The First Casualities of Emmet's Rebellion in Ringsend Bay

 We have long been aware of the importance of Irishtown in the history of the southeast area along the River Liffey and Dublin Bay, but it’s pivotal role in Irish history and the history of warfare and space exploration is probably less appreciated. In our next two posts we will explore that unique and important history. Firstly, we will look at how Irishtown was at the heart of the creation of Republicanism, how its salt water was a source of medicinal cures and secondly while Space X launches the heaviest rocket into the space, the first firing of a rocket anywhere in Europe took place on Irishtown strand. The goal of the Ringsend & Districts Historical Society is the preserve and protect this great history, to research and educate and to bring our proud history to a wider audience. One small step for man, one giant leap for Irishtown.

As we saw in this post, Robert Emmet and William  Johnstone were test firing rockets on Irishtown strand in advance of the planned rising. An interesting article appeared in the newspapers in April 1803 just three months before the outbreak. this may have been a coincidence or a portent of things to come. The report stated that 'guns were heard in the bay' which was often the sound of a vessel in distress around the mouth of the River Liffey and Dublin Bay. Nine men in a lifeboat put out to sea from Bullock Harbour nrar Dalkey 'to affect assistance to the stricken vessel'. The first lifeboat had been installed at Sandycove earlier that year.

But the vessel in 'distress' was more likely more rocket test firing that sounded like a loud gun being fired. The rescue crew was made up of a pilot and eight local fishermen. They rowed out into the bay in the direction of the Pigeon House and Ringsend.

The unfortunate outcome was that in the darkness and 'a tidal tempest' the lives of all nine men were lost. Perhaps these men could be described as the first faltalities of Emmet's 1803 rebellion. 

 

Robert Malone (1897-1936) a Ringsend hero.

 

Robert Malone, A Ringsend Hero (by Trevor James)

Robert Malone in his uniform

Robert Malone, a proud Ringsender, was a fireman and lost his life in one of the worst tragedies in the history of the Dublin Fire Brigade. Robert was the eldest son of Robert Malone and his wife, Catherine Dent.  He was born at 31 Pembroke Cottages and continued to live there with his parents through his childhood.    He had a younger brother Pat and two sisters, Annie and Mary Martha.  His father was a fisherman. Around about 1912 the family moved to another cottage at 17 Pigeon House Road.

Robert joined the Volunteers about ten days before the beginning of the Rising but had previously been a boy scout and national volunteer.  He served with Eamon with De Valera in Boland’s Mills.  He was interned in Wakefield prison and Frongoch after the Rising. He was released from Frongoch in December 1916 and immediately rejoined the 3rd Battalion, Dublin Brigade, “training and instructing recruits, making hand grenades etc” and was promoted to Lieutenant in 1918.  He resigned in 1920, claiming that work made it impossible for him to attend parades.  However, around this time he became a member of the confraternity of St Patrick’s church, Ringsend and remained involved in church affairs until his death and this may also have influenced his decision to leave.

In 1925 his brother Pat died when he fell from a fishing smack while cleaning fish on deck.  Although the other fishermen were almost within arm’s reach of him, he suddenly sank, and his body was never found.

 

Robert had been working as a scavenger but, with the support of his commandant, joined the Pembroke Fire Brigade with his friend Peter McArdle and remained with the brigade when Pembroke was amalgamated with Greater Dublin in 1930.

 

At the age of 30, Robert, or Bob as he was generally known, married Annie Larkin from Strand Street, Irishtown in 1928.  The following year they had a son, also called Robert.  Bob was attached to Tara Street station, and he lived there with his wife and child in the married quarters. Bob loved his work as a fireman but in 1933 he was seriously injured when he fell from a ladder at a fire in Huet Motors, on Grand Canal Street. 

