Thomas Clarke: 16Lives

The 16LIVES Series

JAMES CONNOLLY Lorcan Collins

MICHAEL MALLIN Brian Hughes

JOSEPH PLUNKETT Honor O Brolchain

EDWARD DALY Helen Litton

SEÁN HEUSTON John Gibney

ROGER CASEMENT Angus Mitchell

SEÁN MACDIARMADA Brian Feeney

THOMAS CLARKE Helen Litton

ÉAMONN CEANNT Mary Gallagher

WILLIE PEARSE Roisín Ní Ghairbhí

THOMAS MACDONAGH Shane Kenna

JOHN MACBRIDE Donal Fallon

THOMAS KENT Meda Ryan

CON COLBERT John O’Callaghan

MICHAEL O’HANRAHAN Conor Kostick

PATRICK PEARSE Ruán O’Donnell

HELEN LITTON – AUTHOR OF 16LIVES: THOMAS CLARKE

Helen Litton, freelance indexer and editor, has written a series of illustrated histories and edited Kathleen Clarke: Revolutionary Woman, an autobiography (1991). Helen’s paternal grandmother was Laura Daly O’Sullivan of Limerick, sister of Kathleen Daly, the wife of Thomas Clarke and of Commandant Edward Daly, whose biography Helen has written in the 16 Lives series.

LORCAN COLLINS – SERIES EDITOR

Lorcan Collins was born and raised in Dublin. A lifelong interest in Irish history led to the foundation of his hugely-popular 1916 Walking Tour in 1996. He co-authored The Easter Rising: A Guide to Dublin in 1916 (O’Brien Press, 2000) with Conor Kostick. His biography of James Connolly was published in the 16 Lives series in 2012. He is also a regular contributor to radio, television and historical journals. 16 Lives is Lorcan’s concept and he is co-editor of the series.

DR RUÁN O’DONNELL – SERIES EDITOR

Dr Ruán O’Donnell is a senior lecturer at the University of Limerick. A graduate of University College Dublin and the Australian National University, O’Donnell has published extensively on Irish Republicanism. Titles include Robert Emmet and the Rising of 1803, The Impact of 1916 (editor), Special Category, The IRA in English prisons 1968–1978 and The O’Brien Pocket History of the Irish Famine. He is a director of the Irish Manuscripts Commission and a frequent contributor to the national and international media on the subject of Irish revolutionary history.

DEDICATION

For Frank

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to The O’Brien Press for giving me the opportunity to write this contribution to the study of Tom Clarke, a relatively neglected leader of the Easter Rising. I particularly thank my editor, Mary Webb, for her patience, and the series editors, Lorcan Collins and Ruán O’Donnell.

Thanks are due to the following: Bill Hurley, archivist of the American Irish Historical Association, New York; The Bureau of Military History, Dublin; Siobháin de hÓir, of Dublin, who lent me her father-in-law Éamonn’s unpublished memoirs; the staff of the Brooklyn Public Library, New York; the staff of the John J Burns Library, Boston College; the staff of the Archives Department, University College Dublin; the staff of the National Library of Ireland. Thanks are also due to Linda Clayton, Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland, for research into the Clarke family.

I am grateful to my husband Frank, Anthony and Kristen, Eleanor and Jim and our grandchildren Aoife and Aidan for all their help and support, and to all family and friends for listening to my moans about ‘too much material and not enough time’. Above all, I am deeply grateful to my uncle and aunt Edward and Laura Daly O’Sullivan, and my cousins Nóra and Mairéad de hÓir, all of Limerick, whose parents fought during the Easter Rising and who shared memories and anecdotes with me.

Finally, I pay tribute to my colleagues of ‘Concerned Relatives of Signatories to the Proclamation’ – Eamonn Ceannt, James Connolly Heron, Muriel McAuley, Pat MacDermott, Honor Ó Brolcháin, Lucille Redmond and Noel Scarlett. Along with other groups, we have been working to preserve the footprint of the retreat and surrender of the Easter Rising, all under threat of demolition. We are grateful that the National Monument of Nos 14-17 Moore Street has recently been reprieved by James Deenihan, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and we hope to see this whole ‘battlefield’ secured and preserved for the centenary of the Easter Rising in 2016.

16LIVES Timeline

1845–51. The Great Hunger in Ireland. One million people die and over the next decades millions more emigrate.

