1917 What was on Easter 1917

One year on from the momentous events of the Easter Rising and Dublin was still recovering, the centre of the city still a bomb site. April 9^th was Easter Monday and Dublin was cold, windy with snow and sleet, a far cry from the sunny climate of Easter week. The British authorities had taken no chances and banned all outdoor gathering and processions to ward off trouble. The First World War continued and throughout 1917, Irishmen were still joining up. Many of those arrested after the Rising were still in prison in Britain and Ireland was suffering from rationing, job losses and steep increases in both food and alcohol prices.  Ireland though is changing as the radical nationalism of Sinn Fein begins to replace the moderate Nationalism of Redmond’s Home Rule party.

The main page of the Sunday Independent barely mentioned Ireland and its only reference was to possible nationalisation of the Liquor industry in Britain and Ireland due to wartime conditions. This was also leading to concern as many jobs were being lost at breweries and distilleries especially in Dublin as restrictions on production was imposed. Much of the news columns covered America’s declaration of war on the German Empire on April 6^th. The Easter weekend had been a period of religious reflection with many businesses closed for the Holy Week.

The ban on meetings did not apply to indoor events and so the Dublin GAA annual convention went ahead as planned in the Mansion House. There was plenty of sport to occupy the mind but weather conditions reduced the attendance numbers at most events, which was a bonus on the Monday for theatres and cinemas.

The Grand National went ahead at Faiyhouse where Pay Only picked up the first prize of two hundred pounds. Second place despite all their efforts only won twenty pounds. There was whippet racing at Shelbourne Park, hockey in the Phoenix Park, soccer matches in the Leinster Senior League and club GAA matches at Croke Park and Ringsend Park.

The back page of the Freeman’s Journal on Monday along with actions photos of the Louth v Wexford GAA match was the news that the eldest son of British Prime Minister Lloyd George, Major Richard Lloyd George had got married. But as the year anniversary arrived on Easter Monday the theatre and cinemas were busy.

The D’Oyly Carte theatre company whose run at the Gaiety Theatre had been shut down as events unfolded on O’Connell Street and nearby St Stephen’s Green, were once again opening at the Gaiety with their production of The Gondoliers. The Theatre Royal’s acts on Monday night included Miss Marie Loftus, opera singer, George Forde, ventriloquist and Fred Curran, comedian who would become the opening act for Harry Houdini. The Abbey Theatre was performing G B Shaw’s ‘ John Bulls Other Island’ with Fred Donovan playing the role of Father Keegan. The Empire show was headlined by Miss Victoria Monks, while the Tivoli had Cooper and Lait topping the bill with comedian J B Strain. At the Queens the play ‘Under Two Flags’ was being performed.

Cinema was also growing rapidly although many of the cinemas in the centre of the city had been destroyed during the Rising bombardment. The Grafton Picture House

was showing ‘The Majesty of the Law’ accompanied by a performance by a visiting Russian violinist. The Pillar Picture House had Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Pawnshop’. Across Ireland various Chaplin movies were on Easter Monday. At Mullingar you could have caught his film ‘in two parts’ The Fireman while Police was being shown at the Coliseum in Cork City.

On Easter Monday just before midday a crowd gathered outside the ruins of the GPO and a rebel flag was hoisted on a temporary flagpole at the corner of the building. It was lowered to half mast the stroke of one. As the police attempted to arrest those with flags, they were attacked and stones thrown gathered from the rubble of the street. There were a number of baton charges on O’Connell Street and Eden Quay with skirmishes continuing into the afternoon. The newspapers reported that a heaviy snowfall just after 10pm cleared the street of the ‘rowdies’. The only mention in Monday’s paper of any republican activities was a gathering of about a hundred ladies in Glasnevin where they laid wreaths on the graves of Volunteers killing during the Rising.

One strange quirk of the weekend in Dundalk related to the merging of Irish time and London time in October 1916 when Catholic churches in the town advertised Mass in Irish Time while the Protestant services were advertised in the new time leading to confusion in the town.     

