Ireland’s funeral
traditions have been well documented and in modern times some of Ireland’s most
famous citizens have been honoured with very large funerals. Today the ceremony
and reverence displayed at a state funeral is often conveyed on television and
with access to instant media, the large funerals of the latter part of the 19th
century and early 20th century have become less common. This is a
list of thirty of the largest funerals ever seen in Ireland.
To attract an attendance
of over 15,000 at your funeral in 1729 was a remarkable achieved both to your
status and the efforts of those to attend in an era when transport options were
limited. This though is the esteem to which William Connolly, known as The
Speaker Connolly was held when he died in November 1729. Born in Ballyshannon
the son of an innkeeper, Connolly rose to become the Speaker of the Irish House
of Commons and a popular politician. Once in charge of the Revenue
Commissioners though his position as the Speaker he was the de facto PM in Ireland.
His legacy was to build the impressive Castletown House as the family residence
which can still be seen today.
In the mid-19th
century with a growing sense of Irish nationalism in the face of the worst
famine to hit the country, the funeral of the nationalist Daniel O’Connell was
bound to draw a large crowd. O’Connell, after whom the main thoroughfare of our
capital is named, died in August 1847 in Genoa, Italy and his body returned to
Ireland for burial. According to the London Times 100,000 lined the streets of
the city to bid farewell to the native of County Kerry.
In March 1861, the
Evening Post reported that on a desperately wet day, over 20,000 people
attended the funeral of Captain John Boyd O’Neill. O’Neill was Captain of HMS
Ajax and had lost his life heroically saving others as a storm raged in the
Irish Sea. He was buried in St. Patrick’s Catederal.
In November 1861,
Fermanagh born Young Irelander Terence Bellew McManus died in San Francisco and
his body transported to Ireland for burial. He had taken part in the 1848
Rebellion and having been convicted was sent to Van Diemen’s land. He escaped
from Australia after three years and made his way to the United States. His
funeral to Glasnevin cemetery according to the ‘The Nation’ newspaper was
watched by over a quarter of a million people on the streets of Dublin. Of that
total 50,000 marched behind the coffin as it made its way through the city.
When the Most Reverend
Daniel O’Connor, the Bishop of Saldes died at the Augustinian Friary at John’s
Lane Church in July 1867, fifty thousand Dubliners lined the cortege route from
Thomas Street to Glasnevin Cemetery. Born in 1786, he joined the priesthood in
1810, he spent many years on the missions in India. He returned to Ireland
suffering from ill health caused by the extreme tropical conditions to continue
as a popular bishop in Dublin for over twenty years. These years included the
worst of the famine years and the political upheaval caused by the growing
rebellious movement across Ireland against British rule. He passed at the age
of 81.
In May
1876, The Nation newspaper reported that a crowd in excess of 20,000 ‘sombre
souls’ lined the funeral route for Joseph P Ronayne in his native Cork City.
Born in 1822 the son of a Cork glass maker he made his name as a civil engineer
especially through the expansion of the railways in Munster. He was elected as
a Cork member of Parliament for the Home Rule League in a 1872 bye election,
retaining the seat in the 1874 General Election. He died in Queenstown and in
an obituary he was described as being ‘endeared by all, by a noble generosity,
a genuine spirit of self-abnegation, a modesty that could conseal neither his
remarkable powers not the brillancy of his wit. A gracious manner, open handed
charity and a kindly heart.’
In October 1891, Dublin
would witness one of the biggest funerals ever seen in the city, even to this
day. Even at the relatively young age of 45 at his death, Charles Stewart
Parnell left a lasting impression on his nation and a legacy that helped
Ireland achieve independence. Born in Avondale, Co. Wicklow he was elected to
the British House of Commons in April 1875 as a nationalist MP. His Home Rule
party, The Irish Parliamentary Party struggled for the morale high ground with
revolutionary nationalists like the IRB but his party in 1885 held the balance
of power in Westminster and his support of the Liberal Government was
conditional on Home Rule being adopted for Ireland. At the height of his
success, a personal scandal when it was revealed that he was having a longtime
affair with a married woman Kitty O’Shea and had fathered a number of his
children irrevocably damaged his reputation and career. When he died in 1891
after a gruelling election campaign when he was already in ill health took his
life, nearly a quarter of a million people lined the streets of cold snowy Dublin
to bid farewell to the Irish patriot and statesman.
In a new century in March
1903, one of the old guard of Irish nationalism Charles Gavan Duffy died in
France. His body was returned to Ireland where the Freeman’s Journal reported
in excess of 20,000 on the streets of the capital to watch his coffin being
transported from the docks to the Pro Cathedral and onwards to Glasnevin
Cemetery.
One of the biggest
funerals ever witnessed as an orchestrated piece of nationalist theatre. When
the elderly leader of the IRB, Jerimiah O’Donovan Rossa died in New York, his
body was transported back to Ireland in July 1915 for a stage managed funeral
to Glasnevin which will historically be remembered for Patrick Pearse’s
graveside oration which included the famous quotation, ‘they have left us our Fenian
dead, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace’. The rallying cry was the opening
verbal shots of the 1916 Easter Rising. Twenty thousand marched behind the
hearse from the Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street to Glasnevin with the
streets lined by over 150,000 according to Irish Independent and the Freeman’s
Journal.