1858, March 17. The Irish Republican Brotherhood, or Fenians, are formed with the express intention of overthrowing British rule in Ireland by whatever means necessary.

1867, February and March. Fenian Uprising.

1870, May. Home Rule movement founded by Isaac Butt, who had previously campaigned for amnesty for Fenian prisoners.

1879–81. The Land War. Violent agrarian agitation against English landlords.

1884, November 1. The Gaelic Athletic Association founded – immediately infiltrated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).

1893, July 31. Gaelic League founded by Douglas Hyde and Eoin MacNeill. The Gaelic Revival, a period of Irish Nationalism, pride in the language, history, culture and sport.

1900, September. Cumann na nGaedheal (Irish Council) founded by Arthur Griffith.

1905–07. Cumann na nGaedheal, the Dungannon Clubs and the National Council are amalgamated to form Sinn Féin (We Ourselves).

1909, August. Countess Markievicz and Bulmer Hobson organise nationalist youths into Na Fianna Éireann (Warriors of Ireland) a kind of boy scout brigade.

1912, April. Asquith introduces the Third Home Rule Bill to the British Parliament. Passed by the Commons and rejected by the Lords, the Bill would have to become law due to the Parliament Act. Home Rule expected to be introduced for Ireland by autumn 1914.

1913, January. Sir Edward Carson and James Craig set up Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) with the intention of defending Ulster against Home Rule.

1913. Jim Larkin, founder of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) calls for a workers’ strike for better pay and conditions.

1913, August 31. Jim Larkin speaks at a banned rally on Sackville (O’Connell) Street; Bloody Sunday.

1913, November 23. James Connolly, Jack White and Jim Larkin establish the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) in order to protect strikers.

1913, November 25. The Irish Volunteers founded in Dublin to ‘secure the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland’.

1914, March 20. Resignations of British officers force British government not to use British army to enforce Home Rule, an event known as the ‘Curragh Mutiny’.

1914, April 2. In Dublin, Agnes O’Farrelly, Mary MacSwiney, Countess Markievicz and others establish Cumann na mBan as a women’s volunteer force dedicated to establishing Irish freedom and assisting the Irish Volunteers.

1914, April 24. A shipment of 35,000 rifles and five million rounds of ammunition is landed at Larne for the UVF.

1914, July 26. Irish Volunteers unload a shipment of 900 rifles and 45,000 rounds of ammunition shipped from Germany aboard Erskine Childers’ yacht, the Asgard. British troops fire on crowd on Bachelors Walk, Dublin. Three citizens are killed.

1914, August 4. Britain declares war on Germany. Home Rule for Ireland shelved for the duration of the First World War.

1914, September 9. Meeting held at Gaelic League headquarters between IRB and other extreme republicans. Initial decision made to stage an uprising while Britain is at war.

1914, September. 170,000 leave the Volunteers and form the National Volunteers or Redmondites. Only 11,000 remain as the Irish Volunteers under Eóin MacNeill.

1915, May–September. Military Council of the IRB is formed.

1915, August 1. Pearse gives fiery oration at the funeral of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa.

1916, January 19–22. James Connolly joins the IRB Military Council, thus ensuring that the ICA shall be involved in the Rising. Rising date confirmed for Easter.

1916, April 20, 4.15pm. The Aud arrives at Tralee Bay, laden with 20,000 German rifles for the Rising. Captain Karl Spindler waits in vain for a signal from shore.

1916, April 21, 2.15am. Roger Casement and his two companions go ashore from U-19 and land on Banna Strand. Casement is arrested at McKenna’s Fort.

6.30pm. The Aud is captured by the British navy and forced to sail towards Cork Harbour.

22 April, 9.30am. The Aud is scuttled by her captain off Daunt’s Rock.

10pm. Eóin MacNeill as chief-of-staff of the Irish Volunteers issues the countermanding order in Dublin to try to stop the Rising.

1916, April 23, 9am, Easter Sunday. The Military Council meets to discuss the situation, considering MacNeill has placed an advertisement in a Sunday newspaper halting all Volunteer operations. The Rising is put on hold for twenty-four hours. Hundreds of copies of The Proclamation of the Republic are printed in Liberty Hall.

1916, April 24, 12 noon, Easter Monday. The Rising begins in Dublin.

16LIVESMAP

16LIVES - Series Introduction

This book is part of a series called 16 LIVES, conceived with the objective of recording for posterity the lives of the sixteen men who were executed after the 1916 Easter Rising. Who were these people and what drove them to commit themselves to violent revolution?