1917 The Banned Movie

British sensitivities were still on heightened alert as 1917 began. In January 1917 a film opened to packed houses in the Rotunda Picture House. ‘Ireland A Nation’ had been shown to and passed in December 1916 by the censor

The film itself had actually first been shown in 1914 and was made by the Gaelic Film Company. A silent movie it told the story of Ireland from the time of the 1798 rebellion, Robert Emmet in 1803 and up to the planned arrival of Home Rule, itself having been put on the back burner in 1914. It used dramatic scenes and screen titles to tell its story.  The film website IMDB described the film as,

‘The story of Ireland and her fight for Home Rule, as seen through the experiences of Father Tom Murphy, a patriot with a price on his head, and the famous Irish leader Robert Emmet.’

The film was produced by Lismore, Co Waterford born Walter McNamara. McNamara who according to the magazine ‘Moving Picture World’ was a vice president of the Gaelic League and one of the founders of the Irish Club in London. He had been educated in Wales before heading to the United States and became involved in the silent movie business.

The movie had its exterior shots filmed on location in Ireland including at Glendalough and the Vale of Avoca in Wicklow. The interior shots were filmed at  Ec-Ko Studios at Kewbridge in England which led to many continuity errors which was perhaps the least of its problems as it was often factually inaccurate as well. It starred Barry O’Brien as Emmet. O’Brien was an actor born in London in 1893, passing away in 1961.  Dominick O’Reilly played the role of Napoleon Bonaparte with supporting cast including Patrick Ennis and Barry Magee. Interviewed by George Blaisdell, McNamara spoke about his time in Ireland making the movie.

“Did I have any difficulties finding locations? Yes in one instance when I tried to find a mud hut and failed. Parnell wiped those out. I did though get some wonderful backgrounds.  We had a fort built by Oliver Cromwell and to this day no real son of the old sod passes it without spitting, that’s the only way they can adequately express his feelings for the builder. Were obstacles placed in my path in the making of Ireland a Nation? Yes indeed by the soldiers. Sometimes we would start a scene with not a soul in sight. It seemed sometimes that in two minutes soldiers would come from everywhere and demand to see a permit. The military tried in every way to handicap us. That’s why we were five months over there. The Nationalist Party gave us unofficial sanction.”

When he arrived in Ireland he was arrested by the British on suspicion of importing arms illegally but these weapons were discovered to be props for his film. McNamara was released but his props were not returned to him.

Even though the censor passed the film, he did so with some cuts to the original. Scenes including the interruption by British soldiers of a hillside Mass being celebrated by a Priest and the execution of Robert Emmet plus some of the intertitles were cut including one that told viewers that ‘a price of £100 dead or alive on the hed of every priest’.

On Wednesday September 23^rd 1914 it had its premiere at the 44^th Street Theatre in New York and played to big audiences in New York and Chicago despite being panned by most critics.

The tag line for the movie on its release was

‘Made in Ireland by Irish Actors, 116 years of Irish History in 5000ft of film’

Shown twice a day, tickets cost the movie goer either 25c or 50c.

A copy was being sent to Ireland for showing in May 1915 but it was on board the Lusitania when it was sunk by a German submarine. The intervention of the Easter Rising prevented another copy arriving and so it was January 8^th 1917 before the Irish public got to see the film although with cuts to the original implemented by the censor. Newspaper advertisements called the film "The Greatest Patriotic Picture Ever Screened".  The Rotunda’s 1500 seats were sold out for two consecutive nights but when reports after the first couple of nights that audiences were cheering the death of British forces in the film’s depiction of the 1798 rebellion and roaring ‘up the Republic’ during some scenes, the military authorities banned the film.

The film would not be seen again in Irish cinemas until 1922 when extra scenes of the aftermath of the Rising, the War of Independence and DeValera’s visit to the United States were included.

Bibliography

 ‘A Special Relationship, Britain Comes to Hollywood’ by Anthony Slide

IMDB

Trinity College Archives

New York Tribune

Silentera.com

The Trials of the 1916 Press Pack - Part Five

Excerpt from the book 'The Easter Rising Press Pack' (c) Eddie Bohan

VII

      

Despite the fact that by now the journalists had been issued with Military Passes by the Officer Commanding the North Wall area that would allow them to travel anywhere in the city by early Friday Wilbur Forrest had only reached the Customs House, a couple of hundred yards away from the hotel. He belied his lack of knowledge of the city when he misidentified it as the Four Courts. By early afternoon the ‘guests’ had tired of their confinement and dire warnings about the lack of security around the city. The British were trying to control what news got out. In the afternoon George Leach who had reached the hotel and Forrest evaded British sentries and rebel barricades and meandered their way to the Shelbourne Hotel on St. Stephen’s Green where they had received reports that a female rebel was involved in the fighting.