 

In 1934, the government unveiled the Military Service Pensions Act to provide pensions to those who had fought in the Rising or in the war of independence.  Bob applied for this but heard nothing from them. (See the bottom of this post for copies of the application)

On the night of 5th October 1936, he was chatting to his friend and co-worker, Kit Mullen, when a call was received that there was a fire in Exide Batteries on 164 Pearse Street.  This was close by, and within two minutes fire engines were on the scene, to find flames leaping out of the front windows of the building.  By coincidence, Bob’s wife, Annie, was returning from visiting relatives in Sandymount and was passing through Pearse Street at the time of the fire. The engines had reached there and connected the hoses to the fire hydrants but there was no water pressure and only a trickle of water emerged, preventing the firemen from fighting the fire effectively.   A crowd of onlookers was gathering, and shouts went up that there were children inside.  Annie saw Bob and two other firemen, Peter McArdle and Tom Nugent, enter the building.  One minute later there was a huge explosion and Annie knew that she would never see her husband again. His friend, Kit Mullen, had been off duty but he had travelled to the fire on his bike.  When the explosion took place, the letter "B" from Exide Batteries struck him, and he always believed it was a sign from Bob. 

 

The water pressure wasn’t restored until after midnight by which time the fire had spread to adjoining buildings.  With the pressure restored, the fire was brought under control and the search for the firemen could commence, with firemen police and civilians digging through the smouldering rubble.   It wasn’t till ten o’clock the following morning that the charred bodies of all the missing men were found.  They could only be identified by their badges.  The remains were brought to Sir Patrick Dun’s for an autopsy. 

The whole city was in mourning, and the families were offered a public funeral which they accepted.  The remains were moved from Sir Patrick Dunn’s and Bob’s body was placed on a fire engine from Tara Street and twenty men that he had served with in Boland’s Mills formed the guard of honour.  The other coffins of Peter McArdle and Tom Nugent were also placed on fire engines, and all were brought to City Hall where they lay in state for two days, with four firemen keeping a constant guard of honour.  There was a continuous stream of people through City Hall. Bob’s coffin was draped with the tricolour and the emblem of the Confraternity of St Patrick’s Ringsend where he had been a member for 17 years. 

Two days later, after a funeral mass in St Andrew’s church, Westland Row the funeral procession made the three-mile journey to Glasnevin through streets lined ten deep with about 100,000 people. The funeral cortege was almost a mile long with the men’s families and representatives from the Government, Corporation, trade unions, businesses. The garda band headed the procession and hundreds of firemen in their bright red uniforms followed the engines and a Guinness ten-wheel lorry was needed to hold all the wreaths and flowers. The full procession took almost an hour to pass. At Glasnevin, the Last Post was sounded, a volley of shots was fired over Bob’s coffin, and the three firemen were buried side by side, in death as in life.

His friend, Kit Mullen, who had also served with Bob in Boland’s Mills, was one of those who fired the volley over the grave.  Afterwards he collected the spent cartridge shells and welded them to form a cross, with a fire-brigade badge taking the place of Christ. 

 

Annie Malone went to live at 23 Strand Street, Bayview, Irishtown and subsequently at 180 Stella Gardens.  The military pension Bob had applied for was posthumously granted but only amounted to £31/16s/9d.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a n-anamacha 

Irishtown, Wolfe Tone and the Foundation of Republicanism & The Origins of Space Exploration on Irishtown Strand - PART TWO

 

PART TWO

We have long been aware of the importance of Irishtown in the history of the southeast area along the River Liffey and Dublin Bay, but it’s pivotal role in Irish history and the history of warfare and space exploration is probably less appreciated. In our next two posts we will explore that unique and important history. Firstly, we will look at how Irishtown was at the heart of the creation of Republicanism, how its salt water was a source of medicinal cures and secondly while Space X launches the heaviest rocket into the space, the first firing of a rocket anywhere in Europe took place on Irishtown strand. The goal of the Ringsend & Districts Historical Society is the preserve and protect this great history, to research and educate and to bring our proud history to a wider audience. One small step for man, one giant leap for Irishtown.

