Articles
Ornithologist, geologist, botanist, Henry Chichester Hart was very much a typical Victorian gentleman and amateur scholar, but one of exceptional achievements. Born in Dublin in 1847, he studied Experimental and Natural Science at Trinity College, and after graduation with an Honours degree, became an amateur scholar devoted to a personal study of natural history. He travelled widely in Ireland, exploring the landscape on foot for the most part and publishing his first scientific writings in 1873. Elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1875, he was served as naturalist on the British Polar Expedition of 1875-76, and in 1883 he was one of the first western botanists to carry out survey work in Palestine and the Sinai Desert. He then turned his attention to Ireland, where he explored many of the least accessible and remote corners of the land, including the Dingle peninsula and west Donegal, botanising, recording and classifying plants during prodigious pedestrian tours over wild landscapes, mountains and moors, and discovering many new species. In addition to his published papers on botany, he also wrote about the fauna of Ireland, particularly the birds, and studied Irish folklore and dialects and Elizabethan literature, with particular emphasis on Shakespeare.
One of his friends was RM Barrington, barrister and naturalist, and there was a good-humoured but unspoken rivalry between them. Once Barrington invited Hart to call on him in Wicklow and go botanising along the river Dargle. The day they had selected dawned with heavy and continuous downpours of rain, and Barrington assumed that Hart would not come. He was however surprised when his friend turned up at his door, and not wanting to give Hart fuel for future derision, he took up the challenge: without comment about the weather, he wrapped up some sandwiches and the two men set out. They were wet to the skin in no time, and Hart insisted on leading a way along the riverbank that went through the worst of the mud, thorns and briars in an effort to discourage Barrington. Eventually, they paused for lunch, and in a move to show his scorn for the conditions, Barrington walked into the rushing river and sat down on a rock to eat his sandwiches. Hart, without comment, nonchalantly sat down beside him and tucked into his food. As Barrington wrote afterwards, ‘all rivalry ceased, and friendship prevailed during the remainder of the day’.
It was Barrington who was responsible for the existence of what must be Ireland’s most gruelling walking route, from the suburbs of Dublin southwards into the mountains to the top of Lugnaquillia, Wicklow’s highest summit, and back again. Henry Hart’s prowess as a mountain climber and walker was such that in 1886 Barrington wagered 50 guineas that Hart could not walk from Terenure in Dublin to Lugnaquillia and back in less than twenty four hours. Hart accepted the challenge, and chose midsummer’s night for the task, setting off at 10.58 pm from the tram station in Terenure. Three hours later he was under Kippure and by 6.30 am he was passing through the village of Laragh. He stopped in Glenmalure for a hour to take breakfast at the hotel there, and then went on to climb Lugnaquillia, at 925m, the highest mountain in Ireland outside of Kerry. He was on the summit by 11.10am, and after a rest of ten minutes, he set off to return. The road route he had taken south into Wicklow had taken him thirteen hours, so he needed to return by a shorter route to arrive back within twenty-four hours. He had no choice but to take a risk and return along the tops of the mountains that ran northwards from Glenmalure to Ballysmuttan. After an epic walk that included eight continuous hours in trackless mountain terrain, he reached Terenure with ten minutes to spare, having covered an amazing 75 miles. On his own handwritten note of the event, Hart wrote laconically he was ‘quite right next day’.
Hart’s reputation was such that no-one attempted to emulate him until, in July 1927, J. J. Cronin completed the route in 20 hours and 32 minutes. Thirty years later, in 1953, Uinseann MacEoin succeeded in covering the ground in 19 hours and 50 minutes. That night Uinseann attended a ceili in the Gresham Hotel and didn’t finally get home until 4.30am! MacEoin’s record was not broken until 1976, when Eddie Gaffney and Niall Rice cut the time to 17 hours and 39 minutes. It was another twenty eight years before the record was broken again. In 2004 Bob Lawlor arrived back in Terenure 16 hours and 21 minutes after departing for Kippure the night before. Hart would have covered the circuit in a tweed suit, probably wing collar and tie, and good brogues: Bob had, of course, modern outdoor clothing, support with drink stations along the way, and was able to avail of changes of clothing and footware, but it is still an astonishing achievement, that even the laconic Hart would applaud.
