Patrick Rankin – participant

The following witness statement given to the Bureau of Military History in 1948 refers to the Easter Rising of 1916:

‘‘… Peter McCann proposed that the three of us (Peter, my brother Owen and myself) should go to Dublin. … I thought it over, one brother in the family was sufficient, and Peter McCann was better living for Ireland ... I got John Southwell’s bicycle … as it was more free than my own, which was a Pierce of Wexford, and very heavy … It rained very heavily... until I arrived in Dublin about 7.30 p.m. (I carried a six inch revolver on my journey and, fortunately, I was not stopped by the police). … In a short time I was brought before Tom Clarke who knew me previously and he asked me had I any news of the North. I told him I had none. I think the old veteran knew as much as I did, but he never said a bad word about any man or county in the North. … He thanked me for getting through to the G.P.O. but he would have been delighted and happy to have had some hundreds of his own people from the Northern Counties present.”

Rankin’s descriptive account after his arrest highlights the diverse views of the Dublin public on the Rising. This includes an old woman saying “God bless you boys”, but others were not so sympathetic; with women following the prisoners shouting to the soldiers; “use your rifles on the German so and so’s”

Rankin was later imprisoned in Stafford prison in England, before being interned at Frongoch Camp in Wales. He was held until July 1916, and allowed to return to Newry.