Luke Dineen will discuss the Cork General Lockout of 1909 at the Spirit of Mother Jones summer school on Saturday afternoon 29th July at 2:00 pm at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon.
Luke Dineen receiving a presentation from Ann Piggott of the Cork Mother Jones Committee in 2019.
In 1909 in America, Mother Jones was extremely active. The Miners’ Magazine, publication of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) stated in 1909 quoting from her speech in South Dakota stated “Mother Jones in her speeches in the Black Hills wore no gloves but rapped Capitalism with bare knuckles”. That year also she helped striking shirtwaist workers in New York City and Mexican revolutionaries jailed in the US.
Here in her native Cork, throughout 1909 there was growing unrest in the Labour movement with thousands of workers either on strike or locked out of their jobs. Small local trade disputes multiplied, the City Docks quarrels of 1908 again came to the boil, James Larkin’s new Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) was at the centre of several disputes as it had attracted large numbers of recruits from among various workforces in the city.
By May 1909, the employers in the city formed the Cork Employers’ Federation (CEF) and appointed Belfast born, Sir Alfred Dobbin (owner of the Imperial Hotel and Palace Theatre and many other businesses) as chairman. Described by Luke Dineen as “Cork’s answer to William Martin Murphy” and “widely loathed”, Dobbin’s inability to negotiate resulted in a refusal to resolve disputes as more and more workers were locked out.
Sir Alfred Dobbin.
Cork Chamber of Commerce 1918.
Through the months of June and July 1909, Cork was the scene of violent street battles and baton charges by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). Anyone wearing an ITGWU union badge was targeted. On the night of 20th June, twenty people attended the North Infirmary hospital suffering from head wounds as a result of the street battles.
The end result was a total defeat for the workers, the recently formed ITGWU branch collapsed. Inter union conflict with the Workers’ Union,
the ruthlessness of the employers and RIC and the opposition from the local press ensured a comprehensive victory for the employers. Many workers were left destitute or in prison and their families in poverty.
In the later 1913 Dublin Lockout, Cork born William Martin Murphy acted in a similar manner to Dobbin and the Dublin Employers’ Federation (founded in 1911) adopted the same approach as the CEF. Murphy had the advantage of actually owning the Irish Independent newspaper thus ensuring the support of the press. For their part, the ITGWU learned that union unity and working class solidarity, along with appropriate financial resources, were all vital to success.
During the bitter lockout, the ITGWU had organised some of the workers in Cork into protection groups, armed with hurleys and clubs whose role was to protect strikers on Cork’s docks. This became a precursor of the later Irish Citizen Army (ICA) of 1913 and while defeat was again the outcome in 1913 for the unions and workers, the men and women of the ICA were to prove a major catalyst for the 1916 Rising.
Luke is the author of the recent Irish Labour History Society publication “A City Of Strikes: The Cork General Lockout of 1909”.
He previously spoke about the 1909 Cork Lockout at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival in 2013.
The story of extraordinary Wallace Sisters will be told by Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group on Saturday 30th July at 2.30pm at the Maldron Hotel.
Background to the role of the Wallace sisters.
Now a lifeless vehicular short cut, St. Augustine Street in Cork City is barely noticed by many people these days. A bleak, undistinguished street, it has in recent years become an alleyway located between the Queens Old Castle and McHugh House linking the Grand Parade to South Main Street. It was formerly known as Brunswick Street, which appears on the old street nameplate on the western side.
The street’s current dilapidated condition is in stark contrast to its busy nature in the early years of 1900s. In 1911, some ten shops, stores and houses and the back entrance to St Augustine’s Church lined the street.
Six of those houses were inhabited by a total of twenty seven people on census night 1911. Over at no 4, St Augustine Street, Sheila (Julia) Wallace then aged twenty one was described as “Head of Family”, while her sisters Hannah (29) and Norah (15) also occupied the upper rooms where a young seventeen year old lodger Norah Crean also resided.
Daughters of Jeremiah, an agricultural labourer and Mary Wallace of Barrahaurin, Donoughmore and from a family of eight children, the sisters had moved to the city at a young age and opened their little newspaper and cigarette business. The family had been evicted in the late 1800s and now lived in a small two roomed house on the farm of James Twomey, a local farmer in Barrahaurin. This eviction and the resulting traumatic impact on the large Wallace family being dumped on the side of the road, and its implications for the family must have contributed to the radical political views of Norah and Sheila Wallace, which later lead them to embrace the aims of the Irish Citizen Army.
One might be surprised to learn that many of the most famous names in the revolutionary Ireland 1915 to 1922 came and went with regularity through this street. For at number 13 Brunswick St (later 4 St. Augustine St.) was located the small shop of Sheila and Nora Wallace.
During the War of Independence these firm and engaging sisters went about their day to day shop keeping business as normal which provided a perfect cover for what became a vast beehive of revolutionary activity taking place in their shop.
No.4 St. Augustine’s Street, Cork shortly before its demolition in the 1970s.
