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The First Documents
In the fury that was Easter Week, a me when for four or five days open warfare was waged upon the streets of Dublin, Padraig Pearse wrote his War Communiques - a witness to the unfolding events as they happened thus crea ng a living history for posterity.
These would be the First Documents of the newly proclaimed Irish Republic and the only documents produced by the rebels from the GPO in Easter Week. Historians say Connolly’s influence is in evidence in a lot of the content with its references to military detail but the handwri ng is that of Pearse, normally of neat hand but here with erasures and inser ons illustra ng the intensity of the hour.
Outside the GPO with ar llery fire raining down from Coles Lane off Henry Street and amidst the ever- ghtening Bri sh cordons the young Joe Stanley carefully made his way to the GPO every day for 3 days, un l it was no longer feasible, to do his duty and get printers’ copy from Pearse.
Then from the prin ng plant in Halston Street, commandeered with a gun and armed escort given by Connolly to Joe, He and Ma hew Walker and Charles Walker with journalis c support from James Upton proceeded to print and distribute the War Communiques, in the format of The Irish War News and The Proclama on to the Ci zens of Dublin.
It is important to note here that in those mes the printed word was the all powerful communica on tool and Pearse was relying on his press corp. to get the word out that Ireland was once again rebelling and striking a blow for its freedom.
Soon it was all over, and by the end of May Pearse and Connolly were dead, executed with their fellow comrades, all the volunteers including Joe were interned in Frongoch and poignantly Ma hew Walker delivered a final le er, penned before the official surrender, from Pearse to his mother, “some weeks a er Easter 1916 when Maire Ni Shiubhlaigh’s father brought it to us” as recalled by Margaret Pearse in an interview in 1962.
But as we all know now a flame had been lit and amazingly the original War Communiques. The First Documents handwri en by Pearse survived and remain intact to this day, having been digitally saved for posterity by the family of Joe Stanley almost ninety years later. Today they are in the possession of the Irish Government and on display in the 1916 Museum Exhibi on.
Pearse’s original War Communiques in his own handwri ng along with another 50 documents of the period up to and including the War of Independence form a central part of the book “Joe Stanley Printer to the Rising” – a unique account of a fascina ng element of the period that led to the crea on of an independent state in Ireland. A living history handed down for all to study.
www.joestanleygaelicpress.com
First published in 2005 by Brandon an imprint of Mount Eagle Publications Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland, and Unit 3, Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Road, London N22 6TZ, England
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Copyright © Tom Reilly 2005
The author has asserted his moral rights.
ISBN 0 86322 3462 X
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover design by Anu Design
Typesetting by Red Barn Publishing, Skeagh, Skibbereen
Printed in the UK
C
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
L I
Gaelic Athlete, 22 July 1916.
Front page of Honesty , 8 January 1916.
The Spark; its front page was written by Countess Markievicz .
Pearse’s draft of the first Irish War News bulletin
The first Irish War News bulletin, front.
Pearse’s draft of the Second War Bulletin. The Second War Bulletin.
The Third War Bulletin.
Letter confirming that documents were written by Pearse.
Joe Stanley’s hastily written last will and testament.
Sergeant-Major “Jack Knives” Newstead.
Occupants of Hut No. 6 and duties assigned to each prisoner.
A sentry post along the perimeter fence at Frongoch.
One of the dormitories in South Camp (Joseph Byrne).
Sports results from Frongoch.
The Louth and Kerry teams who played in Frongoch.
Chess tournament.
Illustrations between pages 96 and 97:
1. Joe Stanley in his mid-twenties.
2. A young Annie Walker (Eileen O’Doherty).
3. Pencil sketch, Máire Nic Shiúbhlaigh by Jack B. Yeats circa 1903.
4 (a) Raid on the Gaelic Press, 30 Upper Liffey Street .
4 (b) Irish Volunteers in South Camp at Frongoch.
5. Reproduction of the 1916 Proclamation.
6 (a) Gaelic Press banner.
6 (b) Christmas card from a painting by Jack B. Yeats.
7. Christmas card: “The Flag of Freedom”.
8. Gaelic Press handbills and banners.
9 (a) Matthew and Mrs Walker.
9 (b) Joe and Annie and children.
10. Joe in London.
11 (a) Joe playing golf.
11 (b) An Stad.
12. Joe Stanley’s coffin with tricolour.
Refusal to sign document for return of machinery.
Letter from the censor.
Cover of sheet music: “The Flag of Irish Freedom”
Cover of sheet music: “The Shawl of Galway Grey”
Gaelic Press songbook circa 1917 (front).
Gaelic Press songbook circa 1917 (back).
Agreement between Joe Stanley and Countess Markievicz.
Gaelic Press printer’s proof, May 1917.
Anti-conscription pledge.
Inside of a Gaelic Press Christmas card.
Handbill printed by the Gaelic Press, General Election, 1918.
Gaelic Press handbill advertising Honesty.
List of machinery and stock taken in raids.
Handbill announcing the arrival of banned film.
“The Prison Grave of Kevin Barry”.
Gaelic Press letterheads and colophon.
An Greann
The Argus marks the death of J.M. Stanley
Dedication
To Paddy and Mary
Foreword
“I have not agreed to add one drop of water to the wine of my Irish nationalism.” – Joe Stanley
This account of Joe Stanley’s life should not have come to be written by this writer. It is a narrative that ought to have come from the pen of Joe Stanley himself.
Unfortunately Joe didn’t take the time to write his autobiography, and so it behoves a stranger to tell the world his tale. Yet, as the sentences were constructed, and as his life unfolded on the page, a unique connection developed between author and subject that can only result from a literary undertaking such as this.
Before embarking on the project, I was already very familiar with the name Joe Stanley. My mother had worked for “The Boss” in The Argus newspaper in Drogheda in the late forties. Yet, she knew almost nothing of his part in his country’s claim to nationhood. Joe rarely spoke of the pivotal role he played in that momentous time in Irish history, but he had the foresight to retain for posterity many of the documents that played a key part in his life.
Joe’s guiding hand and the influence of his free spirit on the text was never far away.
Prologue
It was a sunny bank holiday Monday in Dublin. In Sackville Street, opendecked tramcars rattled along on their well-worn slender metal strips. Carthorses pulled a variety of carts, their steps making a steady rhythmical clatter as they struck sharply on the stone cobbles. Shawlies ambled here and there with a sense of purpose and an independent air. Groups of flatcapped men, their well-worn jackets shiny in the sun, engaged in aimless corner-boy conversation. Bowler-hatted toffs strolled with long-skirted ladies and discussed more respectable things. Over at the General Post Office, Willie Nolan jumped on his red-painted Post Office bicycle and headed off to the suburbs to deliver telegrams.
At noon, around 150 Irish Volunteer troops emerged from Abbey Street and with clinical military efficiency charged into the General Post Office to declare an Irish Republic. The bank holiday routine was broken. Once inside, James Connolly shouted, “Everybody out!” The pedestrians in the immediate area then watched in amazement as the customers evacuated the building and the windows were suddenly broken from within. Those who were curious began to approach the building, all the time looking around to see if anyone was coming.
The minutes passed. Since the police were still nowhere to be seen, the mood on the street became almost frivolous. Most were pleased to have a spectacle to watch. There was much jovial banter when Michael Collins broke a window and frightened the life out of a passing shawlie on the footpath outside. She immediately berated the vandals in typical Dublin fashion for “smashin’ all the lovely windas”. Collins couldn’t stop himself from laughing. Within seconds the Volunteers in the main foyer were also laughing their heads off as “the Big Fella’s” infectious laugh reached a pitch.
The uniform-clad Pádraig Pearse next emerged from the building, stood on the step and announced the establishment of a Provisional Government
by the simple act of reading out the Proclamation. The response from the crowd was somewhat subdued, but James Connolly was ecstatic and shook Pearse’s hand vigorously following his oration. Thus began the revolution that would change Ireland for ever.
When Willie Nolan returned to work after his rounds, he was completely unaware of the transformation that had taken place in his workplace in the short time that he’d been away. After an enlightening conversation with a Volunteer who refused to allow him entry, Willie gleefully tossed his bicycle, painted in British letter-box red, over the parapet of the Half-penny Bridge.
About half an hour after Pearse’s address, a troop of impeccably turnedout British Lancers trotted into Sackville Street from the Parnell monument end and proceeded towards the GPO. Oblivious to any risk, their brief was to investigate “disturbances” in the Sackville Street area. At Nelson’s Pillar a volley of shots ripped into them, killing three soldiers and fatally wounding a fourth. The mood changed instantaneously. There was no going back now.
Later that day, Joe Stanley slipped into the Post Office. Twenty-sixyear-old Joe Stanley was a renowned maverick Dublin printer and an IRB man, who had not been mobilised. He was part-editor, manager, owner and printer or publisher of many “seditious” newspapers and journals for the republican cause, including The Gaelic Athlete, The Hibernian, Honesty, The Spark and The Gael. Inside, he met his friend James Connolly. Connolly introduced him to Pearse, of whom he had some previous knowledge. The three men sat down together and began to plan the best way to inform the mystified citizens of Dublin of what was happening. The world must know that once again Ireland was rising. It would be up to Joe to tell the people of Ireland that their country was calling.
The three men agreed that regular daily news reports should be released from the Rising HQ to acquaint the populace of the activities of the Volunteers. More importantly, they needed to persuade people to support the new Provisional Government. National awareness of the revolution was paramount. Details of each blow that was struck against the enemy needed to reach the public in order for the rebellion to have any chance of success.
Pearse, acutely aware that sometimes the best blow he could make was with words, was to write press releases and propaganda. Joe’s role was to convert the result into multiple copies and have them distributed.
But there was a problem: at that time, Joe had no direct access to a printing press. The British had recently raided his premises, the provocatively named Gaelic Press, just around the corner at 30 Upper Liffey Street. His plant had been broken down and confiscated. For the rest of Joe’s life, he would make frequent and futile applications for recompense for the damage done to his livelihood.
Pearse strongly suggested that Joe should take over the nearby premises of the Irish Independent and produce that newspaper each day in a reduced version. Connolly immediately saw that, from a military point of view, to commandeer such a large building would be too much of a drain on resources.
Ironically, it was because of a notice placed in the Sunday Independent the previous day by the president of the Irish Volunteers, Eoin MacNeill, that men were only available for key positions. Despite the fact that he was the leader of the Volunteers, Mac Neill had only heard about the Rising on Holy Thursday. It was the secret organisation within the Volunteers known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood that orchestrated the rebellion. When Roger Casement was arrested following his failed attempt to land much needed guns on the Kerry coast, MacNeill placed the notice in the Middle Abbey Street broadsheet to discourage the Volunteers from engaging in any proposed “manoeuvres”.
Joe agreed with Connolly. He was quick to point out that newspaper printing machinery was not suitable for the kind of publications that he had in mind. A national paper with machines which were designed to produce large sheets in bulk would be difficult to manage from a technical viewpoint. Presses that were more compact were just as capable of producing the required propaganda.
The new commander-in-chief of the forces of the Irish Republic and president of the Provisional Government was convinced. It was unanimously agreed that it would be left up to the resourceful printer to
find, secure and use a suitable printing facility that would have little or no impact on the already limited military reserves.
The meeting ended. The three men got up to go about their respective businesses in their efforts to prise open the 700 year-old grip that the British had on their country: Connolly to instruct his men, Pearse to motivate them, and the newly appointed press officer to the revolution, Joe Stanley, to find the ways and means to inform the masses. As Joe was about to leave, Connolly, aware of the risks, gave him a pistol. Joe was now well ensconced in the insurrection, and he was more than happy to be so. His daytime job which had resulted in thousands of inflammatory publications now sitting in countless parlours and living rooms around the country, had made him well known to the British. He took the gun and left. He came back the next day in full control of O’Keefe’s printing premises in Halston Street.
Two weeks later Pearse and Connolly were dead — shot through the heart on the orders of General Sir John Maxwell, commander-in-chief of the British army in Ireland. Joe was on the run. Eventually he was rounded up and imprisoned. Like hundreds of others who were “out” during Easter Week, his efforts on behalf of the new republic were not enough to make him a national icon, but his role in the Rising and the continual fight for Irish freedom was not an insignificant one.
Chapter One
In the south-eastern corner of Ireland’s smallest county where the Walshestown and Clogherhead meadows converge is the now deserted hamlet of Ard Bolies. At the end of a long, windy dirt track, bordered by dense ancient ditches, lie the settlement’s ruins today. This is Stanley country. The rural community that existed there has long gone. The centuries-old route has few two-legged pedestrians today. Visitors to the area are mostly of bovine persuasion. Like many Irish families, most of the Stanleys have since been scattered far and wide, though some still remain in the area.
The nearby village of Clogherhead is tucked away behind a lofty jagged land spur that dominates the Louth coastline and protects the district from the relentless breakers and hostile gusts of the Irish Sea. It is a location with a perennial allure, the embodiment of a typical Irish fishing village. It is a place that has changed little over time. The well-known song asks the question, “Is Clogherhead as it used to be?” The answer is, “Yes.”
The Ard Bolies commune once engaged in the manufacture of linen. John and Mary Stanley were an integral part of the cooperative until the industry dried up and people began to drift away. Some stayed in the general area, but John gravitated towards the capital. The linen business had been good to him, and displaying an entrepreneurial flair, a trait he would pass to his only son, he opened up a dairy at 36 Great Britain Street, now Parnell Street.
In 1890 the revolutionary linotype machine was introduced to the printing world. In that same year, the revolutionary Joseph Michael Stanley was introduced to the civilised world.
On the morning that baby Joe was officially registered, it was down to his grandparents, Patrick William Stanley and Catherine (née Larkin), to take the child to the registration office. When the official asked, “Name?” Patrick William said “Patrick William” and Catherine Larkin said “
Catherine Larkin”. When the couple arrived back with the baby they were subjected to the usual, “How did it go?” The grandparents expressed surprise that the official must have known Joseph Michael’s name since he never asked for it. They assumed the name had been advised when the booking was made. It wasn’t. On going back to the office to rectify the situation, John was told that they could only insert names to the register, not delete. So Joe’s name was officially registered as Joseph Michael Patrick William Catherine Larkin Stanley.
Meanwhile in that same year, about four miles from Clonakilty, west Cork, in a cluster of houses at a crossroads known locally as Sam’s Cross, Michael Collins first saw the light. Both men would grow to manhood in a country that was already well on the road to self-government. Eventually they would both be called upon to serve that country.
It was in the bowels of Larkin’s Dublin that Joe was raised. He went to O’Connell’s Schools in nearby North Richmond Street where he developed a grá for the written word. He discovered a love for music when he enrolled in the choir over at the Pro-Cathedral. His cultured boy soprano voice rose and fell on Sunday mornings along with the dulcet tones of the great John McCormack. He also found he had a flair for sport and he cultivated a love of athletics, Gaelic games in particular, that lasted throughout his adult life.
Six girls and one son later, John and Mary Stanley continued to provide the local community with milk, cheese, eggs and buttermilk. The local community in return provided the dairy with piecemeal payments on the never-never. Despite the delicate and sometimes inconsistent nature of recompense, ends met satisfactorily. With a combination of hard work and good luck, the family enjoyed a reasonable lifestyle with the net profit. The wolf, a regular caller to houses in the area, never made it to the Stanley’s door.
Joe was ten years old when the century turned. At this time Ireland was perceived by England to be in a relatively calm state. If the status quo was to endure, the future of the country would continue to be determined by foreigners with external accents just as the past had been. Most of them, however, never came to grips with the intensity of the Irish culture or spirit, nor would they ever comprehend the passionate desire of successive groups
of Irish revolutionaries to be free from English domination, despite immense odds. The very idea of Ireland taking its place among the nations of the world was unfathomable to the vast majority of Englishmen.
The abysmal failure of the Fenians’ attempted revolution in 1867 was a distant memory. Emmet’s innocuous twenty-minute attempt at insurgency in 1803 was also consigned to the historical dustbin as no more than a curiosity. To the English these incidents emphasised Ireland’s military incompetence and served to prevent future idealistic notions. To the now emerging Irish patriots, the failed uprisings of the past provided the inspiration to achieve freedom in memory of Ireland’s hapless heroes.
Ireland was far from calm. Between 1891 and 1910, hope for the country’s seemingly best opportunity on the road towards Independence –John Redmond’s Home Rule movement – was suspended. New movements began to emerge to fill the political void, especially the socialist and the feminist movements.
Things were changing. Yeats, Joyce, Synge and Wilde walked Dublin’s streets and looked beyond its dreary facade to discover a character that made them stir within. At 36 Great Britain Street, Joe Stanley had entered his impressionable years. The eldest child, and only boy among six girls in a world dominated by males, Joe was doted upon. A story is told that illustrates Joe’s complete lack of domestic awareness: on one occasion when his parents were on holiday, he was left to the tender mercies of his loving sisters, who, as usual, catered to his every whim. After a few days he left a note on the kitchen table thanking the girls for their solicitous attention with the addendum “PS for Pete’s sake would somebody please empty the piss pot!”
Before he was ten years old he inherited a house at Hackett’s Cross, Clogherhead, from a man by the name of John Murphy, a good friend of his parents. As he was a minor, both Joe’s and his mother’s names were on the deeds. The building had been a bakery in its early days and was still known locally as “ The Bakery”. His parents used it as a holiday home whenever they needed respite from the dairy during the summer. Consequently, Joe made many trips to County Louth in his youth. Frequent visits were also
made to Ardee, where Joe’s mother originally came from, in those early summers.
About a hundred yards from the dairy in Parnell Street, near the Moore Street corner, was a small tobacconist’s shop. It was generally well known that the proprietor was a hardcore republican. In the front window a coloured illustration subtly advertised a particular product. The drawing was of an Irish Round Tower, and the product advertised was Irish nationalism. Business was brisk. The store itself was about large enough to hold just six customers at a push. The owner had spent fifteen hellish years in an English prison. The incarceration had taken its toll on his now emaciated face, but not on his dedication to the cause. The shop became a front for the underground activities of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Tom Clarke was in business all right, the republican business. Needless to say, his subversive activities and those of his customers made a serious impression on Joe, who frequented the shop as a young smoker. He became a member of the IRB as soon as it became practicable.
Joe’s formative years also saw the emergence of such nationalist groups as Griffith’s Sinn Féin, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Gaelic League and Cumann na nGaedheal. These organisations were founded and inspired by people who were keen to revive the Irish language, culture and spirit. In 1851 a quarter of the population spoke Irish. By 1901 the figure was down to an eighth, and falling. The alarming pace of the Anglicising of the Irish people had to be halted. In 1899 the Gaelic League started a newspaper called An Claidheamh Soluis (The Sword of Light), which carried articles, poems and stories in the Irish language and fostered writers such as Pádraic Ó Conaire and Pádraig Pearse, who became the editor from 1903 to 1909. These new Irish groups became fertile recruiting ground for the IRB.
At the same time there was a literary resurgence taking place. Many of the participants involved also had connections to the IRB, including W.B. Yeats. Most of the plays that had been put on in Dublin towards the end of the nineteenth century had featured English professional players. In 1898 Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn proposed to perform “certain Celtic and Irish plays, whatever be their degrees of excellence”. They
pledged to “show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery”, and they were “confident of the support of all Irish people”.
In 1902, Yeats wrote Caitlín Ní Houlihán, a representation of Ireland that highlighted the enthusiasm of young men to die for her. Later he questioned the influence of his play on men he may have “sent out” that the “English shot”.
In 1904, the Abbey Theatre was founded, and many an Irish thespian aspired to tread the boards there, boards that were quick to acquire hallowed status. On Baile’s Strand by Yeats, The Well of the Saints by Synge, The Land by Pádraic Colum and Spreading the News by Lady Gregory were some of the first productions to be put on for Dublin audiences.
Not far away, at 36 Great Britain Street, there were regular gatherings of the purveyors of culture, and céilí nights were not at all unusual as Joe became more and more exposed to and interested in the traditions that inspired such a society and the players that embraced it. Pádraic Colum, one of the early Abbey playwrights, became a good friend of the Stanley family.
One young Irish actress came from a prominent acting family living then at 101 Lower Mount Street. Her name was Annie Walker. Her sister Mary achieved prominence as an Abbey player of international renown and adopted the stage name Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh. Máire had played the title role in Yeats’s Caitlín Ni Houlihán at the opening performance at the Abbey Theatre on 27 December 1904. By that time, she was already a veteran of the Irish Theatre Society that had been formed in 1902 by brothers Frank and Willie Fay.
Annie, who took the stage name Eileen O’Doherty, joined the Abbey Players in 1908 and quickly began to make a name for herself. Within a year, her name moved to the top of all of the theatre’s programmes. The Walker sisters went on to appear in the early plays at the dawn of the century, plays that heralded the launch of the movement from which the Irish National Theatre grew.
The wider Walker family had particularly intimate associations with the early Irish theatre. Annie’s brother Frank was also a player/founder of the Irish National Theatre Company. A third and younger Walker sister, Patricia, affectionately known as “Gypsy”, took the stage name Betty King,
and she too pursued and achieved a distinguished acting career. On the opening night of the Abbey, two of the Walker family were on stage, two were selling programmes in the auditorium, and a fifth was stitching the costumes behind the scenes.
Music and drama were in vogue at that time, and almost everyone in Dublin was a playgoer since there were few alternative entertainments to be experienced. Film was in its infancy and was only available at the Rotunda Hall in the form of the cinematograph. It was around this time that Joe met Annie. A relationship began to develop between the two that would last until death would part them. Joe himself would display a competent ability to perform at various stages in his life, although up to then his only performances were within the confines of No. 36. He was by this time an accomplished piano player, a budding songwriter and somewhat of a raconteur. He often cajoled his sisters into playing different parts with him in his mini-dramas, but he didn’t have the inclination to pursue a career on the stage.
He began to see Annie on a regular basis, and got on well with her parents. Her father, Matthew Walker, was a printer by profession and carried on a business at their home in Lower Mount Street under the name of the Tower Press. Joe found that he had many things in common with Matthew, aside from Annie, in particular politics and the national movement. He was soon moving effortlessly in the respected circles of society that were associated with the exciting and fresh plays of the new Abbey Theatre. As well as having daughters who became two of its shining lights, Matthew himself did a lot of the printing for the new theatre movement. J.M. Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows was first produced at the Abbey Theatre on Thursday, 13 January 1910, with Eileen O’Doherty (Annie) playing the central role of the “Old Woman”.
While Annie did not rise to the theatrical heights to which her sister ascended, she was certainly an actress with a remarkable ability, but her interests were split when Joe came into her life. The theatre was a heartless taskmaster which would not tolerate a divided allegiance.
On 12 September 1911, the two older Walker sisters, Máire and Annie, were both members of the party of Abbey Players which departed for a six-
month tour of America in the company of W.B. Yeats, Sara Allgood and Lady Gregory, during which Máire and Annie played in the Maxine Elliott Theatre in New York. It turned out to be a controversial tour. The IrishAmerican audiences rioted in New York and Philadelphia, and trouble brewed in other venues with strong objections being expressed to their depiction of the Emerald Isle. In particular, the characters’ approval of the apparent patricide in Synge’s The Playboy of The Western World rankled with audiences, as it had already done in Dublin when the police were called to restore order on more than one occasion. (In January 1907, The Playboy had shaken the Dublin theatre world and a controversy began that would continue for many years.) One Irish-American writer also thought that Yeats’s plays were “vile, beastly and unnatural, so calculated to calumniate, degrade and defame a people and all they hold sacred and dear as the plays of the so called Irish players”.
But all of the publicity was not adverse. American critic, Alan Dale of the New York American, who was described as “America’s foremost critic”, saw some of the plays. He was also known as the A.B. Walkley (a noted contemporary London Times critic) of America, and he was quite taken with the acting prowess of young Annie Walker:
It was Eileen O’Doherty whose work impressed me most. The unstudied quality of her work (and nothing on the stage requires more work than the unstudied), the charm of her acting and its direct appeal were most convincing. Miss O’Doherty possesses many of the qualities that we used to laud in Duse. To my mind she is a particularly fine artistic actress. Nothing on the stage mattered as much as she did. In “Spreading the News” Miss O’Doherty was quite wonderful. I hope to see this admirable actress in other plays, but in those two she stamped herself as a consummate artiste. That stamp really needs no confirmation.
The Walker girls became members of Maud Gonne’s Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) – a politico-cultural society of young women, which gave them an opportunity to do “ national” work. Members held classes and debates and encouraged the study of Irish history, music,
literature and art. The parent group was the Gaelic League, which was nonpolitical and non-sectarian and strove primarily for a revival of the Irish language.
An undated letter (pre-1915) written by Joe to the new love interest in his life still exists. It is the earliest surviving sample of his writing.
My Dearest Annie,
I have led you into a trap because I never said I was sad because two girls kissed me. I was only sad as befitted one coming from a funeral. Not that I really felt sad, God forgive me but that I tried to look sad. The friends who know me best would absolutely be carried off to hospital in a fit if they heard that yours truly had developed a sudden spasm of melancholia on the head of being kissed by two young and good looking ladies. I am glad that you did not kiss the Blarney Stone and trust that you are keeping them for something better. You might inform the boys who tried to kiss you on that historic occasion, that I am anxious to discuss the matter with them over a 12-inch cannon at 5 yards range. By the way, please count how many times the word “kiss” and its substantives occur in this letter so far.
Re. the men who have tried to make love to you, I’m afraid it’s only too well I can appreciate their feelings, when you adopt that “icy” attitude, which “cools” their ardour. Not so long ago, I myself experienced it in all its freezing intensity. Dei Gratis I have seen the warmer side too.
Joe’s career was not really going anywhere just then. He was working in railway administration for the Great Southern & Western Railway in the traffic manager’s office at Kingsbridge Station. On leaving school, he had taken the exam for a career in rail transport. There, he had distinguished himself by inventing a timetable that was adopted by the wider network of Irish railways. But he wasn’t challenged. There was neither cut nor thrust in the monotonous routine of the “in and out” trays deep in the bowels of the bleak Kingsbridge Station. The satisfaction derived from timetable
inventing was never going to be a daily occurrence. Yet he would never forget his time there or the people whom he got to know in his first job.
On 7 April 1942, in a letter to one of his old workmates, he poetically declared: “In the course of a busy life, I have often breathed a sigh for the peaceful backwater of the T.M.O. where one could look out of the Rates Department window and allow one’s thoughts to flow down the Liffey current immediately opposite to distant lands on strange emotional climates.”