By the end of the twelfth century, Irish seagoing trade with Europe was well developed and regular voyages took place from ports like Waterford and Kinsale to and from northern Spain and western France. Irish pilgrims took passage on cargo ships to ports such as Bordeux, Coruna or Ferrol, and finished the journey to Santiago on foot. Later in the Middle Ages, as the number of pilgrims increased, ships were used solely to ferry pilgrims directly to northern Spain and back.
Seafaring at the time was hazardous and even in good weather conditions it cannot always have been pleasant. Even the best-appointed ships provided only very primitive conditions, particularly in poor weather, and, apart from the terror of those who had never been to sea before, there must have been constant drenchings and chronic sea-sickness. Passengers had to keep out of the way of the running of the ship, and therefore they would often have to huddle below decks, particularly in bad weather, while the crew went about their work. Any idea of privacy had to be forgotten about, and overcrowding was often a problem. While most pilgrim ships of the period could carry between 60 and 100 passengers, records show that in 1473 the La Mary of London left New Ross in County Wexford with 400 passengers: one can imagine that there would have been little elbow room on board on that trip. To make matters worse, on the La Mary’s return journey from Coruna the ship was captured by pirates, and ransoms had to be paid before the passengers were allowed to return home.
In 1428 it is recorded that one Aodh McUidir died after disembarking from a ship at Kinsale following his voyage from Coruna, only one of the many pilgrims who did not survive their journeys. Some pilgrim ships simply disappeared, like the one carrying the chief of the Barry Roe clan and his entire entourage back to Cork after their pilgrimage to Santiago in 1507.
In spite of the dangers, James Rice, eleven times Mayor of Waterford, travelled to Santiago and back twice, in 1473 and 1483. He was a deeply religious man, and wealthy enough to employ a priest to say mass every day for his salvation and that of his family. As Mayor, he had to receive royal permission to embark on both pilgrimages, and after his second, he paid for the erection of a chantry chapel in Waterford Cathedral which was dedicated to St James and St Catherine.
Most pilgrims did not stay very long in Spain. They usually had about seven days, during which they had to make their way to Santiago, partake in the necessary devotions, and return to their ship, all without falling foul of thieves or falling into temptation. Some pilgrims, however, dallied in Spain, and the Church became concerned about the opportunities for them, removed from the stabilising influences of home and community, to indulge in sexual licence and other sinful behaviour. English churchman John Wyclif believed men and women should travel separately, for, as he said, ‘to travel in company was only to indulge in lechery, gluttony and drunkenness, extortion and worldly vanities,’ – he also suspected that many travelled to ‘see fair countries’ rather than out of devotion to God or his saints.
There is little doubt that a pilgrimage provided the well-off with an excuse, a respectable way to escape for a while from the routine of their lives or from domestic problems. It seems likely that some wealthy pilgrims were motivated, not so much by religion, but by their interest in the wider world. In the medieval church, however, inquisitiveness, or what they termed curiositas, was not regarded as an admirable quality: it was seen as a sinful vice, closely related to pride and sloth. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this curiositas, stimulated by education, began to take hold among the adventurous aristocracy, and for a period many believed that this kind of thinking directly threatened the whole concept of pilgrimage.
Pilgrimage to Santiago still thrives, however, attracting pilgrims of all religions and none. Curiositas is a large part of it, and the only hardship involved is walking long distances, something regarded in our sedentary urban societies today as an enjoyable sport.
In 1915, my entrepreneurial grandfather, T J Sheridan, set up a motor business at Number 129, the Quay in Waterford, overlooking the broad River Suir. He lived above the business with my grandmother and three young sons, Gerard, Thomas and Patrick Joseph. The following year my grandmother gave birth to a daughter: it was a busy time for the Sheridan family, and after years of hard work, the business was beginning to prosper.