Located behind their small traditionally fronted tobacconist and newspaper shop with holy pictures and statues in the window and labour pamphlets on the shelves lay nothing less than the Head Quarters of the Cork No 1 Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). It was effectively the intelligence centre of the IRA where messages were efficiently received and delivered by a huge network of women and men…..in effect an IRA intelligence General Post Office!
Even more amazing is that this simple shop was located just 250 metres from the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks at Tuckey St and the second barracks at the Bridewell on the Coal Quay and yet remained undetected by the Crown forces for a long time.
James Connolly visited the Wallace sisters on his trip to Cork in January 1916, where he spoke later about military tactics at a meeting organised by Tadhg Barry over in the Grianán building in nearby Queens Street, now Fr. Mathew Street. Sheila and Nora were friendly with Constance Markievicz of the Irish Citizen Army (I.C.A) and both the sisters were active members of the Cork Branch of the I.C.A, which as the War of Independence gathered momentum gradually became absorbed into the I.R.A. The Cork Branch members used to meet in the Transport Workers Room in Merchants Quay where a rifle range had been established for practice by the Citizen Army.
An Grianán in Fr. Mathew Street, once the nerve centre of the revolutionary movement in Cork, today lies abandoned. James Connolly addressed a meeting here in January 1916.
University College Cork (UCC) historian and author John Borgonovo has recounted how the Wallace sisters organised a youth and women’s Citizen Army in Cork which lasted until 1921 and which took part in local parades involving the labour movement during the period. Labour organiser and socialist Cathal O’Shannon also took lodgings over their shop for a period while he worked in Cork.
One of the last actions of the Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás MacCurtain was to visit the Wallace shop late on Friday night 19th March 1920. Florence O’ Donoghue, then head of intelligence in the I.R.A, later recounted how Tomás left the shop with the recently elected Alderman, Tadhg Barry about 11:00 pm that night on what was his final journey. Just a few hours later the Lord Mayor of Cork was murdered in his bed by the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C) in the family quarters overhead his own shop at 40 Thomas Davis Street in Blackpool.
There is a family account how MacCurtain’s successor as the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, who was also a regular caller to the Wallace’s shop, went behind the counter and even sold a newspaper and a packet of cigarettes to a customer shortly before his arrest in August 1920. The Wallace sisters were busy at the particular time, taking dispatches around the city. Muriel MacSwiney, his wife, in her December 1951 deposition to the Bureau of Military History mentions how early on she became aware of “a little newspaper shop kept by the Misses Wallace, who were later connected to The Citizen Army”.
Sheila and Nora both worked in the shop and lived overhead at the time and the room to the rear of the shop was regularly used for Irish Volunteer and I.R.A. Brigade meetings. Sheila held the formal rank of Staff Officer as Brigade Communications officer, this was quite unique and she was possibly the only female officer of rank in the I.R.A.
She was awarded a pension of £55-16-8 under the Military Pension Act from October 1934 and her rank was confirmed. This rank is also inscribed on her gravestone in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery. Later on the shop was raided several times and was finally closed by order of the British Military dated 14th May 1921 and the sisters were ordered to be expelled from Cork City.
It reopened immediately after the Truce, indeed Liam Deasy then Adjutant of the First Southern Division recalled a jovial meeting at the premises on 12th July 1921 with the officers of the First Cork Brigade and Tom Barry. As the sisters took the anti-treaty side in the Civil war, it was raided regularly by the Free State forces. Later on the sisters lived on the Old Youghal Road in Teach Shíle.
Historian Anne Twomey who will talk about the Wallace Sisters on 30th July.
The years of “working in impossible conditions”, carrying despatches in all weathers and the associated stress took a heavy toll on the sisters. This was recorded in their military service pension applications in 1934. Sheila died on 14th April 1944, on the Friday of Easter week. It was acknowledged by the Pensions Board that Nora who had developed tuberculosis in the 20s and spent some time in Switzerland, acquired her illness due to her exposure to all conditions of weather, wet and cold due to her intense activities, while acting as an intelligence agent. Nora traded on her own at the shop until 1960 and passed away on 17th September 1970.
The premises was later used as a bookmakers shop and afterwards as a dressmakers. The shop portrayed on a drawing by artist Brian Lawlor* in his book “Cork” appears to have been demolished sometime in the 1970s, during the clearance of the area for the reconstruction of the Queens Old Castle complex.
Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History group will give an account of the story of the Wallace Sisters on Saturday afternoon 30th July at 2.30 in the Maldron Hotel. All welcome to attend and participate in the discussion afterwards.
The Shandon Area History group organised an unique exhibition entitled “Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times” featuring remarkable women from the area and their contribution to the War of Independence at the St. Peter’s Church in North Main Street. in June 2016.
* Cork. Drawings by Brian Lawlor. Poems by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanán. Gallery Press, Dublin, Ireland 1977.
Update: October 2023:
A memorial plaque to Sheila and Nora Wallace was unveiled by their niece Bernadette Wallace at the national monument in Stuake, Donoughmore on Sunday 24th September 2023. The plaque and events were organised by the Donoughmore Historical Society and it included a talk by Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group in the nearby community hall afterwards. There was a fine attendance in spite of heavy rain.