In 1913, at the age of twenty-three, Joe saw his first business opportunity and took it. Matthew Walker’s printing works was struggling. Joe made him an offer for the plant and machinery, and a deal was struck. There was no liability on the purchaser for any of the accumulated debts. On 15 March 1913, Joe parted with the princely sum of £26 14s for the plant, machinery and accessories of a complete printing business. He had borrowed the money from his mother. The deal was sealed with a sixpenny stamp. Joe had little or no knowledge of the printing business, but he immediately saw a dual opportunity to put paid to his aimless day job and to make a contribution to the cause of Irish freedom.
It was a brave step to take. All over Dublin tension had been mounting between employers and employees during the previous five years. It was only five months before the infamous Dublin lockout. Deplorable working conditions were pervasive throughout the city, and James Larkin had initiated a series of strikes against what he perceived to be the abject tyranny of capitalism. James Connolly, recently returned to Ireland from America, was now also deeply involved in securing improved wages and conditions, and attempting to force employers to recognise workers’ rights to form unions.
In 1908, Larkin had formed the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, and Connolly, who had socialist sympathies, joined the frontline of those bent on the destruction of capitalism. Following the lockout riots, Connolly was instrumental in setting up the Irish Citizen Army to enable workers to protect themselves. In three years time the same army would play a significant role in the Easter Rising.
On 25 November 1913, the first ever Irish Volunteers meeting was organised by Eoin MacNeill. The Volunteer movement was effectively established that night in response to the Ulster Volunteers, which had been set up to oppose Home Rule in the north. Recruits came from far and wide to the inaugural meeting in the Rotunda, only a hundred yards or so from Joe’s front door at 36 Parnell Street. Joe, however, apparently did not cross the road to join the Volunteers at this time.
Despite the prevailing climate that existed between business owners and workers, Joe immediately threw himself headlong into his new business venture, undaunted. He secured a shop front premises at 30 Upper Liffey Street, with an associated works facility across the street at 2 & 3 Proby’s Lane, both of which he rented. He then came up with a name that was bound to attract the attention of the English authorities: the Gaelic Press. He may have had no experience of the trade but he had bundles of confidence in his ability to learn it.
Chapter Two
On 28 June 1914, the heir to the Austrian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated at Sarajevo, setting in train the cataclysmic events that would herald the beginning of the First World War. While the war may have resulted in a shortage of goods and materials to supplement the Irish economy, including the printing industry, certain members of the IRB began to realise that the eyes of the British Empire would soon be turned towards Europe and, more importantly, away from Ireland.
Joe quickly set about using both his contacts and his charm to develop the business and very soon had established a high-profile customer base, much of which consisted of repeat work. With once-off print jobs it was difficult to create a flow of production or income. An order for 5,000 handbills was welcome, but an order for 5,000 regular periodicals was significantly better. Most of the work he began to produce was of a highly seditious nature.
Dublin printers played a dangerous game of hide-and-seek with the Castle in their efforts to cope with the demand for prohibited literature. An atmosphere was created among some printing companies in the face of a common peril where the spirit of rivalry was absent. Assistance for each other was assistance for the cause. Joe’s entry on to the scene was seamless, and the city was only too willing to provide him with work. He had also inherited customers from Matthew Walker.
In between the everyday challenges of securing and billing jobs, and avoiding detection, Joe also managed to make time for a busy social life. He found in his girlfriend Annie an imaginative listener who shared his passion for his deeper thoughts and emotions about Ireland. Like him, she was a free spirit. On 30 June 1915, Joe ceased to be a bachelor and doubled his responsibilities when he transformed Anna Teresa Walker from spinster to married lady. The ceremony took place in St Andrew’s Church, Westland
Row. James Crawford Neil, the young Dublin poet perhaps best remembered for his unique child studies of Dublin life, was one of the witnesses. They spent their honeymoon in Kenmare.
Rather than wait for work to come to him, Joe got straight into the business of publishing his own newspaper. There was a sudden and unexpected gap in that particular market due to a general boycott of GAA news in the “dailys” by order of the Castle. A five-minute walk from Joe’s premises in Upper Liffey Street over the Halfpenny Bridge was the centre of British administration in Ireland, Dublin Castle. The administrators there decided to prohibit the broadsheets from reporting Gaelic games information in order to impede the growth of those sports, and frustrate the growing numbers of interested parties. Joe immediately saw his chance and swung into action.
Having just purchased the company days earlier, and now settled in his new printing factory, he took on the mantle of editor of a weekly newspaper. He called it the Gaelic Athlete, and he charged the general public the sum of 1d (penny) for the privilege of reading the news of the national games. With this opportunity, his love for sport now fused with his republican ideals, and both ingredients gave him the platform to present his views to the public. He produced 6,000 copies a week and soon had contributors from Galway (Stephen Jordan), Wexford (Tom Synott), Tralee (Dick “ Dickeen” Fitzgerald) and London (J. Collins) to cover the games nationwide. Although he printed papers for others, the Gaelic Athlete was Joe’s baby.
Joe also came into contact with many individuals who later achieved notoriety for their dedication to the cause. Seán Mac Diarmada, for instance, contributed to Honesty, as did The O’Rahilly. Joe’s own description of the paper was that it had a “very strong anti-British or Republican line”. The circulation of Honesty was about 10,000, and the first edition appeared in December 1914. Production ceased in April 1916 when the troubles abruptly interrupted the Dublin economy. Joe himself was editor under the pen name of “Gilbert Galbraith”.
The Spark was first produced in October 1914, and that too had a print run of 10,000 to 12,000. It claimed to be the “smallest newspaper in the world”. It consisted of four pages, and one could be bought for a single penny. The owner of The Spark was Constance Gore-Booth, otherwise known as Countess Markievicz. Significantly it also ceased to be published in April 1916.
Todd Andrews, in Dublin Made Me, says that the Sinn Féin periodicals were printed by the “mosquito press”. They were operations that were difficult to detect and took frequent bites at the British government. He writes that he “read every scrap of anti-war and anti-British propaganda I could lay my hands on. I used to call at a shop in Stephen’s Street every week after school on Friday to buy The Irish Volunteer, The Spark and the other underground periodicals which came and went as they were suppressed by the British and re-appeared under another name.”
On 29 January 1916, the Gaelic Press began to publish a periodical that would last a mere seven weeks. It was called The Gael, and Joe later confirmed that it had fairly serious “IRB leanings”. It was this particular publication that broke the camel’s back for the British authorities, following the publication of an article in the London Times concerning the seditious nature of The Gael. It was Joe’s opinion that Honesty and The Spark had been the real reasons for the maltreatment that he would experience later. He was fully engaged in playing his part in the national struggle and was a legitimate target for the forces of the Crown. It was inevitable that at some time they would introduce the maverick printer/editor to the harsh reality of the Empire’s disapproval.
The first three years of the business were tough. Joe had to combine the job of sales with the arduous task of learning the trade. Matthew Walker and his son Charlie were Joe’s primary printers in the early days. They may have sold Joe the business but they were still eager to be involved, and a bond had developed between vendor and purchaser. In January 1916, the Walkers had sold their house in Lower Mount Street and moved out to Glasthule in south County Dublin. Joe then began the process of becoming a printer himself. He proceeded to learn the trade and eventually he acquired the title “master printer”.
The newly-weds settled into their new life together in the rooms over 30 Upper Liffey Street and began to plan their future. By the plans of the IRB for a revolution played a much bigger part in the first year of his marriage than any optimistic notions of domestic bliss.
The printing of subversive nationalist material on any Irish printing premises was in direct contravention of the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, and the Defence of the Realm (Consolidation) Regulations 1914. So the jail gate was never so far away that it could be forgotten. On the morning of Friday, 24 March 1916, at the British army Irish Command Headquarters in Parkgate Street, Major General the Rt Honourable L.B. Friend, CB, commander-in-chief of the British troops in Ireland, sat down with his subordinate, Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Edgeworth Johnstone, chief commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and discussed the personage of Joseph Michael Patrick William Catherine Larkin Stanley, a regular thorn in their side.
Major General Friend was in command of what he perceived to be the “competent military authority for Ireland”. That day he signed a warrant which gave his officer complete authorisation to enter the premises situated at 30 Upper Liffey Street, Dublin, in the occupation of the “Gaelic Press”. He was to seize, take and remove all printed material and printing equipment, which would be “likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty, The King”. This, Lieutenant Colonel Johnstone was to do without warning and with impunity.
Over at Proby’s Lane the day was just getting under way. It was a Friday, and Joe was busy balancing the production flow with the demands of his numerous and varied clients. There were deadlines to meet, and the weekend beckoned. Joe had already spoken to James Connolly and promised to provide assistance for the new printing shop that Connolly was installing over at Liberty Hall.
Joe was also a wholesale agent for newspapers that he didn’t print himself. On the premises that day were copies of The Irishman, The Shamrock, The Eye Opener, An Claidheamh Soluis, The Catholic Bulletin, New Ireland, Nationality and other such material that acted as a red rag to the policing agents of John Bull.
One of the Gaelic Press employees had in his possession a copy of a George Bernard Shaw book, which he was reading in his leisure time. It too was taken by the soldiers.
Later, Joe wrote to Shaw to inform him of the incident and to ask him “ whether it has ever been officially given as the opinion of the military authorities, that your book, Plays for Puritans contains seditious matter, or matter likely to prejudice recruiting”. Shaw replied to Joe in typical cavalier fashion on 3 April 1916:
I do not think it is likely that the object of the raid on the Gaelic Press included the seizure of my Three Plays for Puritans. You may confidently acquit the higher authorities on that score. But in one of the three plays, an American, speaking during the War of Independence in the year 1777, uses the angry expression “a pig headed lunatic like King George”. It seems possible that a zealous police officer, his eye lighting on this passage, may have mistaken it for a contemporary reference. If so, the laugh is on your side, as the Vigilance Committee said handsomely to the widow when she convinced them that they had hanged her husband in mistake.
The raid itself was as swift as it was sudden, but it could not have been completely unexpected. Military lorries were made available to haul the printing machinery the short distance across the river. Despite Joe’s protestations, there was little he could do. He watched helplessly as his three-year-old business operation was dismantled and carted away in separate bits. He spent the rest of the day telephoning his clients to explain that, due to circumstances beyond his control, their orders would not now be completed. Later, Joe estimated the loss of the machinery at £1,525. The loss of the account books resulted in a further revenue deficit of £650.
The dust had barely settled and the soldiers were not long gone when a group of workmen arrived at the door with a handcart asking to see the boss. Joe approached the door and greeted the group. Then he remembered. They were members of the Irish Citizen Army sent by James Connolly regarding the arrangement that Joe had made with him. The then general secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union needed type to
supplement his Double Crown Wharfdale printing machine in the tiny 9’ × 6’ print room in Liberty Hall. He needed the type to produce his rebel journal the Worker’s Republic, and whatever else the old rundown machine could manage in its last days.
Nobody had anticipated that the Gaelic Press would be raided that day, and the place devastated. But as Joe gathered his thoughts it was brought to his attention that there were some frames with type locked into them, which were set up for jobs that he could no longer print. He had the type dismantled and piled into the handcart for Connolly.
Within three weeks, compositors Michael J. Molloy, Liam Ó Briain and printer Christopher Brady combined this type with other type that they also procured from Englishman and printer William Henry West of Capel Street, to print a document in Liberty Hall about which Thomas MacDonagh would say: “ The Proclamation of The Irish Republic has been adduced in evidence against me as one of the signatories; you think it is already a dead and buried letter, but it lives, it lives. From minds alight with Ireland’s vivid intellect it sprang, in hearts aflame with Ireland’s mighty love it was conceived. Such documents do not die…”
Joe’s determination knew no bounds. The already late issue of The Spark that was due out on Sunday, 16 March, was now well behind schedule. He immediately contacted Connolly to see if he could avail of the Double Crown printing machine over at Liberty Hall. Connolly agreed, and the periodical that would “ keep the fires of the nation burning” was produced and circulated for that week.
In that edition, Countess Markievicz chose to run with the headline “Ireland’s Press-Arm” and wrote an editorial about the raid. In it she mentions a “notorious London Times article”, which referred to The Gael, branding it as a highly seditious publication and mentioning that it was published by the Gaelic Press, thus setting the company up for official attention.
This was only the start of a long and difficult road for Joe in attempting to redress the balance. He wrote to all of the Dublin MPs, including Ginnell, Nugent, Clancy and the famous Alfie Byrne – all of whom replied. He also wrote to Birrell himself – the chief secretary – to seek justice. As a
consequence of all this cage rattling, the raid on the Gaelic Press was to be brought up in Westminster.
Joe wrote a generic letter to those mentioned above:
The Gaelic Press 29th March 1916
Dear Sir,
We beg to enclose for your information and an official memorandum of the military and police raid which took place on these premises on Friday 24th March. The matter, we understand, will be raised in the House of Commons and we wish to put you in possession of the facts of the case in the event of your deeming it necessary to intervene in the interests of justice.
Yours truly J.M. Stanley.
The abrupt loss of his livelihood served only to reinforce Joe’s resolve and commitment to the nation’s plight. A rising was imminent, and as an active member of the IRB, he must have been well aware of the fact. Precisely a month to the day after the raid, Joe entered the occupied GPO and met with Connolly and Pearse.
All over Dublin plays were being written about the Fenians and various other emotive Irish themes. Many of them were liberally sprinkled with propaganda. Countess Markievicz was often to be seen on stage, and between performances she was well-known to be a lady-about-town as she travelled around the city in her car with her dog next to her. Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh knew Thomas MacDonagh and the Pearse brothers (Padraig and Willie) well and often travelled out to Pearse’s school, St Enda’s in Rathfarnham, to assist with the plays the students performed there. The stage was now set for those actors to play a different part.
On Easter Sunday morning – the day originally planned for the Rising –a meeting of the Military Council of the IRB took place in Liberty Hall, at which the decision to rise on Monday at noon was taken. Just before noon, James Connolly and Thomas MacDonagh entered the print room and
handed the draft copy of the Proclamation to the three men who were to print it.
The men, after great difficulty, set up the document and printed 2,500 copies. During the printing process nobody was allowed into the room, not even the Countess Markievicz, who arrived during the operation. The original draft – which many historians believe is in the handwriting of MacDonagh – is lost.
It is thanks to the foresight of Joe Stanley that the draft has come down to us today. Joe was well aware of the significance of the handwritten notes and took care to preserve them for posterity. They have never been seen by the public before and they are reproduced here for the very first time.
Meanwhile, after leaving Pearse and Connolly in the GPO, Joe Stanley went about finding a premises to carry out the plan that the three men had made for keeping the citizens of Dublin informed about the progress of the Rising and the actions and aims of the provisional Government of the proclaimed Republic. O’Keefe’s printing works in Halston Street, which Joe comandeered to print Pearse’s bulletins from inside the GPO, was a small job printers which possessed only a limited stock of type fonts. But it suited Joe for his particular purposes. Having abandoned the plan to take over the Irish Independent plant, with the assistance of a military escort, Joe easily “ persuaded” O’Keefe that his premises were now in the hands of others. He then proceeded to assemble a working staff. His father-in-law, Matthew Walker, was put in charge. A veteran printer, sixty-nine-year-old Matthew walked all the way from his home in Glasthule every day to “ do his bit somehow”. James O’Sullivan of Denmark Street, Thomas Ryan and Charlie Walker (Joe’s brother-in-law) made up the rest of the workforce, with Joe as editor, publisher and Pearse’s press agent.
Pearse’s idea was to issue regular war bulletins from the Sackville Street stronghold. The first War Bulletin to be released was printed on page 4 of the Irish War News. It formed the Stop Press column of that little journal. The material that was intended for the next edition of Honesty was utilised to make up the rest of the space. This left room for Pearse’s first communiqué from the GPO. The surviving original draft of the Irish War News bulletin in Pearse’s handwriting is the first official document of the
newly declared Provisional Irish Government and acquires unique significance.
Pearse’s draft of the first Irish War News bulletin.
Pearse wrote the text on heavy typewriting paper, which appears to have been taken from the regular stock of paper kept in the GPO for official use. His handwriting is a backhand style, clear, crisp, slightly slanted, and at various points he has corrected his writing errors in the clumsy fashion of the day. One can only speculate at the thoughts in the mind of the writer as the words tumbled from thought to pencil to paper. A proficient writer of moving sentiment, he must have dreamed of committing his opening line to the public domain for some time; it stated, “An Irish Republic was proclaimed in Dublin on Easter Monday, 24th April at 12 noon.”
The text appeared as a news report in the Irish War News. His original draft appears here, verified by the National Library of Ireland to be the actual handwriting of the president of the Provisional Government himself. Joe and James W. Upton, who was one of Ireland’s most trenchant republican journalists, wrote the other articles that appeared in the Irish War News.
It was recorded later for the Bureau of Military History records that the “ostensible owner” of the publication was the Provisional Irish Government. There were 12,000 copies printed early on Tuesday morning, and they went on sale to the public around noon that day.
These printed documents were the only means of contact between the Irish republican forces and the civilian population of Dublin. They were posted throughout the immediate area. But as the week progressed and the British cordon gradually closed in on the city centre, the scene of these operations reduced significantly. Towards the end of the week, Matthew and Joe had added the task of billposting to their other duties.
Late on Tuesday night a decision was made by Connolly and Pearse to abandon the idea of a second Irish War News, and they decided instead to do a handbill-style proclamation with the heading, “ The Provisional Government to the Citizens of Dublin”, which has since come to be known as the Second War Bulletin. In it, Pearse salutes the citizens of Dublin on the “ momentous occasion of the proclamation of a Sovereign Independent Irish State”. Here his writing is more unwieldy, less fastidious. Interestingly, perhaps unconvinced of his long-term future, he declared that at least up to that point, “ We have lived to see an Irish Republic proclaimed.”
Pearse’s draft of the second bulletin.
The second bulletin.
When the job was printed, Joe himself took a supply of the finished article to the GPO. Of all of the places to be in Ireland at that moment, the GPO was easily one of the most perilous. In Enchanted by Dreams (Brandon 1996), Joe Good tells a story he heard from Colonel Joe Byrne, who, like Joe Stanley, had not been mobilised but who reported to the GPO on Tuesday anyway.
On entering he saw his old friend Joe Stanley … who said to him, “Hadn’t you the bloody sense to know you should keep out of this?”
Byrne replied, “No more sense than yourself by the looks of this.”
Neither Stanley nor Byrne was serving in the Volunteers; neither was subject to any mobilisation; but both were active IRB men and were what would now [1946] be referred to as fifthcolumnists, since both occupied respectable positions in society but were subversives belonging to a secret society.
Joe Stanley later recalled that when he left the building, he was in Connolly’s company. The two men managed to remain unscathed and they soon parted to go about their respective tasks. Joe was heading to the safety of Halston Street, his parcel safely delivered, and Connolly was inspecting the various posts in the immediate area.
It was on this particular occasion that Connolly was hit for the second time. (Earlier in the week he had received a superficial wound to his arm.) As he approached the end of his rounds his ankle was suddenly shattered by a sniper’s bullet. He had to crawl to the door of the GPO in agony. He would never walk again.
Letter confirming that the documents were written by Pearse.
Late on Wednesday night, or early on Thursday morning, Pearse sent over more copy to Halston Street for War Bulletin Number 3. This was the final bulletin of the series to be printed, and it appears that very few copies were distributed. The sub-heading “Up with the Barricades” perhaps shows the influencing hand of Connolly in drafting the text.
The date at the head of the paper shows Thursday Morning 88 April 1916. It seems that the quality controls in the commandeered Halston Street plant weren’t as tight as they might have been. In his comprehensive 1936 Irish Press article “The War Bulletins of Easter Week” Joseph J. Bouch says that this last bulletin was dated 28 April, so perhaps during the run someone noticed the mistake and miscorrected later copies to the 28th. Thursday was in fact the 27th. However, the copy kept by Joe reads 88 April. Considering the difficult operating circumstances, from this distance of almost ninety years, the compositor’s error looks perfectly understandable.
On Thursday night, Pearse found that the line of communication between himself and his press officer was cut by the encroachment of the British troops. They had by that time occupied North King Street and Capel Street, thus making contact between the two impossible. On Friday morning, as the GPO burned around him, Pearse composed a fourth and final document, which could not reach Joe and was never printed.
During the most famous week in Irish history, Joe came and went to the GPO for as long as he could. He later recorded that, “this work involved my attendance at the GPO for two or three hours each day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in addition to dangerous penetrations through the British cordons which were drawing in around the Post Office from Wednesday”.
On the Thursday, in the midst of the chaos, he decided to draft a will –just in case. It was a hurried affair, in which he left all his worldly goods to his now pregnant wife. It is dated 27 April 1916 and simply reads: “I hereby will and bequeath all my property, real and personal, to my wife Annie.” It was hastily witnessed by both his brother-in-law Michael McDunphy and his good friend and contributor to the Gaelic Athlete, J.W. Upton.
Joe Stanley’s hastily written last will and testament
Before the official surrender, Pearse wrote a final letter to his mother that ended with the lines, “ The men have fought with wonderful courage and gaiety, and, whatever happens to us, the name of Dublin will be splendid in history for ever. Willie and I hope you are not fretting and send you all our love.”
Pearse gave the letter to Joe to make sure that it would get through to her. As the round-ups intensified after the Rising, Joe gave it to Matthew, who hand-delivered it to Pearse’s mother when the heat died down. Pearse’s sister, Senator Margaret Pearse, recalled in 1962 that her mother did not receive the message “until some weeks after Easter, 1916 when Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh’s father brought it to us”.
A narrative of the fate of the leaders of the Rising here is superfluous. Suffice to say that following the surrender, the British made a catalogue of serious errors, which would unite Ireland against them. Irish prisoner of war Liam Pedlar later declared in Frongoch concentration camp, “ They failed, say you yes – but with their failure achieved success.” The Rising was a military catastrophe for the patriots, but events in the following months created the emotional tide that brought about a flood of major change to Irish shores.
Dubliners could not believe the awful devastation to their city that had been caused by a few hundred rebels. Whole streets were razed to the ground during the trouble, and Sackville Street in particular was destroyed. But what aggravated many of them most was the fact that a greater number of innocent civilians had lost their lives than the total number of combatants on either side: 262 citizens died, compared to 62 insurgents and 141 members of the forces of the Crown. The majority of locals felt contempt for the rebels, and as they were marched by as prisoners, passers-by inevitably berated them.
Chapter Three
It has been recorded that the total number of rebels who took an active part in the Dublin Rising was 1,656. But 3,149 people were arrested countrywide, and 2,519 of that number were deported to England and imprisoned there. (The number of British troops in Dublin rose from 2,500 on the Monday to 5,500 by the end of the week.)
It wasn’t long before the British called to Upper Liffey Street to seek Joe out. On 12 May — the day James Connolly and Seán Mac Diarmada were executed in Kilmainham Jail — he received a summons at his house to appear at the Castle. Taken away by the officers, he was questioned there by a detective regarding his whereabouts and activities during the previous week. He drafted out a convoluted and erroneous witness statement citing various alibis that would place him far from the GPO. His witness statement reads:
At my own house on Friday 12th May, I was ordered to appear before Provost Marshal at Dublin Castle by a detective officer. I am unacquainted with the identity of the detective officer with whom I went away. I was not connected with any of the bodies named. None whatever. No charge has been preferred against me as being connected with the rebellion and I can account for my time and movements during the time it lasted. On Easter Saturday I was engaged at the G.A.A Convention in Dublin City Hall till 3 p.m. as can be verified by the officials of the G.A.A. Easter Sunday evening I spent in my own house with some guests including Mr. James Collins of 56 Stockwell Park Crescent, Stockwell, London. On Easter Monday, I went to Fairyhouse Races with Mr. Collins (mentioned above) and met Messrs John Kirwan and Kevin O’Loughlin, members of the Dublin County Board G.A.A. and Mr McKeever of Ardee, Co. Louth, Turf
Commission Agent. Easter Monday night I spent with my mother and sisters and Mr. McDunphy, 144 Clonliffe Road, at my mother’s house at 36 Parnell Street, Dublin. On Tuesday and Wednesday myself and my wife stopped at my mother’s house to help to protect her property against looting. My mother, sisters, employees, Mr. McDunphy and Mr. Frank Carraher of Smarmore, Ardee, Co. Louth can testify to my movements up to Friday, and I was the best part of the time confined to the house, 36, Parnell Street, Dublin in their company. I was taken out of the house under the direction of an officer of the Notts and Derby Regiment, in common with other men in the houses in that locality and escorted past the barriers. This officer I have seen in Richmond Barracks and can identify. Friday night, Saturday and Sunday the troubles were practically over and I returned to my ordinary business on Monday.
No doubt the reference to Mr James Collins, with an English address, was an attempt to curry favour. (Collins was in fact one of Joe’s chief contributors to the Gaelic Athlete.) But his mention of the fact that he was closely associated with the GAA would have done him no favours. He was an active member of the committee of the Geraldine’s GAA Club. Many members of the GAA flocked to join the Volunteers when they were formed in November 1913, and by this time the British authorities treated the association as a quasi-subversive movement.
The Mr McDunphy of 144 Clonliffe Road was a barrister and was married to Joe’s sister May. McDunphy later became private secretary to both Dr Douglas Hyde and Éamon de Valera in their respective capacities of President of Ireland.
It goes without saying that the incident he mentioned concerning the officer from the Notts and Derby Regiment who took him from the house must have been true. But Joe neglected to mention the fact that he was the press officer of the Provisional Irish Government and had conspired with Pádraig Pearse and James Connolly (by this time both dead) by being the official printer of the new Republic.
Joe’s reference in his statement about being escorted from the house is not so innocuous an incident as it appears at first glance. Sometime between 6 a.m. on Friday until the truce was declared on Saturday afternoon of Easter Week, only yards away from 36 Parnell Street, the “Massacres of North King Street” had occurred. Several innocent civilian men, despite the heart-rending protestations of their families, were taken from their houses and either shot or bayoneted to death.
His witness statement didn’t work. He was promptly arrested and sent to Richmond Barracks in Inchicore along with all of the other Rising detainees, including the leaders. His internment notice outlined that it was for being “ reasonably suspected for having favoured, protected or assisted an armed insurrection against His Majesty”.
