Specific era.? I should have gone on myself after a in honours but was young but stupid
1800-1846. You’re better off reading yourself. Academia is a load of gash.
Prof. Ronan Fanning on with Matt Cooper earlier bigging up his new Dev biography.
He proclaimed Dev to be “Ireland’s greatest statesman”. 
Heard it. Thought it was a fairly balanced and interesting piece.
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Keely John, Killed in Action on the 26th of April 1916 at the General Post Office, educated by the Christian Brothers’ and taught Irish in Dun Laoghaire and he assisted Francis Macken with an Irish class in Saint Enda’s Rathfarnham. He was originally from Rockbrook, Ballyboden, Dublin, lived in Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) and left a widow. John Keely was fatally wounded when, with a group of Volunteers from Rathfarnham, who had arrived late at the GPO, the Volunteers ware attempting to enter the GPO through one of the ground floor windows when they were spotted by a party of Lancers who charged the Volunteers. In the ensuing battle three of the Lancers were killed. John Keely was taken to Jervis Street Hospital where he died early the next day. He is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery.
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Diarmaid Ferriter on Matt Cooper now
The murder of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington during the Rising was one of the most depraved acts ever committed by the British in this country. Regardless of whether he agreed with the actual Rising or not he was a man of wonderfully progressive views who could have made a great contribution to any future Irish state.
http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/13366
Francis Sheehy Skeffington - Remembering the Past
BY SHANE Mac THOMÁIS
On 26 April 1916, the pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington was murdered in Portobello Barracks
Francis Sheehy Skeffington, feminist, pacifist, and idealist, was born in 1878 in Bailieboro, County Cavan. In his formative years, Francis Skeffington, or Skeff as he became known, received his educational instruction from his father, whose views significantly influenced the young boy.
Skeff entered University College with a well-established reputation as a non-conformist. He wore knickerbockers, did not shave, was teetotal and a vegetarian, advocated feminist and pacifist views, and had a habit of circulating petitions in support of his many causes. As a journalist, Skeff often infused his writings with social and political arguments. Like many other contributors to The New Age, Skeff worked against the grain and espoused views that fell under the umbrella of a broadly defined socialism.
James Joyce, with whom he attended school, considered Skeff “the cleverest man at University College” besides himself. Both directed their academic skills toward writing that reflected their nonconformist views. The partnership between Skeff and Joyce, however, did not persist in perfect harmony. Skeff regarded Joyce’s decision to run away with Nora Barnacle as contemptuous of womanhood, and Joyce regarded Skeff as too radical in his feminism.
Skeff advocated women’s equality and had even changed his own last name in fairness to his wife, Hanna Sheehy. Accordingly, upon their marriage, he had altered his surname to Sheehy Skeffington. Together, they fought for women’s suffrage, peaceful resolutions to Ireland’s problems, Home Rule, and the promotion of humanitarianism.
Skeff was involved in a wide number of societies and organisations that reflected his views. He was active in the Irish Women’s Franchise League, the Socialist Party of Ireland, the Young Ireland Branch of the United Irish League, the Incorporated Society of Authors, the Proportional Representation Society, the Irish Anti-Vaccination League, and the Independent Labour Party of Ireland.
Skeffington became editor of the Irish Citizen in 1912, and was a regular contributor to the Manchester Guardian, American Call, and L’Humanité. During the 1913 Lockout he was a member of the Peace Committee, which tried vainly to reconcile the workers and employers. When the Irish Citizen Army was formed in 1913, he was elected one of its vice chairs; he had joined on the understanding that its purpose was to defend workers against the police, and after it became a military organisation he left.
On the outbreak of war he began to campaign against recruitment, was arrested in 1915 and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour, but after six days on hunger strike was released. He then went to America to campaign for the cause of Irish freedom.
A friend of a number of the key figures of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Skeff attempted to convince these men and women to abandon their guns and arm themselves with “weapons of the intellect and will”. His resolve did not break the equal resolve of his fellow patriots to fight the British with violence.
