A City in Wartime

by Pádraig Yeates

  Another hard case was that of Margaret Naylor of 101 Great Brunswick Street, who was killed almost at the same time as her husband, John, a member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who died in the Battle of Loos between 27 and 29 April. They left three children. If either parent had survived they would have received an allowance for the loss of the other. In the event, Mrs Naylor’s sister was awarded 19s a week for the children and a lump sum of £10 ‘in full discharge’ of compensation. A funeral plot at Blackhorse Lane (now Blackhorse Avenue) military cemetery was also provided for the dead woman.

  Nor could other families who provided volunteers for the British war effort expect better treatment. A Mrs Dorgan was denied assistance after her husband was killed because she had four sons, of whom two were unmarried. All four were in the British army. It was not until May 1917 that the Treasury finally agreed to sanction the award of the £150 she was entitled to on the grounds of her husband’s earnings, after the committee wrote to ‘respectfully suggest that the fact that the deceased had four sons at the front would be reason for generous treatment by Their Lordships.’

  Even the most tragic circumstances failed to elicit generosity. The Dublin Victims Committee awarded £25 to Christina Caffrey of 27B Corporation Place (commonly called Corporation Buildings) for the loss of her two-year-old son, only to be overruled by the Treasury. Love asked the Treasury to reconsider, given

  the very sad nature of the case … the child having been shot in its mother’s arms while the mother was endeavouring to recall one of her other children, which had wandered into the street, on the second day of the Rebellion.

  The Treasury finally allowed £5 in compensation, plus the funeral expenses, provided the latter did not exceed another £5. But the second £5 was never released, as Detective-Sergeant John Byrne of Store Street station reported that the family had not incurred any funeral expenses.

  In the absence of more adequate social services, the DMP provided the eyes and ears of the Treasury, investigating the details of each case. Most investigations were completed in 1917, but some lasted into 1918. The detective responsible often advised on the ability of individual claimants to handle awards. Sergeant Cummins reported that Bridget O’Grady of 29 Thomas Court was totally incapacitated by a bullet wound to the thigh and faced the workhouse without assistance. She received an award of £150; but he cautioned against a lump sum. She was ‘a very respectable woman but she is unable to leave her room in the tenement where she resides, which is not in a very respectable locality and … the amount awarded to her could not, with safety, be given to her.’ He added that the local clergy were of the same opinion. Two local priests at Meath Street church were willing to act as trustees.

  Local Catholic clergy were the main source of trustees when the recipient of an award was considered unfit to handle their own finances or when it was feared they might fall prey to unscrupulous relatives or neighbours. But on occasion local public representatives, including the ubiquitous Alfie Byrne, also served.

  Many cases required repeated medical examination, and, given the choice between sanctioning a lump sum and extending ‘hurt pay’ at either the full rate or the ‘materially impaired’ rate, the Treasury would usually opt for the extension.

  Much responsibility fell on Sir Thomas Myles, the government’s medical referee. Like Love, he was frequently frustrated at the imperviousness of the Treasury to the situation of the victims. One such case was that of 24-year-old Ann Lovett of 20 Delahunt Buildings, off Lower Mount Street, who had been shot in the stomach. She not alone survived but became pregnant, though injuries left her suffering from numbness in her right leg and unfit to resume work. After she had been kept on weekly payments of between 4s 6d and 3s 4d for more than a year Myles urged the committee to give especially sympathetic consideration to the young woman.

  She has a very grave wound; she is weak and anaemic and looks as if she was insufficiently fed; she is about to become a mother and this together with her injuries, in my opinion, quite incapacitates her from heavy and laborious work. I gathered from her conversation that she has had a great deal of domestic trouble lately, her mother died of puerperal fever in June 1916 and she … has been trying to look after her father’s six children; to add to her trouble her father has been out of work for some time past. She is already the mother of one child and has a husband to look after. You can readily understand that the wretched girl has hardly been given the most favourable circumstances for such convalescence.

  The committee was not unsympathetic, but the Treasury’s response was characteristically minimalist: it approved the extension of the 3s 4d ‘materially impaired’ payment for another three months.

  Even for those who did receive awards the amounts were often too little to preserve victims from the spectre of poverty. Bertha Mackenzie and her two children, aged thirteen and eleven, enjoyed a life of comfort and security until her husband, Robert, was shot dead in his grocery shop at 3 Cavendish Row during the rising. An award of £50 a year or a lump sum of £300 was recommended by the Victims Committee. However, the Treasury expressed concern that she had inadequate records to support her claim, and those she had made no provision for depreciation or bad debts. C. Friery of the English and Scottish Law Life Assurance Association protested over the inadequacy of the award and reminded the committee that he had produced a certificate from Cooper and Kenny, chartered accountants, showing that Robert Mackenzie had made a net profit of £77 7s 1d in the three months before his death. He had also examined Mrs Mackenzie before the committee about the business and satisfied it that she

  took very little part therein. Since deceased’s death the widow has been compelled to give up a private house in which she and the children resided during deceased’s life time and live in rooms. She is also endeavouring to carry on the business as this is her only livelihood, but I regret to say that the trade is in decline and the profits fast diminishing.