Connolly had been taken to the Castle because of his infirmity and as a result was spared the ignominy of being handpicked for execution by the infamous G-men. These detectives moved through the captive rebels and pointed to those who were to be court-martialed and shot dead. Their actions in Inchicore that day would later consign some of the detectives to an early grave on the orders of Michael Collins during the Black and Tan War.
For the following three weeks Joe was held in Room 6, Block K, of the Inchicore Barracks. Annie came to visit during his time there. It was from Richmond Barracks that Joe soon wrote his first letter to Annie from the first of his three places of incarceration:
Richmond Military Barracks, Inchicore, Friday.
My Dear wife,
I am here quite comfortable and doing well. There is plenty of good company. We can get food from outside and clothing and I believe a visit can be arranged by applying at the gate. Please don’t worry about me in the least, as I am quite happy here. I hope everything outside is as well situated as I am. I hope Gyp and Máire are doing well and mother and all the girls. I have enough money to buy things, but if you can, send in the following things.
1. Shirts, underclothing and socks
2. A little fruit
3. A bit of cheese
4. Cup, saucer, plate and 2 spoons
5. Some water biscuits
Address your parcel as follows: Mr Joseph Michael Stanley, (of 30 Upper Liffey Street, Dublin)
C/O Officer in charge of prisoners
Richmond Military Barracks, Inchicore, Dublin
Remember me to Madeline and tell her to try and collect Eason’s accounts and all the other accounts she can, to keep you with money. I think we are likely to spend the remainder of our time here, whether it be long or short, instead of being sent elsewhere. There are no signs of being tried yet.
With fondest love, from your husband, Joe
PS Please drop me a line if you can’t get to see me.
The Madeline referred to was Madeline Lawless, his first cousin. Her brother Pete was shot by British troops during a raid on their home in 23 Halston Street in the Tan War. Her mother found him lying on the bedroom floor in a pool of blood.
On 2 June, Joe was informed that they were to be transported from Richmond Barracks to another site of confinement. Word quickly spread that they were heading to Knutsford Prison in England.
He hastily scribbled a note to his Annie to advise her of this unsettling development with feigned optimism:
Richmond Barracks
Thursday
My Dear Annie,
I have just got marching orders for England. I believe we are going to Knutsford Detention Barracks, but I do not know for sure, neither do I know what part of England Knutsford is. If you or Noyk telephone to the Barracks tomorrow they will probably be able to let you know for sure. We are all in good spirits and we take it as a good sign that we are being sent away. Don’t worry about me in the least as I am not worrying about myself at all and we are promised equally good treatment in our next “home from home”.
Best Love from Joe
On that day arrangements had been made to ship prisoners to English prisons. Forty were heading to Wandsworth, a hundred to Wakefield, and J.M. Stanley was one of the fifty that were bound for Knutsford in Cheshire. Two weeks later they were all reunited in Frongoch Concentration Camp near Bala in North Wales.
Michael Noyk, a member of the Jewish community in Ireland, was a well-known Dublin solicitor who came to be trusted implicitly by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins in later years. So many Volunteers availed themselves of his services that his offices were raided by the British. It is no surprise that Joe was already acquainted with Noyk. As the solicitor had offices around the corner from him in Mary Street, the relationship had well matured by the time Joe was imprisoned. Noyk actually sent some of his own money to Annie to help her to make ends meet as soon as he heard the news of Joe’s arrest. He later included Dáil Éireann and many IRA men among his clients. He conducted most of the business of the Volunteers under false names.
Even though news of the departure must have been disconcerting, there was a certain comfort and safety in numbers. But those numbers didn’t add up. It was obvious to many, including the British, that they were deporting men who had nothing to do with the Rising. National figures, republicans of varying levels of conviction and general dissidents were rounded up in a knee-jerk reaction by an implacable General Sir John Maxwell. In fact,
some of those who spent up to seven months in prison disagreed vehemently with the events of Easter Week.
Michael Collins later wrote from Frongoch Internment Camp, “At least a quarter of the men in the North Camp know very little about the Rising. One man, a former labourer of my acquaintance, said that he was just forced off the street in the roundup. His only crime appears to be that he was just walking the street.”
Prisoner Martin Kiniry from Fermoy maintained that it was his fondness for cockfighting that induced the local RIC to intern him. And Bob Holland of Inchicore said that two drunks who imitated the marching of a group of rebels along the quays were deported following their arrest.
The British prime minister, Herbert H. Asquith, visited Richmond Barracks and had actually spoken to many of the prisoners. In a letter to his wife he declared that, “They were mostly from remote areas of the country and none had taken part in the Dublin Rising.” By this time, however, almost 2,000 prisoners had been deported.
The cattle ship Slieve Bloom was used to carry most of the prisoners to England. Many later recalled a hellish journey in a stinking hold. Furthermore, the boat zigzagged all the way from Dublin to Holyhead to avoid German torpedoes as the Irish Sea was frequented by U-boats engaged in the war in Europe.
Arising from the round-ups, the British government set up the “Sankey Detention Review Committee” in London to investigate the individual cases of all of those arrested. The prisoners came to call it the “Advisory Committee”. Over the next few months, the enormous task of transporting every single man to Wormwood Scrubs in London for interrogation was carried out. Many saw it as a break from the daily monotony and welcomed the “holiday” in London. Significant numbers of them were released by the Advisory Committee, which began to hear cases at the end of June. It would be some time before Joe appeared before the committee.
On arrival at Knutsford, Joe was immediately frustrated by several issues. There were now more common criminals in his immediate proximity than rebels. The Volunteers were denied the use of razor blades; the distribution of blankets and sheets was inconsistent, the cells were cold and
damp, and his biggest gripe was that letters home took a circuitous route through the censor in London. However, overall conditions at the jail were an improvement on Richmond Barracks. He wrote four letters home from Knutsford, dated the 5, 8, 10 and 11 June. These extracts paint a picture:
No one with whom I have come in contact has been able to assure me for certain how often Prisoners of War are allowed to write home … now as there is nobody of sufficient intelligence in Knutsford to censor your letter, it must perforce go to London!
There is a fairly large average number of new releases here every day, but I do not see any sign of my own being added to the number just yet.
I have met a good number of Dublin friends here and we are quite a happy family at exercise. Tell Noyk my address here in case he wants to write to me. I started this letter with a growl, so I may as well finish with a growl. This institution is termed a military prison. Its function is to take charge of prisoners –military prisoners – for stated terms following conviction. The general sum of its inmates are therefore convicted criminals. How did I come to be included in this category? Up to this I have not even had a charge preferred against me, much less being convicted of any crime. The general application of the policy that has been applied to my case is the real root cause which produces rebels and manufactures artificial rebellions.
I am in excellent health and there is plenty of companionship here.
In his letter of 10 June, Joe got word that another “home from home” was on the cards. He wrote:
There is now a strong rumour prevailing here that we are all to be moved away to a place called Colwyn Bay – a well known seaside resort in North Wales. This is a step nearer home, at any rate, as Colwyn Bay is not a very far distance from Holyhead. If
rumour speaks correctly, we are to be put in an internment camp there, which will, it is believed, do away with the solitary confinement to which most of our time is subjected here. Noyk told me he was coming over here for Whitsuntide – I hope he won’t arrive to find an empty nest and the bird flown.
Don’t worry about the business dear, it will be all right in the end. God never closes one door but opens another and I am completely confident that I can always get enough together for a comfortable living for us both.
Meanwhile in Dublin, Mrs Kathleen Clarke, widow of Joe’s neighbour, IRB veteran Tom Clarke, had formed the Volunteer Dependants’ Fund. The Dublin Corporation also set up the Irish National Aid Association. Both organisations were amalgamated after the Rising. It became obvious that hundreds of dedicated Irishmen had become destitute following the rebellion, and this recently merged organisation became the salvation of many. The benevolence of those with Irish interests in America played a major role in the success of the movement. In those early days, printing was required to enable the organisation to function. In this regard, Noyk brought a note from Matthew Walker with him to Knutsford, informing Joe of some interesting recent developments affecting the Gaelic Press:
Friday June 9th
My Dear Joe,
As Mr. Noyk is going over to see you this evening, I take the opportunity of writing to you. Mr. Fred Allan has sent in some work in connection with the National Aid Association and promises to give us other work. I have every hope of business improving and by the time you are back again with us business will be humming.
O’Keefe, Halston Street met me and he is in a bad way. He really wants to dispose of his place. He would sell everything on the premises for £100. It is a bargain decidedly. He may change in a month – coming down.
Goodbye for a while,
M.J. Walker.
In the short time he was in Knutsford, Joe received some other letters from home, as is evident in his final letter to Annie from the prison on 11 June:
So you are a distressed grass widow now, in the eyes of the Sisters’ Committee. Well, you’ve played a good many parts in your time dear, but I’m sure you never expected to play that one, did you? No doubt you’ll play it quite well too.
By the way, somebody in the office seems to mistake me as a bicycle mechanic. I got a postcard with the office heading on it the other day telling me to call at no “30” and have a bicycle repaired. I’m too busy to do any cycle repairs just now…
In my last letter I mentioned that we were likely to be shifted to Colwyn Bay, in North Wales and slightly nearer home. On the whole we are looking forward to an easier and less confined time there and there might also be a chance of sea bathing… Business at “36” I hear is not all that it might be, but I suppose a season of depression was bound to follow the Rebellion.
Sea bathing didn’t materialise for the prisoners during their sojourn in North Wales.
Chapter Four
Today, the ambiance and friendliness of a characteristic Welsh village can be found in the little hamlet of Frongoch. It provides a perfect picture of Wales. The undulating hills and enchanting valleys that surround the village offer a blend of outstanding natural beauty and spectacular panoramas. Not long after his arrival in the area, Michael Collins wrote, “It’s situated most picturesquely on rising ground amid pretty Welsh hills.”
Joe concurred in a letter home to Annie. “It is really a beautiful country around here and perhaps in the days to come we might spend a holiday in the locality. It would interest you would it not? It has certainly a strong fascination for me.”
Conversely, according to another Irish prisoner, while the hilly landscape may have been reminiscent of Connemara, no part of the rugged Galway terrain was as “lonely, dark, cold or pitiless as this isolated Welsh valley”. Certainly, civilians rarely passed this way.
In 1896, the stills of the Frongoch Whisky Distillery – the only legal whisky-making operation in Wales at the time – had fallen silent, due to a combination of circumstances. The owner was killed in a tragic carting accident; there was a dramatic increase in the building of churches; and a strong temperance movement began to sweep the country.
Because the location was so remote, coupled with the size and scale of the existing factory structure, the site was deemed suitable to be transformed into an internment camp for German prisoners during the war. At one time 1,800 German captives were held there until they were sent to another camp in anticipation of the arrival of the Irish rebels. Frongoch reopened for Irish prisoners on 9 June 1916.
The site was split by a road dividing it into two camps: South Camp and North Camp. The road led from the main thoroughfare to the village railway station. The South Camp contained the distillery, and the North Camp was
simply a large rolling field with huts, all of which were enclosed by wire fences. By the end of June, the camp was again full to capacity.
Joe made the journey from Knutsford to Frongoch by train and arrived there on 16 June. It was the first time that he had been outside Ireland, and the journey must have been a reasonably stirring affair. The prisoners were prohibited from leaving the train at the stops along the journey; soldiers paraded along the train corridors and the windows were kept closed, but the prisoners defiantly raised their voices in song at every station in a determined effort make the point that they held the high moral ground.
Among the 1,832 prisoners to disembark from trains at the picturesque little railway station were a number of men who later left indelible marks on Irish history: Michael Collins, Seán T. O’Kelly, Dr James Ryan, Tomás MacCurtain, Terence MacSwiney, Desmond Ryan, W.J. Brennan-Whitmore, Richard Mulcahy, Michael Staines, Oscar Traynor and Dick McKee. By the time the Treaty came along, the University of Revolution – a later title for the prison – produced an impressive total of thirty TDs.
There were men there from almost every county in Ireland. Prisoner Desmond Ryan, who later became a writer of some repute, said of Frongoch, “All Ireland was there, a strange new Ireland, re-born in the Easter fires, leaderless, restless but dimly aware that nothing would be again as of old.”
Another prisoner, Batt O’Connor, wrote, “Many a lad came in a harmless gossoon, left it with the seeds of Fenianism deep in his heart.” O’Connor also reported that his group entered the Frongoch gates bellowing out “The Soldier’s Song”.
Interestingly, in the seven and a half month period that Frongoch held the rebel Irishmen, there was only one recorded escape. One version of the escape suggests that the escapee, who was described as “a bit gone in the head”, simply walked through the main gate unnoticed and made his way to the town of Bala, three miles away. Upon asking a policeman the name of the town, he was immediately recaptured and returned to the camp. Another, more credible story, is that the prisoner, whose name was Devitt, escaped and was at large for four days until he was found hiding in a ditch.
The camp commandant was Colonel F.A. Heygate-Lambert, who spoke with a lisp, and he proved to be a difficult individual for the internees to put
up with. Prisoners sometimes found themselves in solitary confinement for the most inoffensive of misdemeanours as a result of his attention to detail. As Collins said, “It’s hard to imagine anything in the shape of a man being more like a tyrannical old woman than the commandant in charge of this place.” As a result, internees persistently tried to get one over on him.
On arrival at the camp, every batch of new prisoners was addressed by Heygate-Lambert, who told them that the camp was being run by the prisoners under his supervision, that any attempt to escape would be thwarted and that the low wire fence set three feet inside the high barbedwire enclosure was known as the wire of death. Prisoners could hang their washing on it but they could not lean on it. Anyone who attempted to go beyond it would be shot at by the numerous sentries on guard who had orders to shoot to kill. He further informed them that the sentries had been supplied with shotguns and buckshot.
The prisoners promptly nicknamed him “Buckshot”. On 7 July, with the blessing of the Home Office, Buckshot informed the prisoners that they were denied official prisoner-of-war status. However, they were to be treated as special category prisoners for the duration of their incarceration to differentiate their status from common criminals and the German captives before them, who were official POWs. As official POW status was denied, the prisoners sensed that the associated privileges were also in jeopardy in this unfamiliar, distinctive category. Tensions between captors and captives was thus introduced early in the proceedings.
Sergeant-Major Newstead had a personality that was more acceptable to the men despite the fact that he was foul-tempered and foul-mouthed, had big feet and a fierce looking moustache. He inspected the prisoners’ personal belongings, and they were ordered to hand in all papers, letters, books, documents, and especially jackknives in their possession. He therefore acquired the nickname “Jack Knives”. Along with the tall, gaunt Jack Knives, the adjutant, Lieutenant Burns, oversaw the daily administration of the camp.
The day started for the men at 5.30 a.m. when the calm of the valley was shattered by the piercing echo of a shrill steam horn — reveille. Every day they all lined up to be counted. Mass was celebrated by the camp chaplain, Fr Stafford, about a quarter of an hour after the count. Daily inspections were carried out by the commandant and/or the adjutant. Dinner was at 12.30, tea was at 5.00, and all prisoners were to be in bed by 8.20. There were three meals a day, two of which were eight ounces of bread and almost a pint of tea. The daily routine never changed. It was a long day; lights-out wasn’t until 9.45 p.m. So it wasn’t long before they began to organise daily activities to prevent themselves from going stir-crazy during the long waking hours.
Hut leaders were chosen and they included prisoner No. 1,320, Michael Collins, who was in charge of Hut No. 10. Prisoner No. 352, Joe Stanley, was given responsibility for Hut No. 6.
As they were in control of their own fortunes, the men quickly formed an administrative body, which they audaciously called the General Council of the Civil Government of the Irish Republic of Frongoch. They elected a president of the council and various committees and sub-committees. Joe’s keen interest in the arts and Gaelic games resulted in his being elected to the games committee – or “amusements”, as some of the prisoners liked to put it. However, the General Council didn’t last long in control. It was soon established that a civilian based “administration” was at variance with the fact that the inmates considered themselves to be political prisoners. Senior (republican) army officers soon formed a military administration and took over control of the day-to-day running of the camp.
Joe was assigned to the South Camp, which incorporated the entire distillery and was divided into two dormitories for 936 inmates. The men were housed in the grain lofts, which were infested with rats. The Irish word for rat is francach and this led to many a quip among the prisoners. It was not at all unusual to find rats wandering around their beds in the small hours of the morning. Collins wrote in a letter home, “Had a most exciting experience myself the other night, woke up to find a rat between my blankets – didn’t catch the blighter either.”
Occupants of Hut No. 6 and duties assigned to each prisoner.
The North Camp was on a hill on the opposite side of the public right-ofway and contained thirty-five wooden huts laid out in two rows, or streets. The “streets” soon became known as Pearse Street and Connolly Street. Each hut could hold thirty-two men. Frank O’Connor reported in The Big Fellow that the hut occupied by Michael Collins, where wrestling, pillowfighting and general larking about were the order of the day, was the noisiest in North Camp. As prisoners began to be released and more space became available in the more agreeable North Camp, Joe would be transferred there.
On 30 June, he wrote to Annie. It was their first wedding anniversary. As a prisoner of war yearning for the company of his new wife, it was unlikely that he would forget the date of the happy event:
J.M. Stanley 352 Irish Prisoner, Frongoch Internment Camp, N. Wales (South Camp) 30th June 1916
Dearest,
Many thanks for your parcels, which have come safely to hand. I am still getting on quite nicely here as well as all the others. Tell Noyk it is quite likely I will be sent to London for a day or two to be examined before the Advisory Committee and ask him to write to me to say how I should act there, if a legal representative is not permitted.
This time this day twelve months we were on our way to Kenmare. Well, please God we will celebrate the event next year. I hope you are keeping well and not worrying too much about the business. I am sure you will get good outside help and sympathy to enable you to at least make ends meet.
No Irish papers are allowed here, so I do not know how the “Athlete” is going. I am sure however, that it will get good help from the G.A.A.
We are now allowed to write two letters per week, this style, and perhaps later on we might get further concessions.
the
Around this time the first major confrontation took place between the jailers and the jailed. It was to become known as the “Ashpit Incident”. As part of their fatigue duties, the prisoners were required to remove ashes from their huts every day. On this occasion, Buckshot ordered a detail of eight men on refuse duty to perform this task outside the compound for the sentries posted there. They refused. Their reward for point-blank refusal resulted in their being sent directly to the punishment huts, where privileges were immediately withdrawn. Every day, eight more men refused to comply until there were 136 of them in confinement. The incident ended when a letter from the Home Office referring to the incident as a trivial matter put an end to it and prevented camp morale from breaking down completely.
Still frustrated at the injustice of having his liberty taken away from him without being charged with any crime, Joe pleaded to Annie around this time, “Tell Noyk I have sent in an appeal to the Secretary of State as have most of us here. Let him do so too in legal form.”
As there was no room within the precincts of the camp, a field at the rear of South Camp was chosen as a recreational area. One side of the field rose sharply towards the railway line, providing a perfect platform for spectators. The pretty clear-water River Tryweryn bubbled its way towards Bala and hindered direct access to the playing field, and so a wooden bridge was erected. The football pitch was christened “Croke Park”. When the internees were holding major fixtures, they displayed posters around the camp, advising spectators to “leave their wives and sweethearts at home”!
Eager to introduce Irish sport to the Welsh hills and their daily prison lives, the inaugural meeting of the Games Committee took place thirteen days after the camp had reopened, on 22 June. Joe dutifully recorded the following:
Inaugural Meeting of Games Committee of Frongoch Camp 22.6.16
Mr. O Donovan (Cork) reported that the Gen. Committee of the camp had delegated him to act as Chairman of the Games Committee. Mr. J.M. Stanley, Dublin was appointed Hon. Secretary.
In regard to the laying out of football field, Mr. O’Donovan was delegated to approach Camp Sergt-Major respecting the fixing up of goalposts, and marking of side and end lines.
Owing to the restricted playing area, it was regretted that the playing of Hurling was not found practicable, but it was decided to promote contests in all other branches of sport where circumstances permitted. It was also agreed to approach military authorities with a view to securing weights for weight throwing.
The system of competition in football was discussed and it was eventually agreed to draw the Messes against each other in teams of fifteen aside, picked from Camp Mess. The decision was arrived at to commence the matches the following day, by playing off the first eight Messes.
The attendance was: Messrs. R. Fitzgerald (Kerry), T. Burke (Louth), M. Collins (Dublin), L. O’Flaherty (Dublin), D. Walsh (Tipperary), P. Cahill (Kerry), J. Gibbons (Kilkenny).
On Saturday, 26 June, the Games Committee met again, and the secretary, J.M. Stanley, recorded that there was to be a football game between Kerry and Louth, as well as a full athletics programme the following day as part of their Wolfe Tone memorial celebrations, which began the previous day on the anniversary of Tone’s death. By this time the Games Committee was already affected by the failure of the civilian administration. Seán O’Donovan from Cork was now displaced from the chair and Richard (“Dickeen”) Fitzgerald, a good friend of Joe’s (and fellow contributor to the Gaelic Athlete), from Kerry assumed control in O’Donovan’s stead. Fitzgerald had captained Kerry to All-Ireland success in 1913 and 1914 and was ideally suited to the position.
Joe’s minutes of the meeting read:
Minutes of the Committee Meeting held on Saturday 24/6/16
M. R. Fitzgerald was appointed to the Chair in the absence of Mr. O’Donovan (Cork) removed.
The secretary reported that Mr. O’Donovan’s removal necessitated the nomination by the General Committee of another Chairman for the Games Committee.
Secretary reported having received instructions from General Committee to organise football match and athletic programme for a Wolfe Tone Memorial Celebration the following day. It was agreed to draw teams representative of Kerry and Louth and the following athletic events, 100 yds, 220yds, Long and High Jumps, 28lbs weight. Messrs. Fitzgerald and Burke to draw teams and entries for athletic events to be taken by secretary beforehand. Present, Messrs. T. Burke, D. Walsh, R. Fitzgerald, P.J. Cahill, M. Collins, J. Gibbons & J.M. Stanley.
For some unknown reason the proposed events didn’t take place until the following Friday. As secretary, it was Joe’s responsibility to record the winners and losers, and he kept the original notes of the day. Including heats, there were to be fourteen events: (1) 100 yards heats. (2) long jump. (3) triple jump (hop, skip and jump). (4) 100 yards semi-final and final. (5) 220 yards heats. (6) high jump. (7) 220 yards final. (8) one mile. (9) Siamese race (three-legged race). (10) 440 yards. (11) wheelbarrow race (12) relay race (13). 16lbs hammer throw. (14) football placekick. Joe recorded the following:
The Wolfe Tone Commemoration Games organised by the Games Committee will come off on tomorrow, Friday at 2.00 pm. The order of the programme will be as follows:
2 p.m. 100 yards (heats)
2.15 Long Jump
2.25 100 yards (Final)
2.35 High Jump
2.50 220 yards
3.10 Weight Throwing
3.25 220 yards Final
3.40 One Mile Race
3.50 Football Match Kerry V Louth
All entries received for the athletic programme will stand good. Competitors to assemble at starting point to the call of the whistle. Entries will be taken at the Arch after dinner for the mile race by the secretary J.M. Stanley.
From Joe’s carefully documented trackside reports, it is clear to see that after six events Michael Collins was emerging as the composite all-rounder. He was the outright winner of the 100 yards sprint, the long jump and the hop, skip and jump (triple jump) and reached the second round of the high jump. He jumped a respectable eighteen feet, seven and a half inches for the long jump.
Collins and Joe, in the prime of their lives at twenty-six years of age, both participated in the 100 yard relay race near the end of the day. There were four teams of three. The “Big Fella” still had enough to help his team come first. Joe’s team came in second.
Even in Frongoch, Collins kept a low profile. As he had had a longstanding English address prior to returning to Ireland, Collins would have been a candidate for conscription to the English army. Collins was to feature in most of the 100 yard races that summer. It was around this time that, in a bizarre twist, he was also to feature in the House of Commons for the first time. In defence of stories concerning insufficient food rations at the camp, Major John R.P. Newman addressed the House and informed his audience that the food in Frongoch must have been more than adequate since the 100 yards race was won in such a respectable time.
In a note to his sister Hannie, an indignant Collins sought to set the record straight: “Major Newman said he noticed we held sports here and that the 100 yards was won in 10 3/4 seconds (10 4/5 was correct by the way) which didn’t seem to show any neglect in the feeding etc … Actually there isn’t a solitary man here of no matter how slender an appetite who could live on the official ration.”
Results of 100 yards, 220 yards and triple jump, 8 August 1916.
Results of weight throwing competitions.
Results of half-mile race and tossing the caber.
Chess tournament featuring Gerry Boland (later Minister for Justice) and Richard Mulcahy (Minister for Defence in the first Dáil).
Biographers seem to agree that Collins was a bad loser when it came to sport. (He was not universally popular.) Joe Good, a Londoner who fought for the Volunteers in the Rising, once witnessed an example of Collins’s competitive streak. He wrote, in Enchanted by Dreams:
Once in Frongoch I watched Mick [Collins] for a long time without his being aware of it. It was during the late dusk of evening and long into the night. Mick was trying his best to put a fifty-six pound shot-weight over a high bar, a height over which the same shot had been thrown very easily by a strong Galwayman earlier that day. Mick tried and tried – thinking himself alone – and at last he got it over. Then, seeing me there watching him, he said, “And what do you think of that?”
According to the report that Joe managed to send home to be published in the Gaelic Athlete, Kerry won the big football game against Louth. Many of the teams to play in Frongoch were called after the Rising leaders. But interestingly, Joe played for a team along with Oscar Traynor and Dick Mulcahy that was named Fianna Fáil. On 3 September, Seán MacBrides beat Fianna Fáil 1-3 to 1-2. Frank Shouldice was the referee.
No doubt the time he spent in Frongoch helped Joe to become an accomplished poet and songwriter. He was exposed to a myriad of competent artistes. Following the sports events, the celebrations for the Tone Anniversary continued that evening with a concert. Twenty different artistes performed a variety of songs, recitations and dances, including a recitation of Pearse’s oration at the grave of O’Donovan Rossa by Seán Buckley of Dublin.
Another big sports day was held on 8 August. Collins won the 100 yards race again. This time the runner-up was M.W. O’Reilly. O’Reilly later said that Collins shouted, “Ah, you hoor, you can’t run,” as he overtook him.
