Rebellion

12 posts

Inner Conflict

In August 1916 two large silver cups were presented to the College in recognition of the services rendered by the Officers’ Training Corps (OTC) during the Easter Rebellion. Speaking at the ceremony Provost Mahaffy expressed his regret that the College had to be defended from ‘the dangers of home rebellion’. […]

The making of ‘Insurrection’

Many of us are currently enjoying RTÉ’s Rebellion, the flagship drama from the national broadcaster to commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising. In 1966 the 50th anniversary commemorative offering was very different. When planning for the golden jubilee schedules started in the summer of 1965, the view of the […]

‘Necessity is the Mother of Invention’: Armoured Personnel Carriers in 1916

The Easter Rising of 1916 took the British army by surprise. The troops already in Ireland consisted mostly of reserve forces, and although they were mobilised immediately, much of their military hardware was then deployed in the War in Europe. As a result, improvised armoured personnel carriers were hastily constructed […]

‘Another damned play about 1916’

Despite his derogatory epithet Denis Johnston’s play The Scythe and the Sunset is an interesting adjunct to the canon of literary works relating to the Easter Rising, informed by personal experience of the Insurrection: Denis and his family (and a parrot), were held hostage in their home at 61 Lansdowne […]

‘from the still-hot ruins of the G.P.O. Dublin’

John Joly (1857-1933) was one of Ireland’s most distinguished scientists of the early twentieth century. Professor of Geology and Mineralogy at Trinity College Dublin, Joly, a native of Offaly, was well-known and respected amongst the scientific elites of Ireland, Britain, and Europe, and published on disparate subjects, most notably the […]

The Diary of Winifred Frances Wynne for 1916

A large section of the papers of the Wynne family of Avoca, Co. Wicklow, were presented to the Library in 1987. The great strength of the collection – apart from the evidence it contains of the family’s business entrepreneurship and estate responsibilities in Ireland and Germany – lies in its […]

1916: a view from the Castle

A single sheet of notepaper in the Thomas Bodkin papers, MS 7013/7, gives a concise impression of the atmosphere in Dublin during the 1916 Rising. Thomas was a young barrister at the time, the eldest son of a prominent middle-class nationalist family living at 52 Upper Mount Street. For the […]

Kidd Family Letters

Dr Frederick William Kidd (1857-1917), a professor of midwifery and gynaecology at the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, spent Easter 1916 attending Rugby fixtures at Lansdowne Road and entertaining visitors at home at 17 Lower Fitzwilliam Street. Three of his four sons were then serving in the Great War, and […]

Examination under Fire

The 1916 Junior Sophister term examinations were due to be held in Trinity College on Tuesday and Wednesday 25 and 26 April. Eileen Corrigan, a student from Belfast, travelled to Dublin by train on Easter Monday to attend them, and an account of her experiences appeared in the ‘Belfast Evening […]

Revolution in Redbrick Suburbia

In the early hours of Easter Tuesday 1916, 61 Lansdowne Road, the Ballsbridge home of Judge William Johnston, his wife Kathleen, and their only son, the future playwright Denis, was occupied, under ‘amiable circumstances’, by four armed and apologetic Irish republicans. Denis, then a 14-year-old schoolboy home for the holidays […]

The Howth Gun Running

The organisation of arms for the 1916 Easter Rising was a complicated affair with arrangements to obtain the necessary weapons taking place years in advance. Shortly after the formation of the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers in 1913, the British Parliament banned the importation of weapons into Ireland. In […]