Unlikely Rebels (17 page)

Years later, Countess Markievicz was asked when she had decided to become a Catholic. She had no problem identifying the time: it was when she knelt down with the rebels saying the rosary in the College of Surgeons in 1916.
[18]

Tuesday brought with it several tasks. Between the College and Grafton Street was a row of shops, the overhead apartments of which were rented. Their occupants had fled, and Commandant Mallin's men broke through the walls of these adjoining buildings, stationing men on guard in each. One of Nellie's jobs was to reach them with food – not an easy task because, as she explained, the floor levels differed and often there was quite a drop into the next house, especially difficult when carrying food. In the heat of attack, one young rebel was found, white-faced and red-eyed from lack of sleep and very hungry from a twenty-four-hour lack of food. When they fed him, he collapsed into sleep on the spot. Two country boys had subsisted on nothing but plum jam for two days until Nellie reached them. There were mouth-watering accounts of a French pastry shop nearby which was never reached, and there are glimpses, here and there, in various accounts of the siege, of Nellie Gifford not only supplying tea, scones and porridge, but also furnishing with spirits the First Aid post run by Nora O'Daly of Cumann na mBan. Acquiring food was a problem. The wives of two Citizen Army men called to see if their husbands were there or at the GPO. The Countess gave them money to buy food and they returned later, laden with a very welcome variety.

Carrying dispatches, sometimes verbal, sometimes written, was a common job. One such mission involved Nellie and Chris Caffrey being sent to the Jacob's garrison to get needed ammunition. Their main fear was not the British army but the ‘Allowance women' who got one shilling per day if their men were at the front and who wanted no noble-minded patriotism to rob them of what was, in some cases, their drink money. On reaching Jacob's, through heckling groups of these women, they saw Major MacBride, husband of Maud Gonne, at an upper window. This man, who had fought with the Boers in their war with England, had wandered into their Rising but was delighted to stay to oppose a familiar enemy. He pointed humorously to his slouch hat and asked for their approval. The men had just been issued with them. All the doors of the factory were closed so Nellie and Chris were hauled up through a window. Thomas MacDonagh went to get ready the required ammunition, and Nellie also asked for a tin of biscuits as a bribe to ensure their safe return.

Inside [Jacob's] we rested while awaiting the reply to dispatch [ammunition]. We unloaded our news re our stronghold and heard their story. Máire Ní Shúilaigh [Abbey Theatre actress] was there. It was agony to Commandant MacDonagh, who was the soul of chivalry, to let two girls go out there alone to face those Separation Women [they had attacked a dispatch carrier earlier that night]. Someone engaged his attention and we gave him the slip and stole out of the factory. The Separation Women were waiting for us like a pack of wolves and started to scream ‘Sinn Féiners' at us and surged up to us in a threatening way. Chris' coolness made them doubt their judgement for a moment. She saw their hesitation and calmly handed them the biscuits which Commandant MacDonagh had given us, insinuating that that was the object of our midnight visit to Jacob's. Nevertheless they followed us like some awful tidal wave. We took to the road and I dared not go on the path lest they suspect our destination. My knees wobbled and it was only when we were level with the side door of the College of Surgeons that we dived over and panted through the keyhole the password for the day – ‘Success'.
[19]

Incredibly, once inside, Chris Caffrey's comment on the episode was, ‘Where in the name of fortune did Commandant MacDonagh rustle all those red-haired Cumann na mBan from?'
[20]

Most of Nellie's descriptions of her service in the St Stephen's Green garrison were light-hearted, the only exception being on the occasion one night when, candle in hand, she found herself in a room that contained embalmed parts of the human body. It was, of course, not so surprising in a building calling itself the Royal College of Surgeons.
[21]

Notes

The trim, military uniforms of today's Irish army bear no resemblance to the scorched, soot-stained, assorted garments of Pearse's GPO garrison in 1916. For all that, some of the weary, embattled ones making their way out of the doomed GPO in their conglomerate clothing, would be among the first members of the Irish National Army, and the standard cap badge of that army today, embodying a sunburst and a reminder of the legendary Fianna, was the same one introduced by Professor Eoin MacNeill for his Irish Volunteers in 1914, based on his Celtic studies.

Pearse's exhausted men, who had sniped all week from windows and high roofs or burrowed their way from building to building, were now ordered to make a dash for it, in small groups and at sporadic intervals, to the comparative safety of Henry Place, parallel to Sackville Street and leading circuitously to Moore Street, where the military council eventually holed up in Nos 15 and 16. The last act of Pearse, Clarke and The O'Rahilly had been to free their prisoners from the basement, where they had been housed for safety from the battered roof and its falling timbers. There is a street now called after The O'Rahilly, close to where that wealthy head of his clan was killed as he led a small group to Parnell Street.

It was being confronted by the devastation of the streets around them and reluctance to lose more lives that persuaded Pearse to surrender. The badly wounded Connolly was not enthusiastic about giving up. They had discussed the possibility of retreating through Jervis Street, but he agreed eventually to allow the intrepid Nurse Elizabeth O'Farrell, under a white flag, to initiate the surrender. That lady's extraordinary bravery, her coolness as she walked towards the enemy ranks, reflected the dedication of the women involved. Shamefully, the figure of Nurse O'Farrell was airbrushed out in the familiar photograph of Pearse surrendering.

