by Joe Power
The sinking of the Leinster was condemned by public bodies in Clare, such as the Ennis Board of Guardians, and the Kilrush Board of Guardians, as a ‘horrible and inhuman outrage’. Members of the Ennis Urban Council also unanimously condemned the sinking, ‘another sorrowful example of German ‘Kultur’ and friendliness towards the people of this county, to whom they have professed to be our so-called “gallant allies”.
However, there was some controversy at the monthly meeting of the management of the Clare Asylum, which was chaired by Revd A. Clancy, PP, a strong supporter of Sinn Féin. When one member, Mr Lynch, proposed a motion of sympathy with the victims and condemned the sinking ‘as a cruel act on a defenceless people, a cowardly crime’, the chairman, Fr Clancy, described it as ‘an act of warfare on a vessel carrying troops and munitions.’ Councillor P.J. Linnane described it as ‘a cold-blooded, cowardly treacherous act by the Germans.’ The motion was passed unanimously only when the chairman, Fr Clancy, included an addendum, ‘and also condemning in the strongest possible manner the British Government for the murder of Thomas Russell at Carrigaholt.’ (Thomas Russell was a teacher at the Irish College and a member of the Irish Volunteers, who died after being stabbed with a bayonet by a British soldier at Carrigaholt, while the British Army was endeavouring to clear a hall, where a banned Sinn Féin meeting was being held).34
The sinking of the SS Leinster almost jeopardised the peace talks to end the war. On 6 October the German Government requested United States President Woodrow Wilson to arrange an armistice to end the war. Four days later, on 6 October, President Wilson, obviously aware of the tragic loss of life after the sinking of the Leinster, sent a telegram to the Germans stating that there could be no peace talks as long as Germany was attacking passenger ships. Shortly afterwards, the Germans took heed of President Wilson’s ultimatum. Admiral Scheer, chief of the German navy, signalled an order to all German U-boats on the high seas, to return from their patrols as soon as possible. They were ordered not to take any hostile actions against merchant ships. The U-boats were only allowed to attack warships in daylight.35 Three weeks later, the Germans surrendered unconditionally on 11 November 1918. The Great War was finally over.
‘All Quiet on the Western Front’36
The news of the termination of the war was received with much jubilation in the county. In Ennis there was a ‘liberal display of bunting’ in the local military headquarters. Many people in the town of Ennis displayed red badges and there was deep satisfaction that the war was finally over. The editorial in the Clare Champion of 16 November, questioned whether the peace in Europe would bring peace to Ireland:
The war is over and peace is at hand. One must wonder if that peace will bring peace to Ireland. By all the principles of justice it should and if Irishmen assert themselves we believe it will. We speak for no party now; we plead for the Irish nation and its freedom … We do not under-estimate the difficulties; we know how Ireland will be maligned and mis-represented and we can gauge the forces against us, but we believe that a united demand on the part of Ireland cannot be defeated or mis-represented at the peace conference. Can we not have unity on one particular issue?
Map of the Western Front, 1918. (Courtesy of Peadar McNamara Collection)
Thanksgiving services were held in all the major churches around the county. A special inter-denominational (Protestant) Thanksgiving Service for victory for the Allied cause was held at the Church of Ireland, Bindon Street, Ennis on Sunday 17 December. A contingent of seventy-three Scottish Horse, accompanied by pipes, fifes and drums marched to the church, accompanied by some Royal Welsh Fusiliers. Members of the Presbyterian Church joined the congregation and the church was crowded. Revd T. Abrahall MA conducted the service, which consisted of hymns, readings and a sermon. A collection for the Red Cross raised the large sum of £17 6s 8d. ‘It was’, according to the Saturday Record, ‘altogether a memorable service, characterised by deep feelings of gratitude to Almighty God, the only giver of victory, and to the brave men, thousands of whom had laid down their lives willingly that liberty might be established in the world’.
