In fact several former army officers with a unionist background, including the Earl of Meath, were already working with the Irish Volunteers to improve the quality, organisational consistency and political respectability of the organisation. The one most involved was Colonel Maurice Moore, who was Inspector-General of the Volunteers. Among nine senior appointments announced on 5 August was the Earl of Fingall, who agreed to become Chief Inspector of the force in Co. Meath. The nationalist press, borne along by Redmond’s oratory, enthusiastically promoted every rumour that the government and War Office would harness this new-found national unity to the war effort. But the government lacked the vision of a Redmond, or even a Fingall, and by 8 August the earl was examining horses for the army’s remount department at the Royal Dublin Society’s grounds, selecting those fit for service abroad. By the end of the month he had resigned from the Volunteers, because they refused to place themselves unconditionally under the control of the War Office.2 The Earl of Meath resigned as president of the Irish Association of Volunteer Training Corps, and the false dawn of Irish unity based on support for the British war effort ended in mutual recrimination.3
Dubliners did not allow the high-flown political rhetoric, and hopes, to deflect them from life’s social staples. The Baldoyle Races provided the highlight of the weekend, and the city’s streets were unusually quiet, even for a bank holiday. The few scattered showers ‘served a useful purpose in tending to lay the dust,’ the Irish Times reported. All the papers remarked on the exceptionally good weather and urged Dubliners to conserve water, as the Roundwood reservoir was 9½ inches lower than usual for the time of year. Few seem to have paid much attention, judging by the corporation’s repeated warnings in the press of water rationing.4
Besides, politics continued to demand the public’s attention. On Sunday 2 August rumours spread through the city that more guns had been landed by night at Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow. The small police detachment in Bray was held at gunpoint when it tried to stop a convoy of motor lorries, charabancs and motorcycles whisking weapons through the little seaside resort to the city.5
There was clearly no shortage of transport and other resources available to the gun-runners. Participants included such pillars of the community as Sir Thomas Myles, medical head of the Richmond Hospital, who provided the yacht that landed the guns, and members of the younger generation of professionals attracted towards radical nationalism, such as Harry Nicholls, an engineer with Dublin Corporation’s Electricity Department. Nicholls, who had taken part in the events at Howth the previous weekend, was a member of the Church of Ireland who had been radicalised by exposure to the Gaelic League and then to police batons during the 1913 Lock-out. By the summer of 1914 he was a member not only of the Irish Volunteers but also of the IRB.
Of more concern to the general public was the news that train services were being drastically curtailed to facilitate troop movements. This was quickly followed by an announcement that the Dublin Horse Show, due to begin on 25 August, had been cancelled. The show had been dogged by bad luck for several years. The 1911 opening had been blighted by a railway strike, the 1912 show by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, and the 1913 show by the start of the lock-out. In 1914 the grounds were commandeered by the military to facilitate the mobilisation of reserves and the training of recruits.
The cancellation of all excursion trains in the first week of the war effectually marked the beginning of an era when the railways would fall increasingly under government control, which lasted until 1921. For the moment most operational decisions were left to the local management and boards of directors. The largest company, the Great Southern and Western Railway, was inundated with appeals for free transport. These included the Red Cross Society seeking to forward medical supplies to the Local Government Board, which itself wanted to transfer displaced Belgian refugees and to distribute 2,500 80-pound Québec cheeses to families in distress. Individuals also sought concessions, such as Lieutenant-Colonel L. G. Esmonde, who sought a free travel pass on the grounds that he was an inspector with the Irish Volunteers, whom, he asserted somewhat optimistically, were now part of the ‘Imperial war effort.’