The Four Courts garrison surrendered immediately after the GPO evacuation. The Jacob's garrison, as well as those at Bolands Mills, under Éamon de Valera, and the South Dublin Union, under Ceannt, were still well entrenched in their positions when the surrender order arrived. MacDonagh, now in overall charge with the arrest of the headquarters' staff, was reluctant to surrender. Brigadier General Lowe went out of his way to encourage him to do so, perhaps influenced not only by his regard for Pearse but also by the presence of a remarkable Anglo-Irish officer, Captain Henry de Courcy Wheeler, whose neighbours in Robertstown, County Kildare, including the Volunteers, had given him an affectionate farewell on his way to the trenches in 1914. Lowe offered his car to two Capuchin friars, Fathers Aloysius and Augustine, who reached Jacob's and persuaded MacDonagh how essential it was to obey Pearse and Connolly's surrender order. He agreed to meet Brigadier General Lowe at St Patrick's Park, which was as near as Lowe's car could safely reach, and at that meeting MacDonagh explained that it would be advisable for him to contact Éamonn Ceannt personally at the South Dublin Union. Lowe agreed, and MacDonagh honoured his promise by returning to St Patrick's Park at 3 p.m. and formally handing over his belt and revolver in the age-old ceremony of surrender. He had persuaded a reluctant Ceannt to do likewise.

Éamon de Valera had awaited MacDonagh's decision. He had shown himself a very able commandant, hoisting his flag on a building close to his garrison so that the firing from the British gunboat,
Helga
, was deflected there, but now he, too, surrendered.

The personnel at the Royal College of Surgeons were also still well entrenched in their positions when the surrender order came. But it was obeyed, again reluctantly. Nellie Gifford found fresh towels, and the dishevelled men cleaned themselves up before the doors opened and they followed their two commandants to Captain Wheeler, waiting outside to receive their surrender. Countess Markievicz refused the captain's offer of a lift to prison, saying she preferred to walk at the head of her men. She kissed her Mauser before handing it over to him. Then, looking defeat in the eye and turning it on its head, she remarked: ‘We have done better than Emmet anyhow.'
[1]

The women were sent first to Ship Street Station, from there to Richmond Barracks, and finally to Kilmainham Gaol, where they were lodged four to a cell. The Countess was placed in a cell on her own from where she was sent to England. Nellie wound up in a cell with three others. For the first time in her life – but not the last – Isabella Gifford, niece of Sir Frederick Burton, had a jailbird daughter.

Not all the military dealt with their prisoners as honourably as Brigadier General Lowe, both at the headquarters surrender by Pearse and in his later negotiations with MacDonagh. Nevertheless, sympathetic discretion was shown by other British officers, some of whom quietly sent the youngest, teenage Volunteers home to their parents with nothing more than a dismissive cuff on the cheek. Others were vicious in their behaviour. On 26 April 1916, the day on which Seán Heuston's surrendered garrison was treated with contempt, a far more heinous act was committed on three unarmed civilians at Portobello Barracks. Captain Bowen Colthurst ordered the killing, without trial, of three civilians, Francis Sheehy Skeffington, Thomas Dickson and Patrick J. McIntyre. Sheehy Skeffington was a pacifist and had been trying to stop looting.

Another military crime was committed at 177 North King Street, a licensed premises owned by a Mrs O'Rourke. Two bodies were discovered, fully dressed and buried twelve inches below the cellar floor. One was the mutilated remains of Patrick Bealon, foreman at the premises, and the other that of James Healy, a clerk at Jameson's Distillery. At the subsequent inquest on Patrick Bealon, Lieutenant Colonel H. Taylor, commanding the 2nd/6th South Staffords, denied that his troops were culpable. The jury found otherwise:

We find that the said Patrick Bealon died from shock and haemorrhage, resulting from bullet wounds inflicted by a soldier, or soldiers, in whose custody he was, an unarmed and unoffending prisoner. We consider that the explanation given by the military authorities is very unsatisfactory, and we believe that if the military authorities had any inclination they could produce the officer in charge.
[2]

A similar verdict was passed in the case of James Healy. The two victims were neither armed nor in the Volunteers – and neither were the other eleven men and two teenagers who were killed by Taylor's men, who went on a murderous rampage in the area.
[3]

In the limited ground space outside the Rotunda, where the Volunteers had been founded so auspiciously three years before, upward of 400 prisoners from the GPO and the Four Courts, including some women, were packed together. It was a chilly night, and they did not receive as much as a drink of water for thirty hours. Even before he became really drunk, the officer in charge, Captain Lee Wilson, behaved atrociously towards them. He called his prisoners animals and would not allow them to get up to relieve themselves. He is said to have contemptuously snatched Joseph Plunkett's will, leaving everything to Grace, from his pocket, sneering that it was proof that the rebels knew they would be defeated. He knocked the walking stick away from Seán Mac Diarmada, and he had Thomas Clarke, the senior leader, stripped to the buff so that he could be searched, during which search he passed derogatory remarks. The veteran Clarke, survivor of the notorious imprisonment meted out to the Fenians, was stoical.
[4]

You cannot indict a whole army for the vicious behaviour of some of its members, and the surrenders effected ‘by the book' must balance the others. It should be remembered also that the women involved were not subjected to any indignities, beyond a few ribald remarks. Most of the GPO ladies found their extremely hazardous way home, but Winnie Carney had refused to leave the wounded Connolly. In fact, Winnie recorded that on reaching Richmond Barracks, chilled to the bone from their ordeal at the Rotunda, the women were shown great kindness by Captain Robert Barton. She asked him if they could have tea, and when he had it brought to them with it were also very welcome ‘sticky buns'.
[5]
It was to be their last food and drink until the next day. In fact, this Captain Barton was so taken with the spirit and thinking of the rebels that he later embraced their freedom ethos and became a Sinn Féin delegate at the Treaty talks in 1921. Nor was he the only convert from the British side.

Sometimes a junior officer's kind intent was overruled, as when Lieutenant Lindsay assured Ned Daly at the Four Courts that Dr Brigid Lyons and the other young women would be taken home. His superiors decided otherwise, and the women were jailed.

Notes