A report in The Kerryman, on 26 August 1916, provides details of a major concert that was held on the night of 8 August. The MC for the evening was “ The Rajah of Frongoch”, Jimmy Mulkearns, who gave hilarious introductions to the various performing artists while dressed in full oriental costume. Dubliner Peadar O’Brien walked ahead of him bowing
occasionally and calling “Hail to thee, O Rajah of Frongoch”. (The name stuck and Mulkearns had some anti-conscription and anti-British poems published after his release under the pen name the Rajah of Frongoch.)
The first performer was introduced as “Signor” Toomey, who Mulkearns announced was recently returned from a big game expedition in Central Africa, to which one of the prisoners shouted up, “Hope it wasn’t a white elephant!”
Toomey sang “My Old Howth Gun”. Michael Collins of Clonakilty, fresh from his 100 yards victory earlier in the day, was the second artist on stage. He brought the house down with his recitation of “The Fighting Irish” (“Kelly and Burke and Shea”).
Stephen Jordan of Galway, a contributor to Joe’s papers, was then introduced as “The athletic marvel from the Western World”. He sang “Remember the Glories of Brian the Brave”. Seán Neeson of Belfast gave a rendition of “ The Two Grenadiers” and “ We Will Have Our Own Again”. Brian O’Higgins, later TD of the second Dáil and a poet who wrote under the pseudonym Brian na Banban, sang “Fried Frogs’ Legs” and recited “ The Man From God Knows Where”. Writer Desmond Ryan suggested that while in Frongoch, O’Higgins wrote a poem a day. A Dubliner by the name of O’Brien sang “ Rí Tú All the Day O” and “Eileen Óg”. The strict rule of no encores was broken for Neeson, O’Higgins and O’Brien.
The Rajah of Frongoch himself then took centre stage and sang “ Come Along and Join the British Army”. Other performers on the night included Mort O’Connell from Caherciveen who sang “Éire”; James O’Connor from Dublin who performed “The Gallant Men of ‘98”; Joseph Begley, Dublin, “ The West’s Awake”; Barney Mellows, “ The South Down Militia”; J O’Leary, “A Soldiers Song”; Joe Good, “ Clare’s Dragoons”; Joseph Trimble, “ Dear Dark Head”; William Power, “ The Vales of Arklow”; and Joe O’Connor rendered “The Irish Brigade”. The evening’s proceedings were brought to an emotional finale with a mass rendition of “A Nation Once Again”.
An early note home to Annie reads: “We have a piano here. And if possible send some music, also choir music from ‘36’ for choir singing.”
Concerts were held on Sunday evenings, and it is hardly surprising to learn that there was a significant variety of talent among the prisoners.
Other outdoor pursuits included route marches. Colonel HeygateLambert decided to punish the prisoners, when they refused to work, by sending them on six-mile route marches in the nearby countryside three times a week. The sentries at the camp were usually elderly or in some way unfit for active service. On occasion, some of the more mature British soldiers who were chosen to lead the marches couldn’t keep up with the pace. At other times the prisoners actually carried their heavy weapons in a compassionate gesture. Often war pipes were produced, and they marched over the Welsh moorlands to the tune of Irish airs.
On 4 July, Joe wrote to Annie, “We had a march round this country yesterday which was thoroughly enjoyed.”
The lot of the incarcerated Frongoch prisoner was as reasonable as could have been expected under the circumstances. Meanwhile, on the Continent on 1 July, the battle that symbolised the horrors of warfare for many people, the Battle of the Somme, began in France. On that day alone the British lost 60,000 men, and by November that figure had risen to 420,000. Many of the young lads who went over the top at the Somme were persuaded to volunteer by posters summoning English men everywhere to take up arms and show their patriotism. Conscription had been introduced into England on 6 January 1916.
But thoughts of the homeland were never far from the minds of the Volunteers. Back in Dublin those associated with the Volunteers had already begun to put the wheels in motion to reorganise the movement in the event of a general release. The majority of those who had made the journey home simply picked up from where they had left off and returned to the struggle.
Meanwhile, some aspects of the fight for Irish freedom were being thrashed out in debate in the camp. It seemed to the captive Volunteer leaders that commandeering principal buildings and attempting to hold them was futile, stout hearts or no stout hearts. The seeds of guerrilla warfare were beginning to be planted in the minds of many around this time – especially Michael Collins.
The spirit of the Irish Volunteer pervaded every fibre of Joe’s being. As a writer, he used any excuse possible to put pen to paper. While back in Dublin Joyce was putting the finishing touches to his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joe took his trusty pencil and left us with an enduring image of Frongoch and the political thoughts that prevailed in his head at that time:
The dominant note on internal life in Frongoch Camp is Militarism. Practically all phases of camp life and camp activity course along military channels. You turn a corner unexpectedly and find yourself face to face with militarism and the mailed fist. Some of it is practical militarism, but much of it is merely farcical.
Now militarism, in its proper place is a noble and beautiful thing. The disciplinary lessons it inculcates are invaluable as an asset towards victory either in warfare or in general organisation. It is noble because it effectually calls to arms the military, industrial and general resources of a community wherever its interests are threatened and lines up a solid phalanx to face the oppressor.
It is beautiful because it throws into broad relief that wholesome sympathy and unity of purpose which activated each individual in that community. There, broadly speaking the utility of militarism ends.
Now the ideal community to an Irish rebel is a free Republic.
Republican institutions, Republican forms of government, Republican Law Courts, Republican standards of thought and Republican conceptions of individual duties are essential to the existence of an ideal Republic. The more clearly the organised public life of the community approximates towards the realisation of these democratic institutions, the nearer does it approach towards the perfect Republic.
Under normal circumstances there can be nothing more repugnant to republican ideals than militarism, since militarism, to be effective, must be either autocratic (as in present day republics), or subordinate (as in most present day kingdoms or empires). The acceptance or theory that the man instantly above you is your
superior is an essential to effective militarism. Thus we find a gradually tapering pyramid at the authoritative apex of which we find a small number of men, or one man, commanding and directing the whole.
This condition of affairs does not stand in consistency with those democratic ideals which go to make up the republic in normal times, such as the state of warfare. However, this militarism becomes essential for the reason that the community must have that unity and singleness of purpose which can only spring from a single commander and this is quite irrespective of circumstance that that unity of singleness of purpose may be perfectly right or perfectly wrong. Therefore we reason that in a normal republic militarism is a prejudgement thing, but in the abnormal republic it becomes a useful and necessary instrument for pursuing a noted object.
Joe had settled into life in Frongoch with relative ease. The documents that survive show that he put his organisational talents to good use. Soon various cultural activities were introduced into the camp by the prisoners themselves, and in the afternoons classes were organised that included Irish, French, German, Spanish, Irish history, maths, bookkeeping, shorthand and telegraphy. Other artistic activities included drama, choir singing and step dancing. Debates were also held regularly in Irish and English. He helped organise and often participated in these events.
Letters to and from home became a highlight of camp life for Joe. The prisoners were allowed to write two letters home each week, and he took full advantage of this privilege. Annie wrote regularly and sent food as often as she could, so that he was kept in plentiful supply. News from home was mostly about the two businesses at Nos 30 and 36. All regular letters had to be written on small 6” × 3” slips of paper that were available from the camp stationery stores. A notice posted up around the camp informed the prisoners that they were only to write on both sides of the paper!
Letters both arriving and leaving the camp were checked by the camp censors. On more than one occasion, Joe’s illegal letters didn’t get beyond the perimeter fence. But from time to time he managed to smuggle
correspondence out to Annie, and they invented a code between them to inform each other of prohibited news.
Michael Collins was also directly involved with covert correspondence channels between the camp and the outside world. His secret methods of communication included having a direct link with the camp censor’s office where a contact there removed mail for him before it reached the censor’s desk. A favourite way to get letters out was to conceal them in the sandwiches of those prisoners who were being released. Also, they would mix letters with those that had already been read by the censor as they carried them home. Illegal incoming mail was often delivered by visitors.
From Richmond, Knutsford and Frongoch, Joe referred to his possible release regularly in his twice-weekly correspondence. Most days at the count, those who were being released would be given the good news, and the Volunteers were constantly on edge as the names of the lucky ones were being announced. An undated letter (probably early July) reads:
Dearest,
I got your parcel of socks and handkerchief all right and I will have sufficient socks to last me for some time to come. I am surprised the heir (or heiress) has not arrived yet and sorry at the same time because it must mean great anxiety for you. It is a comfort of course that your mother and mine and so many others are taking a kindly interest in you and from their experience, a tender one, I am certain of the best.
In your recent letters you have asked the question perpetually, why are the releases stopped? It appears that the Advisory Committee, before which we appear in London, recommended that the remainder of us here now, our individual cases having been duly considered should remain interred indefinitely. Therefore for the present, we are marking time for the next move in the game. What that will be, time alone will tell, but we have strong reason to believe that the present position will not be long maintained. How is Noyk getting on? Remember me to him. I don’t think he can do, or could do, any more than he has done.
Has there been any demand yet for the Proby Lane rent? I don’t think it was paid before I was arrested. I don’t know how about the Liffey Street rents, but the agent is very reasonable, or used to be!
Other news concerned the Gaelic Press and how they were managing to eke out an existence despite the raid in March and the Easter Week devastation in the capital. Matthew Walker was busy on the ground writing to the Castle for news of when the machinery was to be returned. Failing that, it was the view of the Gaelic Press directors and staff that the authorities should provide some sort of compensation. Before he was arrested, Joe had engaged the services of his good friend Michael Noyk to handle the case.
On Tuesday, 13 July, Joe smuggled out a letter to Annie by way of a friend who was heading to appear before the Advisory Committee in London. It was posted from Putney on 16 July. Annie and Joe had many friends who ended up in Frongoch. Some of Joe’s sisters were part of the greeting parties who met many of the prisoners off the train when they arrived home. Had Annie not been pregnant, no doubt she would have done the same.
Dearest,
I was surprised to learn that you had only got two letters from me up to the 7 July, as I arrived here on 16 June and wrote first once, and later on, twice a week regularly after that.
I have not yet been called to London and it seems now as if I may not be called at all. Seamus and most of the Dublin men have been called and they are now calling up men from other counties. I’m afraid you people at home are a trifle too sure of my being shortly released, if you expect to see me walk in on you one morning. Very few have been released from here as yet, but there is a general expectation of a large number of releases at “ no far distant date”. The staple joke of the camp is that the first five years will be the worst.
Fondest love to yourself,
Joe
That same day he penned another letter in which he tackles other issues that were more suitable for the censor’s eyes. This time he used the official channels to post it out. In it he wrote:
I hope the Gaelic Athlete is going well and should be glad to know how it is going on and if it is paying its way. Ask your father to write and let me know how business is progressing. Any chance of getting back the machinery or, at all events, the account books? It would be no harm I think if Noyk applied for it. Have you sent me any music yet? If not I’d be glad to get some. We have plenty of amusement, games, concerts, football matches etc. here and some fine musical talent. We are therefore by no means lonely. Get all you can to write to me as letters are always welcome.
Joe’s pet project, the Gaelic Athlete, continued to be published by his faithful staff in his absence. From time to time he tried to smuggle out pieces about the camp games for publication.
By the middle of July he had still not travelled to London to appear before the (Sankey) Advisory Committee. As a result of these hearings, on 22 July, Mr Herbert Samuel was able to announce to the House of Commons that between 1,200 and 1,300 cases had been considered and that 860 had already been released. The other prisoners hoped that the committee would treat their case equally favourably. However, there was a sting in the tail. It was generally believed by the prisoners that the Advisory Committee had mischievously concluded that most of the participants in the Rising were unaware that a rebellion was taking place at all. Consequently, the committee suggested that many were reluctant participants who turned up on Easter Monday for a route march but had then no option but to obey orders. The men then drew up an agreed statement refusing to repudiate their leaders and declaring that their parts in the Rising were voluntary.
Joe had made many lifelong friends since his arrest. Even though, in some cases, he had only known these men in Frongoch for as little as a month, a bond had formed between them that would never be broken. Many
who were released early promised him that they would call on Annie in Liffey Street to bring her news of her husband. Seamus Gregan, a member of the Frongoch General Council and who married Annie’s sister Daisy, was one of these. On 16 July, Joe wrote:
Seamus has gone home and will, before you get this letter have given you all the news about me, which you will want. I am keeping as fit as a fiddle, and with the reduction of numbers here, things are greatly improved.
I have not yet been called to London for examination, but I understand it is likely that if I am released at all, it will be from there. If that is so, I will try to have a look around me for half a day or so, to try and find out if any machinery is to be got second hand there. The opportunity would be a good one and I would make the most of it when I got the chance.
On 23 July, he reported the news that he had finally been summoned to appear before the Advisory Committee in London: “I was in London on Thursday last and got back on Saturday. If I am to be released at all, it should be about Saturday next. Until then we must live in hopes. You will, I am sure have had plenty of visitors from here who were released as several of them undertook to call on you and let you know how I was going on.”
But “Saturday next” was to pass without incident. No doubt the finer details concerning his part in the Rising were either well known or well suspected by the authorities. The handful who either played a minor role, none at all, and any who were prepared to compromise their principles were being sent home to their families. But despite Joe’s positive outlook, the British made sure that he wasn’t going anywhere at this time.
Even on 29 July he wrote: “I am still without news as to the prospects of early release, but perhaps it may come shortly now. A very large number have already gone home from here, and a good number more will go by all accounts.”
By this stage in Liffey Street the account books of the Gaelic Press had been returned from Dublin Castle, following the intervention of Michael Noyk, and this facilitated what under normal circumstances would have been
a difficult enough task – collecting debts. It was one thing having to deal with slow payers but quite another when the identity of the debtor could not be linked with the amount owed. However, the company managed to survive the shortfall of the £650 that was lost by the taking of the account books. Joe reacted to the news that day thus: “I also am glad the books have been got back, but surely there were a lot of other things taken that ought to be released? How about the machinery? Is the business on a paying basis yet?”
Unfortunately there is no record to tell us when Joe’s father died, but by July 1916 his mother was a widow and was just about managing to keep the dairy going in Parnell Street. Annie, with the aid of her father and others, was keeping the Gaelic Press ticking over nicely. Matthew had duly purchased the machinery in O’Keefe’s of Halston Street at a knock-down price. She performed the administrative duties and her father took care of production. From his “home from home” deep in the Welsh countryside, Joe still had an input into the daily running of the company. On 2 August he wrote to Annie:
I was delighted to hear that you had been able to take over O’Keefe’s plant. Tell your father to scrap the old cropper in Proby Lane but I would not care to have the other cylinder machine scrapped unless it was absolutely necessary.
For some strange reason or other I am still being kept here, but possibly only for a week or a couple of weeks longer.
Joe was also very concerned about the upcoming birth of his and Annie’s first child, and it must have been very frustrating for him to be cooped up as Annie’s big day loomed. He was also confused over the dates of the impending event as is obvious in his response to Annie’s latest letter on 9 August:
I did not think our baby was due quite so soon, but I’m praying that things will be as easy as possible. I will, as you can imagine, be very anxious so I hope that somebody will wire me that all is well as soon as possible after the event. It does not seem likely that I will be released in time, though it cannot be very long deferred.
The releases are temporarily stopped from here and only a few take place now.
By the middle of August the majority of men had been released, and in order to facilitate improved management of the remainder, the authorities closed the North Camp and moved all of the prisoners into the South Camp. The North Camp was retained as a punishment area.
Around this time also, Joe became aware that new press censorship restrictions were prevailing back home. “I don’t understand the Press Censorship arrangements in Ireland but I am content to take them for granted. I suppose he [Matthew] has to submit proofs of everything and delete whatever is blue pencilled.”
On 18 August his attention was directed elsewhere as any sign of an imminent release began to disappear:
We have been officially informed here that all of us who are at present detained have had our cases considered by the Advisory Committee and that acting upon their recommendations, we have been interned for the present. The majority of opinion here is inclined to take this as a formal affair and the feeling is that releases will be recommended before the end of the month. As I have said before, I do not know why I have been interned.
Back home in 30 Upper Liffey Street on 28 August the happy event finally took place. Two days later Joe received a telegram telling him the news that he was a father.
He wrote to Annie on 1 September:
I got a telegram from Máire [Nic Shiubhlaigh] yesterday bringing the good news that the long expected stranger had arrived, a son and heir to the house of Stanley. Needless to say I was delighted and a heavy load was lifted from my mind. I endeavoured this morning to get permission to send a telegram to you and have fairly good hopes of succeeding. It was indeed great tidings that both yourself and our son were doing well which was the best possible tidings I could receive.
I daresay as soon as you are fit to travel, mother will take you to the more bracing air of Clogherhead with our young hopeful. As I said in a former letter, I leave it entirely in your hands what name you will christen him, who is to be the future staple of the house of Stanley. What you say in the matter goes.
Somehow, though long expected, I had become so accustomed to waiting that I received a bit of a surprise when Máire’s telegram reached me. It was only the previous evening I received a letter from you, which gave me no clue that the time was approaching so closely.
I trust in God’s providence that all is progressing favourably by now and a period of rest and ease will set in for you. God knows you deserve it, since accumulated trials and troubles, which commenced at Easter. May God keep guard of yourself and the boy, and may he grow up to make his mother feel glad for all the pain and trouble his birth caused her.
Annie immediately saw an opportunity to commemorate those killed in the Rising in the best way possible. Between her exiled husband and herself, they had created a life among all this death and destruction. She named their first-born John Augustus Colbert Stanley. The name “Augustus” came from one of the Franciscan priests whom they both knew well and who had attended some of the leaders in Kilmainham Jail before they were executed. “Colbert” was after Con Colbert, one of the executed Rising leaders who held a command in Watkin’s Brewery of Ardee Street during Easter Week. The name “John” is likely to have come from Seán Heuston, a school friend of Joe’s from O’Connell’s Schools who was also shot in Kilmainham Jail. The baby would become known as Colbert.
Now that the birth had taken place, his mind was eased greatly and his letters began to focus more on business. By this time they had been sending him copies of the Gaelic Athlete, and one or two had managed to get past the prison censors. On 3 September he wrote: “Till I learn that you are gone to Clogherhead, I will continue to write to Liffey Street. I was very glad to get your father’s letter telling me, as it does, all about the business. Tell him I got the programme and paper all right. The programme is a splendid job
indeed. One of the best we have ever done. I heartily congratulate him upon it.”
He proceeded to outline instructions for his father-in-law concerning machinery. Some of the printing machines that had been dismantled and confiscated were leased from a company called Thompson’s in the UK. This obviously had a bearing on the Gaelic Press coffers. To continue to pay monthly instalments at this point seemed futile.
On 6 September he provided Annie with an interesting example of the camaraderie of the camp:
The box of good things sent by Lillian arrived safely last night and was as welcome as flowers in the Spring. I am, whatever befalls, arrived of plenty to eat for some time to come, which is a great comfort. Of course there are a few pals to feed as well as myself, as we are to a great extent a heterogeneous mass of small socialist communities here and we live on each other’s parcels from home in a manner which would do justice to the early Christians. If the dose could be repeated about the 20th of the month it would be soon enough.
Annie chose to convalesce at her family home in Glasthule following the birth rather than head for Joe’s ancestral domain of Clogherhead. She decided upon Joe’s sister Eileen as godmother for John Augustus Colbert. But interestingly, her choice of godfather for the child proved to be a source of bewilderment to her husband. She chose a gentleman by the name of Mr McCarthy for the honour, and strangely, upon receiving this news from Annie, Joe hadn’t a notion who this man was. On 9 September, he wrote, “ Dearest, – Who is the Mr McCarthy who has been godfather for John Augustus? I cannot for the life of me think who he is.”
The Mr McCarthy referred to seems to have been chosen from one of the many theatrical friends that were associated with the Stanleys and Walkers. He was a well-known playwright, then with an address in Salem, near Boston, Massachusetts. Annie had once starred in his play The Supplanter.
Like most of the other prisoners, Joe had decided that the food in Frongoch didn’t suit his palate and he also reported that day:
I cannot eat the meat or drink the soup here, so I would be glad if you would get the Parnell Street people to send me fresh eggs regularly and some tins of sardines, or salmon or “ brawn” now and then. An odd tin of cocoa would also be very welcome. I daresay in the excitement at home they forgot to send me a parcel lately, and as for money, I have had to go borrowing to keep myself in cigarettes.
How are Eileen and Máire? Eileen stuck to her guns as regards writing all right and has now established a very strong claim to my affections, but Máire has lost valuable ground.
He also wrote around this time:
How is O’Keefe’s plant working out? Was it put up in Proby Lane or Liffey Street? I hope you are getting all the newspapers kept for me that have any bearing on the Rebellion. They will be very interesting in days to come.
Will you tell your father to try and get in touch with Maurice Collins or Luke O’Toole and tell them that the GAA Committee here would like to know if the GAA body at home would offer a clean set of medals for a football league starting here now. I am sure the Geraldine’s Club would do it, or try, if no one else would. There are three members of that club on the Committee, Shouldice, Flaherty and myself. There is a parcel coming to me today, I don’t know what it is yet.
Maurice Collins, an official referee attached to the GAA, had been released from Frongoch, and when he arrived home there was a benefit match held in Croke Park for him by the GAA. He started a tobacconist’s shop in Parnell Square with the proceeds. He had called to see Annie on his return to Dublin.
Annie had ceased to tread the boards over at the Abbey not long after her marriage, but now that she had had the baby, she was considering a return to the acting world. On 8 October, Joe wrote:
I hear the Abbey is going great guns these days. I leave it entirely in your own hands about going back, and if it made you happier, you should certainly do so. It would also, I am sure, bring more “grist to the mill” and help you to make ends meet. I have really no likes or dislikes in the matter either way.
I want you to get and keep for me the two issues of the London Times “History of the War” which deals with the Irish Rebellion. You will get this from the London Times, Printing House Square, London, cost 1/6. I also want you to keep the Irish Times, History of the Irish Rising and also the Cork Free Press of Sept 30th of this year. Would you send some few apples and nuts for All Hallows Eve towards the end of the month? Myself and several other lads here want to burn nuts and see if our loves are true.
The Halloween night of 31 October was another night of entertainment in Frongoch. One of the huts, called the YMCA hut, was packed to capacity with prisoners who partook in Irish dancing, singing and festive party games. Snap apple, bear race and diving in water for silver were just three of the games that were played. The highlight of the evening was the fancy dress competition. Entrants included a “Frenchman” who was chaperoning his “two daughters”, a “wild man and his keepers”, a cowboy fully equipped with a hat, whip and lasso, four “Prussian Guards”, a piper in a kilt and a “Brian Boru”.
Before that, on 12 October, Joe was again yearning for the theatre. By this time, Irish papers had been allowed in the camp:
I have been reading the Irish papers and am pleased to see that there is a movement afoot for our release. I also see that Gyp made an appearance in Widower’s Houses and I am sure she did well. I am genuinely sorry to miss the Abbey shows as I have a great liking for Shaw’s plays, particularly the lesser known ones such as “ Widowers” and Arms and the Man. However, maybe I’ll see them sometime later. Have things developed any further in the direction of you going back there? Who is their leading woman now?
Joe had chosen not to shave during his time in Frongoch and continued to grow the beard that he was compelled to start in Knutsford. As a consequence he acquired the nickname “Whiskers” Stanley. In the same letter he wrote:
How is the little Didums-Wasums John getting along? I am sure he is growing a fine fellow now. But anyone that says he is the image of his Da, has never seen the aforesaid Da with his whiskers on. Well, I am taking the whiskers off anyway, so it will only be the Frongoch men who will have memories of it in all its glory.
By all accounts Dublin is a fairly lively place just at present –almost if not quite as lively as Frongoch. We are settling down for winter conditions here now and we’re knocking the best value we can out of it. My pals all declare that I have put on flesh and a healthy appearance during my recent experiences, which is quite satisfactory. I am certainly feeling very well anyway. I had a note from M. J. McCarthy of Salem yesterday. He said he wished to write me a long letter, but as he did not know what subject would be prohibited by the censor, he wrote a short note to let him “know the ropes”. Would you drop him a line to say that he can write what he likes and the censor will remove any matter objected to by a blacking out process.
Gaelic Press handbills and banners.
Joe playing golf.
Obviously, by this stage, the identity of the man that stood for his child was now known to Joe, and appropriately enough a line of communication was opened between father and godfather. By 19 October business was again playing on his mind:
I am sure I do not know why we are being kept but the only remedy for it is to sit tight and await developments. Now, I have been thinking about the machinery etc and wondering if Noyk has made any application to get it returned. If the Tralee stuff was got back, I don’t see any reason why an application on my behalf should not be equally successful. Have you ever asked him to write to me on the point? I think I have asked for a letter from him a few times.
Money matters were also in his head and he was perpetually concerned about the rent:
I would also like to know particularly what the position is with Thompson’s. I am very glad the insurance business has been settled satisfactorily. Did your father sell the electric motor belonging to the Halston Street lot? I was relieved to learn that he was keeping things going and that the Proby Lane man was not worrying him unduly. How about Liffey Street? But I think they will be equally lenient.
Apart from the wire to tell him the news of his first-born at the end of August, Joe had not yet received a letter from Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh for quite some time. But by 23 October she had remedied the situation:
I got a letter from Máire today and rejoice to learn that she is still in the land of the living. After her long silence through the Autumn it was like a breeze from the whin-bushes to get her newsy note. Now that Máire has gone into the game of glorifying the little Didums-Wasums, I feel that I won’t have a friend left in Ireland by the time I get back with sufficient time to spare to admire me for a change. I am in hope however that she will get
sufficient theatrical engagements to keep her at least heart-whole till I return.
A couple of days earlier (21 October) he had received a letter from his brother-in-law Michael McDunphy. It began:
140 Clonliffe Road, Dublin 19 October 1916
Dear Joe,
I understand that you are not yet dead. You may be interested to hear that I have been in communication with Brother Weston (late “Our Boys”) who is at present stationed in Bristol, with a view to securing your release. He has considerable influence in matters of this nature and he has promised to do all in his power for you.
In his letter he quotes as follows from the private secretary of the Chief Secretary (Mr Duke), “ The Chief Secretary is quite willing to investigate any case where cause is shown for a new enquiry, but an application from the person concerned is an essential preliminary.”
Cheer up old man, we’ll have you home for Xmas. Give my best wishes and heartfelt sympathy to all the boys.