At 8.15 one morning in November, a powerful storm, which had caused flooding and mayhem along the south coast, hit Waterford, and a severe gust of wind toppled the tall brick chimney off the house next door, and it fell onto the roof of Number 129. Like a pack of cards, the attic and the third floor collapsed into the second floor, the masonry of the chimney punching its way through to the ground floor. My grandparents had been asleep in bed when it happened. My grandmother was in a room on the third floor nursing her infant daughter, and two of her sons, Gerard aged four, and Patrick, aged eighteen months, slept in cots near her bed. My grandfather was asleep on the floor below with Thomas, aged three.
As the third floor and ceiling collapsed, dumping its contents and four occupants into the second floor, it trapped my grandfather in his bed, with his son Thomas at his back. He could only move his head. Thomas gave a short cry and caught him by the hair, but he could not turn to him. He heard his wife nearby but could not see her. In the first miracle of the day a mechanic who slept in the attic rode the collapse all the way down, and staggered out of the ruins at ground level, covered with dust but unhurt.
Dockers unloading a ship on Waterford’s Quay saw the building collapse and they were the first on the scene. Getting hold of a ladder, four of them, James Hayes, Martin Alleyne, Joseph Colfer and John Brown climbed through a window into the ruin. The coals of the kitchen fire had begun to ignite the old timbers in the debris and there was a possibility that the house would burst into flames, but amid falling bricks and slates these man risked their lives. From the thick cloud of dust being swirled about by the gale, James Hayes heard a woman crying for help, and crawling almost blindly on his hands and knees he removed a mountain of loose debris to unearth her, barely conscious, and carry her out. In the second miracle of the day, John Brown discovered in the rubble the tiny bundle that was her infant daughter, and carried her down the ladder to safety.
Assisted by Richard Lonergan of the Fire Brigade, the dockers brought out my grandmother, Gerard and Patrick, and returning into the chaotic hell of rubble these brave men heard my grandfather calling and located him. He asked them to take Thomas out first, and as they were doing so, the child called out for his father, and died in their arms. The Mayor of Waterford, Dr J. J. O’Sullivan, had arrived at the scene as my grandfather was taken from the ruins, and found that although Gerard survived unhurt, Patrick had also died. John Brown still had the infant girl in his arms, and after examining her, the doctor told him to take her to Waterford’s Infirmary, about a mile away. He ran off immediately with his precious little bundle, past Reginald’s Tower, down the Mall and Parnell Street to the Car Stand, and up John’s Street. She cried the whole way, but he didn’t stop running until he reached the hospital, and breathlessly handed over his charge to a doctor. After washing the thick layer of mortar dust from her face, the doctor and the nurses examined the little girl and found her to be unharmed. That infant was my mother.
My grandparents probably never completely came to terms with the tragedy, but they soldiered on with acceptance and stoicism, as people did in those days, and three years later my grandfather built a new motor garage with an apartment above two doors away from the disaster. There the family lived to survive the siege of Waterford six years late, and my mother and uncle grew up happily, joined in later years by another brother and sister. That infant that John Brown carried to the Infirmary went on to live a long and full life, having four children, ten grandchildren and there are now sixteen great-grandchildren, and I’m sure, more to come!
The Oul Knees
In the old days, if a person had a complaint of some kind, they were referred to as ‘suffering’ from whatever ailment it was, as in ‘Johnny suffers from his chest’, or ‘Mary suffers from her back’. These were kind of permanent afflictions that often characterised a person, and, other than the odd miracle at Lourdes, one rarely heard of Johnny being cured of his chest or Mary being cured of her back.
I used to suffer from my knees. Now, my complaint, one could say, was self-inflicted. In middle age I took to regularly forcing vigorous hillwalking on limbs, muscles, and tendons that had not been adequately prepared by a youth well-spent taking part in a range of sporting activities. Looking back, I seem to have spent much of that that devising brilliant methods of dodging weekly rugby practice and substituting it with dates with girls in the afternoon cinema. Anyway, when I started hillwalking I didn’t consider it was an actual sport or even a particularly physical activity, even after those early climbs which left me in no doubt that my anatomy included ankles and hip sockets. Eventually, apart from a few blisters or welts on my feet before they hardened up, I had no problems.