The General Election of 1918
Three weeks after the war ended, Prime Minister Lloyd George called a general election, which became known as ‘the khaki election’. In his election propaganda he promised, among other things, ‘to build a country fit for heroes’. There was no contest in Clare as no candidate stood against the Sinn Féin candidates, Eamon de Valera in East Clare and Brian O’Higgins in West Clare, both of whom had been arrested and held in prison since ‘the German Plot’. Arthur Lynch, the incumbent MP for West Clare, wisely decided not to stand again in the county. Instead he stood as a Labour Party candidate for the South Battersea constituency in London, but he was not elected there either.
Dr Fogarty came out publicly in favour of Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election and he sent a subscription and a letter to Mr J. O’Mara, director of elections for Sinn Féin, publicly endorsing the Republican Party:
… The country is sick of the House of Commons with its plutocratic record of oppression, corruption and chicanery. Ireland, since it came under its influence a hundred years ago has wasted and withered like the Armenians under the Turks.
The policy of massaging English ministers by our ‘expert statesmen’ has had an ample trial. We know where it has landed us, in the national degradation of partition. The authors of that criminal and cowardly surrender will never be forgiven by Ireland.
I am not afraid of abstinence; it is only a logical and long called for protest against the pillage of our national rights under the infamous union. But in view of the insulting policy expounded by the prime minister as to the share reserved for Ireland under his world-wide reconstruction, no other course is open to us, if we have a particle of self-respect.
Irish representation in a House of Commons dominated by Mr Lloyd George and his anti-Irish coalition is a horrible imposture, which it is time to terminate. That unionist combine will work its shameless will on Ireland whether Irish members are present or not. Why then send them there to be spat upon as paupers, to come back to us with empty hands, or with a few crumbs from the English table garnished with rhetoric, but as always with the leprosy of anglicisation visibly represented on their person for the ruin of our national spirit.
Partition is to be defeated and liberty won not by talking to the dead ears of the House of Commons, but under God, where emancipation was won, landlordism broken, and conscription defeated, at home in Ireland by the determined will of the people. John Mitchell was right when he called for the withdrawal of the Irish Members fifty years ago, and time has fully verified the words he then used in speaking of this subject. ‘That Parliament’, he said, ‘is a lie, an imposture, an outrage, a game in which our part and lot is disgrace and defeat for ever. To Ireland it is nothing besides a conduit of corruption, a workshop of coercion, a storehouse of starvation, a machinery of cheating, and a perpetual memento of slavery.’
I am,
Yours sincerely,
M Fogarty,
Bishop of Killaloe
Not alone did Bishop Fogarty publicly endorse Sinn Féin, he and many other Catholic clergy in Clare proposed and endorsed de Valera for re-election – in fact five parish priests and twenty curates supported de Valera’s candidature. With such powerful ecclesiastical backing, combined with the support of the Clare Champion, the Home Rule Party did not stand a chance in Clare and did not put up any fight this time or propose any candidates. Incidentally, during the election Sinn Féin propaganda literature discredited the Home Rule party and asked the electorate: ‘Will you vote for the faith of Tone, Davitt and Parnell? Or will you vote for that of Arthur Lynch, Stephen Gwynn, W. Archer, Redmond – all of the English army?’37
Earlier in the year, when the leader of the Irish Home Rule Party, John Redmond, died on 6 March in London, Bishop Fogarty, though he had long before this time abandoned his support for John Redmond’s Home Rule Party in favour of
Sinn Féin, was ‘much affected’ when he heard the news, and issued the following terse statement: ‘I am sorry to hear of the death of this eminent Irishman, who has filled a very big part of our public life. I have no doubt future historians of Ireland will give his name the prominent place it deserves’.38
Weather and Harvests
Despite the Tillage Acts, the illegal ploughing activities, and the appeals from Dr Fogarty and other bishops earlier in the year to till as much as possible this year, the farmers of Ireland had a tough battle against the elements to save the autumn harvest.