As the green fields of
France turned crimson red with blood, a German U boat off the coast of County
Cork caught the ocean liner The Lusitania in its torpedo crosshairs. On May 5th
1915, as she reached the conclusion of her cross Atlantic crossing from New
York to Liverpool with 1,962 guests and crew on board she was sunk by German torpedoes.
1,198 people lost their lives in the icy waters off the Cork Coast. Bodies that
were recovered were taken to Queenstown (Cobh) where a mass grave was prepared
long before a DNA service could identify those who had no personal belongings
to repatriate them to their families. According to British Pathe over 10,000
lined the route as one hundred and forty-eight unidentified victims were taken
to a small cemetery the crowds made up of locals and military personal based in
Cork.
The most deaths the
following year was those executed in the aftermath of the Rising but they were
not accorded a normal burial instead buried by the British in then unmarked graves.
In September 1917 more than forty thousand lined Dublin streets in defiance of
the British authorities to witness the funeral of Thomas Ashe who had died
following complications in Mountjoy Prison when he was force fed by the prison
authorities after being on hunger strike. The British in their clumsy attempts
not to create another martyr for Irish nationalism offered the perfect patriot
for a huge funeral on the streets of battle damaged Dublin.
Outside the capital, in
Cork in November 1920 the Mayor of Ireland’s second largest city Terence McSwiney
died on Hunger Strike at Brixton prison in England after 74 days on strike.
Future Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh who was in London at the time of
McSwiney’s death remarked, ‘a nation that has such citizens will never
surrender’. After the murder of his
mayoral predecessor Thomas McCurtain on March 20th 1920, McSwiney
was elected mayor. He was arrested by the British military forces on August 12th
and sentenced to two years in prison following a court martial charged with
having seditious material. Thirty thousand filed passed his coffin at St.
George’s Catederal in London. Fearing a massive Republican funeral in Dublin,
the British forced his family to take his body directly to Cork. Despite heavy
and at times brutal security arrangements put in place by the British, over
15,000 attended the funeral in Cork where McSwiney was laid to rest in St.
Finbar’s Cemetery.
The politician who would
deliver the graveside oration for Terence McSwiney would be the recipient of
the next big funeral in Dublin in August 1922, when Arthur Griffith died. Griffith
had headed the delegation that attended Downing Street for the Treaty
negotiations at the end of the War of Independence. He worked tirelessly and
even though ill continued a heavy workload leading to his collapse and death on
a Dublin street on August 12th 1922. According to various newspapers
reports of the day over 100,000 people lined the streets of Dublin from the Pro
Catederal to Glasnevin cemetery four days later. One of the most high profile
mourners was Michael Collins who would replace Griffith’s as the de facto head
of state.
Collins himself morbidly
would be the next big funeral in Dublin. Ten days after Griffith’s death, while
touring his native County Cork, Michael Collins’s motorcade was ambushed near
Beal na Blath outside Macroom. In the midst of a bloody Civil War, the Free
State forces transported Collins’s body via ship from Cork to Dublin where his
body lay in state at City Hall. The funeral mass was celebrated by the
Archbishop of Dublin Rev. Byrne along with 300 priests. A gun carraige drawn by
six black horses carried the coffin and fourteen further cars were required for
the wreaths. To allow as many as possible to witness the occasion, the cortege
left the Pro Cathederal and headed down Gardiner Street, over Butt Bridge onto
Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street), around Merrion Square, onto St
Stephens Green, down Grafton Street, through O’Connell Street and onto
Glasnevin via Dorset Street taking over four hours to pass any one point on the
route. A half a million people paid their respects to the fallen leader
followed by a graveside oration delivered by General Richard Mulcahy before
internment.
In April 1932, one of the largest funerals for
a woman took place when the mother of the executed 1916 leader Patrick Pearse,
Margaret passed away. Having lost two sons to the executioner’s bullets in
1916, Patrick and William, Margaret continued to be a political activist for
the rest of her life. In 1921 she was elected as a Sinn Fein MP but having
taken the anti-treaty side during the subsequent debates in Dail Eireann she
left with DeValera. She helped DeValera found Fianna Fail and also strived to
keep open her son’s school St. Enda’s in Rathfarnham raising thousands to keep
it going. Her funeral, soon after Fianna
Fail and DeValera had taken power for the first time was a propaganda coup for
the new Government. An estimated 40,000 filed passed her coffin laying in state
in City Hall and over 100,000 lined the four mile route from Westland Row to
Glasnevin where DeValera delivered the graveside oration.
One of the saddest
funerals in Dublin was that of three firemen Thomas Nugent, Peter McArdle and
Robert Malone of Tara Street station who were killed as they fought a fire on
Pearse Street in October 1936. Led by Eamon DeValera and members of the
Government, along with the families of the fallen firefighters and colleagues
from Dublin, Ireland and further afield, the cortege travelled from the
con-celebrated Mass in Westland Row to Glasnevin watched by what the Irish
Press estimated as 100,000 people but other sources put the total nearer
40,000, still an impressive turn out in tribute. A volley of shot was fired
over the graves by colleagues of Robert Malone, who had served alongside
DeValera in Boland’s Mill during the Easter Rising.