Thomas Russell

Wolfe Tone great comrade Thomas Russell, even after the failure of the 1798 rebellion continued with his revolutionary plans and became involved in the planning of the Robert Emmet 1803 Rebellion. Irishtown was once again at the heart of the action. With his knowledge of Irishtown strand from his time with Tone, it was here that with Thomas Brangan, they tested for the first time, armed rockets they intended to use against the British once the rising began. Brangan, a timber merchant lived in Irishtown following a falling out with his brother Michael in October 1785. The Branagan’s had lived on High Street near Christchurch before Thomas moved to Irishtown. Brangan stored weapons in Irishtown in advance of Emmet’s rebellion. He was married to Mary[1] and they had four children.

While most scholars identify China as the first country to use rocket technology in warfare, the first use of recognisable rockets as we know today built inside a metal tube was during the war between Kingdom of Mysore (modern day Southern India) and the East India Company. The Mysorean rocket had a range of over one kilometre. The first test firing of a rocket in Europe took place at Irishtown strand in 1802 and was later described,

‘Johnstone who was making the rockets, brought one of them, so we all went, that is Mr. Emmet, Russell, Dowdall, Hamilton etc. The rocket was made fast to a pole with wire and rested on a trestle, the match being put to it and it went off like a thunderbolt, carrying the pole along with it and throwing flames and fire behind as it advanced, and when it fell it went on tearing up the ground till the last matter with which it was filled  was completely consumed. Mr. Emmet and Johnstone were quite satisfied with the effect it produced, and they decided that all the rockets and tubes should be prepared and filled in the same manner.’

William Dowdall it is said became alarmed when the rocket launched and disappeared. Panicked, he immediately made his way out of Ireland seeking sanctuary in France. One of the men who worked with Emmet at the time on the rockets was Pat Finerty whom the British later employed at the munitions works at Woolwich to replicate and improve on the rocket technology, this creating the foundation of rocketry and missiles of today. According to Simon Webbert writing in the Oxford handbook, William Congreve, who expanded rocketry technology in the first decade of the 19^th century, was thought to have developed his rockets based on Indian designs used in wars between Mysore and the East India Company. But Webbert observed,

‘There is some evidence that Congreve did not learn of war rockets from India but from Ireland, where Irish nationalists and Republicans used their own version of the Indian war rocket to revolt against the British in 1803.’

He stated that William Johnstone, a former pyrotechnist with the East India Company was designing and preparing rockets in their arms depot off Thomas Street in advance of the Emmet Rising. Finerty was a carpenter but was a regular visitor to the arms depot and to avoid prison or execution to turned approver and was taken by naval frigate from Dublin to Woolwich where Congreve was based.

 

According to Emmet’s first biographer, his brother Thomas Addis Emmet and the more modern biographer Professor Patrick Geoghegan of Trinity College, they are ‘positively of the opening that the British Government decided that under no circumstances should the name Robert Emmet be associated with the rocket as an inventor. To this end they both believe that Congreve was employed nominally in the manufacturing of the ‘new’ weapon until his name became permanently associated with it.

Congreve's Rockets

It was Brangan who suggested that Emmet’s plans include an attack on the Pigeon House Fort that had recently been opened to protect the port against any possible attack from Napoleon’s French forces. Branagan’s plan was that two hundred rebels would gather on the beach at Irishtown at low tide with the forces to divide into to groups. One would travel across the sandbank while the others would attack from what was known as The Devonshire Wharf, now the Pigeon House Road. Once the objective was seized, a rocket was to be fired to alert the other rebels to attack the other two main objectives, Dublin Castle and the army barracks at Island Bridge. In the lead up to the failed rebellion, Russell often visited Brangan’s house in Irishtown where they walked across the strand to the Pigeon House Fort to make observations.[2]

 

An Irish Independent article in 1915 looking back at Emmet’s rebellion wrote of Brangan,

