. He was extremely unpopular in this capacity and he was renowned for his over-enthusiastic sentencing policy.
Foot is chiefly remembered today for his conviction of three members of the Kearney family from Piperstown in 1816 for the murder of Ponsonby Shaw’s land steward, John Kinlan, at Bohernabreena.
Kinlan was an unpopular man in the area and he was also known to be an informer, so when he disappeared one night in 1816 no one in the locality was too upset. Although Kinlan’s body was never found, the Kearneys were arrested and charged with murder. The Kearneys had apparently been heard to utter threats against the land steward and an axe with blood and human hair was discovered. This ‘evidence’ was purely circumstantial but Foot convicted the three men on a charge of conspiracy to murder and sentenced them to death.
The three men, Peter, Joe and Billy Kearney, were taken from Kilmainham Jail in a cart and they were brought to their place of execution on the banks of the Dodder near Old Bawn in Tallaght. When they passed the Shaw family home at Bushy Park in Terenure, the men asked for the cart to be stopped for a minute. The Kearneys then knelt down in the cart and cursed the seed and breed of the Shaw family for all eternity and then went on their way to their place of execution.
An eyewitness to the hanging said that the men were hanged on a triangular shaped scaffold. One son climbed up the ladder first and helped his father and he was followed up by the other son. At that point another Kearney brother, who hadn’t been implicated in the crime stepped forward from the crowd and asked to take his father’s place on the scaffold. This request was refused and, according to the witness: ‘The three of them were hanged together, and the bodies were then thrown into a cart and brought back to Dublin.’
Foot later sold his house at Orlagh and moved to Rosbercon Castle in New Ross. On 2 January 1835 Foot, who was by then seventy years of age, was attacked near his home and bludgeoned to death with a large stone. At the time there was wild speculation that members of the Kearney family had taken their revenge on Foot but the real culprit was soon unmasked.
Foot had bought a small landholding that had previously been worked by an evicted tenant named Murphy. Murphy’s son James was seen fleeing from the scene of the attack and he was convicted of murder and hanged.
Lundy Foot was initially buried in Kilkenny but his remains were moved later to the family tomb at St Matthew’s in Irishtown.
Mount Jerome
Mount Jerome Cemetery in Harold’s Cross takes its name from a Reverend Stephen Jerome who was vicar of St Kevin’s parish just before the outbreak of the rebellion of 1641. At the time, Jerome was well known around Dublin for his ‘fire and brimstone’ style of preaching and after the rebellion had been put down he was, according to Elrington Ball, ‘appointed a special preacher of St Patrick’s Cathedral to stir up the devotion of the congregation and to instruct the soldiers in those times and brought on himself the censure of the Irish House of Lords by his advocacy of Puritan opinions’.
In later years the lands were owned by the earl of Meath. The original house built during the eighteenth century on the Mount Jerome estate is now used as a cemetery office. Three hundred years ago this house was owned by the Falkiner family and in 1784 the house had been leased by John Keogh, a leading light in the movement for Catholic emancipation. Keogh lived at Mount Jerome until his death in 1817 and in 1834 his family sold the house and lands to the Dublin General Cemetery Company.
The cemetery opened just in time for inclusion in Samuel Lewis’ Topographical Dictionary of Ireland , first published in 1837, and it provides some interesting information on the cemetery. Lewis described Mount Jerome as ‘a beautifully picturesque demesne’ consisting of ‘twenty-five acres of gently elevated ground, embellished with lawns and shrubberies, and wholly surrounded with lofty trees of venerable growth, giving it an air of seclusion and a solemnity of aspect peculiarly appropriate’.
The Dublin Cemetery Company was set up as a profit-making concern with an initial stake of £12,000. It was initially envisaged that people of all religions would be buried at Mount Jerome, but Catholics weren’t buried there until the 1920s when Glasnevin cemetery was temporarily closed during a strike.
The company entered into an agreement with the owners of the Grand Canal for the improvement of the road leading from Portobello to the cemetery, and all hearses travelling to and from Mount Jerome were exempted from paying a toll that was then in force. The Dublin Cemetery Company went into liquidation in 1983 and the cemetery was sold to Massey’s undertakers in 1984.
The cemetery is laid out in a series of walkways with names such as the Nun’s Walk, Orphan’s Walk, Guinness Walk and Consecration Walk, and the remains of scores of Ireland’s best-known painters, playwrights, patriots, peelers and others are interred there.
There is a plot for deceased members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and a large number of members of Dublin’s Huguenot community were re-buried at Mount Jerome following the closure of the Huguenot cemetery at Peter Street.
There are some unusual monuments in Mount Jerome including the Harvie Memorial which features the statue of a dog. The statue had been headless for many years but the head has recently been restored by the owners of the cemetery. Apparently the dog had made a vain attempt to save his owner from drowning and both dog and master were buried in the same grave.
Another unusual monument close by is the Gresham family vault. This was the tomb of a woman who was afraid of being buried alive and the coffin had a spring-locked lid just in case she wasn’t really dead. There was also a bell inside the tomb that she could ring to attract the attention of passersby.