Very sincerely yours,
Michael
While Joe was purporting to maintain a carefree attitude on the outside, deep within, the fires of Easter Week still burned in his soul. To defeatists, the aspiration of national freedom in the immediate future seemed now lost. But there were still senior members of the IRB circulating among the Frongoch prisoners, and they began to ascend in popularity as the secret organisation began to live and breathe again. Collins played a key role in the resurgence of the militant wing of the movement. Despite the fact that he occupied a low level of rank within the Volunteers, he muscled his way into many of the high-powered covert meetings that were taking place in the camp and his mettle began to show. For Joe’s part, he was prepared to “rot” in Frongoch in preference to surrendering any of his ideals. In an “illegal” letter, he immediately replied to McDunphy thus:
Dear Michael,
I got your letter of the 19th on Saturday 21st . I am also very grateful to you and Bro. Weston for your efforts to secure that very much to be desired consummation, my release. At the same time I am making sure to avoid any possibility of disappointment by not anticipating any likelihood of release for the present, for reasons which I will set out later.
You do not, I think, (or probably Brother Weston does not either) fully realise the situation here, and the curious chain of circumstances, which have culminated in the present position of the Irish prisoners at Frongoch. The Irish public have been successfully kept in the dark as to the vital parts of the case and beyond an occasional vague reference to the circumstances that they are untried prisoners, there is no general realisation of the essentials of their position. For example, few outsiders comprehend that a large number of them have not been tried, and remain untried, for the rather odd reason that no supportable charge can be preferred against them.
Then too, all along the line they have experienced nothing but breaches of faith on the part of their captors, starting off conspicuously with the breach of faith with Pearse and the Leaders.
In Richmond and in several military prisons, promises and threats are employed to make them sign forms, which are tantamount to self-accusations or misleading alternative forms equivalent to non-denial of their alleged guilt. They justified the measure by releasing a few prisoners on the strength of these forms – some of these prisoners were merely looters and a few others were freed at a serious sacrifice of principle. The process was continued when the remainder entered Frongoch under the status of Prisoner of War.
A new form was invented, another image was held out for them to feast their eyes upon in the shape of the famous Advisory Committee. It was intimated that an appreciation to be heard
before the Advisory Committee was a sure road to release. Again the remedy was tried and all the interned men were compelled to appear before the Committee. There was a sub-stratum of seriousness under it all which none of us realised.
As an example of the lighter side of the picture here is a typical set of the questions asked by the Committee.
Prisoner enters
President: “You are John X?”
Prisoner: “Yes sir”.
President: “Your father is Pat X?”
Prisoner: “Yes sir”.
President: “You live at …(giving address) ?”
Prisoner: “Yes sir”.
President: “Thank you Mr X. That will do. Good morning Mr X.
Exit Mr X in wonderment.
Well, that is all rather a good joke is it not? But the cream of it is to follow. Mr X after making all these damaging admissions, naturally anticipated an early pass home, accompanied perhaps for an apology for the mistake made in bringing him here.
The “X” Tribe, of which there was at least 1,000, claimed their release and rejoiced uproariously. A considerable number of them got out and the rest waited patiently for their turn.
Then one day they were mobilised by the military here, who imparted to them the glad tidings that they were to be permanently interned. As a result I opine that at least between 40 % and 50 % of the men here now are the X tribe and were asked no questions of grave import than those instanced above.
But now to the more serious side of the Advisory Committee proceedings. In the light of after events, it is now practically unanimously agreed that the one really serious function of the Advisory Committee was the amassing of information and the justification of the shooting of our leaders. The achievement of the latter aim was attempted by getting the examined men to state that
they did not know what the Easter Mobilisation was for, and that they blindly followed where their leaders led them.
Very subtle, no doubt, but not quite (as the English say) cricket. The net total achieved by the Advisory Committee was about 1,000 or so releases. Who to release and who to intern, we believe was achieved by no more a logical process than that of tossing a coin to decide each case.
In the course of the proceedings, I, and others represented to the Commandant the true nature of the proceedings before the Advisory Committee. This apparently started some wheels somewhere, and subsequently an announcement was made that applications could be made by prisoners for a re-investigation of their cases.
It was subsequently made clear that these applications must come from the prisoners, and not from outside. This in effect is the gist of the information that Brother Weston has obtained.
Now our experience here has taught us this – to look twice at any proposal emanating from our gaolers ostensibly pointing towards our release. Practically everyone here has been given to understand that their releases can be easily obtained – on terms. The terms have also been made clear. They are, that an undertaking be given for future good behaviour, which on the reverse side of the picture is another attempt to extort an accusation against our own past conduct – another vilification of our leaders. Freedom achieved at such a cost would be freedom too dearly bought. That is the feeling of the men here on the point. And in that feeling we are unanimous. You will understand therefore why we look upon the Government’s display of concern for our release with considerable suspicion tinctured with not a little amusement. We are an obvious source of embarrassment to them and in that role we are content to remain here (to rot) despite the manifest hardships and systemised cruelty.
There is just one thing that Brother Weston might do, if he could, which I would be grateful for. If he would use his influence
to obtain for me the return of several hundred pounds worth of machinery and effects, which the military without any previous warning or complaint, illegally took (or looted) from me in March last.
If he could persuade them to take remedial measures to assuage the incalculable damage inflicted on me by loss of trade and by the loss of book debts due to me to the extent of between, £300 – £400 occasioned by the removal and retention of my account books.
I would feel safer in my mind in regard to the support of my wife and child if, on these things he could be usefully employed. And I should be thankful to him for any efforts directed towards this end. But at the moment any talk of my release is impractical.
I am getting this out by a channel other than the usual one and I would like you to show it to Annie so that she may know how things are. Tell her to put (XXXX) 4 crosses or kisses at the end of her next letter to signify that it has arrived all right. But do not refer to it (or let her do so) in any other way.
With best wishes
Yours ever.
A few days later, on 27 October, “Didums-Wasums” among other things, was on his mind:
Dearest,
I am glad you are having a good holiday at Glasthule, as I feel sure it will strengthen you to face the worries of the business when you get back to Dublin. Is John proving too big a job for you? (By the way, is it John you call him or Jack or Colbert?) In one of the letters I got from Parnell Street, they called him the latter name, which I rather like.
Dick Fitzgerald (of Kerry football team) left here the other day and will call on you the first time he goes to Dublin. How about Xmas cards this year? There should be a great demand for them.
Are you thinking of putting any Xmas novelty, postcard, or souvenir on the market from the office?
I am enjoying good health here just now – as good as ever I had, but I often wonder will I ever be any good to do work again after the comparative idleness of it all. Well, I suppose time will tell.
Chapter Five
The general appearance of prisoners was a significant aspect of daily life in Frongoch. There may have been 1,800 men held in the double compound at one time, but the British authorities could only positively identify about fifty of them.
As the Great War was still raging on the Continent, in particular the Battle of Verdun between France and Germany, the lengthiest battle in world history, the threat of conscription hung over certain Frongoch prisoners like the Sword of Damocles. While it was ludicrous to expect extremist Irish rebels to consider fighting in the European war for the Empire, there were about sixty men who had had British addresses prior to the Rising and who qualified for membership of the British army. Irrespective of the Rising and its aftermath, the introduction of conscription into Ireland would later become a significant bone of contention.
The British made many attempts to coerce prisoners to identify themselves so that they could be conscripted. Daily roll call had not been carried out from June, so when it was eventually introduced the prisoners smelled a rat and saw it as an attempt to identify the sixty “refugees”. As a result, they made the daily task of roll calling an extremely confusing affair for the enumerators. Not answering roll call, answering the wrong name and surrendering the wrong people became regular occurrences. On one particular morning, one exasperated officer shouted out, “For Christ’s sake, answer to the name you go by, if you don’t know your real name!” Refusing to answer roll call was a court-martialling offence.
It was at this time that Michael Collins began to acquire prominence among the prisoners as the vociferous leader of the internees. On 2 November, as a ruse to identify one of the sixty, prisoner Michael Murphy, the authorities circulated the news that he was eligible for parole due to his wife’s illness. The fact that he now had a wife was more of a shock to Murphy, who was a confirmed bachelor. Naturally nobody responded. Great
efforts were made to hunt Murphy out, and eventually a prisoner called Barrett from Galway was thought to be him. When Barrett refused to be conscripted (as Murphy one presumes), he was promptly sent to London to be charged under the Army Service Act. Embarrassed officials sent him back to Frongoch when Murphy’s father, who was at the court-martial, happily exposed him as an impostor. Barrett is said to have revelled in the incident and thoroughly enjoyed his time away from the camp.
The Michael Murphy affair had far-reaching consequences for Joe. When Barrett returned from his “holiday” in London, the commandant, Heygate-Lambert, expressed the view that, “If we’re to have nothing in this camp but corpses, I will have discipline.”
On 7 November, the hut leaders were called to the commandant’s office and alerted to the fact that a roll call would take place immediately and that they were to exert their influence on the men in their huts to respond when called. Joe immediately decided to resign his post as hut leader there and then, but due to being suddenly dismissed, he didn’t get the opportunity.
As a further consequence of the Murphy saga, fifteen hut leaders were court-martialled when Heygate-Lambert employed his heavy hand. Solicitor George Gavan Duffy defended most of the men, as they were given the opportunity of legal representation. (Gavan Duffy, just then fresh from making a futile defence case for Roger Casement, was the final reluctant signatory of the Treaty in 1922.) The hut leaders were eventually convicted and sentenced to twenty-eight days hard labour, despite their fears that they would be transferred to civil prisons. The Manchester Guardian and the Irish Independent newspapers were present during the trials, and consequently the events were afforded wide publicity throughout Ireland.
Joe was to revel in his brush with the camp authorities and would conduct his own defence. His statement of defence has survived and gives an interesting insight into both the man and the situation in which he found himself that autumn, far away from his home in 30 Upper Liffey Street:
Military Court (Frongoch) 25th November 1916
J.M. Stanley 352
Irish Prisoner of war Frongoch
Statement of Defence
Charge
That on 7th Nov at Frongoch North Camp, after being personally warned by the Commandant that a roll call would take place on that day, refused to answer his name on said roll call being called.
Defence
On 7th Nov I was paraded before the Commandant in company with the other Hut Leaders. The Comdt. outlined for the first time, new regulations for daily roll calls, and new responsibilities for the enforcing of these regulations, which he decided to place upon the Hut Leaders. Feeling that I could not render these new regulations practicable in the hut of which I was leader, I decided to request that I be relieved of my position, and its attendant responsibilities, but I got no opportunity of doing so, as the Adjutant immediately proceeded to call the roll on entering my hut (see evidence under cross-examination of the Adjutant & Sergeant-Major Newstead). In my defence I beg to submit the following arguments:
1. That as the position of Hut Leader carried no special privileges, the holder should not be liable to special punishment for an offence in which two-thirds of the Camp were equally participant.
2. That the prosecution is vexatious and discriminating for the reason given above.
3. That the punishment for refusal to answer the roll call was definitely specified by the Comdt. on Nov 7th (internment in South Camp) and no further punishment should therefore be inflicted.
4. That the officers governing the Camp are primarily responsible for the indiscipline existing in the Camp in regard to roll calls, as the roll call should have been called daily from the date of the prisoners entering the Camp, as is now done. (Cross
Examiner Adjutant Burns who stated that this was so to P. Scollan and myself on Nov 7th). By their negligence in this respect they must be taken as having connived at the present prosecution.
5. On Nov 10th a second count of the charge was urged against me that I influenced others in my hut to refuse to respond to the roll call. This charge was withdrawn on Nov 18th , but the evidence of the Adjutant & Sergeant-Major bearing on the second phase of the charge is reproduced. I submit that evidence given on a deleted charge is irrelevant, and cannot be admitted as testimony properly bearing on the case.
6. I submit that as I was selected as Hut Leader by the men of Hut 6, and not by the Comdt, I could not properly disassociate myself from the policy adopted by the majority of the hut. In my particular hut, none of the 28 occupants answered to their names and numbers.
Before opening my statement, I wish to say that I do not admit that I am a Prisoner of War, or that I am interned, as I have no knowledge of the terms of the order upon which I was placed in Frongoch camp. I submit therefore I am not liable to punishment as such.
To begin with, I am considerably exercised in my mind to know how I come to be here at all in the position of Hut Leader. Reading over the Camp regulations in regard to leaders – Mess Leaders they are called officially – I find that they are “elected by the men – subject to the approval of the Comdt.” Now, I have never been notified that I was approved of as Hut Leader by the Comdt. And no official communication on the point or formal conferring of the position upon me has passed between us. Therefore, if I am to be regarded as a Hut Leader at all, it must be distinctly borne in mind that I took up the position voluntarily, at the request of the men in my hut, and I desire to have the attention of the Comdt. specially focussed upon this point. Under these circumstances, I submit that I was entitled to relinquish the post at any time I so desired.
On Nov 7th I attended the Comdt’s office in company with the other Hut Leaders. A discussion took place on the subject of roll calls and also in regard to the duties and responsibilities of the Hut Leaders. He joined up the two questions by reading out a list of new regulations for daily roll calls for the working of which he proposed to make the Hut Leaders responsible. The first roll call would, he announced take place that morning and I was ordered to return to my hut and address my men that the roll call would be called. It is clear that he anticipated some refusals, as he added that the men were to be also informed that the punishment for non-compliance with the order to answer their names would be internment in the South Camp, with the loss of privileges. Two of the Hut Leaders, intimating their feeling that they could not carry on their work in accordance with the new regulations asked to be relieved of their positions and immediately thereupon before I got an opportunity to do likewise, the parade was dismissed and I was returned to the North Camp. In my hut I duly carried out the Comdt’s orders and informed my men of the terms of his instructions. I did not inform them how I proposed to act in the main. I used no influence with them, nor did I give them any advice or instructions beyond those issued by the Comdt. When the Comdt. and Adjutant entered the hut for the purpose of calling the roll, I intended to resign my position, but I got no opportunity of putting this into effect as is proved by the evidence under cross examination, of the Adjutant and Sergeant-Major Newstead. In order to properly vindicate my position it will be necessary for me to reconstruct for the Court, in a brief manner, a picture of the unhealthy moral atmosphere which existed here in the Frongoch Camp on the morning of the 7th November and to depict it for you as it appeared to me. When I left to attend the Comdt’s office everything was normal, the prisoners being for the most part occupied with the scrubbing of tables and the shining of Mess tins. As I was coming back, I was reviewing in my own mind some rather reckless statements made by the Comdt. in
regard to the running of the Camp at the point of a bayonet. I was studying a suggestion made by him that a camp full of dead bodies was not an impossible contingency. On entering the compound, I found a most imposing array of armed military force assembled – all the machinery at hand for the production of dead bodies on a considerable scale. I respectfully submit that this is a factor, which cannot be lightly overlooked in the case. I would also urge that this assembling of a special guard was unnecessary, was injurious to the discipline of the camp and it was provocative in the extreme.
I would also respectfully urge in my own defence that the necessity for this prosecution is due to contributory negligence on the part of the military control of the Camp. On the evening of the 10th Nov, the Adjutant stated to P. Scollan (another of the accused Hut Leaders) and myself that the roll should have been called daily from the first day we entered the Camp. Instead of this being carried out the roll was never, to my own certain knowledge, called, except for the occasions when men were being sought for military service.
On these occasions the roll calls cannot by any show of reasoning be claimed to have been successfully carried out and surely if the superior authority of the military control failed to make the roll call effective, the lesser powers of the Hut Leaders could not supply the deficiency. Therefore I hold that I was given an impracticable work to perform and set to do an impossible task. If the daily roll call for some unknown reason was not enforced in June when we came here, I could not possibly put it in operation as an innovation on Nov 7th . It was this consideration that prompted me to resign on that date, but as stated already, I was denied the opportunity.
In justifying myself for having failed to answer my name (I did not refuse to do so), I would ask the Comdt. to take cognisance of the facts of the situation, which brought about the inception of this roll call.
The object was clearly and admittedly to render easy the identification in the Camp of men who were, or might be, wanted for military service. If these particular men did not answer to the roll call, they could still be sorted out by a process of elimination, so long as the men who were not wanted duly responded. Consequently, by answering the roll call, I would in effect, be informing on a comrade and leaving him stranded high and dry in a situation that I knew to be utterly abhorrent to him. It is a root principle of human nature that a man may not betray a friend and maintain his status as an honourable man. Therefore in trying me on this charge, I am really being tried because I am human.
I would, in conclusion, ask the court to consider the problem involved if a British officer found himself a captive in the hands of the Germans in company with an un-naturalised German friend who honestly believing Germany to be wrong in the quarrel, had taken up arms against Germany in the interests of right & justice. Could he reconcile it with his honour or his conscience to betray his former colleague?
That was the problem which confronted me on the 7th Nov and on the court’s judgement on that problem I bare my case.
J.M. Stanley 352
Irish Prisoner of War Frongoch Internment Camp 27/11/16
With posterity in mind as ever, Joe sent a facsimile of this document home to Annie. This was by no means an easy task with the censorship restrictions that prevailed. But it just so happened that a prisoner by the name of Richard Coleman was being released around that time and he smuggled Joe’s letter out. Coleman delivered it personally to Annie in Upper Liffey Street along with Joe’s note to his wife to invite Coleman to stay a couple of nights and glean as much information as she could from the released prisoner. He also advised her that she might not hear from him “for a couple of weeks”, and that Coleman would tell her the reason why. Posting of letters was an obvious privilege that would be removed if he
were to be found guilty. Coleman was back in prison again in 1918 (Usk Prison) where he died.
In the accompanying note, Joe also wrote:
Just a line to enclose you copy of my statement for defence, which I wish you to keep for me. It created a bit of a stir in court and some flattering references by the President to my “legal mind” and excellent literary accomplishment. Verdict not yet known.
Joe 28.11
He wrote to Annie again this time addressing it to “Eileen O’Doherty”: 20/11/16
My Dear Eileen,
I suppose you will have seen in the home papers an account –more or less correct – of how we came into our present condition here and how I came to be put in cells along with 15 out of 18 of the other camp leaders.
I sent you an account of it last week but if that didn’t reach you, last Friday’s Independent will show you how matters stand. We were taken in custody on Friday week, 10th November and remanded for trial by a higher court. They were trying to take men out of the camp for the Army and we did our little bit to obstruct them. We have got Gavan Duffy (London) to defend us but the authorities appear to have experienced some difficulty in fixing the trial as they are continually remanding us and no date has yet been fixed for the event to come off.
Pressure of public opinion in Ireland is forcing them to do things they never intended to do and to leave undone things they had fully decided. They will probably think up a special charge against me of influencing the men under my charge to refuse to answer their names, but this charge has now been withdrawn –another instance of their resolution wobbling. There are some of us who think this business will never come to trial at all because
we have let a little daylight in on it. In any case we have no fear that it will amount to anything serious. Over and above every other consideration is the one that we have driven a wedge into the system of Conscription they endeavoured to introduce into the camp, which will not easily be extracted.
Probably you have heard about the prospect of their being a further batch of releases from here. I have seen two reports – one in last Wednesday’s Daily Mail and the other in the Sketch. The Daily Mail says we are to be released. The Sketch says it is only a rumour. I think the Daily Mail is right, but probably a few will be kept over.
I am naturally a bit excited at the prospect of getting home to you and Colbert and Mother and all the girls of both families, but I’ve got into a condition of mind now, which takes nothing for granted. I don’t allow myself to build anything on a foundation which is not tangibly certain. Suppose I was too happy and contented before the troubled era for my own moral good. I may as well exhort what spiritual consolation I can from this thought. In any event I regret nothing and I would have nothing altered. I never paused to count the cost before the troubles, nor do I regret the expenditure now.
There is one thing that is tolerably certain about the Daily Mail report and it is that the men undergoing Penal Servitude will be taken from their several prisons and massed together in some internment camp where things will be much more endurable for them, as prison discipline as I have experienced it, is something awful. This will be great news for people like Mrs Bevan and we are as pleased about it here as we are at the prospect of going home. Even if we do not get home, it is very likely that these men will be put together with us, and that probability pleases us immensely.
I have always held a theory that (if nothing happens before), one of the convenient and indecent waves of sentimentality will break out in the government newspapers in or about Xmas time in
regard to Irish prisoners of war suggesting that they be released as an offering to the spirit of peace and good-will.
To the fatuous Englishman dining off roast turkey and fortified with a few glasses of brandy, the headlines in the newspapers, “Restored to the Old Home at Xmas Eve” would be infinitely consoling and refreshing as a condiment to a good dinner. Having acquitted himself of this monumental act of magnanimity, he would expect Ireland to sit up and take notice of his recruiting posters once more. (Alas if he should be disappointed.) For this reason I have a kind of a sort of a dim hazy notion that I will be home for Xmas, if not before.
The fifteen of us (camp leaders) are in cells at present, but in some respects we are better off than if we were outside. For one thing we are treated and fed like officers, our cells are not locked, we may smoke and read and talk together amongst ourselves so that we have not much to complain of, except the confinement. When I was in cells last, I had none of these things.
I got a letter from Jennie today … she is pulling a line with Willie McNeive, whom I know and liked very well here and was released. He is a fine type of lad, rather like Mick McDunphy in build and appearance.
Since I wrote to you last about the prospect of getting home for a week on parole, the situation has not changed and consequently until I am tried or the charge withdrawn, I do not think it would be any use applying for a week’s parole. In all cases you might understand that the application must come from your side of the water first and it must be based on medical grounds affecting – or supposed to be affecting, your own health. Please keep last Friday’s paper for me and all papers relating to Frongoch.
The hut leaders were returned to their colleagues after six days in the cells. On 20 November he wrote again to Annie, this time legitimately, requesting to be remembered to Mrs Heuston, the mother of Seán Heuston, whom they both had known before he was executed for his part in Easter
Week: “Get Mrs. B. to remember me to Mrs. Heuston and to tell her that Jack has always occupied and will always occupy one of the highest places in the regard of the boys here. In more peaceful days they hope to give more tangible evidence of this and please God he’ll be there to see it.”
On 23 November, Joe replied to his sister Jennie, who had told him about her line with Willie McNeive (whom she would eventually marry). Such was the small world that those who took part in the Rising, inhabited:
My Dear Jennie – I was delighted to hear from you that business at home was so good and things generally flourishing at “ 36”. I dare say you are all up to your eyes in work that I am sure the less pleased that you have found time to dispose a considerable share of your very charming society upon Willie McNeive, who I hope is in the pink. Willie is a fine chap and I formed a great liking for him here. Tell him I hope he will be able to beat me at “ draughts” when I get home.
I am in high hopes that I will be able to light the whiskey on somebody’s Xmas pudding in Ireland this year, and to pay certain other little attentions to the same pudding subsequently. As Annie will tell you I am at present under remand for trial, which will come off this week, and of course I cannot guess at the result. In any case, I do not anticipate that the outcome will be anything serious, and certainly it won’t provoke any flow of language on my part comparable to the hymns chanted by Johnny Clarke at the Denmark Street Whist Drive.
In another letter that he smuggled out on 26 November, he admitted his inexperience in a particular area, mindful of the fact that he had not yet met his three-month-old son and heir: “I am delighted to hear that Colbert is beginning to sit up and take notice. Children are a bit of a puzzle to me and I should certainly like to be on the spot to see how one of my own conducts himself. Well, some say it will be all right and probably the better for the present parting.”
By 30 November, there was still no news concerning the result of the court martial. He wrote to Annie:
Dearest – what has happened that you have not written for almost a week past (or at least I have not got any letter from you)? I hope there is nothing wrong. I am still waiting for the result of the court martial and when I learn it I will communicate the result, if I am allowed to do so. In any case, you will probably learn from some quarter or other what the next move is to be.
Where are you spending your Xmas this year? In Glasthule or Dublin? I should like to know where or how I will spend mine but that is a decidedly open question just now.
How is the paper doing? It is a long time since I saw a copy of it now.
The findings of the court martial became irrelevant. In the outside world, on 7 December, Lloyd George became prime minister. The casualties on the Somme had risen to over a million on both sides. The British authorities were beginning to realise that there was no further point in keeping the Volunteers interned, all of whom were held on suspicion only, with no charge ever likely to be preferred against them. Pressure was being brought to bear on the London government from the Irish public and various public bodies back in Ireland. Irish MPs Alfie Byrne and Larry Ginnell were also busy behind the scenes campaigning for the release of the remaining 500 rebels. Joe wasn’t to know it at the time, but he would soon be sitting in his own living room reading the latest edition of the Gaelic Athlete. On 22 December, Buckshot called all the prisoners into the mess hall and gave them all an unconditional release. Joe arrived on the doorstep at 30 Upper Liffey Street on Christmas Eve 1916 – a free man.
Chapter Six
The significance of Frongoch’s place in Irish history should not be underestimated. In 1948, when Joe was called upon to make an afterdinner speech in his old alma mater in O’Connell’s Schools, North Richmond Street, he declared to his audience: “I feel that Frongoch Internment Camp was a terrifically important springboard for a new advance in Irish Nationalism. Quite naturally, it became a national conference – representative of the entire country, in which a coherent future could be arranged and planned at comparative leisure in its dealings with Ireland. Frongoch was one of Britain’s biggest blunders.”
The freed Frongoch internees set about the task of returning to everyday life in Ireland. They had left Dublin mostly in disgrace; now they were afforded a heroes’ welcome. With the help of his internment camp comrades, Michael Collins soon secured the position of secretary of the Irish National Aid and Volunteers’ Dependents’ Fund and began to sow the seeds of his meteoric rise. Meanwhile, Joe needed to get back into the printing/publishing business and see about his confiscated plant. And, of course, there was the little matter of getting to know his son. His main objective, however, was to return to the core of the struggle.
Early in January 1917, he had a meeting with two British officers, General Mahon and Captain Atkinson, at the Irish Command Headquarters, Parkgate Street, to see what could be done about the return of the machinery, which by that time he had valued at £2,000.
On 24 January, as a result of the meeting he drafted out a full list of the material taken and submitted it to the “Competent Command of the British Forces in Ireland”. The authorities reacted predictably. Writing to Noyk in response to Joe’s claim, they agreed to return the machinery on the proviso that he signed the enclosed agreement.
Joe refused to accept his machinery back with those particular strings attached. He had every intention of breaking the Defence of the Realm
Regulations on a daily basis. Now, infused with fresh nationalistic fervour he had gained from his Frongoch experience, his loyalty to the cause was absolute. He met up with his fellow ex-prisoners on a regular basis in the months following his release. He worked closely with Collins, for instance, on the election campaign of Count Plunkett (father of Joseph Mary Plunkett, an executed 1916 leader) in the Roscommon by-election of February 1917. Plunkett, representing Sinn Féin, defeated the candidate of the Irish Parliamentary Party (John Redmond’s home rule party). Many observers assumed that Sinn Féin’s victory in Roscommon, their first ever election victory, was a flash in the pan. Plunkett refused to take his seat at Westminster.