After a number of years, however, there came a time when things started to go downhill, particularly when I was walking downhill. I mean, I always knew I had knees, but they now began to take on personas and assert themselves, complaining and causing me trouble every time I took on steep descents. I took them to the doctor, who, after examining my legs and feet sat back and gaily informed me that my right big toe had a congenital deformation. While I was walking straight, it was tending to bear right, heading off on its own, and even attempting to climb its smaller comrades in the process. The old song, he said, about your knee bone being connected to your thigh bone and so on was right – my wayward toe was causing all my knee trouble.
He recommended I attend a physiotherapist to see what could be done. She asked me lots of questions, some quite personal, that seemed to have little to do with my problem and I began to wonder if she had mixed me up with someone else. Then she examined my legs, manipulating them vigorously, twisting, pulling and kneading them in an alarming, most unladylike way. She then asked me what warm-up exercises I did before setting out walking. When I told her I didn’t think I had to do warm-up exercises, the reason I was doing the walking in the first place was to get exercise, she was visibly shocked, and stood back and regarded me as a stern parent would a naughty child. She then proceeded to show me what warm-up exercises I should be doing before walking, and put me through a series of unseemly contortions that an Indian fakir would have found challenging. Most of them left me lying on the floor in very compromising positions, panting for breath, and then she sent me on my way having relieved me of the price of a good evening out for two, including wine and a taxi home.
Well, the next time I went out walking with friends I felt I had to do what I was told, the advice had cost me enough. Because I couldn’t do some of the exercises on my own, I had to call on a companion to assist. I was afraid the scene we created, however, might have started embarrassing rumours in the walking community, and there was the danger of having a passing farmer throwing a bucket of cold water over us. Out of consideration for my friends, and probably to try to keep my friends, it didn’t take me long to drop the exercises.
Salvation was at hand, however. Another, highly recommended physiotherapist spent five minutes looking at my feet, had the civility not to mention my wayward toe or wrestle me to the floor, and just gave me insoles to put in my boots. I never looked back. I also purchased a pair of trekking sticks, which I had seen used widely on the continent. Initially I had the inescapable feeling that I looked ridiculous, and I expended a lot of concentration and energy trying not to trip over then sticks and look even more ridiculous. I soon mastered them, however, and was delighted to meet others, often clearly seasoned and experienced climbers, using them on Irish summits from Mweelrea to Carranuntoohil.
So where there’s life there’s hope. I got my miracle without going to Lourdes: my toe is still wandering off, my knees are still banjaxed, but I don’t ‘suffer’ from them any more.
A Safe Place
Irish Republican Army Documentation and Funds In the Four Courts, June 1922
Although I have written books on a range of different subjects, only those dealing with history have ever attracted correspondence after publication. My recent book, The Battle of the Four Courts, possibly because it dealt with comparatively recent events, was no exception. Subsequent to its publication, many interesting and revelatory nuggets of information were brought to my attention, neatly filling in what, for me, had been tiny gaps in the story, missing pieces of the jigsaw. A couple of these shone a fascinating light on a question I had been asking myself during the original research process: why was no effort made by the IRA Executive in the Four Courts to ensure that Óglaig na hÉireann Headquarters files would not fall into the hands of the Provisional Government if they succeeded in taking the courts. The bureaucratic documentation and paperwork associated the anti-Treaty IRA Executive and Headquarters staff would have been substantial by June of 1922. Much of it had been transferred to the Four Courts in April from their former offices in the Gaelic League Hall in Parnell Square and it would have been added to over the busy two months of occupation of the courts. It would have included records such as the minutes of meetings, instructions to and reports from different IRA brigades around the country, audits of brigade numbers and arms, general correspondence, reports on the manufacture of munitions, plans and logistic arrangements for proposed raids on the North and specifications regarding purchase of arms from Germany. There seems no doubt that a large amount of money in cash, which had been ‘levied’ by IRA units from Irish banks in the preceding six months, had also accumulated in the Headquarters coffers, including, presumably, much of the £156,000 handed over by banks in May 1922. Robert Briscoe, later to be Lord Mayor of Dublin, wrote in his autobiography that in May, Liam Mellows gave him an ‘odd, delicate’ job. In his office in the Headquarters Block in the Four Courts Mellows sat surrounded by waste paper baskets, all of them full of mint bank notes. There was also a cupboard that was almost full of money. Mellows gave Briscoe the task of ‘laundering’ as much as £40,000 in new bank notes into used notes, which he succeeded in doing. Did all this cash and the Headquarters documentation go up in smoke when the courts burned on 30 June 1922? Since my book was published, additional information has been brought to my attention that has helped to reveal possible answers to this particular question.