The weather at Carrigoran in 1918 was very poor from an agricultural point of view.
The total rainfall for the year was more than six inches in excess of our average annual rain, and this may well be styled a “wet” year … There was a great deficiency of rain in the first six months of the year … with disastrous results to agriculture caused by the excessive rainfall this year. There was a great excess of rain in the second half of the year, especially during the months when hay and corn crops were harvested, thus causing almost unprecedented damage and loss to the crops.
The Carrigoran annual weather report was corroborated by contemporary accounts of bad weather in the autumn.
The weather had been very bad, so bad that in September prayers were offered for fine weather. Huge damage was done to hay and cereal crops all over the county, rivers burst their banks, there were destructive storms at seaside resorts and the houses of the poor people in the back lanes of Ennis were severely flooded. The Saturday Record of 28 September recorded that Bishop Fogarty offered prayers for fine weather and for the preservation of the harvest at first Mass on Sunday 22 September at the cathedral in Ennis:
The prospect before the county could not have been worse. For some time portions of the county, especially in the low-lying districts have been more or less flooded from the heavy rains which have prevailed since the beginning of the month – but the torrential downpours of Friday night, Saturday and Sunday night have left far-reaching stretches of water on all sides, and already incalculable damage has been suffered.
Hay has been washed away in places where it had already been made up, and in the low-lying lands along the lower Fergus towards the Shannon, has been carried away by the rivers, which have become enormously swollen. Here and there half-submerged cocks of hay are like miniature islands in the surface of the waters.
Corn crops have also suffered disastrously and on Saturday, groups of men wading waist deep could be seen near Ennistymon endeavouring to save the stooks of corn on the lands along the swollen Inagh River.
The bank of the Shannon near the Cratloe district has given way and the countryside is under many feet of water. The same story comes from many localities along the Fergus and along the upper reaches as far as Ennistymon, by both sides of the West Clare Railway, which presented a spectacle of an inland sea.
But perhaps the most damage was done about Doora, where a large breach was made in the river bank, mid-way between the Metal Bridge and the Railway Bridge, fully 20 yards wide. Through this an enormous volume of water poured, inundating the country inside the bank. The water also poured into the tract of land on the Cappagh side, where there was another immense spread of water.
Along this tract there are many sufferers, amongst them, Mrs Corry, whose corn and green crops have been almost destroyed, also Mr McInerney, Mr Hogan and others. In the early hours of Sunday morning, thanks to willing hands, a number of cattle and sheep were brought out of danger, or many would have been lost in the rapidly rising waters, which still cover this side of the county. From some quarters come stories of the loss of cattle and sheep, but in most places all stock have been moved to higher ground in good time.
In Ennis on Sunday morning, the tide was so enormously high that all the lower levels of the town were flooded to a depth of from two to three feet, notably in Lower Mill Street, and the poorer inhabitants in the adjoining lanes off the quays were left in a miserable condition.
At Kilkee on Sunday, a tempestuous Spring tide broke over the sea front and all the men’s bathing boxes belonging to the Benn Brothers, well known to visitors to this fashionable resort were dashed against the battlement and made matchwood of, involving the owners in huge losses. We are glad their patrons are taking steps to come to their assistance in this disastrous occurrence. At Lahinch a large sea demolished the remains of Reidy’s Baths, once a landmark in this resort, and broke a number of windows along the front.
At Latoon the Fergus overflowed its banks and poured into the adjacent corcasses; about 30 acres of hay belonging to Mr Lynch were badly damaged and he also had about 7 acres of oats almost ruined. At Ballycorick the banks also gave way and much damage was done to hay and corn.
There were serious fears entertained for the potato crop, which is widely showing symptoms of rotting in the sodden ground. Altogether, the outlook is of the gravest nature.