Francis Sheehy Skeffington’s only role in the Easter Rising was as a neutral party. He attempted to prevent the looting of Dublin’s storefronts. A party of British scout troops arrested him and, led by of Captain JC Bowen-Colthurst, took him and two journalists, Thomas Dickson and Patrick MacIntyre, as human shields on a raid. During this raid, Francis and two others witnessed the murder of an unarmed young boy, JJ Coade, by Colthurst. The raiding party then proceeded to the home of Alderman James Kelly, a Unionist, but Colthurst had mistakenly identified him as a Sinn Féin councillor. They destroyed his house with grenades. Another Dublin Councillor, Richard O’Carroll, was also shot by Colthurst.
Just before ten o’clock the next morning, the prisoners were taken out from the cells by Colthurst. As Skeff walked across the yard, he was shot in the back without any warning by a firing squad. As he lay there, the two other editors were marched out also and murdered in cold blood without warning.
Later, a senior British officer discovered what had occurred and, after failing to induce Dublin Castle to act, reported it to the Prime Minister. Colthurst was quickly found guilty but insane. He was confined to Broadmoor criminally insane hospital for one year, then released and allowed to go to Canada, where he died in 1965.
The British Government then offered Hannah Sheehy Skeffington £10,000 compensation. She refused and demanded the full facts be made public.
Dubbed a ‘crank’ for his non-conformist views, Skeffington would often reply: “A crank is a small instrument that makes revolutions.”
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Nice one.
I reckon the location could be on Father Russell Road. There was an old cottage and derelict farmyard similar to that shown on the left of the photo where a small apartment block now stands and the footpath & stone wall were the same as shown until less than 20 years ago.
That would be 100 yards from my house.
Have any comments been attached to the photo elsewhere?
Not sure … I was on Joe Players facebook when I saw it- i’m not on FB myself… Remind me next week and i’ll track it down… I know the guy who posted it - He may have appeared on the Late Late in the 90s calling one of Limerick’s famous authors a liar.
I can deduce the man you refer to.
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Rightly calling one of Limerick’s famous authors a liar.
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This is a cracking little book by @Tim Riggins’s pal Ronan Fanning.
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Oops…
succeeded by David Lloyd George, outmanoeuvred John Redmond, the Home Rule leader, who comes out very poorly of this study in purely political terms: honourable but deluded, “ludicrously naive” on Ulster unionism and regularly misjudging the balance of probabilities on Home Rule.
Taken at face value, it was clear that long before 1910 the British were never going to countenance a situation where Belfast would be ruled from Dublin. The depth of anti Catholic sentiment amongst the higher echelons of British society is quite breathtaking. One might wonder how much of that lingers to this day.
It is a very good book on the period.
Shows the US influence that nudged the Brits to the negotiating table. Perhaps Dev’s grand tour was not wasted (apart from the cash collection of course, handy for launching newspapers)
The Curragh mutiny is also shown as an important turning point
The depth of anti-Irish racism throughout the latter half of the 19th century seems to be largely ignored by Bruton and his acolytes. This was a society where Irish over-population was thought to be a consequence of the potato’s properties as an aphrodisiac. And where its relatively short cultivation time was seen as producing an endemic laziness that was the source of Ireland’s poverty. The British viewed Ireland with every bit as much cartoonish racism as can be seen in their representation of native Africans. And it’s not like it ended with the famine.
This all seems to be ignored by the Redmondite crowd, who genuinely seem to believe that by aping the British and mindlessly (for which read ‘loyally’) supporting all their various causes we could disprove the stereotypes and be seen as something approaching equals. In other words that self-government was something we had to prove to the British we were capable of, as opposed to a natural and inalienable right.
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Someone uploaded the full movie ‘The Treaty’ to youtube. The acting is patchy although Gleeson does a decent job of portraying Collins. The best thing about it is the way in which it captures the minutiae of the negotiations and the key points it centred around. Dev and his external association is as usual portrayed somewhat unsympathetically.
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Such anti Irish sentiment had been ingrained in English minds since our refusal to accept the protestant religion during Tudor times… If not before. Think I threw it up before, but your fellow county man’s book, Human Encumbrances (David P. Nally) is a great read that touches on this.
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WTF you religon