Captain Butler informed the Foreign Office on April 30^th

            ‘we do not know where they are or what they are doing’

As they reached the back of the hotel on Kildare Street, the battle was still raging. The British troops on the roof of the fine building were pouring fire across the twenty two acres of the Green towards the Royal College of Surgeons where Michael Mallin and Countess Markievicz commanded the Irish Citizens army battalion who were forced to abandon their trenches in the Green for the security of a building.

Just as they entered the lobby of the hotel a British major in charge was not pleased with their presence once their identity and papers were checked.

            ‘Get the hell out of here’ he boomed

After some five futile minutes arguing their case that they should be allowed out onto the roof to report the story the two reporters departed the same way they had come in and in defeat headed back towards the North Wall.

They watched as the starving of the city followed them as they walked through the back streets and alleyways occasionally pausing to allow nearby gunfire to cease. Their civilian clothes provided them some immunity especially from any sympathetic Sinn Feiners in upper windows who fired on uniformed soldiers as they struggled to regain control of the city. In one doorway as they hid from the bullets whizzing down the street, they noticed a women huddled with her children in the hallway of a tenement block. She looked gaunt and exhausted. With tears flowing down her wrinkled face even though they guessed she was not that old, the woman cried out

            ‘No food, no food, my God when will it end’

The firing stopped and they left the family to their woes. The two men ducked from doorway to doorway make slow but steady progress. When they eventually returned to the hotel there was some good news as bread would now be served with their evening meal. On several corners they were stopped and questioned by sentries and even on occasions despite their press passes they were thoroughly searched.

Early on Friday morning, another bright sunny day in Dublin while Forrest and Leach dodged the rebel bullet and their dangerous route back to the hotel, six of the journalists were taken in an open military truck that offered them very little protection with a military escort to the British army headquarters at Parkgate Street near the Phoenix Park. This group whose military pass was signed by the British officer commanding the North Wall, Major Harold Somerville, included Berry of AP, Thomas Naylor of the Daily Chronicle, Phillips of the Daily Express, Bidwell representing the British based Press Association wire service and Baldwin Herbert, a war photographer with the Central News Agency. 

While the foreign correspondents enjoyed their meal being handed to them in the hotel dining room, they were probably unaware that two fellow journalists had been summarily executed by a British officer in Portobello Barracks on the Tuesday and the British military were intent on covering the killings up. The two men were thirty eight year old Patrick McIntyre editor of the Searchlight newspaper and thirty one year old Thomas Dickson editor of The Eye Opener magazine in Dublin. He two men had been arrested on the same day as the pacifist Francis Sheehy Skeffington.

In the dining room as if to make a point to the complaining Forrest about their unwelcome entertainment the night before, the Colonel entered with a red haired, black moustached prisoner who he claimed was the sniper who caused them so much hardship the night before. Forrest asked the rebel prisoner if he had realised he was shooting into his hotel room. He said he knew exactly what he was doing and was proud to have participated in Ireland’s bid for liberty. He only lamented that he wasn’t more accurate with his Russian made rifle. Feeling assured that night, Forrest and Berry retired to their candle lit room. They ambled about their room safe in the knowledge that they had seen the face of their adversary and now all was under control.      

The two journalists worked for a while on their respective typewriters writing their version of events, sharing their stories, Forrest having been in the thick of the action in St Stephens Green and writing about the female rebel and how she is reported to have shot a policeman dead in the early hours of the rebellion and Berry was recounting the meeting in the Vice Regal lodge. They were just about to retire to their beds when a bullet crashed through what little glass panels there was in their bedroom window and missed Forrest by just a couple of life saving inches. Immediately once again they grabbed their mattresses from the bed and settled on the floor under the window sill.