It is not clear how many requests were granted. However, as a gesture of their commitment to the war the directors of the GSWR put a first-class dining-car and sleeping-carriages at the disposal of the officers’ mess of the Main Supply Depot at Kingsbridge (now Heuston Station). It was a gesture they came to regret, as they had great difficulty in ejecting their guests when the carriages were required for other duties, including the transport of wounded soldiers. The officers eventually decamped at the end of October, complaining at the lack of suitable alternative billets in the vicinity of the station.6
Of greater concern to the wider public was the rapid rise in food prices. Unlike the military, civilians had no automatic access even to basic foodstuffs. Overnight sugar shot up from 2½d a pound to as much as 6d, butter increased from 1s a pound to 1s 6d, flour from 10s a sack to 12s, and bacon from 1s 1d a pound to 1s 4d. When newspapers questioned the price increases, retailers blamed the wholesalers, who in turn blamed the creameries, the farmers and cross-channel suppliers. The latter had suspended credit facilities and were demanding cash with every order.
The sudden price increases may have been a factor in attacks on several German pork butchers’ shops around the city on the night of Saturday 15 August. The most serious incidents were at the premises of Frederick Lang in Wexford Street and of George Reitz at Leonard’s Corner on the South Circular Road. The mob was led by a newly enlisted soldier. Not only were both premises wrecked but Lang was arrested and interned, while his family was left impoverished. He joined eighty other ‘enemy’ aliens, mainly hotel waiters and shopkeepers.
The only full account of this pogrom appeared in the following issue of the Irish Worker.7 It reported that the DMP stood ‘idly by.’ This was not quite true, for at least some of the looters were arrested and were subsequently charged. They were mainly teenage boys and girls. Several of their mothers also appeared in court for receiving stolen goods, most of it meat and sausages. The Lord Mayor and members of Dublin Corporation’s committee on foodstuffs when it met the following Monday unanimously condemned the looting.8
This did not prevent the corporation from withdrawing the honorary freedom of the city from Dr Kuno Meyer, the prominent Celtic scholar, founder of the School of Irish Learning (later merged in the Royal Irish Academy) and a friend of the founder of the Gaelic League, Dr Douglas Hyde. Fortunately, the Germanophobe city fathers were unaware that Hyde’s wife, Lucy Cometina, née Kurtz, was also German, or they would probably have disgraced themselves further.9
Xenophobia and fear over food prices fed off each other. When Dublin Corporation held its first meeting of the war on Monday 10 August, food prices were at the top of the agenda. It was agreed to set up a cross-party food committee to control prices. Another motion called on John Redmond to secure legislation enabling ‘municipalities to deal direct with wholesale merchants and farmers with regard to such necessaries as food and fuel, as retail merchants state they are unable to deal profitably without charging the public prohibitive prices.’ The legislation was never passed, and the committee had to seek the voluntary co-operation of the wholesale and retail provision trade. It should not have been difficult, given that twenty-four of the eighty councillors were either wholesalers or retailers themselves, but it was to prove a problem at times, with trade representatives frequently not bothering to turn up for meetings.10
An easier and more effective measure was the decision to publish recommended maximum prices for staple products, such as butter, bacon, cheese, eggs, lard, margarine and flour. This had some effect in moderating inflation, at least in the early period of the war. Not only would shortages inexorably force up prices but differentials of between 20 and 50 per cent were maintained between prestigious retailers in the principal thoroughfares, such as Sackville Street and Grafton Street, and shops in poorer districts.11
And although Ireland was a net producer of food during the war, prices were usually significantly higher than in Britain. Some differences could be accounted for by the fact that products such as sugar and tea had to be imported. In August 1914 sugar cost up to 41 per cent more in Dublin than it did in London. But such home-produced items as cheese and flour were also dearer, although butter was the same price in both cities. The honorary secretary of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, R. H. Andrews, a wine merchant, explained the difference in the stronger bargaining power of the English market. This was little consolation to hard-pressed Dubliners.
It would be 1916 before any statutory controls were introduced, and for a wide range of items these became effective only from mid-1917. This meant that Dubliners experienced increases in the price of such basic food items as bread, meat and potatoes of 70 per cent, 190 per cent and 250 per cent, respectively, in the first three years of the war. Food prices and food shortages would be important factors gnawing away at support for the war in Dublin from the opening salvoes.