‘A determined man, whose energies to forward and serve the sacred cause of freedom and independence of this country, and whose daring resolute designs for this purpose could not be surpassed, was Mr Brangan of Irishtown, he possessed all the qualities. He had a wife and several children whom he tenderly loved, yet to consideration could prevent him from sharing the dangers of our struggle. He requested me to introduce him to some of the counties of Wexford and Wicklow men who resided in his neighbourhood, he wished particularly to know who were employed at Mr. Haig’s Distillery. In a short time, he had those intrepid refuges organised and ready for action. In consequence he made a proposal to Mr. emmet to surprise and take the Pigeon House. Mr Emmet cheerfully accepted Mr. Brangan’s bold offer and promised him to have small depots of arms placed at his disposition as soon as possible.

Mr. Brangan’s conduct and services as an officer of the Irish Legion could often incited to prove that he was ever ready to undertake the most perilous missions, I could mention many instances myself when he was unhappy because it was the turn of the other officers and not his to be ordered to attack a strong position or mount a breach. When Robert Emmet appointed him to the position of general, he immediately bough general epaulets, determined to prove he was worthy of wearing them.”

 

When the rebellion failed, the British sought out Brangan, who was using the alias Williamson. According to his daughter, he initially was hidden by Mrs Cuffe on Pill Lane before moving to Mr Butler’s house on Fishamble Street. While there and on the run, he fell ill and when he was examined by a friendly doctor, little hope was given that he would survive. A priest was summoned to provide comfort but even in such severe illness he refused the efforts of the cleric to reveal that crypts of St. Mary’s church on Mary Street was being used as an arms depot for Emmet’s weapons. His place at Mrs Cuffe’s had been taken by Thomas Russell but the house was raided and Russell arrested. When Brangan eventually recovered, he made his way back to Irishtown and from Ringsend he was taken by boat to a ship in Dublin Bay and escaped to Portugal. He wrote to his family from Oporto but shortly afterwards he made his way into France and joined the military. He served with distinction in the so-called Peninsula Wars. According to documents in the hands of his daughter, Thomas Brangan died in a duel in France in 1811.

A Mysorean Rocket

The importance of Tone’s stay at Irishtown is illustrated when playwright Brendan Behan wrote a play based on their stay in the cottage in Irishtown. ‘An Ghaoth Bui’ (The Big Wind) opened in the kitchen of the cottage as the three main characters Alas while he hoped the play would win a drama competition at the Abbey Theatre, the play fell foul of the new censorship laws which would later ban his work the Borstal Boy.

---

[1] Mary Brangan died October 1816

[2] Richard Madden’s 1849 Life and Times of Robert Emmet

Irishtown, Wolfe Tone and the Foundation of Republicanism & The Origins of Space Exploration on Irishtown Strand - PART ONE

We have long been aware of the importance of Irishtown in the history of the southeast area along the River Liffey and Dublin Bay, but it’s pivotal role in Irish history and the history of warfare and space exploration is probably less appreciated. In our next two posts we will explore that unique and important history. Firstly, we will look at how Irishtown was at the heart of the creation of Republicanism, how its salt water was a source of medicinal cures and secondly while Space X launches the heaviest rocket into the space, the first firing of a rocket anywhere in Europe took place on Irishtown strand. The goal of the Ringsend & Districts Historical Society is the preserve and protect this great history, to research and educate and to bring our proud history to a wider audience. But let’s begin with part one and a homage to Irishtown, published in the Dublin Evening Post newspaper in August 1790.

IRISHTOWN – AUGUST 1790

 

The sun behind proud Merrion’s towers,

Calls off his ardent conquering powers.

Reflectant light flow quits the plain,

And yields to fable night’s domain.

The opening rosebud hangs its head,

The tulip droops upon her bed.

And mourns the morning ray,

Shall bid her all her charms display.

That ray, which now paints the grove,

And gives the parting kiss of love.

To Howth’s tall hill, whose blushing face

Receives Sol’s lingering last embrace

Tis darkness all! but soon we'll see,

The Moon in splendid majesty.