The rank and file as well as the leadership were all from diverse backgrounds. Some were privileged and some had no material wealth. Some were highly educated writers, poets or teachers and others had little formal schooling. Their common desire, to set Ireland on the road to national freedom, united them under the one banner of the army of the Irish Republic. They occupied key buildings in Dublin and around Ireland for one week before they were forced to surrender. The leaders were singled out for harsh treatment and all sixteen men were executed for their role in the Rising.

Meticulously researched yet written in an accessible fashion, the 16 LIVES biographies can be read as individual volumes but together they make a highly collectible series.

Lorcan Collins & Dr Ruán O’Donnell,

16 Lives Series Editors

CONTENTS

Reviews

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

16LIVES Timeline

16LIVESMAP

16LIVES - Series Introduction

1. The Early Years 1858-83

2. Prisoner Number J464 1883-98

3. Freedom and Family 1898-1907

4. Shopkeeper and Republican 1908-14

5. Planning a Rebellion 1914-15

6. The Easter Rising

7. Endgame and After

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index

Plates

Copyright

Other Books

Chapter One

• • • • • •

The Early Years

1858-83

‘In a sense, Tom Clarke is a man of one small book, a few letters, and his signature in the 1916 Proclamation.’

This remark by historian Desmond Ryan (who had fought in the GPO) sums up the public image of Tom Clarke.¹ A born conspirator, always behind the scenes, Clarke was overshadowed in Easter Rising legend by more charismatic and eloquent figures such as Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and Joseph Plunkett. In recent years new material has become available, and deeper research has begun to alter received ideas about this unassuming-looking man, and to emphasise his absolutely central role in the history of the Rising and the years leading up to it.

Tom Clarke had a somewhat unusual background for an Irish revolutionary, who was to become one of Ireland’s most celebrated rebel leaders. English-born, he had a father whose career was spent in the British Army, and who wanted his son to follow suit.

Tom’s father James, from Errew townland, Carrigallen, County Leitrim, was born in 1830 to James Clarke (or Clerkin), who shared a small farm with his brother Owen, although in his son’s marriage certificate James senior is described as a ‘labourer’. The family was Protestant. When James the younger left school, he worked as a groom, then enlisted as a cavalry soldier on 4 December 1847 in Ballyshannon, County Donegal. His age was given as 17 years and 11 months; he was just under proper age for the army – eighteen – so his first month of service was not counted towards the final total on his discharge.² He had decided on an army career during the worst years of the Great Famine, when opportunities of employment were few, and a small farm would not have supported a family; his experience with horses made the cavalry a suitable choice for him.

James’s regiment was sent to join the Crimean War (1853-6), in which the English, French and Turks united to fight Russia. This war is mostly remembered now for the Charge of the Light Brigade, and the development of Florence Nightingale’s theories of nursing care. According to his military record, James saw action at the famous battles of Alma, Balaklava and Inkerman in 1854, and the year-long siege of Sebastopol (September 1854-September 1855). He received a medal for the Crimean War, with ‘clasps’ for the three battles and the siege.

He was later garrisoned in Clonmel, County Tipperary, probably on his return from the Crimean War. Here he met Mary Palmer, from Clogheen, and although she was a Catholic, they were married on 31 May 1857 at Shanrahan Church of Ireland parish church, County Tipperary. The marriage record describes her as ‘of full age’ (meaning over 21); her father was Michael Palmer, a labourer.³ Her mother’s maiden name was Kew, and she had obviously been very well-known in her community. According to some anonymous ‘notes’ for a life of Tom Clarke, Mrs Palmer’s funeral in the 1880s (in either Clonmel or Clogheen) was a big public occasion, and she was the first woman waked in the local Catholic church.⁴

Soon after the marriage James was transferred to Hurst Castle, Hampshire, England, and here their first child, Thomas James Clarke, was born, on 11 March 1858.⁵ He was baptised a Catholic; the couple obviously came to some agreement on this, or perhaps James was not too concerned about such matters. Catholics marrying Protestants were obliged to rear their children as Catholics.

