COUNTDOWN TO 2016: Release of prisoners, Christmas 1916
Published in Issue 6 (November/December 2016), Reviews, Volume 24By Joseph E.A. Connell Jr
The Rising had hardly been the work of a massive conspiracy, but the British acted as if it were. British security forces arrested 3,430 Irish men and 79 women, of whom 1,841 were sent to Britain and interned there. These were substantial figures in relation to the scale of the outbreak, though most (about 2,700) had been released by early August 1916. Meanwhile, those thought to have organised the insurrection had been held back in Ireland for trial. These mass arrests and the increased military presence portrayed Ireland as a country in the control of an oppressive and alien government that could only rule by force.
Since the Rising, MPs had questioned whether the mass internments were effective or were counter-productive. That the British government wanted to release the prisoners by the end of 1916 is clear from the Members’ Questions of the time as recorded in Hansard. In addition to showing the great wit and argument of those sessions, the fact that many MPs felt that prisoner releases were long overdue is clear.
Above: Crowds at Westland Row railway station, Dublin, welcoming home released internees, Christmas 1916. (NLI)
Mr Byrne: asked the Home Secretary if any new conditions have been agreed on as regards the treatment of the Irish prisoners of war; if they have been now eight months imprisoned; whether he proposes to release them at an early date; and, if so, when?
Sir G. Cave: I am not in a position to add anything to the answers given by my predecessor and by the Chief Secretary for Ireland on this subject.
Mr Byrne: Having regard to the fact that the blundering and stupidity of his predecessor in the past have been the means of the right hon. Gentleman occupying his present position, will he not say whether the blundering and stupidity will now cease?
Mr Speaker: I should like to see that question on the Paper.
Mr Byrne: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think that the time has come for the release of all prisoners?
Mr Byrne: asked the Home Secretary if his attention has been drawn to the admissions of Sergeant-Major Newstead, when under cross-examination at the court-martial of the fifteen Irish prisoners at Frongoch; if Sergeant-Major Newstead admitted that the commandant stated that he would have discipline if he had nothing but dead bodies in the camp; if these statements are deeply resented in Ireland and are likely to cause further trouble in the camp; and whether the commandant has yet been proved to be perfectly sane by a doctor?
Sir G. Cave: The answer I shall give to the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr Byrne) I think answers that question. I have asked to see the evidence taken by the Military Court, and am making special inquiries as to the conditions at Frongoch …
Mr Ginnell: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has yet come to a decision with reference to release or amelioration of the condition of all or any of the 500 untried Irish prisoners now being starved at Frongoch; and especially whether the 350 of them now in special punishment in the insanitary [sic] south camp, and denied visits, letters, and comforts sent to them by friends, will be returned to the north camp for Christmas, and allowed to receive parcels from friends outside?
Sir G. Cave: It is not true that anyone has been starved, and the reply I have given the hon. Gentleman will cover the remainder of the question.
Mr Lynch: Can there not be a general amnesty of these prisoners, and could not that have been undertaken months ago?
By the end of 1916 the British authorities had determined to release most of the rebels, and these were home in Ireland by Christmas. They returned to a riotous welcome, a complete turn-around from the send-off they had been given by the populace eight months earlier on the way to prison. The tide of public opinion had clearly changed.
Joseph E.A. Connell Jr is the author of Who’s who in the Dublin Rising (Wordwell Books). His new book, Michael Collins’s Dublin, will be published in early 2017 (also by Wordwell).
This column will continue until the end of 2024 under the title ‘100 YEARS AGO’.
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.