On the evening of Tuesday 27 June 1922, the day before the attack on the Four Courts by the National Army that would signal the beginning of the Civil War, it seems that there was a general awareness amongst those in the courts that some form of intervention in their occupation, either by the British Army or Provisional Government forces, was imminent. As one member of the garrison, Andy Doyle, put it, ‘There was great excitement.’ Last minute work was carried out strengthening the defences, putting up barricades, erecting additional barbed wire, distributing sandbags and laying mines. Crossley tenders were sent out to requisition provisions for the garrison, as the food stocks were low.
Liam Mellows is said to have told Liam Lynch, who had been reinstated Chief of Staff of the IRA a short time before, that he had received indications from ‘the higher echelons of the Provisional government that there would be an attack.’ It seems possible that he may also have discussed with Lynch at this time that it might be necessary to move Headquarters documentation and funds from the courts to a safe place.
According to Ernie O’Malley’s interviews some years later with members of the Four Courts garrison, that night, less than five hours before the National Army began the attack on the courts, Headquarters files were boxed under the supervision of Joe Griffin, IRA Director of Intelligence, with the assistance of Sean Myler and two eighteen-year-old Fianna members, Tom Wall and John Cusack, of the Public Records Office garrison. The safe place chosen by Liam Mellows to deposit the documentation was the Capuchin Friary in Church Street, about four hundred metres from the Chancery Street gate of the Four Courts. Andy Doyle was a driver with the Four Courts Transport Section attached to the Headquarters Block, and he was chosen to transport the documentation there. Many years later Ernie O’Malley also interviewed him about the event, and the notes of the interview tell of Doyle using a touring car, that had been ‘borrowed’ some time before from the Lord Mayor of Dublin, for the purpose. He drove up Church Street to the Friary and asked for Fr Dominic O’Connor, and when the priest came to the door he handed over what he termed the ‘bundles’ of papers from the car. Fr Albert Bibby came down to help, and when all the papers were brought in, Doyle took the two priests back to the Four Courts at about midnight. Sean Myler told O’Malley that it took four journeys to complete the transfer. It would have been very unlikely that the accumulated cash was not also sent to the same ‘safe place’.
Fr Dominic and Fr Albert were in the courts before the attack began at about 4am on Wednesday morning, therefore, to give spiritual support to members of the garrison. They were in and out of the courts, indeed, many times during the battle, facilitating the removal of wounded and, indeed, they were subsequently involved in helping to arrange the surrender.
Fr Albert Bibby and Fr Dominic O’Connor (courtesy of the Capuchin Archives)
I could find no evidence of the documents and cash turning up later and it seems that no documents of this nature are held or were held, by the Capuchins. Brian Kirby, the Capuchin Archivist did, however, unearth for me another piece of the jigsaw, and an intriguing one at that. Through the copies of letters written by Fr Dominic O’Connor that are held in the Archive, it is clear that he was not only a Capuchin monk, but also an IRA officer. He had become chaplain to the Cork No 1 Brigade in 1918, and in that year he wrote ‘Instructions for the Chaplain of the Fianna on Active Service’, a manual for the Catholic priests that he had persuaded to also become IRA chaplains. When, in March 1920 Tomás McCurtain, Commandant of the Cork No. 1 Brigade and also Lord Mayor of Cork, was shot at his home in Blackrock, Fr Dominic was early on the scene. He led the Mayor’s funeral procession through Cork City and gave testimony at the subsequent inquest, which passed a verdict of wilful murder against the British Prime Minister Lloyd George and against members of the RIC.