James must have left the cavalry, because he was now promoted to Bombardier (the lowest rank of non-commissioned officer) in the Royal Artillery in October 1857. He was promoted further, to Corporal, in 1859, and transferred to the 12th Brigade of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. On 9 April 1859, he was sent to South Africa. According to Louis Le Roux, who wrote the first authorised biography of Tom Clarke, the little family ‘narrowly escaped drowning during the voyage when the ship on which they were travelling became involved in a serious collision’.⁶ A note among the Clarke Papers in the National Library of Ireland says that it was a collision with a coal boat.⁷

The family spent almost six years in South Africa, in various garrisons. The English and the Dutch South Africans (Boers) had been at loggerheads over the ownership of the province since the late 18th century, as it was an important stop on the trade-routes from Europe to India. The Clarke family was living in Natal when Tom’s sister, Maria Jane, was born on 23 December 1859, and young Tom began attending school there. Natal, annexed by the British from the Boers in 1845, had been separated from the colony in 1856, and granted its own autonomous institutions. It was later one of the four provinces of the Union of South Africa, established in 1910.

James was promoted to Battery Sergeant at the end of 1859, in the Cape of Good Hope. He then re-engaged himself for a period of nine years, starting on 21 March 1860. He and his family returned to Ireland in March 1865, and James was appointed Sergeant of the Ulster Militia. Its headquarters were in Charlemont Castle, County Tyrone. As the barracks accommodation was inadequate to house a growing family, the family moved into Anne Street in Dungannon, the nearby town.

A son, Michael, was born to James and Mary Clarke, in Clogheen, County Tipperary, Mary’s native place, on 9 May 1865. The birth was registered by Bridget Palmer. His father is described as a soldier, ‘resident in Portsmouth’. Mary, who must have travelled from South Africa while pregnant, had probably gone to stay with her family while James, temporarily based in England, arranged the move to Dungannon. Michael must not have lived very long, as he is not part of the family history, but no official record of his death can be found.

James and Mary’s second daughter, Hannah Palmer Clarke, was born in Dungannon on 24 August 1868, and on 26 December of that year James Clarke, Soldier No. 694, claimed his discharge from army service. The record states, ‘Discharge proposed in consequence of his having claimed it on termination of his second period of limited engagement’. James had served for 21 years and nine days, and his discharge was approved, and carried out at Gosport. On 12 January 1869, he was admitted as an out-pensioner of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London, aged 39, on a pension of one shilling and 11 pence per day. This was later increased to two shillings and eight pence per day.

He is described in his discharge papers as of swarthy complexion, with dark eyes and hair, with no marks or scars, and 5 feet 7 and a half inches in height. The papers note that his behaviour has been ‘Very Good’. He had two Good Conduct Badges before his first promotion to Bombardier; he had no entries in the regimental ‘Defaulters’ Book’, and had never been tried by court martial.⁸

The day after his discharge, 13 January, his records state that he was appointed a Sergeant on the permanent staff of the 6th Brigade, Northern Ireland Division, and the family remained in Dungannon.⁹ Here Alfred Edward was born, on 24 May 1870, in Anne Street. James is described as ‘Sergeant, Tyrone Artillery’. A further birth took place, that of Joseph George, on 16 November 1874; the family was now living in Northland Row. Sadly, Joseph George died on 22 November, having suffered convulsions. His death was registered by James Clarke.¹⁰

Tom Clarke was eight years old when his family came to Dungannon, and thus spent almost all of his formative years in the town. A bright boy, he attended St Patrick’s National School. His first teacher was Francis Daly, followed by Cornelius Collins, who employed Tom as an assistant teacher or ‘monitor’. Le Roux says this continued until the school closed in 1881, but Tom had left for the USA in 1880.¹¹ Tom was restless and energetic, and it seemed unlikely that he would remain a schoolteacher for long. A later witness statement says that he failed to move higher than a monitor when he refused to teach Catechism on Sunday mornings. ‘He had no objection to teaching Catechism, but reckoned that Sunday was not included in a teacher’s working week.’¹² Tom’s best friend was William or Billy Kelly, who assisted Louis Le Roux with his biography of Tom, and also left his own memoir.¹³

Dungannon, a linen and brickmaking town with a population of about 4,000 in 1881, provided a microcosm of social conditions in Ulster.¹⁴ The industries were owned and run by Protestants, and employment for Catholics was limited. There was a clear demarcation between the prosperous homes of Protestants, and the areas where Catholics lived in dreadful conditions, in mud cabins outside the town or tenements within it, and where tuberculosis was rife. Riots between Catholics and Protestants were frequent, when one side would attack the other’s parades or religious processions.