Monument to the Wallace Sisters.
The Wallace sisters were natives of Kilcullen South in Donoughmore and when the family were evicted in the 1890s they had to move to the nearby townland of Barrachaurin. Later, the sisters moved to the nearby Cork City where they opened their small shop. The plaque commemorates the very vital role Sheila and Nora played during the War of Independence.
Members of the Irish Citizen Army outside Liberty Hall, Dublin
The Spirit of Mother Jones festival will include a series of lectures exploring the origins and role of the Irish Citizen Army, a workers army, in the Easter 1916 rebellion. The venue for the lectures will be the Firkin Crane, Shandon, Cork. Date and Time: Friday, 31st July 2015 at 3.30pm.
The 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic refers to just three organisations, one of which is The Irish Citizen Army (ICA). On Easter Monday morning 1916, over 200 members of the ICA, men, women and boys marched into a revolution in Dublin led by James Connolly.
The Irish Citizen Army comprised almost 30% of those who actually turned up for the Rising on that Monday morning and represented an internal mobilisation of almost 80% of the available and active membership. Some 50 including Connolly, who had played a central role in planning the actual military attacks,occupied the General Post Office. The remainder of the ICA played an active part in some of the fiercest fighting witnessed during the week in places such as St Stephen’s Green, College of Surgeons, City Hall and Dublin Castle.
James Connolly
Copies of the 1916 Proclamation itself was printed by the ICA at the Co-Op Stores at No 31 Eden Quay, alongside Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. Considerable quantities of the weapons, bombs and explosives used later in the Rising were stored in Liberty Hall, even the flag which flew over the GPO was created there.
Many of the active participants in the Rising had spent the Easter weekend in and around Liberty Hall, and marched from there to seize various buildings. Liberty Hall itself was bombed by the British initially as they immediately understood that the rebellion had been organised from there, the building was wrecked during the attack.
Sean Connolly of the ICA fired the first shot of the Rising, which killed Sergeant James O’Brien at the gates of Dublin Castle. In a strange twist of faith, Connolly himself was the first casualty on the rebel side when he was killed by a sniper an hour later. At the very end, Elizabeth O’Farrell of the ICA was with Padraig Pearse at the formal surrender of the rebels near the GPO, while she also carried the orders and dispatches which confirmed the cease fire and surrender elsewhere in Dublin.
Dr. Leo Keohane’s book on Jack White
Yet they were pushed to the margins of history soon afterwards and virtually disappeared from the narrative of Irish history for a considerable time, even during the 1966 commemorations. Who were these working class men and women, so many of whom were killed or injured in the Rising or imprisoned or impoverished in its aftermath?
By any standards The Irish Citizen Army was central to the 1916 Rising itself. It provided thecatalyst which set off the explosion leading to eventual Independence. Its origins among workers in the 1913 Lockout, its first Commandant ….. a Boer War hero, its voice unique and its participants brave, its discipline and ideological stance which set it apart in Ireland even in a period of dissent and conflict.
The Irish Citizen Army by Ann Matthews
The Army was led by one of the greatest socialist agitators and thinkers of the 20th Century. Yet why is its legacy so uncertain, why is its central contribution considered a curiosity of history and why were its beliefs swamped by the conservative ideology which followed?
Earlier on the 1st August 1915, by order of James Connolly, the Irish Citizen Army had also gathered initially at Liberty Hall to participate alongside the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union in the funeral procession for the Fenian leader Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, (born in West Cork and a “Freeman of Cork City” who had died on 29th June 1915 in America) to Glasnevin Cemetery.
Led by the James Fintan Lawlor Band, The Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers marching side by side put on a hugely impressive show of force accompanied by the trade union movement, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Cumann na mBan as they marched north to the Cemetery.
Liberty Hall in ruins after the 1916 Rising
In the climax to his oration at the grave, Padraig Pearse threw back his head sharply…..….”but the fools, the fools, the fools! — they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
Standing nearby, Connolly could see the Rising as a reality.
Almost 100 years to the day, on Friday evening 31st July 2015 at 3.30pm, the Cork Mother Jones Committee will hold a series of lectures at the Firkin Crane entitled “The Irish Citizen Army and theRoad to the 1916 Rising”.The lectures and discussion will explore the origins, the progress and the eventual participation of this workers’ army in the 1916 rebellion. How important was its contribution, the role of James Connolly, what caused its subsequent political isolation and relative obscurity in Irish history?
Under the chairmanship of Theo Dorgan, poet and author, those participating include;
Dr Ann Matthews, author “The Irish Citizen Army” Mercier Press 2014.
Dr Leo Keohane, author “Captain Jack White, Imperialism, Anarchism &The Irish Citizen Army” Merrion Press 2014.
Scott Millar, author and journalist with Liberty, the newspaper of SIPTU (formerly the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, founded by Jim Larkin)