Both Collins and Joe were also heavily involved in the historic South Longford by-election of April 1917, which coincided with the first anniversary of the Rising. The Sinn Féin candidate chosen was Longford IRB man Joe McGuinness, who was still imprisoned in England’s Lewes Jail. McGuinness was a reluctant participant, but Collins insisted on putting his name forward. Joe was on McGuinness’s election committee along with Collins and he canvassed the Longford area vigorously. He also printed some of the election material. McGuinness’s name went before the electorate with the simple slogan “Put him in to get him out”.
Polling took place on 9 May 1917. Despite refusing to stand, Lewes Jail prisoner Joe McGuinness was returned as MP for South Longford by a majority of thirty-nine votes.
During the Longford campaign, Collins had shared a platform with Thomas Ashe in Ballinalee, and it was this incident that resulted in Ashe’s being arrested for a seditious speech. He died in September when he was force-fed by his British captors, while on hunger strike. Although Ashe had been a leader during Easter Week, he had escaped the firing squad. The circumstances of his death caused yet another wave of revulsion in Irish nationalist circles.
Joe Stanley’s handwritten comment reads: “ This document was offered to me – through my solicitor Michael Noyk – for signature, but I declined the terms offered and refused to sign”.
Back in Liffey Street, Joe continued to develop the business. Had the Gaelic Press not been raided in March 1916, Joe might well have printed the Proclamation itself. However, it may well have been the case that a decision was made by the Volunteer Military Council not to involve a general printing company in the printing of such a contentious document. Twelve months on, it seemed fitting that a reissue of the momentous document would be received in a much less hostile manner than its forerunner had been by the people of Dublin. A small group of women from Cumann na mBán approached Joe in April with a view to having it reprinted. As is always the case with printers, the job hit the machines late. It was only put on the machine on Good Friday. Both Matthew and Charlie Walker worked through the whole of Good Friday night and part of Easter Saturday to allow for its distribution and posting around Dublin in time for the anniversary on Monday.
Ever the perfectionist, Joe was keen to ensure that the commemorative edition of the Proclamation retained as many of the hallmarks as the original as possible, so he organised to have whatever type remained in Liberty Hall – the same type that he himself had supplied – to be used in the second edition. Hence the fonts used resulted in exact reproductions of some of the text. The paper was of superior texture to that of the original, and the famous typographical errors (notably an inverted “e”) were corrected. The poster was then posted around Dublin on all public buildings and major vantage points. It was also decided to fly the tricolour from all of the buildings in the city that had been associated with the Rising, in a highly seditious propaganda act. Thus, the historic document was reborn. Joe’s 1917 version of the Proclamation is the only reprint that has any ostensible historic value.
The propaganda began to work, and nationalistic passion continued to increase countrywide. On the wider political scene in 1917, Sinn Féin proceeded to win another two by-elections; de Valera won easily in East Clare and W.T. Cosgrave took a seat in Kilkenny. Joe printed some of the promotional material for both campaigns. A poster printed by the Gaelic Press for Cosgrave uses the slogan “We got him out to put him in”. The
successful candidates failed to take the Oath of Allegiance and, consequently, their seats.
A letter from the censor which Joe Stanley obviously ignored.
The year 1917 was a busy one for Joe, and the by-elections took up a lot of his time. He also held an official command in the Volunteers. After his release from Frongoch, he was attached to C Company, 1st Battalion, but on the formation of H Company in September 1917, he was promoted to lieutenant.
It was also around this time that his wider entrepreneurial talent began to emerge and take shape. Songs and ballads of Ireland were a major passion. He once wrote: “Ireland has always been rich in ballad and poetry. Throughout the ages its influences have been marked in a special way. It is because of something in our national temperament that we found it necessary to express emotion in verse. Ballads were an integral part of rural life.”
Joe had already written “The Frongoch Roll Call”, a musical parody of the incident where he and the other hut leaders had been court-martialled. He would later write the highly acclaimed “A Shawl of Galway Grey” in 1922, and dedicate it to Michael Collins. One of his other songs that became popular was “The Flag of Freedom”.
It was also around this time that he became very friendly with Peadar Kearney, who had written “The Soldier’s Song” in 1908. Kearney’s father hailed from near Ardee in County Louth, as did Joe’s mother. Both had spent time around the area as youths and found that they had a synergy as a result. In 1918 Joe took over exclusive production, sales and distribution of “The Soldier’s Song” and he became the sole licensee for the tune that would eventually become the national anthem. Periodical accounting took place, and Joe paid Kearney all royalties due to him for sales of the song as owner of the copyright. The two men remained friendly until Peadar’s death.
The Gaelic Press was thriving, as there was now a growing sense of national defiance and a fresh desire among Irish people to read about the changes to the nation’s attitude. In an attempt to earn a greater share of the market, in December 1917, with the profits from the Liffey Street operation, Joe started a separate wholesale and retail publishers and stationery business around the corner at 6 Mary Street. He called the new enterprise the Art Depot.
Cover of sheet music.
The new business was primarily concerned with selling republican pamphlets, song sheets and ballads, and a wide variety of separatist publications and paraphernalia to the general public that were mostly printed by the Gaelic Press. For the first few months the business went well.
In February 1918, he was also engaged in the selling and promotion of Irish ballads on a wide stage. He entered into an agreement with Countess Markievicz for the international rights of her composition “A Battle Hymn”. They were to split the profits fifty-fifty. The Countess signed the agreement, “Constance de Markievicz I.R.A. February 1918”. It is interesting that the Countess should embellish her signature with the name of the IRA. While many of the participants from Easter Week used the expression freely, it was only later, when the Irish Volunteers would be drafted into use by Dáil Éireann, and later still when the Civil War would break out, that the term would become universally popular.
On 17 May 1917, the British rounded up most of the Sinn Féin leaders on the pretence that they were engaged in orchestrating a German invasion of England via Ireland. De Valera ignored the warnings from Collins, who had received intelligence of the wholesale arrests, and was captured. Collins managed to avoid the round-up. This stroke of luck was to catapult him into the public eye, as he stepped into the breach of a leaderless Sinn Féin.
Over at the Castle, the Crown forces were not slow to notice the recent development in Joe’s business career. There were two separate police forces in operation in Ireland at that time: the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police. The DMP operated solely in the Dublin area and were made up of seven sections, A, B, C, D, E, F and G. The first six units were made up of uniformed police. G Section members were plainclothes detectives who dealt with all types of felonies, including political crime.
They swung into action. On 6 July, the DMP carried out a limited raid on the Gaelic Press, taking away musical publications and printed matter worth £250.
The very next day a squad of G Division detectives swooped on the Art Depot for the first time to see what they would find. Joe recorded later that
they removed music to the tune of £320, song sheets worth £70, books worth £80 and Sinn Féin stationery and pictures worth a total of £210.
Agreement between Joe Stanley and Countess Markievicz for the rights to her song, “A Battle Hymn”.
The raid on the new Art Depot business must have been particularly disconcerting due to the fact that Annie was nine months pregnant and the arrival of their second child was imminent. On 13 July, she gave birth to another baby boy. They named him Heuston, after the executed Rising leader Seán Heuston. The child was only nine days old when the detectives arrived at the Liffey Street premises again and confiscated seditious pamphlets worth £250.
Joe was also now engaged in printing all of the army circulars and publications, including An tÓglach for Michael Collins. The printing of that particular paper was a very controversial affair, and it carried no Gaelic Press imprint. Piaras Béaslaí was the editor of the army’s mouthpiece, which was now the official organ of the Irish Volunteers. Collins himself wrote a regular column entitled “Notes on Organisation”, and he personally directed and distributed the publication. This was a very dangerous publication with which to be involved.
Béaslaí later wrote:
Early in July [1918] Collins evolved the idea of starting an official organ for the “Irish Volunteers”. The project was sanctioned by G.H.Q., and Collins proceeded to make the necessary arrangements. He asked me to become editor, to which I gladly consented. Such was the “genesis” of An tÓglach of which I was editor for the following five years. The new secret journal was a small four-page production and at first appeared only twice a month. It was printed by the Gaelic Press, Liffey Street, and all the arrangements for the distribution as well as the carrying backward and forward of copy and proofs was done under Collins’ direction. He took a keen interest in the project and for several months contributed a series of “Notes on Organisation” in which he explained the scheme of organisation for the framing of which he was chiefly responsible.
Gaelic Press printer’s proof, May 1917; the notes in the margin are Michael Collins’ alterations and he has twice initialled the document.
The first issue of the new organ appeared on 15 August 1918, under the title, “ An tÓglach Official Organ of the Irish Volunteers”. Of all the directors, none was so regular and punctual in his contributions as Collins, who hardly ever missed an issue up to April 1919 when the publication of the paper was temporarily suspended owing to my imprisonment.
Thankfully, the turnover at the Gaelic Press was steady and the business reasonably profitable. Collins made sure that Joe was paid regularly for the periodical. Other work also seemed to pay well. The raid on the Art Depot didn’t have quite the same effect as the one on the Liffey Street premises the previous year, as there was no machinery there to be confiscated. By the middle of July, Joe seemed to have survived the financial losses incurred during the Art Depot raid, and he continued to sell his seditious material to the people of Dublin right under the noses of the DMP. But on 21 July, the G-men hit the Art Depot again, this time removing material to the value of £230.
Piaras Beáslaí, in an interview in Inniú , in 1947, mentioned the difficulties that Joe had in trying to keep one step ahead of the authorities, especially in being the printer of Michael Collins’s An tÓglach.
I was anxious about Joseph Stanley, however, because of his connection with the movement and the Gaelic Press was often raided. Nothing was discovered but there were often narrow escapes. On one occasion An tÓglach had just been printed when Stanley saw the detectives coming. He rushed to the door, stopped them, asked to see their warrant and argued vehemently on the street until his men had time to take the copies of An tÓglach out the back way.
Another time there was a pile of An tÓglach supplements covered with paper in the place when the detectives entered suddenly. One of the detectives sat on the pile resting himself while his companions made a fruitless search elsewhere.
On another occasion all the type for the paper was on the machine during a raid but even though the detectives ransacked
the whole place, they did not think of looking on the machine.
Joe Stanley’s business enterprises must have been high on the agenda during meetings the British authorities were holding that particular week. The following day, on Thursday, 1 August 1918, the Gaelic Press was raided again under similar circumstances as the March 1916 raid.
Michael Noyk takes up the story:
3rd August 1918
To the Chief Commissioner of Police
Lower Castle Yard, Dublin.
Sir,
On Thursday the 1st inst, the premises at No. 3 Proby’s Lane, of my client, Mr Joseph Stanley, trading as the Gaelic Press were entered by a man purporting to be Inspector Love who was accompanied by a number of others.
They proceeded, in the absence from the premises of my client, to dismantle his printing machinery.
My client arrived on the scene during the proceedings and demanded from the alleged inspector his authority for this highhanded action and asked had he a warrant.
The man purporting to be Inspector Love then stated that he had no warrant, but was proceeding under Regulations 27 and 51 of the Defence of the Realm Act.
My client then telephoned for me, and on my arrival I asked the man purporting to be Inspector Love had he a warrant, and if not under what authority he was proceeding. He stated that his authority was Regulations 27 & 51 of the Defence of the Realm Act.
I then asked him what legal proof he had that he was Inspector Love, as he alleged he was and that he was acting in an official capacity. He could furnish none.
I then asked him if the man who dismantled the machinery was a constable, and he replied he was, but refused to give his
name. In this case there was no proof that the alleged constable was a constable or had any official status.
Having completed the work of dismantling, the man purporting to be Inspector Love refused to give an inventory of the articles he ordered to be removed or to sign a receipt for the inventory, which my client had made.
I pointed out that the seizure was highly illegal and that if it were so decided we would not be in a position to obtain a complete return of our property, as if any were lost or destroyed, he could state that he never received same.
He however persisted in his refusal, though in a previous raid a fortnight ago, he gave a receipt for the property received.
Under the circumstances I should like you to specify the grounds upon which the seizure was made, and the nature of my client’s offence, as none was alleged, and to furnish proof of the identity of the alleged Inspector Love and the other men with him, especially the man engaged in dismantling the machinery, whose name the alleged inspector refused, as my client intends to test the legality of this arbitrary action.
The financial loss caused by the second raid on the Gaelic Press was comparable to the first, as the value of the machinery taken amounted to £1,290. The company at the time had an annual turnover of approximately £1,200. The DMP were determined to put a halt to the regularity with which Joe audaciously defied the Defence of the Realm Act. The very next day, to rub salt in the wounds, they raided the Art Depot again, this time taking music worth £30. Two more raids were carried out in August: on the 7th £210 worth of material was taken, and on the 22nd the value of the goods that were confiscated was £105.
In early August, Noyk suggested that it might be worth discussing the matter with George Gavan Duffy. Noyk and Joe both went to see the eminent barrister at his house, and they discussed the issue of the raids at length. In the end, the future Treaty plenipotentiary reached the opinion that legal action would be futile. On 3 August, a long letter of complaint
containing claims for “ return of property removed, damages for destruction and injury of other property” was forwarded by Noyk to the chief commissioner of police. The claim was repudiated.
Despite the raids, Joe continued to participate in the national struggle with his involvement in elections and got under the skin of the authorities at every given opportunity. Following on from his Frongoch court martial, on 24 August 1918 Joe found himself at the centre of the conscription issue yet again.
Although conscription was never actually introduced, the English government were determined to try to get 50,000 Irish-men into the British army before 1 October of that year on a voluntary basis. Colonel Arthur Lynch MP was one of the more notable members of a recruiting council that was set up for this purpose. He announced that they would hold open meetings with no security restrictions at various places to address the people of Dublin.
Michael Collins and Harry Boland were determined to take control of these rallies, which they doubted would be unpoliced, and they engaged the assistance of two prominent Sinn Féin men, Frank Gallagher and Joe Stanley, to hijack the meetings. The idea was that the two would feign to be potential conscripts and would pre-arrange with the recruitment council that they would address the crowd. However, once they took the stand they were to articulate a different line from the one that the recruitment council had expected.
At the first meeting the boisterous crowd jeered the English speakers, who opened the proceedings, because a heavy police presence was in fact obvious, despite Lynch’s promise. Joe explains the events in his own words:
One rather amusing incident, which had its serious side, occurred in connection with the recruiting campaign. The romantic figure of Arthur Lynch was selected to make an appeal to the young men of Ireland to join the British Army. With Captain O’Grady, he came over to hold meetings in Dublin. Emphasis was made on the fact that they had proposed to hold these meetings free of all police or military protection. In other words they were to be “
open” meetings. Flaming posters appeared on the hoardings signed by Arthur Lynch.
Anti-conscription pledge printed by the Gaelic Press and published by the Art Depot.
The inside of a Christmas card printed by the Gaelic Press.
Michael Collins sent for Frank Gallagher and myself and we had a conference at 6 Harcourt Street. It was decided to test the true inwardness of these open meetings and I wrote to Arthur Lynch – with whom I had some little previous acquaintance.
Many of you will remember what happened. The first meeting was held at James Street Fountain. Lynch and O’Grady, despite the genuine efforts of Frank Gallagher and myself were refused a hearing. I think this was largely due to the fact that (I believe in spite of their express wishes) a large force of uniformed police were in attendance and practically the entire detective division. They gave up the struggle and Frank and I then addressed the meeting, but the police were now very prompt to interfere actively. They had another try the next evening at Seville Place, but the proceedings were even more short-lived than before.
So much for free speech and “ open” meetings. This marked the end of the voluntary recruiting meetings.
Jim Maher in his Harry Boland – a Biography (Mercier Press 1998) describes the incident:
Frank Gallagher and Joe Stanley jumped on the platform and took over the meeting. There was a huge cheer from the crowd – so loud that the journalists could not hear Col Lynch. Joe Stanley spoke first, then Frank Gallagher, and as Gallagher looked down he recognised a few G-men just under the platform. Then he saw that a big number of RIC men were approaching the platform in a cordon. He could see a man with a jet-black moustache pushing his way hurriedly through the crowd in the direction of the platform. Gallagher kept on talking, though by now his flow of words had slowed and his speech began to falter. The man with the moustache stopped just behind the RIC cordon. Gallagher looked again and he could see that the man was winking his left eye – Harry – in disguise. He shouted out, “Gallagher, jump, over the cordon, quick.” Frank jumped without thinking and hands grasped him as he came down. He felt himself being passed
bodily over the heads of the crowd and back towards the edge of the meeting. When he came to his feet, Harry was standing beside him. “Frank, get home as quick as you can,” he whispered. The platform was crowded with RIC men trying to find him.
Joe, already a marked man, went up a few more places on the detectives’ hit list. On 3, 4, 5, 7 and 21 September 1918, the G-men called to the Art Depot and took material away. The regularity became alarming. Then on 25 September, during a raid, the DMP produced a closing order instructing the proprietor to end the business or face the consequences. Joe immediately got Noyk involved, and together they formally challenged the legality of the order.
During the time that the closing order was under appeal, the DMP made sure that the law was upheld, and they raided the Mary Street business again on 1, 3, and 11 October, costing the business a further sum of £85. Inevitably, the appeal against the closing order failed. Following fifteen raids, the Art Depot closed its Mary Street doors for good on 27 October 1918, having been in business for less than a year.
Joe reflected on this period of his life with some levity in his later years. He also painted quite an interesting picture of the relationship between the G-men and the Art Depot regarding some of the incidents that took place in the background at that time. In 1948 he wrote:
I think I can claim with some confidence that a little enterprise of mine, the Art Depot, played quite an important part in the resurgence of national ballads and other national propaganda. In connection with this, there was,
1. The Business Names Registration
2. The two Eileen O’Doherty’s
3. The two Art Depots.
These kept the detectives intrigued for months, trying to ascertain under which thimble they could find the pea. First they found the wrong Eileen O’Doherty – who knew nothing and cared less about Irish affairs. Next they found the wrong Art Depot, which concerned itself with fairy needlework.
In 1918, the 16 November issue of Nationality (a Republican paper printed by Joe) carried an ad from the Gaelic Press, apologising to subscribers to their various publications for delays in supplying orders. The ad reads: “ Driven from our home – Business as usual”. With the help of others in the business, the Gaelic Press just about managed to stay in business at 30 Upper Liffey Street. (Today, the site is occupied by Marks & Spencer’s Liffey Street entrance.)
On 11 November 1918 – Armistice night – Joe was involved in military action once again when he participated in the defence of the Sinn Féin headquarters at 6 Harcourt Street. Collins had an office in the building, and it was always liable to be raided or, as on that particular night, attacked. Crowds of Dubliners walked the streets waving Union Jacks. This brought the nationalists out in a counterdemonstration with tricolours. Some Volunteers tried to squirt paraffin on the British flags and follow that up with lighted matches. Nationalists clashed with unionists, and scuffles broke out all over Dublin city centre. It was decided that the Harcourt Street offices should be manned in case of trouble.
In September of the following year, a sudden raid resulted in a detective bursting into Collins’s office, catching him redhanded. Fortunately, he was not recognised by the G-man and he totally defused the threat by rebuking the detective for “spying on his countrymen”. The detective was so surprised by Collins’s self-assurance that he inadvertently gave the Corkman time to escape through the skylight by failing to follow him up the stairs.
With the Great War over, the British prime minister, Lloyd George, called a general election for December 1918. But the Sinn Féin leaders were in jail, as a result of the “German Plot” – a bogus scheme invented by Westminster, who alleged that the Sinn Féin leaders were plotting with the Germans against the Crown. Griffith, MacNeill and de Valera were among the captured. Michael Collins, whose contacts in the Castle had prewarned him of the plot, and Harry Boland were left with the task of selecting candidates to go forward for election. Joe was keen to throw his hat into the ring, but he needed a constituency. The twelve Dublin constituencies were well catered for with the likes of Constance Markiewicz, Seán T. O’Kelly,
Richard Mulcahy and George Gavan Duffy. Michael Noyk became election agent for Seán T. O’Kelly and Countess Markiewicz, both of whom were returned with overwhelming majorities. Joe then turned to the county of his forbears and sought a nomination in Louth. In late August he contacted the local cumann in Drogheda with a view to representing them in the election. But his candidature was not ratified locally, and instead, they chose John Joseph O’Kelly, the editor of the Catholic Bulletin, who was duly elected. According to contemporary Sinn Féin sources, “local jealousies between North and South” Louth was the reason for Joe’s name not going forward. A Drogheda member of the Louth Cumann wrote to Joe on 17 September 1918: “Regarding last Sunday’s meeting, we were not able to put your name through owing to local jealousies between North and South [Louth]. We could have carried your name if it went to a vote, but then we did not want any jealousies or bitterness afterwards … the northern end of the county are a queer crowd.”
Undeterred, Joe threw himself headlong into the election campaign. He was appointed a sub-election agent for Arthur Griffith, who was standing in the East Division of County Cavan. He took himself down to the boreens of Cavan and began canvassing for the founding father of the organisation. He later recorded: “East Cavan was really won by Jack O’Sheehan and myself. Because instead of talking seriously to public meetings, we went around and sang songs to them. In theatrical parlance, we just knocked them stiff.”
One of the many handbills printed by the Gaelic Press for the General Election of 1918.
But as Joe was enjoying the pleasant distraction of canvassing in Cavan, more trouble was brewing for him back in Dublin Castle. On 6 December, the G-men appeared at the door of the Gaelic Press for the final time. This time they meant business. They found out that he was printing An tÓglach because on this occasion they discovered the type for an upcoming edition all set and ready for printing. They proceeded to completely dismantle his plant, including a Quad Crown machine, a Double Demy machine, four Platen machines, and a cutting machine. They also vandalised the premises, causing £110 worth of damage, and broke the ancillary equipment they chose not to remove. They also took away all the election material, pamphlets, music and song sheets that they could find on the premises. The financial cost on this occasion was about £5,000. This was a loss that rendered it impossible for Joe to continue in business in 30 Upper Liffey Street and Proby’s Lane. It was the final straw. He was forced to close the business down. That year the Gaelic Press had been raided six times and the game was finally up. Bereft of a plant, for the second time in two and a half years, he prepared himself for a bleak Christmas.
The 1918 December election for seats in Westminster’s House of Commons would prove to be a defining moment in Irish history. Polling day for the election was 14 December. On the 28th the results were announced. Sinn Féin won 73 out of the 105 available (25 unopposed), thus being handed an overwhelming mandate by the Irish public. None of the elected representatives took their seats in London, as they had pledged, despite the lure of an annual salary of £400. They would soon constitute themselves as the first Dáil in January 1919 and form a counter government to the “foreign” one already in existence.
Meanwhile, Joe Stanley was still smarting from his wounds. George Gavan Duffy had ruled out legal action in the case of the Gaelic Press versus the Dublin Metropolitan Police. But behind the scenes, he was preparing to take the Crown forces to task over the little matter of their part in the shortness of the life of the Art Depot.
Chapter Seven
The year 1919 saw a remarkable change in the lives of Joe, Annie, Colbert and Heuston Stanley. The unremitting persecution from the Castle had succeeded in breaking Joe’s spirit, for the time being at least. In January, with his businesses in tatters, Joe had to start a new life.
But before settling down to the next chapter in his career, he took legal action against the Crown for the raids that had closed down the Art Depot. In order to keep his name out of the matter, Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh was made plaintiff. The defendant was Detective George Love, a man not unfamiliar with the printing and publishing scene in Liffey Street and Mary Street respectively.
The plaintiff claimed return of the goods, damages for depriving and detaining same, and damages for wrongful entry. The King’s Bench, on defendant’s motion, stayed all proceedings in the action “on the grounds that same was frivolous, and vexatious, and an abuse of the process of the Court”. Not surprisingly perhaps, on 17 February 1919, the plaintiff’s appeal was dismissed.
Things had to change now for Joe. His main source of income was cut off and his growing family needed to be maintained. Annie had her hands full with the two boys. The next move had to be given plenty of consideration. The detectives watched and waited for him to resurface. They had spies in many camps, and it was often said that the Castle knew of events well before they even happened.
While in Frongoch, Joe had met and become friends with a Louth man named Tom Burke. Burke was a fellow member of the Frongoch Games Committee and an accomplished athlete. He had captained the Louth team in Frongoch that had lost to Kerry by a point. His family lived in the Duleek Street area of Drogheda and ran a dairy business there. Joe decided to get out of Dublin. The lure of Clogherhead, only seven miles from Drogheda, was too great to ignore and perhaps he also had ideas of making an impact
on the rural political stage. He and his family moved to Drogheda, to rented accommodation across the street from Tom Burke at 25 Duleek Street.
Volunteer Philip Monahan, a native of Dublin, was a science teacher living in Drogheda at that time. Local RIC man DI Carbury had arrested both Burke and Monahan on the night of Wednesday, 4 May 1916, when thirteen “suspected parties” were rounded up in Drogheda following the Rising. They both ended up in Frongoch for unspecified misdemeanours. When Joe arrived in Drogheda, old acquaintances were renewed with his two comrades. As he still harboured political aspirations, his name was soon to appear again before the local Sinn Féin cumann for an upcoming election.
On 21 January, Dáil Éireann met for the first time. Many of the elected representatives were still in jail. The twenty-eight members that did attend formally ratified the establishment of an Irish Republic that had been first proclaimed in 1916. (Collins and Boland were recorded as being present, but at the time they were actually in England successfully springing de Valera from Lincoln Jail.) A system of administration with various governmental departments, including a court service, was duly implemented. Joe was appointed a district court justice of the newly formed Department of Justice. The formal government of the country, however, remained with Westminster.
While living in Drogheda, Joe travelled to Dublin on a regular basis, maintaining a keen participation in the movement while pondering his next step. He hoped that the Gaelic Press and the Art Depot would trade again. The climate for such an eventuality would be so different if the Provisional Government were to prevail.