By Saturday morning the British noose around the rebels was tightening and the rebellion was crumbling. Later that evening the first of the rebel prisoners following Patrick Pearse’s surrender were marched down the North Wall passed the journalists hotel. They were to be transported in cattle ships to England and Wales for internment. Forrest reported

‘They were the rank and file of the succession movement. Here some of the low brow of the slums of Dublin indiscriminately mixed with their leaders. But standing out like brilliant lights in the slow moving columns were idealist type, the intellectual, the College professor, the patriot and the martyr glorying in his captivity.’

Percival Phillips described the prisoner movement

‘the people in the street watched the prisoners pass without any demonstration save an old woman spat at them and called them dirty dogs’

(Despatches from the World)

That morning a group of them were taken by motorcar through the disturbed streets of the city via the North Circular Road into the Phoenix Park arriving at the Vice Regal lodge and a press briefing from the King’s representative in Ireland the Viceroy Ivor Guest, Lord Wimbourne. Included in that group was Berry from AP and the INS correspondent Sidney Cave.

Following the meeting in the Vice Regal Lodge with the press pack Captain Butler reported that

            ‘the US journalists heckled poor Birrell and the Lord Lieutenant with alarming acrimony.’

VIII

So how did they report it to the press Stateside? Robert Berry of AP, whose piece was carried by the Bismarck Daily Tribune of Dakota on April 30th 1916 reported

‘Dublin, April 29.—-Baron Wimbourne, lord lieutenant, of Ireland, expressed to the Associated Press at the Vice Regal lodge today, the assurance that, the seditions movement, would be suppressed in the course of a few days. The Viceroy was full of praise for the loyalty displayed by the great majority of private people and consid­ers the momentary success gained and the damage done by the rebels as small, when viewed in connection with the surprise of the outbreak and the evident preparation made for it. The country outside of Dublin, ex­cept for a few isolated places, has, he declared, remained peaceful.

Baron Wimbourne, when requested to give an account of what had happened, since the Irish rebels had pro­claimed an Irish republic last Mon­day afternoon, said:
"The outbreak began Monday morn­ing at about 11:30 o'clock. About that time information was received that Dublin had been attacked, St. Steven's green occupied and the post office seized by the rebels. Telephon­ic communication with the Curragh camp was immediately obtained by the authorities, and the reserve troops there were brought into Dublin that night and the following morning.

Sniping Operations
"On Tuesday morning all the re­inforcements we had called for from Curragh had reached Dublin, and since that moment the rebels have not attempted anything except snip­ing from certain houses and locali­ties. It is so easy for them to aban­don houses by back doors and away to other advantageous positions. The military cannot distinguish the rebels from other citizens. Some­ times they reach the houses after hid­ing their rifles and cartridges and mingle with the ordinary inhabitants. As a matter of fact, the general run of people do not sympathize with them. In the early stages of the revolt, the Sinn-Feiners fired on the mem­bers of the fire brigade, but later we cleared the area around the fires and the fires and the firemen were able to extinguish the flames. Regarding the situation in the provinces on the whole, it is very good.

No German Supplies.
"As to the landing of Sir Roger Casement.'' said Baron Wimbourne, "that, was arranged in Germany with the connivance of the Sinn-Feiners. On the night of his arrest, a motor car upset in the river and the occu­pants who were drowned both wore Sinn-Feiner badges. The Germans do not seem to have supplied the rebels with arms which are of all descriptions, including fouling pieces. A proclamation issued by the rebels announcing the foundation of the Irish republic, was signed by seven persons, including Clark. Connolly, Pearce and Mac Dermott."

Post office Burned.
Field Marshal Viscount' French, commander of the Home forces, re­ports that the general post office at Dublin, which has been the principal stronghold of the Sinn-Feiners, has been burned down. Connolly, one of the leaders of the rebels, is reported to have been killed. Many of the rebels have been tak­en prisoners and the move in Dublin is on the verge of collapse. In the rest of Ireland, the situation is gen­erally satisfactory.

The newspaper added though under a piece titled ‘Rebellion Not Quelled.’

‘Official statements were lacking during the day, regarding the situ­ation in Dublin. New dispatches re­ported the military gaining the ascend­ency, but with the rebels still in pos­session of important points, all of which, however, were declared to be commanded by the regulars. Fires of a serious nature have broken out, according to the current telegrams, and street fighting is continuing.’