BITE-SIZED HISTORY
Published in Issue 6 (November/December 2019), News, Volume 27BY TONY CANAVAN
Immigrants boost native population
New research from Queen’s University Belfast’s School of Natural and Built Environment has found that Ireland’s population was in serious decline for almost two centuries before the Vikings invaded. The QUB experts have released an estimate of past population numbers. They argue that the data show the importance of migration, as without the Vikings the population decline could have been much worse. Dr Rowan McLaughlin, Research Fellow from the School of Natural and Built Environment, explains:
‘Around the year 700, the population in Ireland mysteriously entered a decline, perhaps because of war, famine, plague or political unrest. However, there was no single cause or one-off event, as the decline was a gradual process. The Vikings settled in Ireland in the tenth century, during the phase of decline, and despite being few in number they were more successful than the “natives” in expanding their population. Today, genetic evidence suggests many Irish people have some Viking blood.’
For the study, the researchers used a database of archaeological sites discovered during the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years, when there was a boom in motorway-building and other developments. This large database has opened up a completely new perspective on the past.
Quaker cemetery in danger
The status of Ireland’s oldest remaining Quaker cemetery is in danger because of disagreements between the Health Service Executive (HSE) and Dublin City Council (DCC). The burial ground at Cork Street was bequeathed in 1697 by Roger Roberts, a Quaker and innkeeper, and remained in use until the late 1860s, when a new cemetery was opened at Temple Hill in Blackrock. Most of the remaining headstones in Cork Street date from its latter years, as Quakers only allowed physical memorials after 1855, but written records remain of hundreds of burials on the site. Retired city council planner Kieran Rose said that the condition of the cemetery had deteriorated to an extent that was ‘disrespectful’ for a historical burial ground. The cemetery is in the grounds of the Weir Home, a HSE residential mental health services facility. Named after Scottish philanthropist James Weir, who funded its construction, it was built in 1903 to accommodate nurses working at Cork Street Fever Hospital and remained a nurses’ home until the late 1970s. Since the early 1980s it has been used as a mental health facility, but owing to its age and condition the HSE has decided that it is no longer suitable and plans to relocate its residents to a facility at Stanhope Street in Grangegorman. The HSE has committed to transferring the Weir Home, including the cemetery, to DCC for ongoing use, but DCC does not want it. Instead, DCC envisages the HSE transferring the Weir Home to an approved housing body for development for emergency accommodation, so what will happen to the Weir Home and the Quaker cemetery is very much up in the air.
Victoria Cross on loan to National Museum of Ireland
A Victoria Cross (VC) awarded to an Irish soldier who served with the Australian Army during the First World War has been loaned to the National Museum of Ireland. It is the first time in more than 60 years that a VC has left Australia to be loaned to a museum. The VC is the highest award for valour in the face of the enemy awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
Sgt Martin O’Meara was awarded the Victoria Cross for his acts of bravery at Pozieres in France on 9–12 August 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, when he repeatedly went out and brought in wounded soldiers under intense artillery and machine-gun fire. His actions saved many lives, and he also volunteered to carry ammunition and bombs through a heavy barrage to a portion of the trenches that was being heavily shelled at the time. Sgt O’Meara, who was born in County Tipperary in 1885 and moved to Australia in 1912, is praised as a true representative of the ANZAC spirit. According to the Australian War Memorial, he was discharged from the army in November 1919. He was later admitted to a psychiatric facility for soldiers suffering from the effects of war, where he remained until his death in December 1935.
The medal will be exhibited in Dublin for twelve months, along with O’Meara’s British War Medal and Victory Medal, returning to Australia in July 2020.
Reliving history
Down County Museum is seeking to recreate history with a project to find out more about the people who lived in the huts at Ballykinlar Camp. The aim is also to build a ‘history hut’, typical of the type that housed soldiers, internees and refugees between 1914 and 1950. Around 100 people have been taking part in the project, organised by Newry, Mourne and Down District Council with the help of Queen’s University Belfast’s Living Legacies team. The group wants to hear from anyone who has information or stories about the camp.
About 4,000 men of the 36th (Ulster) Division were trained there in 1914–15. In 1917 there were 4,000 wounded soldiers housed there, and although the project has a photograph of some of the nurses in 1919, it doesn’t have their names. The team is also looking for artefacts made, or owned, by some of the 2,000 internees held at the camp from all over Ireland during the War of Independence from December 1920 to December 1921. In addition, information is being sought on the identity of the mothers and children, described as Maltese refugees, photographed in the camp during the Second World War. When one of the huts was dismantled in 2012, many artefacts were found underneath it, including a First World War dog-tag belonging to R. Daidson, about whom the group is trying to find out more. Anyone with information about Ballykinlar Camp is asked to contact the museum on 028 4461 5218.
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.