At that time, he was unable to produce any printed matter, including the printing of Collins’s pet project, An tÓglach. Collins was determined that the paper should continue to appear. The army periodical had been subcontracted out for printing to Mitchell’s of nearby Capel Street, where another ex-Frongoch prisoner, Oscar Traynor, worked as a printer. Under Collins’s instruction, a hidden print plant was then set up in Gleeson’s shop in Aungier Street. It was at this point that Dick McKee, another
professional printer and ex-Frongoch man, helped Joe to publish the paper. Joe wrote:
My knowledge and experience of printing frequently caused me to be requisitioned by Michael Collins for the production of a very secret military printing, including the military organ – An tÓglach. This had to be produced under exceptional conditions and mostly at night, and for the purpose I could not even employ my own staff in their entirety as the British authorities (we discovered) had ways and means of finding out what went on in my own plant.
In consequence of this, General Collins arranged with Commandant Byrne that if my military duties were found to clash with the production of An tÓglach, I must be released from these duties. For obvious reasons this fact could not be allowed to become known, even to my other company officers. Moreover, these military printing duties were by no means terminated when my own plant was completely dismantled and removed in December 1918, as I was then instructed by General Collins to purchase from England and set up a printing plant at the back of a newsagent shop in Aungier Street, where confidential military operations continued.
After settling the family in Drogheda’s Duleek Street, Joe looked around the town for a suitable premises to start his new business venture. This time it had nothing to do with printing. He wanted to start a cinema!
The transition from printer to cinema owner may seem an unlikely course of action from this distance, but Joe always had a keen interest in film from his earliest days. Having attended many of the early Abbey shows – and no doubt influenced by his actress wife Annie – the career change is not so difficult to understand. Later, he wrote plays and screenplays, none of which would ever be produced, but nonetheless it explains his venture into the motion picture business.
On Drogheda’s Fair Street was a chapel of ease building that had accommodated the overflow of families on Sunday mornings from the
nearby St Peter’s Church of Ireland. It was no longer in use. Joe thought that it would make a fine cinema.
Raising his head above the parapet once more, and not content with one cinema, he also investigated the possibility of opening up a second one in Dundalk. It was this move that brought him to the attention of the Castle again.
A letter from Joe to the Irish Independent published on 17 September 1919 sheds some interesting light on his Dundalk venture. In January of that year, Ian MacPherson MP had been appointed chief secretary for Ireland by the British government. Recent comments of his, combined with Joe’s experience in Dundalk, had stirred the new cinema owner into wielding his trusty pen:
To the Editor, Irish Independent
Dear Sir,
Just a few lines by way of postscript to a letter of mine, which you inflicted upon your readers a short time ago, respecting Mr MacPherson’s denials that purely business interests were ever interfered with, on political grounds, by the British Government Authorities in Ireland.
You may remember that in my previous communication, I waxed facetious over the multiplicity of instances in which my own business affairs had been censored (to put it mildly) by Dublin Castle, for the very good reason, no doubt that I was “ agin the government”.
I have now to add to the soft impeachment, another example of the fatherly hand of Mr MacPherson’s agents in dealing with my wayward self. Arrangements have been made by me to reopen, as a Cinema Show, a hall in Dundalk, which up to recently was open for cinema performances and which is the property of the Dundalk Irish National Foresters. It appears that in the pursuance of business, I overlooked securing the sanction of a certain Sergeant Kiernan (of the local R.I.C.) before proceeding with the matter. At least this is what I gather from the
circumstance, that the gentleman in question has taken the trouble of pointing out to an official of the Dundalk Foresters that the closing of the hall (under DORA) is a not unlikely contingency consequent upon its occupation by a reprobate like myself. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
Possibly, Mr MacPherson might wish to add the incident to his next series of denials of uneven handed justice in Ireland.
At all events, I am giving him, the heads of the R.I.C., and the Irish public, this opportunity of appreciating the zeal of an official who mayhap, is too modest to claim such recognition for himself.
Yours etc.
Joseph Stanley, Boyne Cinema, Drogheda.
Despite the initial difficulties, the Oriel Cinema was soon open for business in the Forester’s Hall on Dundalk’s Market Street under the proprietorship of J. M. Stanley.
Around this time there were approximately 50,000 members of the RIC in Ireland. Their system of reporting news to the Castle, even from the most rural of outposts, was extremely effective. Joe’s absence from Dublin was bound to cause a few eyebrows to raise, wherever he relocated. In typical Joe Stanley style, he wasted no time in wreaking havoc among the local RIC when he embraced the medium of his new enterprise and turned it into a propaganda weapon.
When the Dáil was set up, Collins, the newly appointed minister for finance, was given the responsibility of procuring the necessary money in order for the alternative government to operate. The Dáil then set up the National Loan, a process whereby citizens could contribute to the new national government and be reimbursed over time. Naturally, the word needed to spread in order for the loan to work. Naturally, too, Chief Secretary MacPherson soon declared any advertising of the loan illegal. Twenty-one local newspapers were suppressed between 17 September and 7 October for carrying ads about the loan.
Joe Stanley’s list of the value of machinery and stock that was taken in the numerous raids on the Gaelic Press and the Art Depot.
Earlier in the year, John MacDonagh, a brother of the executed leader Thomas, had made a short propaganda film in two parts, of a half hour’s duration, to publicise the loan. Part one of the film showed Michael Collins and Diarmuid O’Hegarty sitting outside Pearse’s school, St Enda’s, signing bonds for Pearse’s mother. Also depicted was the annual pilgrimage to Wolfe Tone’s grave at Bodenstown, Plunkett’s election victory at Roscommon, scenes of de Valera in uniform during the East Clare election and the reception for Countess Markievicz after her release from prison. In part two, scenes included the anti-conscription meeting at Ballaghadereen, showing John Dillon (Home Rule Party) and de Valera sharing a platform, the crowd outside the Mansion House during the first sitting of the Dáil and de Valera’s first appearance in Dublin following his escape from Lincoln Jail.
The film first came to the attention of the authorities when Inspector Herbert of College Station, B Division of the DMP, noticed a green, white and orange poster outside the offices of the Irish Film Supply Company on Pearse Street (then North Brunswick Street). Chief Secretary MacPherson was immediately notified, and two G-Men were sent along to inspect the film before the Castle would approve. The detectives were horrified with what they saw and labelled it “Sinn Féin propaganda pure and simple”. On their recommendation the film was immediately banned.
But the film company moved faster than the DMP. When the police arrived to seize the film, they discovered that the manager had already taken it to Drogheda a couple of days earlier to fulfil an engagement at the Boyne Cinema.
An urgent telephone message was made to RIC Inspector Carbury in Drogheda, to inform him that the film was banned. Coincidentally, the Westgate RIC Barracks in Drogheda practically backed on to the rear of the cinema itself. By this time, no doubt Joe must have been surprised at the failure of the police to act. For the past few days he had widely distributed handbills around the entire town publicising the now prohibited film with no interference from his neighbours. Furthermore, he had also gleefully shown it to audiences on the previous two nights, 14 and 15 April.
The film was advertised as “The Sinn Féin Review – the picturised story of the Sinn Féin movement from 1916 to the present day – all the leaders”.
On 16 April the local RIC swung into action, albeit belatedly. All the available men of Drogheda’s Westgate and South Quay Barracks were led to the cinema by a head constable. Either by accident or design, Joe gave the evening show a miss that day and he wasn’t on the premises. Bob Roden, a staff member, refused to let the police in the door. The constables had brought a hatchet with them, and the threat of such a destructive implement soon persuaded Roden to unlock the door. The police entered and duly confiscated the film, but not before the crowd jeered and heckled them. Following the raid Joe put a sign up on the door to acquaint passersby of the seizure. Records are inconclusive as to what happened to the film reel afterwards.
Some contemporary reports suggest that armed Volunteers also took copies of it around the country and ordered projectionists to show it to audiences, remaining on site and scarpering when the half hour was up, before the local RIC knew that anything untoward had happened. While the entire film seems to have since been lost, many of the scenes that it depicted had been copied on to newsreels and have survived to this day.
The Dáil itself was declared illegal in September 1919, and as the War of Independence raged across the country, Joe’s two cinemas began to turn a profit.
The infamous Black and Tans were then introduced to Ireland in January 1920. RIC membership had rapidly dwindled due to Collins’s guerrilla tactics and the fact that most of the RIC men were Irish and, as such, were easily persuaded not to pursue their careers in the face of the determined republican counter government. As British intelligence officers were being murdered on Dublin’s streets, wholesale resignations of RIC men took place all over Ireland. The Tans were recruited from England and were employed as a military force to meet violence with violence. Sinn Féin’s view of them is eloquently epitomised in Piaras Béaslaí’s statement: “A body whose unsavoury record stinks in the nostrils of the civilized
world, and reflects undying disgrace on the government responsible for calling them into existence”.
Joe also had a busy opening to the year 1920. The local elections were being held and municipal seats were up for grabs. This time he secured a nomination from the local Sinn Féin cumann and went in front of the Drogheda electorate, standing in the Duleek Gate Ward. There were five Sinn Féin candidates in the ward, but due, no doubt, to his reputation as a committed republican, his role in the Rising, the seven months he spent in British prisons and the fact that he was now an unconventional local cinema owner, he topped the poll with 166 votes on the first count, which equated to 12 per cent of the overall vote. Having easily exceeded the quota of 125, he was elected an alderman of the Drogheda Corporation. Another successful candidate, Philip Monahan, his fellow Frongoch inmate, was elected mayor at the next Corporation meeting.
On 16 April, Joe and Annie added a fifth member to their rapidly growing family, with the birth of baby Peter. Now with an extra mouth to feed, it was imperative that the cinema business succeeded. Despite frequent visits from his RIC neighbours, thankfully they remained oblivious to his extra-curricular activities in the capital, and business was good. The Boyne Cinema was the only cinema for miles, and people flocked to see the latest in entertainment methods.
In June of 1920 he went forward as a candidate for a seat on the Louth County Council. He was consequently elected and now added the economic, political and social issues of the county to his ever-growing portfolio.
He was still a prominent member of H Company and was always available for active service in between shows. Some of his comrades had also been transferred from C Company when the brigades were being reformed in 1917. A young man by the name of Kevin Barry was one of them.
Barry joined the Volunteers in October 1917, when he was just fifteen. He had won a scholarship to study medicine at University College Dublin and is said to have been an outstanding athlete. He was soon promoted to section commander. On 20 September 1920, Barry was involved in an
attack on a British ration party in a plan to take their weapons. But instead of dropping his weapon, as ordered, one of the British soldiers began to fire on the raiders. In the commotion, Barry’s rifle jammed, and as he knelt to free it, he failed to notice the withdrawal of his comrades. He took cover under a lorry but was spotted and dragged out. Three British soldiers were killed in the incident.
While Barry was in prison, various plans were hatched to free him. Four attempts were made, three of which were aborted on the eve of the execution. That day Dick McKee and Oscar Traynor (both printers and exFrongoch men) had planned to dress as priests and take Barry from Mountjoy under arms that were to be hidden in their cassocks. But they didn’t carry it out, nor did the idea of masquerading as British troops in the guise of reinforcements for the prison proceed, because they learned that bone fide reinforcements had recently arrived.
Alderman Joseph Stanley was assigned to the unit that made the final attempt to spring the young prisoner from jail later that night. Accompanied by C and D Companies, Joe’s H Company took over the streets surrounding the prison, with orders to engage any enemy reinforcements that appeared after the planned action had begun. The line of H Company ran from Doyle’s Corner all the way to the Parnell Monument on O’Connell Street. Their plan was to blast the prison wall open with a land mine, battle their way to Barry’s cell and take out the prisoner. Meanwhile, selected members of H Company were to create a diversion by firing at the main gate. The companies all mobilised, reached their target positions and waited for orders. But the action never got under way. The attempt was called off when it was realised that arrangements had been made within the prison to shoot Barry if any disturbance took place. Also, because of the heavy British military presence in the area to prevent an escape attempt, it was obvious that such a largescale operation could result in carnage that might also have included civilians. The operation was cancelled, and Joe was not called upon to fire his gun. It was the closest he ever came to shooting or being shot at.
The “lad of eighteen summers” was executed the following day. It was widely reported that Barry showed extraordinary resolve and went to his
death as a dedicated republican, apparently happy to die for Ireland. His execution was to inspire scores of patriotic songs. Joe became involved in preserving Barry’s memory by promoting such songs and becoming a founder and lifelong member of the Kevin Barry Memorial Fund. The day Barry was executed, he became an instant martyr to British oppression, and it is said that that very day Sinn Féin were inundated with thousands of new recruits. Perhaps as a direct result of his being involved in the unsuccessful escape attempt, Barry’s tragic story would have a profound influence on Joe’s life.
Trying to run his businesses while at the same time being involved in the national struggle was a perilous way to exist in 1920. The Black and Tans made their presence felt in every corner of the country and tolerated little. Thomas Halpin, a Volunteer and fellow member of Drogheda Corporation, who lived at Stockwell Lane in Drogheda, was taken from his bed on 12 February 1921 and shot in the back by the Auxiliaries, a later addition to the Tans. There were times during this period when Joe would have to go on the run. He was also involved in other military operations around this time, including an incident at Landy’s Bakery, Rathfarnham in October 1920, of which the details are now lost.
Sometime in 1921 the family moved into a Swiss-cottage style house at Cherrymount on Drogheda’s Donore Road. Again, it was a renting arrangement as the Stanley roots were only partly placed in the County Louth town. In September, baby Kevin Stanley came into the world, the fourth boy to be born to Annie and Joe. He was named after Kevin Barry. In November of that year, Joe opened up a third cinema in the main hall, or assembly room, of Cavan town.
It was also around this time that he took the imprints of the Gaelic Press and the Art Depot and set up a publishing business in the street that would become known as the home of music in Ireland, North Frederick Street, where Walton’s music shop was based. Money could still be made, and Irish culture could still be promoted, through its songs and ballads. “The Gaelic Press & The Art Depot – Irish Ireland Publishers” was based at No. 27, and one of the first songs to be signed up was “ The Prison Grave of Kevin Barry”, with words by artist Richard Clarke, music by J.M. Stanley.
Gaelic Press letterheads and colophon.
At Christmas time, the Gaelic Press would print a variety of festive cards with a nationalistic flavour. Some of them carried images of paintings by Jack B. Yeats. Joe was known to Yeats as they often moved in the same circles. Yeats painted and sketched some of the Abbey players, including a portrait of Máire Nic Siubhlaigh that currently hangs in the foyer of the Abbey Theatre. A little-known pencil sketch that he did of her in 1903 is reproduced here.
Meanwhile, in Westminster, in an attempt to settle the Irish question, the Government of Ireland Act was passed by parliament in December 1920. The act proposed to create separate parliaments for the north and south of the country. In May 1921, elections were held for the return of members to serve in the two new parliaments. Sinn Féin refused to accept the concession of a parliament for southern Ireland and adopted a resolution that the elections were to be regarded as elections to Dáil Éireann.
So great was the support now for the separatist movement in the south that all Sinn Féin candidates in the twenty-six counties were returned unopposed. Sinn Féin proceeded to constitute themselves as the second Dáil and met for the first time on 16 August 1921. The Truce, which meant the suspension of the War of Independence, was instigated in July 1921. Peace negotiations between the two countries were initiated, and it was at this point that the defining moment of Michael Collins’s career would occur. He was part of the delegation that would sign the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland on 6 December 1921. The Treaty provided for the establishment of a twenty-six county Free State, with jurisdiction over the six northern counties remaining with Great Britain.
After a bitter debate, the second Dáil approved the Treaty by 64 votes to 57 on 7 January 1922. The Provisional Irish Government was then set up under the chairmanship of Collins with control over the twenty-six counties, pending the establishment of the Free State government. For a time the Provisional Government and the government of Dáil Éireann existed simultaneously and had overlapping membership.
This, or something like it, was the moment that Joe had been waiting for. The detectives that had driven him out of the print manufacturing and music selling businesses no longer had any authority over him. The English
government moved out of Dublin Castle and the Irish Free State government took charge of the building. When they moved in, some of Joe’s equipment was found there and returned to him. The temptation was too much for Joe to resist. With his law enforcement adversaries now gone, there was an excellent opportunity to revitalise the Gaelic Press. Although he was not in a strong position financially, Joe was convinced that compensation for the raids, due to his work for the cause, would be forthcoming from the new Irish government.
He set about with vigour resurrecting the Gaelic Press print shop in anticipation of some form of reimbursement, if not in whole, then in part. He searched around Dublin for a premises in which to launch his new printing project. As luck would have it, there was a retail unit available at 21 Upper Liffey Street. Joe immediately took up the lease option. The new Gaelic Press premises was even more conveniently situated than the old one (today it is a retail clothes shop called Storm) as it was almost directly across the street from Proby’s Lane, his former print plant unit. Remarkably, the unit in the lane was without a tenant, so Joe moved his equipment straight back in.
Though the Art Depot, the wholesale and retail arm of the Gaelic Press, had had such a bad start in 1918, the way now seemed clear for the company to realise its potential over at North Frederick Street. Joe had created a mini empire. It was business as usual for the Gaelic Press –without the shackles – and it must have been an exciting time for the printer/publisher/cinema owner.
On 16 May 1922, he enthusiastically wrote to the new government to outline his past plight and stake his claim so that he could defray some of the costs of starting again. He addressed the letter to Minister for Home Affairs Austin Stack, and in reply he was “given to understand” that his “claim had received most sympathetic consideration by the provisional government, but it could not be dealt with owing to no funds being available for the purpose”.
It was a bad body blow, as he had been depending heavily on government support. He felt very strongly that they had a moral obligation to him since he had played his own unique role in helping them to evolve.
But there was some hope; the reply suggested “that it would be provided for by legislation dealing with criminal injuries to be introduced into the first parliament subsequent to the constitution”.
But Joe had acted prematurely for other reasons too. His vision of the dawn of a new “Ireland for the Irish” quickly evaporated. The country was not at peace for long. The hostile debates over the Treaty now sparked the beginning of the Civil War as de Valera and his followers occupied an entrenched anti-Treaty position. The economy was again thrown into chaos, and a recession would ensue. Irregular anti-Treaty troops, or the Irish Republican Army, took up arms against the Free State government, their cause – the ideal of a thirty-two county republic. This war would be the violent catalyst that determined the future politics of Ireland and left an indelible scar on the country for generations.
The Civil War broke out on 28 June 1922. Joe was still a lieutenant of H Company, 1st Battalion of the IRA, but it was at this point that he officially resigned from the army. Family, local politics and his new and existing business interests were dominating his life around this time as he strove to get back on an even financial keel. At the age of thirty-two, with a wife and three young children, his days of engaging in military activity were over. The necessities of life had become his priority. Besides, like many other Volunteers, he had no appetite for fighting his fellow countrymen whose opinions may have happened to differ from his.
An incident reported in a local Drogheda paper on Monday, 3 July 1922, makes interesting reading. On that day, both himself and Philip Monahan, the then mayor of Drogheda, were walking in the direction of Drogheda’s Dominick’s Bridge. Dominating the route is the steep hill of Ballsgrove. As the two aldermen passed by, they were suddenly fired upon by snipers hidden in the bushes on the hill. Joe escaped unhurt, but the mayor was hit in the neck and was treated in a hospital on the town’s Dublin Road. It turned out to be a minor injury from which he soon recovered.
Joe’s priorities had changed significantly. In 1916, he had had the fortitude to involve himself directly in the military struggle at whatever cost to his livelihood. Financially, it was an expensive decision. By 1922, his
economic circumstances were quite different. No sooner had the Gaelic Press been restarted when he was in serious financial trouble. New machines had to be bought, and the set-up costs for 21 Upper Liffey Street were considerable. Despite the fact that the Civil War was in full swing, Joe had no option but to try to accelerate his case for compensation from a fledgling government, at war now with its own citizens.
The Shaw Commission had been set up by the government to evaluate compensation claims of this nature, but it did not cover incidents that occurred prior to January 1919. Joe couldn’t wait for the implementation of a criminal injuries clause in the constitution that the government had proposed to set out his case. In this hour of dire need, he turned to a man whom he had helped become elected in 1918 with the printing of his election material, a former minister for local government in the first Dáil, a man who was, at this time, next in line to Collins in the new provisional government, W.T. Cosgrave.
But the time that Joe chose to ask Cosgrave for help was not exactly opportune. If the sender had a lot on his plate, the recipient had considerably more. Arthur Griffith died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage on that very same day, and within a fortnight, Cosgrave became chairman of the Provisional Government as the result of another sudden death.
The Gaelic Press 21 Upper Liffey Street 12 August 1922
To: L.T. MacCosgair, T.D. Government Buildings, Merrion Street.
A Chara dhil,
I am very reluctant to trouble you at what must be a very difficult time, but am compelled to do so by the force of circumstances.
I have a claim before the Reparations Commission for approximately £15,000 (about £9,000 for Gaelic Press suppression extending from 1916 to 1918 and about £6,000 for the Art Depot, both of which businesses you will perhaps
remember were put out of action). If necessary I should be pleased to submit itemised details of the claim, but I thought it might be more useful at the outset to investigate broad principles.
It now seems that my claim has been ruled out in toto on account of all the damages having been sustained prior to the date provided for in the Treaty (January 1919). Under normal circumstances, while it is rather a hardship, I should have bowed to the inevitable, as I have not sufficient imagination to hope that the Treaty could be altered to accommodate my claim.
Unfortunately, however, the news that my claim was ruled out came too late to prevent me committing myself to a programme of reconstruction of this firm on the assumption that my claim would be honoured at least in part. All the old machines having been dispersed, I had to start at the bottom again, and the effort has both exhausted both my capital and my credit. In a word, I am at the moment, faced with the alternative of either applying to the government for assistance, or to the courts for protection.
If my losses had been ordinary trade losses, I should not and would not grumble. It would be clear, however, that they are of an entirely different cause, which it is unnecessary to stress. I never received any assistance from National funds, beyond a small amount, which my wife received during my internment in 1916.
It has occurred to me that as the Provisional Government is debarred from dealing with my claim on the technical grounds referred to, that possibly An Dáil could deal with the matter, or advance an exgratia [sic] grant, and this is what I had in mind in applying to you.
I am really sorry to have to bother you at a time like this. It is not an easy thing to do, but I am sure you will understand and help if you can.
With kind regards Mise do chara.
J. M. Stanley
Ten days after he wrote this letter, his old comrade, idol and regular winner of the 100 yard dash in Frongoch, Michael Collins, chairman of the Provisional Government and commander-in-chief of the Free State army, was shot dead in his home county of Cork.
Chapter Eight
Around this time Joe was spending much of his time in Dublin. The Drogheda Corporation records from this period show his regular absences from chamber meetings. Demands on his time necessitated his presence in the capital.
Meanwhile, the government were putting the finishing touches to the Criminal and Malicious Injuries (Amendment) Bill. In an effort to ensure that his own malicious injuries would be covered in the bill, he wrote to President Cosgrave again on 22 December 1922: “I now observe that a bill is being drafted to deal with reparations, and as these losses were inflicted prior to the period covered by the Treaty, I should be glad if provisions could be made in the forthcoming bill, to deal with my particular case, which I feel sure will be regarded as one of exceptional hardship.”
But again, his timing was off. Three days earlier, on 19 December 1922, the Criminal and Malicious Injuries (Amendment) Bill had been sent to the printers by the government. Provisions in the bill had not been made to deal with his “particular case”. Joe soon got his hands on a copy of the new bill, and both he and Noyk studied the clauses closely. They were to be disappointed.
It was in three parts. The period covered by part one dealt with the period, 21 January 1919 (The day the first Dáil opened) to 11 July 1921. Part two dealt with injuries committed after 11 July 1922. Part three was equally irrelevant. Still determined, he decided to write to Cosgrave again, to outline the fact that he was considerably hampered through lack of capital. On 10 February, after pointing out the anomaly in the dates contained in the bill that precluded his particular case, he wrote, “I regret troubling you at such a busy time, but I am confident that it is your desire that I should bring to your notice this omission in the bill, and that an amendment will be introduced to deal with it.”
Cosgrave had personal knowledge of the claimant, and this was reflected in his response. He was said to be “sympathetic towards the claim, realising the pioneer work done by Alderman Stanley and the hardship of being deprived, by one month, of the benefits of the Shaw Commission”.
Indeed, many of the contacts that Joe had made throughout the previous six years were by this time in prominent positions in the government. His fellow Frongoch “students” had achieved their degrees from the University of Revolution and were now working in the higher echelons of government buildings in Merrion Street. Following its inception in December 1922, the first convention of Cumann na nGaedheal took place on Friday, 27 April 1923, and Alderman Joe Stanley was cordially invited to attend by the Provisional Standing Committee. It had as its core element the pro-Treaty section of Sinn Féin. It was the official launch of the administration that would lead the country for the next ten years. W.T. Cosgrave was elected president at that meeting.
Around this time, a document was put before the Dáil with the specific and exclusive aim of proposing to cover the case of the Gaelic Press and the Art Depot. Finally, after six years of incessant lobbying, Joe was getting his chance to make a proper case for compensation.
Noyk then got to work and put together a comprehensive set of documents outlining details of the various raids (twenty-one in total) on both companies by date, a list of equipment dismantled, publications confiscated and financial losses incurred over a two-and-a-half-year period. They were then submitted to the attorney-general for evaluation. The total amount for both claims was £15,000, £9,000 of which was for the Gaelic Press and £6,000 for the Art Depot.
They waited for a response. But the red tape was tightly tied, and typically it would be slow to loosen. Meanwhile, Joe put his head down and attempted to develop the businesses despite the fact that an economic recession prevailed due to the Civil War. When they did respond, the government questioned the amounts in the claim, and straightaway Joe changed the figures at the prospect of seeing the matter being satisfactorily resolved. He drastically reduced the claim for the Gaelic Press to £2,473 and the Art Depot to £763.
On 12 June 1923, he wrote back, “In regard to the amounts originally claimed for machinery, I have now adopted actual replacement values at the present time as a basis of estimate, resulting in very substantial reductions.” But it wasn’t long before he was preoccupied with a separate, totally unexpected legal case against the government that had nothing to do with detectives, raids or printing.
On 25 July 1923, he was driving his car along the Conyingham Road in the direction of Chapelizod. In the car were his sister Jenny, her infant daughter and two of his adult cousins. As he approached the Islandbridge Road junction, a military car suddenly appeared around the corner on the wrong side of the road and struck Joe’s car, overturning it, knocking him unconscious and throwing Jenny from the car. The driver of the army car had only been driving for six months. Jenny had her leg badly broken and would suffer ill health for a considerable time afterwards as a result. The Department of Defence, however, refused to accept responsibility for the accident, and Joe was left with no option but to seek recourse through the courts. In March 1924, the case was heard by Mr Justice Dodd and a common jury. Not surprisingly, the court found for the plaintiffs. An amount of £300 was awarded to Joe and £700 to Jenny.