Apart from the debate on food prices, little was said at the August meeting of Dublin Corporation to suggest that a world war had begun. The main focus of attention was the Bachelor’s Walk shooting. Aldermen and councillors unanimously condemned ‘the savage crime of Sunday 26th July’ and called for the dismissal of ‘the permanent officials of Dublin Castle who were responsible, either by direct action or by negligence for calling out the military.’ Not even the unionist councillors demurred.
There were no votes for King and Country, despite John Redmond’s rousing speech in the House of Commons a week earlier. In so far as the impending conflict impinged on the consciousness of corporation members at all it was very much in a resentful way: for it seemed that the British government intended excluding Irish local authorities from access to cheap loans to finance working-class housing schemes. The Housing (No. 2) Act was passed on 10 August 1914, and £4 million was made available for slum clearance by local authorities in Britain. The idea behind the legislation was to combine outdoor relief12 for building workers made idle by the war with investment in new housing.
As the Irish Times pointed out, Dublin had more than its share of unemployment and had the worst slums in Europe. The Lord Mayor telegraphed Redmond and the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, after the corporation meeting to make them aware of Dublin’s displeasure.13 A week later, thanks partly to the lobbying efforts of P. J. Brady, MP for the St Stephen’s Green division, the Housing Act was extended to Ireland.14
Regrettably, it proved an empty victory. Dublin Corporation was given details of the scheme only in January 1915, by which time Treasury economies to meet long-term military commitments had severely restricted access to house-building schemes. In May funding was stopped for all schemes not already approved. Unfortunately, the secretary of the Local Government Board had not forwarded any of Dublin Corporation’s requests for funds to the Treasury, nor had it been notified of the deadlines.
The City Architect, Charles McCarthy, and City Treasurer, Edmund Eyre, told the Housing Committee that the act was ‘a make believe and a sham.’15 The Irish Builder, mouthpiece of the industry, along with the Dublin Trades Council, condemned the city’s treatment, as did a public meeting in Clanbrassil Street, where blame for the debacle was placed squarely on the Local Government Board. A special meeting of the corporation passed a motion of no confidence in the board.16 A deputation was sent to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Reginald McKenna, to express the public’s outrage. He eventually agreed to a grant of £6,000 to allow the corporation to acquire sites for building new houses in Ormond Market, beside the Four Courts, in Spitalfields, near the Coombe, and the McCaffrey Estate, adjoining the South Dublin Union, when things improved.
It was all a far cry from the high hopes entertained when the Civic Exhibition was launched. Before, to quote Lord Aberdeen, ‘the desolating cloudburst of war’ had caused a sharp falling off in attendances. The closing ceremony, on 31 August 1914, provided a suitable coda to Dublin’s blasted hopes. After the speeches of the distinguished guests a swarm of slum-dwellers descended on the grounds and took all the furniture.17
They showed more prescience than the city fathers, who had no plans for meeting the crisis. During the course of the war nearly a thousand tenements had to be closed as unsafe, and 3,563 of the 4,150 families made homeless as a result had ‘gone on to intensify congestion of the still standing 6,735 tenement houses.’ There were funds for building only 327 new houses during the war years, in a city that would need to rehouse fifty thousand people by 1918.18
Dublin’s poor would lose valuable allies in high places when the Aberdeens were evicted from the Viceregal Lodge in 1915. It all arose from Lady Ishbel’s efforts to promote Britain’s war effort among Irishwomen. She had launched several important social initiatives before the war, of which the most significant had been the founding of the Women’s National Health Association. Even before the Civic Exhibition closed she called a meeting in the Royal Dublin Society’s premises to which a wide variety of women’s organisations were invited.19 Among those who responded, besides the Women’s National Health Association, were the United Irishwomen, the Irish Volunteer Aid Association,20 the St John Ambulance Brigade and Cumann na mBan. Republican apologists subsequently explained the presence of Cumann na mBan by saying it was to avail of any opportunities for training that might arise and could be used later in the nationalist cause; but it also probably reflected the confusion in nationalist ranks about where Redmond’s declaration of war in favour of the empire might be leading them.