Terence MacSwiney, McCurtain’s second-in-command of the Cork Brigade, took his place as Lord Mayor, only to be arrested in August of 1920, and imprisoned in England. When MacSwiney went on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, Fr Dominic was there to minister to him, and was present through the ten weeks of his hunger strike and at his death in October 1920.
On his return to Cork Fr Dominic continued work in his capacity as chaplain to the Cork Brigade, which was very active at this time. When Bishop Daniel Cohalan of Cork decreed that anyone in his diocese who organised or took part in ambushes or murder or attempted murder would be excommunicated, it caused some consternation among some Volunteers. Fr Dominic wrote to Florrie O’Donoghue, brigade intelligence officer, however, assuring him that kidnapping, ambushing and killing with the authority of the Republic of Ireland was not only not sinful, but good and meritorious. He added, ‘Therefore the excommunication does not affect us. There is no need to worry about it.’
Fr Dominic O’Connor in Volunteer uniform, c 1920
(permission needed from the McMenamin family, Portland, Oregon)
As his political leanings, if not the extent of his involvement, became known to the Black and Tans in Cork he began to receive graphic threats, and his Capuchin superior decided that it would be prudent to remove him from the Cork area. By the end of 1920, therefore, Fr Dominic found himself based in the Capuchin Friary in Church Street in Dublin. His growing reputation as a republican sympathiser followed him, however, and the Friary was raided by British forces on 18 December 1920 and Fr Dominic was arrested. In January 1921, on the basis of letters found in his room at Church Street, he was found guilty of ‘spreading reports likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty’. He was sentenced to five years penal servitude, ending up in Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight, where he wore a convict uniform and acted as the vice-commander of the IRA inmates there.
Fr Dominic was released from Parkhurst with the other Republican prisoners after the signing of the Treaty in December 1921. His letters of this period, particularly after the ratification by the Dáil of the Treaty in January 1922, leave little doubt about his opinion of the Treaty and some of its supporters. In late April, he refers in a letter to the newly formed National Army as ‘The Bushmen, that’s the Mulcahy army,’ and writes that they were ‘acting in a very bad way. They are living on lies, and are behaving in a worse way than the B&Ts. Thanks be to God, our boys (by which he means the anti-Treaty IRA) are very sober and as good as they are disgusted with the conduct of the others. Yesterday evening a poor lad was ‘’shot trying to escape’’. And in Athlone McKeown and his bunch made a similar attempt and afterwards drove our boys out of their Hotel. I think Ireland will get a surprise one of these fine days.’
When Rory O’Connor led the taking over of the Four Courts on 15 April 1922, Fr Dominic was in residence again in the nearby Capuchin Friary, and together with Fr Albert Bibby he administered to the spiritual needs of the anti-Treaty garrison of the courts. The garrison’s spiritual needs were not the only reason he frequented the courts, however. On or about 25 April, he wrote to a friend, ‘I have been over at Army Council HQ a few times on business. The Officers there are fine lads. My late Divisional Commandant is now Chief of Staff and a better they couldn’t have. They all smoke Belfast tobacco and cigarettes! Don’t be shocked. It’s captured boycotted stuff. As a General Officer I am sharing in the spoil and am enjoying cigarettes and tobacco from the North free, gratis, and for nothing...the IRA is now cut off from the Dáil and is ruled by an independent executive as in olden days when I first joined, and stands for Ireland and not for any one party. ’
The same letter suggests that Fr Dominic is not only sharing in the free tobacco, but taking some part in high-level discussions. He added ‘I made a suggestion to them the other day – of course this is only for Annie & yourself & Madge if you like but no one else – to proclaim a Republic in Munster within the Irish Republic. The Munster one to include the 6 counties Waterford, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Clare. I wasn’t going to leave you out. The south is pretty solid and it would prevent the F. Staters getting a hold there, and would also mean certainty of finances etc for the Army of the Irish Republic. I chatted it over with some of them and then came home here and put the whole plan in paper. They are weighing and considering it and even if they don’t go the whole way, I’m certain that they will do something before very long to end the F.S. in Munster. If I’m found out, I suppose the F.S. will be arresting me next.’