In November 1960, Ireland
was taking its place amongst the nations of the world and lending its weight to
UN peacekeeping missions around the world but events in the Congo would
according to the Irish Independent bring 300,000 Irish citizens onto the
streets of Dublin to pay tribute to 9 Irish soldiers murdered at the Niemba
ambush in the Congo. Those who died were Kevin Gleeson and Michael McGuinn from
Carlow, Hugh Gaynor, Peter Kelly, Liam Dougan, Matthew Farrell, Thomas Fennell,
Anthony Browne and Gerard Killeen all from Dublin.
In the days before the
Easter Rising, former British diplomat Roger Casement was arrested for treason
for his contacts with the Germans as he attempted to land arms off the coast of
Kerry. He was secretly transported to London where he was tried and executed at
Penteville Prison. In accordance with most execution he was buried within the
prison walls in an unmarked grave but as relations between the two islands
thawed, Roger Casement’s body was returned to Ireland for burial at Glasnevin
cemetery in March 1965. According to the Evening Herald 30,000 lined the
streets of the capital as the cortege passed the GPO on its way to the
northside burial grounds.
Dublin born Sean T.
O’Kelly became Ireland’s second President in June 1945 and served two terms. A
veteran of the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, he served in various
roles including Sinn Fein’s envoy to the US after the Civil War and in various
Fianna Fail cabinets after 1932. He passed away in November 1966 with the Irish
Press reporting 30,000 lining the streets of the capital to bid farewell to the
former President.
As 1969 arrived the
troubles in Northern Ireland intensified and in September 1971 the death of a
fourteen year schoolgirl shot dead in Derry brought 10,000 out onto the streets
of the Maiden city for her funeral. Annette McGavigan was caught in crossfire
between an IRA unit and British soldiers near her home in the Bogside. She
became the 100th civilian to be killed since the start of the
troubles and her memory remembered in the ‘Death of Innocence’ mural in the
Bogside where she is depicted in her green school uniform. Civil rights leaders
including Ivan Cooper and John Hume attended the large funeral.
One of the survivors of
the Easter Rising and a man at the heart of Irish history for over a quarter of
a century Eamonn DeValera died aged 92 years in August 1975. His wife of 65
years passing away earlier the same year. Having cheated the executioner bullet
after the Rising, he would go on to lead the anti-treaty forces during the
Civil War and in its aftermath found a new party Fianna Fail who came to power
in 1932. He led the Government until 1959 when he became President of Ireland
serving two terms in Aras An Uachtarain. Over the first weekend of September,
his casket lay in State at St Patrick’s Hall in Dublin Castle and according to
the Irish Examiner more than 100,000 filed through the great hall to pay their
respects. More than 100,000 lined the streets of Dublin as the cortege
travelled up O’Connell Street passed the GPO and onto Glasnevin for burial.
One of the few sportsmen
to make the list is the great Cork hurler Christy Ring. When he died in March
1979 he was a legend in the GAA. Just 58 years old when he suffered a massive
heart attack as he walked along the streets of his beloved city, Christy’s
prowess as a centre forward earned him nine Munster titles, eight All Ireland
titles and eighteen railway cups hurling with Munster. In 2000 he was named as
the right wing forward on the team of the millennium. The former Taoiseach and
fellow Cork native Jack Lynch said upon his passing
‘As long as young men will match their
hurling skills against each other on Ireland's green fields, as long as young
boys swing their camáns for the sheer thrill of the feel and the tingle in
their fingers of the impact of ash on leather, as long as hurling is played the
story of Christy Ring will be told. And that will be forever.’
Two years later saw one
of the biggest funerals ever seen on the island in May 1981. Following sixty
six days on hunger strike at the Maze prison also known as the H-Blocks, twenty
seven year old Bobby Sands died. During his strike and incasaration he was
elected as a British member of parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Sands
became the first of ten Reublican prisoners to die during that period as the
Brotosh Government refused to give into the demands of the prisoners who were
seeking political status rather than. Over 150,000 people lined the streets of
Belfast as Sands was buried in the Republican plot at Milltown Cemetery.
In June 1996, as IRA
subversives attempted to rob a cash in transit van in Adare, Co Limerick, the
gang opened fire on two Garda special branch detectives who were protecting the
delivery. Garda Jerry McCabe was shot dead, His funeral was attempted by in
excess of 40,000 shocked locals lined the funeral route through Limerick City
with mourners led by his wife Anne. Four IRA men were subsequently convicted of
manslaughter of the Garda.
The sudden passing of
motor cycling superstar Joey Dunlop following an accident in Estonia drew in
excess of 50,000 to the small town of Ballymoney Co. Antrim. It took the hearse
bearing the sports stars body who had made the famous Isle of Man TT races over an hour to travel the single mile from
his family home to the local church for the funeral service.
