Centenary of Catholic Emancipation: The Centenary Record
Published in 18th–19th - Century History, Issue 3 (Autumn 2004), News, Volume 12
Seventy-five years ago, on Sunday 24 June 1929, celebrations to mark the centenary of Catholic Emancipation ended in Dublin with a Pontifical High Mass in the Phoenix Park attended by 300,000 people, and a procession to Watling Street Bridge followed by Benediction. According to the newspapers of the time everything went like clockwork, due no doubt to meticulous planning that included a special act of the Oireachtas to postpone the opening hours of public houses in the city area until these liturgical events had concluded.
The celebrations did not include any formal participation by the other Christian denominations, but Revd R.M. Gwynn in the chapel of Trinity College and Revd J.C. Breakey in the Abbey Presbyterian church preached sermons that would not be out of place in later, more ecumenical, times, while the Methodist Conference meeting in Cork a few days earlier had passed a motion expressing appreciation of the fact that so many Christians were now free of persecution and that Emancipation had been achieved by a great Irishman supported by men of various religious beliefs.
One by-product of the anniversary was the publication of a handsome Centenary Record edited by Revd Myles Ronan, containing scholarly articles on the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland and no less than 312 advertisements, all of which had been booked, proofed and passed by Kenny’s Advertising Service, the largest advertising agency in the country, according to its own notice.
The prime position was given to Clery & Co., O’Connell Street, who published a series of ‘resolutions’ to which their salespeople had signed up. These amounted to what would nowadays be called a customer service charter and, with minor amendments, they could usefully be adopted by some modern purveyors of ‘customer care’. Staff promised that they would know their stock, treat each customer with cheerfulness and courtesy, be as attentive to the purchaser of the most inexpensive item as to the person with more elaborate needs, be patient with the customer who was ‘provoked’, be prompt with the customer who was hurried, be sympathetic to the customer who was puzzled, and be considerate to those who were difficult to satisfy.
Financial institutions preferred to talk about themselves. The Bank of Ireland and the Hibernian Bank simply reproduced their latest balance sheets, while the Irish Life & General Insurance Company announced that companies under its control had authorised capital of £1,000,000 and assets of £350,000. Other businesses adopted a more informal style. Varian Brushes claimed that their products swept all before them, while the notice for Urney Chocolates of Tallaght, like many an advertisement before and since, linked up with the event of the hour by declaring that its Tara product was manufactured by ‘really emancipated’ Irish brains and workers. Morgan, hatter of Duke St., promised to take head shapes free of charge and, as an additional bonus, offered the public an opportunity to view a hat made for Daniel O’Connell in 1832, while J.T. Lemass, hatter, hosier and outfitter of Capel Street, simply claimed that Irish-made goods were their speciality.
Nowadays most of us think of Dún Laoghaire as a suburb of Dublin, but in 1929 it was anxious to promote its merits as a seaside holiday resort and its Publicity Bureau took space in the Record to make claims that lacked little in creativity. The alleged benefits for the visitor included a mean rainfall as low as 29.5 inches, a mean temperature higher than that of Bournemouth or Stockport, and a combination of bracing sea breezes and exhilarating mountain air that, in the opinion of ‘eminent’ but unnamed medical men, produced the ‘ideal tonic’.
Meanwhile, Our Boys magazine was concerned about the health of young people. It warned young men not to take up the pernicious habit of smoking until they were 21 at least, if they wanted to be athletes, and it added the observation that smoking was an unlovely and unmaidenly habit for girls.
T.F. O’Donnell & Co. of Eden Quay, ‘wine suppliers, whiskey bonders, tea and coffee importers’, proudly boasted that they supplied their products to convents, colleges, institutions and the clergy at wholesale prices!
The Centenary Record is available to readers in the excellent Gilbert Library, Pearse Street, Dublin.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.