Roomkeeper’s Society
Way back in 1790, long before the advent of the welfare state, the Sick and Indigent Roomkeeper’s Society was established to give aid to Dubliners who had fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. The society was only set up to look after those who were unable to work or families who had lost their main breadwinner. Aid was given on a temporary basis and usually took the form of help with rent arrears, and sometimes tools or equipment were given to people in order to help them to provide for themselves.
The society was founded in a room in Mountrath Street on 15 March 1790 and the nine-man committee consisted of several merchants, a carpenter, a stonecutter and a fruit seller. The committee decided that members should contribute two pence per week toward a fund for the relief of ‘persons who had never begged abroad, industrious mechanics and indigent roomkeepers who, above all others are the most pitiable objects of distress’.
The society was, unusually for its time, a non-sectarian, non-denominational organisation and it often went to great lengths to emphasise this virtue. They even went so far as to change the name of the society in 1799 to ‘The Charitable Society for the Relief of the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers of all Religious Persuasions in the City of Dublin’.
The leading light of the society was a man called Samuel Roseb
urgh who was one of the original founders of the charity. Roseburgh, a linen draper, was involved with the Roomkeepers for over forty years and he explained in a pamphlet written in 1801 his reasons for getting involved:
I have often reflected on the situation of a poor man or woman walking about our streets the entire day with little or no clothing to cover them and the little they have in rags. I have followed them to their miserable retreats and found their accommodation inferior to that of a brute.’
The society used a variety of methods to raise funds including the staging of an annual ball, subscriptions and charity sermons. The annual ball seems to have run into trouble during the latter part of the nineteenth century and in 1864 the lord lieutenant refused to attend the ball ‘due to the admission of improper characters which of late years was increasing.’ The annual ball was again a point of contention in 1877 when the archbishop of Dublin and three other committee members resigned from the society. It emerged later that the men had objected to high jinks that had taken place at the ball and they made an intriguing reference to ‘men appearing in female attire’. Soon afterwards, the annual ball was replaced by a temperance picnic.
During its earliest days, the society met in coffee houses and pubs such as Mulligans in Poolbeg Street and in 1855 the society bought a house at 2 Palace Street in the shadow of Dublin Castle (opposite the Olympia Theatre) with the help of a donation from Benjamin Lee Guinness. The Sick and Indigent Roomkeeper’s Society left this wonderful old building during the early 1990s and it remains as a focal point for Dubliners and visitors alike.
The work begun by Samuel Roseburgh and his friends in 1790 still continues today and the Sick and Indigent Roomkeeper’s Society is still in business at 34 Lower Leeson Street, which makes it Dublin’s, if not Ireland’s, oldest and longest running charity.
Bullock Harbour
Between the villages of Sandycove and Dalkey lies the picturesque Bullock harbour and castle. Nowadays, the harbour is a nice place to spend a summer’s evening but in former times Bullock was a thriving and prosperous place with an identity all of its own.
In pre-Norman times Bullock or ‘Bloyke’ belonged to the monks of St Mary’s Abbey in Dublin and they also controlled fishing rights in the harbour. In 1346, local fishermen brought an action against the abbot of Bloyke for stealing their fish.
However, the courts decided that the abbot was perfectly within his rights and ordered that henceforth the monks were entitled to have one fish from every catch landed at Bullock and an annual tax of 600 fish from every herring boat fishing out of the harbour. The impressive Bullock Castle was built by the monks in order to protect their fishing interests which grew to a considerable size in medieval times. The castle and the lands immediately surrounding it were in a vulnerable position due to its location on the border of the Pale, and the settlement was attacked many times throughout the years.
One of the first recorded attacks on Bloyke occurred in 1312 when raiders described as ‘enemies of the king’ made off with a large consignment of corn and other items belonging to the monks.
Following the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 Bloyke, which then contained two houses and six cottages in addition to the castle, was described as a strongly defended and walled settlement partly covered by fir trees.
In 1542, Bloyke was leased out to a number of families loyal to the Crown, including the Talbots and later on the Fagan family. In 1611, while under the ownership of John Fagan, the settlement – although the castle appeared to be in bad shape – had grown substantially and John Dalton in his History of the County of Dublin says that it contained along with the castle and a tumbledown tower, ‘thirty dwelling-houses, 10 acres of meadow, 200 acres of pasture and furze, with the fishing and haven to the main sea’. It had grown to such an extent 150 years later that one contemporary writer described it as ‘a complete walled town in miniature’.
Down through the ages Bullock Harbour was a popular haunt of smugglers and there have been many tales recorded in relation to conflict between them and the customs men.
The Dublin Weekly Journal of 25 April 1735 reported on a major incident at Bullock in which two smugglers were killed by the revenue men: ‘Last week some of the King’s officers made a seizure of a large quantity of tea and brandy at Bullock, and next morning several persons attempted to rescue it from the officers, which occasioned a great battle, in which several were wounded on both sides; one Mr Brown, an officer, was shot through the thigh, and ’tis thought two of the smugglers were killed.’