There is no doubt that Fr Dominic was close to Liam Lynch: in a letter written on 31 May 1922 from the Four Courts by Lynch regarding his brother Tom’s ordination to the priesthood, he says he will attend with Liam Deasy, Con Moylan and Sean Hyde, and asks if he can invite two ‘special friends of mine during the war’, Fr Joseph Breen and Fr Dominic O’Connor, who ‘often calls in to see me’.
During the short battle of the Four Courts, Fr Dominic and Fr Albert were active, offering spiritual support and assisting with the evacuation of the wounded but there seems to be little doubt that Fr Dominic at least, in his other role as a ‘General Officer’ in the IRA, was also busy passing messages in and out of the courts, to and from Oscar Traynor, the Commandant of the Dublin Brigade entrenched east of O’Connell Street. As he was marched away with the surrendered garrison from the Four Courts on Friday 30 June, Liam Mellows must have felt assured that he had placed the IRA Headquarters documentation and cash in safe hands.
Fr Dominic was held briefly by the National Army after the surrender, and then released. His name does not crop up for the next few days as the fighting east of O’Connell Street escalates; presumably he was busy moving on the Headquarters documentation and cash.
After their retreat from Dublin, the men of the Dublin Brigade and other anti-Treaty fighters regrouped at Blessington, 30k south of Dublin, and the National Army moved swiftly to engage them there. Fr Dominic turns up again in Blessington on 7 July, assisting a Cumann na mBan field hospital in a house in the square, looking after anti-Treaty and National Army wounded. It seems that he then went to England, but was swiftly deported back to Ireland, where he returned to Holy Trinity, Cork.
The Irish Hierarchy, particularly Bishop Daniel Cohalan of Cork, I’m sure, were greatly concerned about Fr Dominic’s activities, and in November the Capuchin Order Provincial Definitory decided to transfer him to their Mission in Bend, Oregon, an isolated township of about 5,500 inhabitants 7,500k, as the crow flies, from Ireland. There Fr Dominic died in 1935. His colleague, Fr Albert Bibby, who had also been exiled, had died in 1925, and there were unsuccessful moves in the 1930s to have their remains returned for burial in Ireland. In the early nineteen fifties a veterans committee of the Cork No.1 Brigade took up the case, but it wasn’t until 1957, when Fianna Fail returned to power, that the matter was moved forward.
The bodies of the two exiled priests were finally returned to their home country in 1958, arriving at Shannon Airport on 13 June. From there the cortege travelled through Limerick and on to Cork, the route lined with members of the public, trades unions, community groups and GAA clubs, and guards of honour provided by the Old IRA marched beside the hearses. Requiem Mass, attended by the President, Sean T O’Kelly and the Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, was celebrated by Bishop Cornelius Lucy of Cork, in Holy Trinity Church where Fr Dominic had served. After the mass the remains were taken to the Capuchin Friary at Rochestown, where, before a great crowd, Fr Dominic O’Connor and Fr Albert Bibby were laid to rest.
Ultimately, the Headquarters funds probably found their way south to the anti-Treaty forces in Munster, but the other documentation, an important collection of records for historians, as far as I am aware, has not turned up since.
The funeral cortege of Fr Dominic and Fr Albert passing over Parnell Bridge, Cork June 1958
(permission will be required from the Cork Examiner)