Despite the prayers of Sunday 22 September, the bad weather continued. The Saturday Record of 5 October commented on the adverse weather at harvest time: ‘The weather during the past week was adverse to harvesting operations.’ In a letter to the paper Mr R.F. Hibbert of Woodpark, Scarriff noted that the rainfall for September had been 8.52ins, a record since 1894. The rainfall of July amounted to 4.69ins and that for August was 4.37ins. Mr Hibbert attacked the Compulsory Tillage Act by observing as follows, ‘The futility of attempting to grow grain crops in such a climate, where the average rainfall is from forty to fifty inches, should be evident to the authorities’.39
Besides the bad weather the economic conditions in other areas of the county were still deteriorating. The only newspaper published in the county, the Saturday Record, announced a 50 per cent price increase from 1d to 1½d. Their justification was that the price of newsprint had become exorbitant. It must be remembered that the paper had been reduced in size to just four pages due to the shortages. The editor promised on 1 June 1918 that at the first opportunity they would return to the old price.
The Spanish Flu
Though the Great War had ended, more misery and deaths occurred due to the great influenza epidemic, which affected Ireland between June 1918 and March 1919. The outbreak of influenza was a worldwide epidemic, which apparently killed between 16 and 20 million people in the world at this time, perhaps more than were actually killed during the Great War itself. It was called the ‘Spanish flu’, as it was first reported in Spain. It arrived in Ireland in the late spring and early summer of 1918 and reappeared again in the early months of 1919. About 800,000 people were affected in Ireland, of whom about 20,000 died, a national mortality rate of around 2.5 per cent.
The second wave of the flu outbreak from mid-October to December 1918 had the most impact in Ireland. The provinces of Leinster and Ulster seem to have been most affected. Some counties escaped with a very low outbreak of the epidemic. County Clare, for example, had the lowest rate of infection and mortality in the country, with only 0.4 per cent mortality, whereas County Kildare had the highest with 3.9 per cent mortality. Nevertheless, the outbreak created a major health scare in the county, judging by the newspaper reports of the epidemic and some deaths in the county. According to Dr G. Peacocke of the Adelaide Hospital, Dublin, ‘Death came with dramatic suddenness, often within 24 hours.’ Many of its capricious victims were young people.40
The epidemic seems to have hit County Clare between the end of October and the end of December of that year. The weather at this time of the year was quite wet, with about 16 inches of rain during these three months as recorded at Carrigoran. The first mention of the virus was in the newspaper of 2 November, ‘the outbreak in Ennis not as virulent as in other areas, yet it is of considerable severity. There is public alarm. The Mercy Convent has been closed, but the CBS and the Ennis National School are still open. There are two cases of death, a young lady, Miss McInerney, in Doora and Mr Frank Moloney, Victualler, Ennis. There is a big run on disinfectants … soldiers also affected … the vir
us resembles malarial fever.’
The next edition of 9 November indicated that the flu outbreak in Ennis had become more serious. The article referred to the ‘scourge of influenza’, ‘the national school has been closed and the hospital is full. There are at least forty cases in town, only one death in hospital, but four deaths in the town. Some police affected … no necessity for alarm … avoid crowded places of assembly and disinfect.’
A week later the epidemic was still raging in the town:
This dreaded scourge continues to rage through the district, with violence, little if any abated, and again this week, some deaths have to be chronicled from its effects, the immediate cause in nearly all cases being pneumonia, following the influenza. In some cases the victims were only a few days ill. Among those who have succumbed are Mrs Hastings, mother of the parish clerk; Mr M. Torpey, a popular clerk in the West Clare Railway and Mr J. Cullinan, a well-known carpenter …
The hospital is now full to excess … Dr Coghlan, the Medical Officer, who has had a most strenuous time, day and night for some weeks, has at last been attacked and his work in the hospital has been undertaken by Drs MacClancy, Counihan and Duggan, and much valuable help is also being given by Mr Power, a medical student of Clare Castle.