  He enclosed accounts from Cooper and Kenny showing a profit of only £86 16s 6d for the six months to 31 March 1917.

  It will be apparent to you therefore that there has been a considerable falling off in trade and if the present decline continues it seems only a matter of a few months when this poor woman will be out of trade altogether. My Client’s health has been impaired, and she has been advised that unless an improvement in her health sets in at once she must give up business entirely.

  The Treasury relented somewhat and allowed the £300 award; but the widow was to receive only £120, with the balance of £180 to be held by the Recorder’s Court for the children. A yearly allowance was out of the question. Even questions in the House of Commons had no effect. The Chief Secretary, Henry Duke, sympathised with Mrs Mackenzie but told MPs that no more money was payable.12

  A similar case was that of Mrs Harris Abrahams, who claimed £2,500 against her lost husband’s earnings of £290 a year. She received £100; another £200 was lodged with the Recorder’s Court for five of the couple’s eight children. Her eldest, Isaac, had his own tailoring business in Lower Ormond Quay, where her two oldest daughters worked for 18s and 15s a week, respectively. All three were excluded from any compensation.

  William Holmes, who owned a tea room in Railway Street and suffered ‘drop foot’ as a result of a bullet traversing his leg, had a claim for £500 reduced to £150 by the committee and then to £17 5s by the Irish Treasury, even though Detective-Officer John Byrne confirmed that the business was making only £1 a week and Holmes’s opportunities for other work had ended because of his injury. He had a couple of slum properties nearby, but these had been closed as unfit for human habitation some time before. The comment that his brother ‘occasionally assists the family with small amounts’ may have sealed his fate.

  Sometimes a man was better off having a good employer than being in business for himself. Patrick Behan of Irishtown claimed £100 against lost earnings of £1 a week. He received an award of only £6 10s for a bullet wound to his left arm and abdomen but in fact w
as better off than normally because he received ‘hurt pay’ of 10s a week, half pay of another 10s from his employer, and national health insurance benefit of a further 10s while incapacitated.

  On the other hand, an employer’s kindness could rebound, as it did on Catherine Hegarty. She was a domestic servant and had been shot during the Northumberland Road fight. Her employer, Frances Neweth, allowed her to return to work in 1917, and when the committee discovered this it immediately stopped her ‘hurt pay’ and held an investigation into an overpayment of £3 10s 4d. Mrs Neweth protested that Miss Hegarty could carry out only limited duties, assisted by her other servant and herself. ‘In my opinion,’ she wrote to the committee, ‘she is not yet capable, in the open market, of earning the same rate of wages she received before her injury.’ This view was confirmed by Sir Thomas Myles, who confirmed that ‘Miss Hegarty cannot do any hard work of any kind and … it is possible the condition may continue for a very long period.’ The allowance was not renewed, but it is not clear whether the overpayment was ever reclaimed.

  One of the few successful appeals against awards was made by Alderman David Quaid, acting as solicitor for one of his constituents, two-year-old Mary Ann Reilly from Greek Street. She had been shot in the right leg; the wound became gangrenous, and the leg had to be amputated above the knee. It was ‘a very serious and permanent mutilation,’ Quaid wrote to the committee. The award of £100 offered was ‘entirely inadequate for the loss of a leg, practically limiting the earning power of this girl during her life and even preventing her from having marriage chances.’ He proposed the Workmen’s Compensation Act rate as more appropriate, and he accepted an improved offer of £150 on her behalf. This was the highest payment for an infant and, as in other cases, the award included legal costs.

  Amounts paid ranged from £300 to £5. All but five of the claimants had an address in fairly close vicinity to the fighting. Two of the exceptions were a woman who lived in Harold’s Cross and a widow in Kingstown. The woman in Harold’s Cross had lost a son; the Kingstown widow, who had two children, was partially dependent on her dead brother.

  There were three claims from dependants of men living in Cos. Sligo, Limerick and Roscommon. The Sligo case involved a teacher passing through Dublin on his way to a conference in Cork who, according to his brother, was ‘shot like a dog’ in the street and then robbed of all his possessions. The other men were on bank holiday outings.

  Of the remaining sixty successful claimants, thirty-six lived in the north inner city and twenty-three in the south inner city. One woman was committed to the Richmond Lunatic Asylum, which means she had probably lived in the catchment area of the North Dublin Union. Twenty-six of the north city claimants lived between the Five Lamps (Amiens Street) and Capel Street and seventeen in tenements in streets close to Sackville Street, such as Corporation Street, Gardiner Street and Rutland Street. In contrast, only five came from the North King Street area, where the allegations of soldiers shooting civilians had been most prevalent.

  The addresses on the south side of the Liffey were more dispersed, again reflecting the spread of the fighting. There was one successful claim from Ringsend, three from the Lower Mount Street area and a scattering from the vicinity of Jacob’s factory. The use of the Workmen’s Compensation Act inevitably meant that payments were based on lost earnings, with scant regard for the size or circumstances of families. Elizabeth Watson of 55 Middle Abbey Street had no dependants but received £273, while Anne O’Grady of 28 East Arran Street, who had six children, received £265.