The current harbour at Bullock was built on the site of the medieval pier nearly two hundred years ago when the Dublin Ballast Board – forerunner of the Dublin Port Authority – acquired the leases on land at Bullock for quarrying purposes in 1804. A local contractor, George Smith, was awarded the contract for the quarrying of the stone and the construction of the new harbour in 1819. The harbour was, for a period of time, used as a base for Dublin pilot boats operating in Dublin Bay, and a number of cottages were built for the accommodation of the pilots at a cost of £10 each. A lifeboat was stationed at Bullock during the same period, but it could only be used when the weather was fine.
Dunlop
Today, millions of cyclists and motorists worldwide all take for granted the air-filled rubber tyres and tubes that propel them with relative ease on their journeys. However, before their invention in 1888, cycling was an altogether different and very uncomfortable experience. The earliest tyres were manufactured from leather and later on they were made of solid rubber.
A plaque on the wall of a building in Dublin’s Upper Stephen Street is now the only visible reminder that the world’s first tyre factory was located here. It reads: ‘The first pneumatic tyre factory in the world was started here in 1889 to make tyres under John Boyd Dunlop’s patent of 7 December 1888.’
John Boyd Dunlop, a Scottish Belfast-based veterinary surgeon has been widely credited as the inventor of the pneumatic tyre as we now know it. There had been an earlier version of the pneumatic tyre invented by another Scot – Robert Thomson – in 1845 but it was before its time and it was never developed commercially.
From an early age Dunlop, as he said himself in his History of the Pneumatic Tyre, had developed an interest in the improvement of all types of locomotion ‘by road, rail and sea’.
It gradually dawned on Dunlop that he could make travel by bicycle faster and more comfortable by adding a tube made from rubber and canvas and filled with compressed air.
Dunlop first came up with the concept of the pneumatic tyre when he observed that his son Johnnie’s bicycle was subjected to a tremendous amount of shaking as he cycled it around the cobbled streets of Belfast.
Dunlop decided to have a go at improving the solid rubber tyre and his first experiment involved the fixing of a tube made from a sheet of rubber to a circular wooden disc. He then inflated the tube with his son’s football pump and sealed the tube by tying it off at both ends. The tube was then secured to the disc by nailing a canvas strip all around the edge.
Dunlop then tested his new invention by rolling it along the length of his stable yard and he saw that it travelled much further and faster than Johnnie’s solid wheel. Dunlop made further modifications to the wheel and he came up with the idea of using a rubber tyre instead of the canvas.
Dunlop applied for a patent for his idea on 23 July 1888 and it was to all intents and purposes the world’s first pneumatic tyre. Within six months, Dunlop’s new invention was being used on the cycling track at Queen’s University in Belfast and it began to attract widespread interest.
In 1889, a group of Dublin businessmen who realised the importance of Dunlop’s invention approached him with a view to forming a company and the Pneumatic Tyre and Booth’s Cycle Agency came into being later that year. The company’s headquarters were at Upper Stephen’s Street, while manufacturing operations were carried out at 35 Westland Row.
However, Dublin’s connection with the emerging tyre i
ndustry was severed during that year when the company decided to shift its entire operation to Coventry. This followed a court case taken against it by Dublin Corporation because of pollution caused by the manufacture of the tyres at Westland Row.
Dunlop came to live in Dublin on a permanent basis in April 1892 and he took up residence at Mount Merrion and then 46 Ailesbury Road where he lived for the remainder of his life. He resigned as a director from the Pneumatic Tyre Company and Booths Cycle Agency in 1895 and sold the bulk of his shares in the company.
John Boyd Dunlop, the man whose invention revolutionised the bicycle and motor car, died on 23 October 1921 and is buried in Deansgrange Cemetery.
Art’s Escape
A recent trip to the reputed last resting place of Art O’Neill deep in the heart of the Wicklow Mountains called to mind an epic escape from Dublin Castle over 400 years ago.
Every year, as close to midnight on ‘Little Christmas’, 6 January, as they can manage it, a group of intrepid walkers set off from the walls of Dublin Castle in commemoration of the great escape from Dublin Castle of Red Hugh O’Donnell and Art O’Neill on 6 January 1592.
The 53 kilometre walk follows the route taken by O’Neill and O’Donnell, who were attempting to reach the safety of Fiach McHugh O’Byrne’s mountain stronghold at Glenmalure in Wicklow.
The fifteen-year-old Red Hugh O’Donnell had been kidnapped some five years earlier when the English lord deputy, John Perrot, lured him on board a ship at Rathmullan in Donegal and took him to Dublin, where he was held in an effort to secure his father’s compliance with the English administration in Ireland.
O’Donnell had attempted an escape from the Gate Tower of Dublin Castle one year earlier in 1591 when he and a number of companions smuggled a rope into the castle. O’Donnell actually managed to reach Felim O’Toole’s territory in Wicklow but O’Toole, fearing retribution from the English, brought him back to Dublin.
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