Arising from the accident, the government saw an opportunity to placate the Drogheda alderman, which is best described by Joe in a letter to Eamonn Duggan TD on 25 July 1924, a year to the day after the accident:
21 Upper Liffey Street, Dublin
A chara,
With reference to our interviews last week, and yesterday evening, I thought it would be well to write to you formally, so that you could put in a concrete way, before the President my objections to the two claims (the Islandbridge motor accident and the Gaelic Press) being considered jointly.
The suggestion to compound these cases – which are of a vitally different nature – by paying in full the damages assessed by the Court in the motor accident case would result in £300 being
paid to me, and £700 being paid to my sister Mrs McNeive. I take it that the point of view is that, in the net result, the Stanley family would benefit to the extent of £1,000. This point of view is quite fallacious for the reason that both my sister and I have separate establishments, we are both married, she having two children, and I having five.
The essential difference in the cases is that one concerns myself alone, while the other concerns my sister primarily and myself in a secondary degree. The two cannot, therefore be negotiated as if they concerned only one individual. The settlement contemplated under your suggestion, and involving the elimination of the Gaelic Press case, would, in effect, amount to this. The £300 coming to me would be in quittance of my medical and other outlay, the destruction of a valuable car (which for business purposes, I have since had to replace at my very own expense) plus over £3,000 worth of plant, type, machinery, stock in trade etc. actually destroyed or removed by the British. Looking at this matter broadly, the accounts do not seem to balance justly.
I am not insensible to the suggestion that there is no legal obligation on the Government to meet these claims. On the other hand, I contend that there is a strong moral claim in both instances.
As regards the motor accident case, no private employer could justify the attitude that he had no liability for damages caused by his employee in the course of his duty.
The final destruction of the Gaelic Press in December 1918, (when type of An tÓglach was discovered) only preceded by a bare month, the prescribed Treaty date which would have brought the question within the scope of the Compensation Commission. This is a technicality and not a valid argument against the moral justice of that claim.
I recognise that at the moment a difficulty exists as to the means by which the Gaelic Press case can be met. In view of this, and in view of the uncertainty of it being dealt with in the near future, if ever, at all, my suggestion would be that the motor
accident case should be met by honouring the verdict of the Court, and paying the amount of assessed damages.
I would feel very grateful for an early decision on this matter –my own financial circumstances are bad at the moment, but those of my sister are infinitely worse. She is still under medical treatment (twelve months after the accident) and has undergone four operations, the latest recently. She is entirely dependent on her husband’s moderate salary, as a civil servant, upon which her long illness has told severely. I mention these facts to indicate that there is some urgency.
If the President or yourself, would wish for any further information on the subjects, I would be very happy to wait upon you at your convenience.
Mise do chara Joe Stanley.
Joe’s preoccupation with money at this point is understandable; he had a family of four children – with another on the way – and several business ventures that were barely making ends meet in a highly volatile economic climate. This was, however, his last attempt to seek compensation for the raids. It was unsuccessful. He took his £300 for the accident, finally put the raid baggage behind him and moved on.
Back in Drogheda his interest in local politics was on the wane and his disenchantment with the government was about to be made complete. Of nine Drogheda Corporation meetings that were held in 1923, he attended only three. His final appearance in the Corporation Chamber was on 8 December 1923. The death of Michael Collins had left a void in his life, and he could no longer engage in politics as a result. At the end of 1923, following five years of being involved in local government, he bowed out gracefully.
In 1924, Joe and Annie’s fifth and final child was born. Little Aidan was the latest addition to the Stanley clan. Philip Monahan agreed to be his godfather.
The Gaelic Press lasted another three years. Sometime around 1925/26 he moved the family back to Dublin. They lived at 8 Haddon Road, Clontarf,
for a couple of years until returning to Drogheda in 1927. In the second period of the company’s life, he got more and more involved with writing and editing. He had also revitalised Honesty in January 1923 and developed it into a regular periodical that lasted the duration of the Gaelic Press’s second phase. Later, concerning the second series of Honesty , he wrote, “It had a strongly nationalist line, critical of both the Cosgrave and de Valera parties but also interesting itself in a critical attitude towards economic and social aspects of Irish life.” Fianna Fáil had been set up by de Valera in 1926 and remained in the shadows until 1932. Finally, in March 1929, Joe retired from the Gaelic Press.
For the time being, the general printing business no longer played a part in Joe’s life as he exclusively pursued his career in the more glamorous world of films. Like many of the participants of the Troubles who had experienced Easter Week, internment, the War of Independence and the Civil War, the flame that once stirred within had almost burnt out.
As the Roaring Twenties came to a close, the spontaneity that sometimes drove the entrepreneur down uncertain roads again came to the fore. In 1928, he applied for a visa to travel to America. He had by this time established some contacts in the States in the film business. But for some unknown reason he eventually decided against the trip.
Another enterprise that he financed around this time was a travelling troupe of actors, complete with steam engine and caravans, that performed in many of the rural parts of the country. Some of Joe’s and Annie’s contacts in the Abbey and other performers whom they had come in contact with through the profession could not find steady work, so Joe decided to help them out. He collected together a competent group of out-of-work actors who toured the country spreading some culture and entertainment to many a far-flung hamlet. The cavalcade was sometimes headed by the steam engine, which chugged its way from village to village. The steam engine also provided lighting as a generator for the evening performances. This venture may have been an admirable theatrical project, but it was never going to pay its way, especially as Joe was always a soft touch for various types of canny itinerant artistes, who exploited his generous nature.
The boys were growing up fast. Colbert was now attending Newbridge College in Kildare, Heuston was in O’Connell’s Schools in North Richmond Street, and the other three, Kevin, Peter and Aidan, were getting under Annie’s feet at home. In 1928, the family moved yet again, this time to the house at Hackett’s Cross, Clogherhead, and settled into country life, a mile and a half away from Ard Bolies, the place from where John and Mary Stanley had moved to Dublin all those years ago. Kevin, Peter and Aidan were all enrolled in the Clogherhead National School and later went to the Christian Brothers’ School at Sunday’s Gate in Drogheda.
With the cinemas practically running themselves and the family settled –for the moment in Clogherhead – Joe decided that he wanted to return to the world of writing and the cut and thrust of the newspaper business. In early 1929, he received an offer that was simply too good to refuse. The position was as a sub-editor in the Daily Mail, on London’s Fleet Street. His itchy feet took their owner back across the Irish Sea on a boat to England. No doubt memories of the previous time he had made this journey, locked up in a filthy cattle ship bound for an English jail, weren’t far from his thoughts. The lure of Fleet Street wages, however, made this trip quite a different prospect.
He proceeded to settle in England to support his family, and the plan was to add the (significant) extra money to the Stanley coffers for some future, as yet unknown, business plan. Indeed, not long after arriving, the money was so good that he bought a brand new car for Annie so that she would not be isolated at Clogherhead and could keep an eye on the progress of the cinemas.
Far from being isolated, and as a temporary lone parent, Annie coped well with five high-spirited lads. She took a great interest in the local drama group, who were overawed by the reputation of the famous Abbey actress they had in their midst. She, too, had learned a thing or two about business, and she put some of the money that Joe sent home to good use by opening up a general grocery and confectionary shop at Hackett’s Cross called An Stad. Ideally situated for the rural community, it was the classic Irish country shop, located at a crossroads, a bus stop and directly opposite a church – St
Michael’s Church, Clogherhead. Her homemade ice cream was a speciality that was well known beyond the precincts of the village of Clogherhead.
As perhaps might be expected from one with an acting background, household chores and culinary skills were not her forte. As a result, help was hired to perform many of the menial tasks around the house. That help more often than not became like one of the family. Annie is remembered fondly in the Clogherhead area as a bohemian type.
Kevin later recalled that his memories of that time were that the Stanley children were immersed in thespian soirées, with music and poetry by a select glitterati that included the likes of Peadar Kearney and other such luminaries. Annie still maintained her contacts with many of the Abbey players, and many came to her for advice, as she was a seasoned veteran of the profession and knew all the tricks of the trade.
Kevin also relayed a story about a particular trip she undertook to Dundalk in the new car. While the kids were creating havoc in the back seat of the car, Annie must have turned around and neglected to negotiate a Tjunction at Annagassan. The car shot straight through the ditch on the far side and careered halfway down the strand towards the sea before she managed to regain control of the vehicle. Some locals gathered at the scene, and thanks to the kindness of a local farmer and the help of his tractor, they were soon back on the road. Annie was not a person who panicked easily, and she took the whole thing completely in her stride.
Annie kept the boys on the straight and narrow and was not averse to keeping them in line with a slap. Joe showed all the traits of a typical Irish father and floated in and out of the boys’ lives, rarely raising his hand, while their mother performed the role of disciplinarian. On evening walks around the Clogherhead area, Joe would point out to the boys the popular formations of stars in the night skies and tell them about the infinity of space.
In the evenings it was the custom in the house for them to say the rosary for Joe’s safekeeping, far away in England. When he was due to travel, there were special addenda attached afterwards that he would arrive safely and that the boat would not sink. Joe’s holidays from London were usually greeted with much excitement as he usually brought presents and toys for the
boys, and while at home he would curry their favour by generously supplementing their pocket money.
“ The Bakery” at Hackett’s Cross consisted of two main buildings, one of which was occupied by the family; the other was rented out to a Fr O’Neill from Ardee as an Irish College. A young Maureen O’Hara passed through the school on her way to a glittering career in Hollywood.
Joe spent the following six years in London. Even from that distance, he tried another business venture when he started one of the earliest Irish comics. He called it An Greann (The Fun), but it had limited success. During his time as a sub-editor with the Daily Mail, he also travelled on the Continent, at times performing the duties of a foreign correspondent. It was perhaps during an assignment in Europe that he came up with the idea of sending two of his sons to school in Belgium. He had become fond of languages, and it appeared to him at this point that Kevin and Aidan would have better career opportunities if they were able to speak a European language. In early 1935, the two boys accompanied their father, staying overnight at his London flat, to Belgium where they were enrolled at the Institute de Saint Berthuin, a De La Salle College in the village of Malonne, near the town of Namur. On the trip the boys gained first-hand experience of Joe’s ability to speak reasonable French. The experience would be more than a purely educational one, as relationships were formed there that endure up to the present day.
From time to time while living in England, Joe received visitors from home. Annie went often and the boys were then left in the hands of various hired maids. On one such occasion during the summer, his sister Lily arrived at his office on Fleet Street to find him in his slippers with his trousers at half-mast, due to the heat.
On his return to Ireland, Joe moved the family – one final time – back into Drogheda. He bought a large house at the bottom of Mill Lane on the banks of the River Boyne, a couple of hundred yards from the Boyne Cinema. James Connolly’s son, Roddy, was often a visitor to the house.
When the war broke out in 1939, it was no longer practicable to send young Kevin to Belgium. Aidan had only attended the college for a year. For the time being there were no more business ventures opened up or closed down by either himself or Annie. The money that he had earned in England, combined with the money from the cinemas, the rental from the Irish College and the shop at Clogherhead determined that they had a reasonably affluent lifestyle.
The film business occupied most of his time during this period. He became the main voice of Ireland’s cinema owners, as the Irish Press reported: “Joseph M. Stanley, who has been for years, leader of the Irish Provincial Film Exhibitors, has perpetually urged retrenchment of our money exported on films. He considers it extremely startling that there is no reliable information on the money we spend on films and the amount Hollywood claims as its rake-off. Stanley says the money could be used for an Irish film industry.”
He was convinced that a native film industry should be set up. Of the 1,506 motion pictures that had been introduced into Ireland in 1938, 82 per cent were of American origin and 17 per cent were British. But the entire 82 per cent of American films stopped off in England on the way and were taxed there before arriving in Ireland. It is not hard to see why Joe would have had an issue with this.
The remaining 1 per cent was of German, French or local origin. He was also keen to have the Irish Film Distribution Board restructured as the nature of the operation meant that many millions of pounds were exported, as he eloquently said, “leaving nothing behind but a memory”. The tax on imported films was also a bone of contention between Joe and the authorities, as the government of the day treated films with huge earning capacity on exactly the same basis as films of the cheaper variety, which were sometimes lucky to earn a tiny profit above their import tax. While no
official figures were available, Joe reckoned that annual box-office receipts were around the £2 million mark.
In 1947 he wrote:
Practically all the films now used in this country come from Hollywood. The type and standard of films is essentially the Hollywood standard. The exhibitor is purely a retailer of entertainment and has no more control over the production of the entertainment he provides than the grocer has over the production of tea.
The position of the exhibitor of pictures is a very peculiar one. Almost alone among the trading community, he has to buy his goods blindly. He has rarely an opportunity of seeing the pictures he buys, and it occasionally happens that he even buys them before they are made. He is tied by a contract devised to make him purchase whole groups of pictures, irrespective of their suitability to his theatre or audience.
Hollywood control has led not merely to a standardisation of pictures, but to something vastly worse, an artificial restriction of product.
To this result, the Hollywood Star System has contributed very materially. Hollywood could easily train up a dozen Greta Garbos, a dozen Deanna Durbins, a dozen Clark Gables or Spencer Traceys. In the world of the living stage, this is done every season, but Hollywood doesn’t want to do it, because it would only create competition for itself.
The whole position is entirely unsatisfactory, and the future is certain to be one of great difficulty if our present arbitrary connection with British distribution continues.
I am not aware of any good reason why this system should have survived the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. All economic considerations seem to me to indicate an opposite course.
Joe’s point was that the money that was going to the British distribution authorities for American films coming into Ireland could be used for the
creation of an Irish film industry. On this very point he finished a letter to a colleague in the film business by emphasising that this idea would work, “if our idiotic government could only be persuaded to see further than the extreme point of their idiotic noses!”
When the war came along, it put paid to many business ventures around the world as a variety of materials were either in short supply or impossible to procure. Films were an entirely different matter as Hollywood continued to churn out motion pictures to provide glimpses of pleasure to audiences inhabiting a world of chaos. Conversely, there was a general shortage of money in circulation, and the box offices were obviously affected as the necessities of life took priority over idle forms of entertainment. But, on balance, Joe’s cinemas seems to have provided the necessary financial security.
His journalistic background blended with his ready wit and made him a much sought-after and respected after dinner speaker and storyteller. Today, many locals in the Drogheda area remember that he had an uncanny ability to liven up any company with a good old singsong. A quick toss of the hair, a change of facial expression, with one hand on the piano, he immediately took on a different persona and regaled those present with a hilarious ditty.
Thanks to Joe, the citizens of Drogheda were exposed to a variety of exciting Hollywood characters. America’s most popular western singing cowboy, Gene Autry, was a major attraction at the Fair Street venue. Hopalong Cassidy regularly blazed a trail across the Boyne Cinema silver screen, miraculously avoiding bullets and arrows on many a Saturday afternoon. Whirlwind horseman and serial hero Ken Maynard chased outlaws into the Arizona and Texas sunsets and had audiences in raptures. Heroic frontiersman Davy Crockett brought the Battle of the Alamo to town and had the local children imagining they were fighting Mexicans all the way home for tea on Drogheda’s grey streets. The antics of the Keystone Cops, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy had them rolling in the aisles.
Joe’s social life was always a busy one, and as the years passed, he spent many evenings away from home. He was a founder member of the Gate Bridge Club in Drogheda, and he collected more than his fair share of
trophies for the game. He ran many of the tournaments and also devised a card game called “Duplicate Solo” based on bridge tournaments or whist drives, which he described as “a welcome variation to both”.
When it came to religion, Joe was not demonstrably devout, yet he was very friendly with Clogherhead priest Fr McCooey and is said to have made many covert donations to the church. He subscribed to a magazine called The Freethinker, but often went to mass on a Sunday in St Michael’s across the road. When his mother came to stay with them, it was obvious to the family that she was a pillar of the church, and if she was ever missing from the house, she would always be found in the church.
In the summers many of the Stanleys and Walkers, their husbands, wives and children would descend on Clogherhead, renting houses in the area. “ Granny” (Annie) Stanley at one point had twenty-five grandchildren running around the place. For his part, Joe was always good at games, in particular football, which he played a lot with his sons, and with his competitive edge he was known to have left them with sore shins on more than one occasion. Mostly, the boys were in awe of him, and even though he was not given to corporal punishment, a simple word, spoken with the appropriate inflection, was usually enough to put a halt to any unruly behaviour.
It was also around this time that he set up Elba Films, a wholly owned Irish film distribution company, which would distribute both American and British feature films to Irish cinemas. By 1944 there were thirty-one movies being shown on Irish screens that were distributed by Elba. By that year also he wanted to “extend the operations of the company to provide for the weekly production of a distinctively Irish newsreel as a first, and easiest step in the development of an Irish film manufacturing industry”.
Just then, the foreign newsreel makers had agreed between themselves to cease importation into Ireland, due to what Joe called “Eire’s censorship mentality and security regulations”. This left the door wide open for a native newsreel, and he was keen to get the government involved. Unfortunately, the government didn’t quite see things in the same light at that particular time.
Somewhat disenchanted that his ideas regarding newsreels and a native film industry weren’t getting anywhere, in the early forties, his fondness of
the newspaper business saw him yearn for a return to the printing/publishing arena for the third time. In 1941 he considered setting up a small national Sunday newspaper. He wrote to his prospective partner in the venture:
I propose a small weekly paper – The Sunday Review. I would print a first issue of 10,000 copies, size 4 pages Demy. I would confine the first issue to Dublin as an experiment and in view of transport difficulties of country distribution. These latter difficulties, if circumstances warranted, could be overcome later. But to confine expenses to the limit which I have in mind, I am disposed for a try-out in Dublin alone.
I would have the newspaper on the streets and in the newsagents on Sunday morning. I believe there is great scope for such a Sunday paper. I think Sunday is the ideal day for a paper with ideas. The people must have some paper on Sunday and the Sunday Independent is a washout except for the crosswords.
Formerly, 150,000 English Sunday newspapers sold in Dublin and now they only arrive at 5.00 p.m., so that there would be a free field for the Sunday Review almost. The Sunday Review would be severely critical of the Fianna Fáil Government which it would frankly accuse of failure.
The office from which Arthur Griffith issued the United Irishman at 17 Fownes Street is now vacant and I would engage this at about 10 shillings a week for the moral and prestige value of the address.
For whatever reason, the Sunday Review never got off the ground. However, Joe persisted with the idea of bringing out a newspaper. For less resolute souls the timing may not have been great, but J.M. Stanley was blessed with a different disposition to most. Printing materials may have been hard to get in wartime, but with the connections that Joe had in certain government departments, he did not expect to experience the same problems as the ordinary businessman on the street.
The existing newspaper in the Drogheda area, The Drogheda Independent , may have been around since 1884 – and a local institution to boot – but at that particular time, Joe felt that there was a gap in the local market for a second weekly paper in the Drogheda area.
In 1835 the Hughes family had started a newspaper in Drogheda called The Drogheda Argus. The first issue appeared on 19 September of that year. Another paper, The Drogheda Advertiser, was run by the McKeown sisters until 1926 when it was bought from them by Newry man R.H. Taylor, who also had also bought The Drogheda Argus around the same time. On 21 December 1929, Taylor merged both titles to form The Drogheda Argus & Advertiser until he closed down the business in 1936.
Joe did a deal with Bertie Taylor and purchased the entire concern, including the newspaper title and rights. He then restored it to its former glory, assembled a staff and was soon operating from the original Argus premises at 6 Peter Street, Drogheda. He was up and running in the printing business again. He pushed ever onward and soon added the Monaghan Argus to his publication portfolio, and his printing empire began to blossom once again.
During this period, on a visit to Kilmainham Jail to inspect some printing machinery that the government printing office was selling off, he took his son Kevin completely by surprise with his command of the Irish language. When they were stopped by a guard who spoke with a heavy Kerry accent in the precincts of the jail, Joe broke out into fluent Irish and stopped the Kerryman in his tracks.
But there were also other things on his mind around this time. He was a regular attendee at the Óglaigh na hÉireann 1916 Veterans’ Association meetings. Under the 1934 Military Service Pensions Act, as an IRA veteran, he was entitled to a military pension. But remarkably, despite being in the GPO at the birth of the Republic and having done so much for his country during the Troubles at enormous financial loss, he was refused a military pension.
The pension itself was only worth between £10–£15 per year, but it was the principle, rather than the amount, that was at stake. Furthermore, Charlie Walker, his brother-in-law, who had served under him during Easter Week,
had been successful with his application. Joe proceeded to make a case for himself and wrote a personal letter to one of his Frongoch colleagues, and fellow printer, the then minister for defence, Oscar Traynor.
10th July 1942
Personal
Dear Oscar,
I have received notification under Reference No. 20034-N.I.459 (Military service Certificate Pensions Act 1934) intimating that my application for a Service Certificate has not been granted, on the grounds that the Act does not apply to me.
An earlier notification stated that if I wished to submit further particulars, I was at liberty to do so, and I then asked that the personal attendance of Mr Charles Walker and of Commandant Tom Byrne should be requested by the Board, as these gentlemen could add very important testimony to the statements previously set out.
I understand that neither of them were summoned and consequently, I feel that the fullest evidence was not made available to the Board before a decision was made.
I am quite at a loss to understand the decision arrived at, and my feeling is that for some very obvious reason, some vital aspects of the matter were overlooked.
Mr Charles Walker was granted a Service Certificate for his Easter Week work, for which he was allowed two and two-fifths years. He could have testified that he had absolutely no military standing whatever for this work except as an Executive acting completely under my direction and with absolutely no status except that given him by, and through, me.
Even more emphatically I am at a loss to understand why my continued service as Lieutenant of H. Company, 1st Battalion, should fail to obtain recognition. I was drafted from C. Company into H. Company and was appointed Officer of the Company from its very inauguration. I was still an officer of the Company until I
resigned subsequent to the Irish Treaty on an occasion at which you were personally present and when I disagreed with the policy of sending delegates to the Army convention.
Commandant Byrne could have testified as to the various operations and Company activities in which I participated during the intervening period.
I do not think that at this stage it is necessary for me to weary you with the details of the many national and military measures by which I contributed at least one man’s part in the National struggle. I do not think, either, that I need emphasise the tremendous financial and personal sacrifices involved therein.
I do not have to remind you, of all people, that one month from the Rising of 1916 my printing plant valued at over £2,000 was dismantled and removed to Dublin Castle, nor need I reiterate that two and a half years later, nearly £5,000 worth of plant and machinery was again seized and removed under similar circumstances.
What is perhaps important to stress is that neither the Shaw Commission nor any subsequent Tribunal had any machinery for compensating me in the slightest degree for these very substantial losses.
In the circumstances, you will appreciate why I am appealing both to your sense of fair play and your special personal knowledge of the circumstances, to have the decision referred to above re-opened for review.
With all good wishes,
Yours very sincerely, Joe Stanley
The minister for defence did not forget the six months he spent in an English internment camp with Joe all those years ago. His pension application was subsequently passed.
The Argus was an immediate success for Joe despite the fact that the war was still in full swing. The war years saw only one provincial newspaper launch in Ireland, Joe Stanley’s Argus. It was around this time that he began
to be affectionately called “The Boss” by both family and friends alike. He hired the well-known republican Larry de Lacy as a production manager. Larry was a colourful character, and staff would later relate stories of his carrying out his daily chores with a revolver safely tucked under his clothes.
The editor that succeeded de Lacy was John Good, who was the son of an “English” Volunteer who hailed from London. His father Joe had taken part in the Easter Rising, and “the boss” got to know him well during the time they spent together in the prison compound of Frongoch. John first worked for Joe as a cub reporter before leaving to try his luck on London’s Fleet Street.
Others of note who worked in the Argus were fledgling reporters Peter Tynan-O’Mahony and his brother David. The latter went on to become the famous stand-up comedian Dave Allen. Distinguished Sunday Independent and RTÉ journalist Ted Kenny also cut his journalistic teeth with Joe in the Argus. Ted was actually Joe’s and Annie’s nephew. Annie’s sister Gypsy (Patricia Walker) married Edward Kenny and Ted was their son.
For the next seven years the paper was the main business interest in Joe’s life, and during his time there it provided formidable opposition to the Drogheda Independent. However, he was determined to build a newspaper empire, and it was in this area that he directed most of his efforts to the detriment of the general printing aspect of the business.
He also bought the Imperial Hotel on Drogheda’s West Street (today the site is occupied by the main post office). The building was in a ruinous state, but there was a perfectly preserved seventeenth century oak room on one of the floors. Joe had it dismantled and moved to Clogherhead, where he transformed the buildings at Hackett’s Cross into the Ferrard Hotel.
He also started an eighteen-hole pitch and putt course next to the Ferrard as he was a keen golfer, although as he said himself “of limited skill”. When his pitch and putt project failed to take off, he joined, and served as the captain of, the nearby Baltray Golf Club. He cycled the three and a half miles from Drogheda every day. He became more and more involved in the local social scene, helping to set up the Drogheda Branch of Rotary and printing their magazines, Cogs and The Inner Wheel, at his Peter Street printing premises.
He was a familiar figure around Clogherhead, and on one occasion he, along with his son Heuston, helped to save a drowning man who had fallen from the pier. They both received a certificate from the Royal Humane Society for their bravery. In later life, he was never known to have expressed any anti-British sentiment, nor was he inclined to discuss the Rising or the events that surrounded it, even with his family. He could be seen regularly walking around the Callystown Road on a summer’s evening. His five sons all married and had sons and daughters of their own – the present generation of Stanleys.
The name Stanley is still synonymous with the business community in Drogheda today as it has been ever since Joe set up his first business there in 1919. Several local businesses are run by his family. The succeeding generations inherited many of the Stanley traits. Some of the present generation have enjoyed international acclaim as they made the most of the musical genes they inherited from their grandfather.
From the GPO in 1916, Pearse wrote, “We have lived to see an Irish Republic proclaimed.” In 1949, Ireland was officially declared a republic. Joe had come to witness the reality of the vision that he had helped Pearse and Connolly to assert. On Friday, 2 June 1950, Joseph Michael Patrick William Catherine Larkin Stanley passed away peacefully at the Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. He was sixty years old and a devoted son of Ireland.
Ten years later, Annie, the glamorous Abbey actress Eileen O’Doherty, with whom Joe spent most of his life, took her final curtain call and exited the stage of life.