  There were ninety-nine children altogether among the families covered by awards, including the child of the woman committed to the Richmond Asylum. Eleven claimants were awarded the maximum amount of £300, twenty-eight received between £200 and £293 and the remainder received between £199 and £5.13

  Dependants of participants in the rising fared much better. The Veteran Fenian Tom Clarke had given his wife £3,000 to relieve distress among Volunteers and their dependants. By May there were two bodies collecting funds for the prisoners and their families, the one established by Kathleen Clarke and another one closer to the Irish Party. In August they amalgamated to form the Irish National Aid Association and Volunteer Dependants’ Fund, which embraced the Irish Relief Committee in America. More donations flowed in from sympathisers in Britain and Australia. As a result, the fund was able not alone to make small weekly payments to the dependants of prisoners but to invest £20,000 in Dublin Corporation loans in September 1916 and to allocate £1,500 to each widow. This could be taken as a lump sum or in a weekly stipend based on the interest. Unlike payments by the government, no account was taken of the income of the lost breadwinner, but neither was any account taken of the number of dependants: all families were treated equally. In some instances the families were substantially better off than ever before, such as James Connolly’s widow, Lillie, and their six surviving children. Instead of having to subsist on her husband’s pay of £2 a week as a union official, supplemented by the earnings of her two working daughters, Nora and Ina, Lillie Connolly took the lump sum of £1,500, as well as additional donations worth £325.

  Near the other end of the income scale was Éamonn Ceannt, who had earned £220 a year as a senior clerk in the corporation. His widow, Áine, took the £1,500 lump sum together with additional donations worth £300 and used it to set up a market garden for the upkeep of herself and her ten-year-old son.14 The second in command of the Citizen Army, Michael Mallin, left a wife and five children; his widow, Úna, received £1 7s a week, later increased to £2 10s, plus £100 from American funds. She opted to have her £1,500 invested for her children’s education.

  The Irish National Aid Association and Volunteer Dependants’ Fund decided to set up an education subcommittee to look after the education of all the orphans from Easter Week. The subcommittee, fourteen strong, included no less than four Catholic priests, including Father Aloysius, who heard the last confession of Connolly and other executed leaders. Most of the thirty-nine boys were sent to St Enda’s, the school founded by Pearse, and the twenty-eight girls to various boarding schools. Lillie Connolly dissented, asking for the money to be paid to her directly for the education of her son, Roddy.

  The commitment to equality of treatment of the widows and orphans of 1916 was commendable, but it was also an inadvertent early indicator that those loyal to the Republic and the values of Irish Ireland could expect preferential treatment under the new political dispensation. The independent Irish state would treat some of its children more equally than others.15

  Casualties of the rising were not restricted to those who lost their lives, property or homes as a result of the fighting. The largest group of non-combatants adversely affected were ordinary workers, such as employees of the Great Southern and Western Railway. The company had traditionally adopted a very hostile attitude towards trade unions and anything that smacked of radical politics. It had seen off protracted strikes in 1902 and 1911, so successfully that the railways operated normally during the 1913 Lock-out.16 Nevertheless, as one of the largest employers in Ireland, with nine thousand workers, it contained a microcosm of the national work force.

  Fatal casualties in 1916 included the Limerick district auditor, William Moore, shot on an Easter bank holiday day trip to Dublin, and a junior clerk, Seán Heuston, who was executed by order of a court-martial for his role in defending the Mendicity Institute a couple of hundred yards away. Employees who scabbed in the 1911 strike and joined the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in 1914 were among those killed or wounded in the fighting around the Mendicity Institute and the South Dublin Union.17

  The living proved more of a problem than the dead. Any GSWR employees arrested during the rising were subjected to intense scrutiny and not readmitted to employment on release unless they could prove themselves free from any taint of suspicion. On 6 October 1916 the company received a petition from thirty employees seeking reinstatement after being released without charge. Their plea was supporte
d by Richard Bowden, administrator of the presbytery in Marlborough Street, who wrote to the company urging their reinstatement ‘having regard to the difficulty of obtaining employment in the city at the present time.’ He testified that ‘I know some of these employees personally as being very decent, hard working, sober and good living men.’ In April 1922 the Provisional Government of the new Irish Free State was still seeking reinstatement for seventeen of them.18

  Edward Whelan, a senior clerk in the GSWR Solicitor’s Office, with twenty-two years’ service, had great difficulty being reinstated. He explained his absence from work between the Tuesday and Thursday of Easter Week by saying he was trapped by the fighting in his elderly father’s home in Dorset Street. When military control of the area allowed him to return to work he did so immediately, only to be arrested at Kingsbridge station for being in possession of a circular for the Sinn Féin Loan Fund. He was released from Kilmainham Jail after a few days, and the military authorities confirmed that there was ‘nothing known against him.’ He still had to sign a declaration stating that he had no involvement in the rising or association with the Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army or Sinn Féin before being allowed to return to work.