Agnes O’Farrelly, a lecturer in education at University College, Dublin, and a leading light within the moderate wing of the Gaelic League, had presided at the inaugural meeting of Cumann na mBan in April 1914.21 While Cumann na mBan would quickly depart the scene, a plethora of wartime women’s organisations would emerge that did much useful work in providing hospital care for casualties, among other activities. Initiatives included the conversion of the State Rooms in Dublin Castle into hospital wards, the establishment of the Irish War Hospital Supply Depot at 50 Merrion Square and the mobilising of working-class women and war refugees in the provision of food parcels and clothes for soldiers at the front, including those taken prisoner.
Such activities tended to reflect the social status quo. Lady Aberdeen initiated the hospital in Dublin Castle, the Marchioness of Waterford presided over the Hospital Supply Depot and Lady Fingall chaired the Central Committee for Women’s Employment, at the request of Sir Matthew Nathan, Under-Secretary for Ireland.22
Perhaps the most extraordinary venture was the League of Honour, set up in November 1914. This emulated a similar crusade in London to draw attention to the threat that war posed to female morality. It was feared that young married women left to their own devices, and with their husbands’ separation payments to spend, might fall victim to drunkenness, or worse. The Church of Ireland Primate, Dr John Baptist Crozier, told a meeting in Dublin that the league would ‘band together women and girls with the object of upholding the standards of women’s duty and honour during the time of war.’23
As Eileen Reilly has pointed out, only women with plenty of free time and independent means could afford to engage in voluntary war work. These included those members of the burgeoning Catholic middle classes who believed, like their husbands, in Redmond’s strategy that the best way of securing greater freedom for Ireland was by supporting the British war effort.
Alexandra College, which had both a unionist and a feminist ethos and had pioneered a model of secondary education that would allow women to carve out a career for themselves in the new century, supplied another important source of recruits. The 1,000-strong College Guild, which was open to present and past pupils, undertook three projects in the city. These were a hostel for Belgian refugees, a workroom for the unemployed and, no doubt mindful of the League of Honour agenda, a club for soldiers’ wives. All three were relatively modest operati
ons. The hostel was in a house belonging to the Adelaide Road Presbyterian Church at 16 Northbrook Road and accommodated fourteen refugees (out of some 2,400 Belgians who arrived in Ireland).24 The Guild Workroom was in Westland Row and employed no more than a dozen women full-time and between twenty and thirty part-time, who produced such items as socks for the war effort. It relied heavily on public subscriptions. The social club was in Westmorland Street, and the emphasis was on enlightened entertainment with an educational bent, such as music, cookery and sewing lessons. There was less enthusiasm for ‘health culture’ among visiting soldiers’ wives, mothers and sisters, according to guild reports. Like similar initiatives by the Women’s National Health Association and the League of Honour, the organisers saw it very much as an antidote to debauchery.
Pupils and past pupils of Alexandra College undertook other initiatives. A knitting association despatched two thousand articles of clothing to the front, mainly to members of the Leinster Regiment, in which many male relatives served. Others responded to the appeal of the Irish Sandbag Committee for volunteers; and fifty-three participated in the college’s nursing division, helping maintain the Irish War Hospital Supply Depot in Merrion Square. One past pupil, Norah Fitzpatrick, established a Soldiers’ Recreation Room in St Stephen’s Green, catering for almost three hundred soldiers. Many of the soldiers said the facilities for reading, games, writing letters, getting a cup of tea and cake for 1d, or simply a chance to talk, made it seem ‘like home.’ In some instances it was probably a welcome refuge from their real homes in the city.
Some past pupils of Alexandra College were recruited into clerical jobs in the civil service, including the Press Censor’s Office, and an adventurous few served as nurses at the front.
A City in Wartime Page 5