 

And lo! she comes, with decent pride,

Moving thro’ th’ ethereal tide.

Stars resplendent join her train,

Hail her Queen and grace her reign.

View'd from Irishtown’s sweet shore,

Dublin Bay looks silver’d o’er.

Whilst in watery murmurs faint,

Spirits make their sad complaint.

That no tender friend was by,

To receive their parting sigh.

Nor to shed the silent tear,

O'er the slow’r-bestrewed bier.

Howth emerging from the deep,

Shews its awful rocky steep.

Points to Charlemont’s fair dome,

Patriotic virtues home.

Softest scenes my eye arrest,

Sweet sensations fill my breast.

‘Til with black frowns Ringsend steals in,

And like unhappy Adam's sin.

Saddens the view, and in a thrice,

To Hell itself links Paradise.

While from that side the sailors’ cry,

Proclaims the crowded shipping nigh.

 

Hark the sprightly violin,

Tells the moon- light sports begin!

Let us to the green repair,

Mirth and music voice I hear.

Where the church its gothic head,

Lies among the peaceful dead.

Dismal bells toll out no more,

Dinning with their plants the shore.

Death in vain is monarch here,

Youthful Frolick knows no fear.

All his threats we set at nought,

On him let’s not lose a thought!

Come—the country dance lead down,

‘Tis the life of Irishtown.

 

Where the mossy banks permit,

Eager-looking matrons sit.

Whilst their daughters young and gay,

Trip it merrily away.

Extasy marks every face,

Innocence and lively grace,

Who can view and not be charm’d?

Drooping Age itself is warm’d,

When to music’s lively sound.

Feet unnumbered press the ground,

Rage, and Strife, and Vice away.

Innocence is not your prey,

Curs'd be the deluder’s art,

That could wound one virtuous heart.

 

Gods! what giggling, sporting, swearing!

I’m afraid t’will hurt my hearing;

Beaux unnumbered group’d together,

Light and sportive as a feather.

Zealous to display perfections,

Move about in all directions.

Youth and beauty disappear,

Quick as though:—the coast is clear.

Now bucks advance—your cares are o’er,

You've swept the counter, shut the door.

Your angry masters’ gone to bed,

This night, no blows you'll have to dread.

Each here appears as an’ Adonis,

So snug his face, so neat each bone is.

Assurer’d of this, your dear selves proffer,

As partners who’ll refuse the offer?

For Ladies like that you should treat:’em,

To what you have—some musk’d pomatam[1].

 

Hear the bagpipes zerking note!

Mark each zigging petticoat!

Whilst the squeak of ill-timed flutes,

Thro’ my pericranium shoots.

Hopping, squeezing, oogling, nodding,

On all sides destruction’s plodding.

Sideways, frontways, glances flying,

Belles exulting, Gallants dying.

 

Retrograde with many a thump,

Yorder Damsel smacks her rump.

Against her heedless paramour,

Down he falls on Earth's hard floor.

Take him up, and bear him hence,

This may teach him to have sense.

Hair dishevell’d! waistcoat burst,

Irishtown and Pipes be curs’d.

Noise succeeds, and fad confusion,

At a brother Fop’s contusion.

All the conquering rump askance,

Eye, with fear, and quit the dance.

 

CONCLUSION.

 

In flow numbers, soft and sweet,

Bagpipes celebrate the fete.

Let the conquering Maid be crown'd,

And her rump with laurels bound.

 

Now the fiddle of recall,

Bids them vacate the church wall.

Dublin, Dublin, is the cry—

Dublin echoes thro’ the sky.

Straight embody’d Beaux depart,

Carrying each, a fair-one’s heart.

Boasting, loudly, without measure,

Of the captive, lovely treasure, Taken by the force of locks.

Charg’d with powder, and fierce cocks !

Should a drunken Sailor dare

To impede their proud career,

Fierce; impetuous, ten to one, soon they make the foe begone.

Or, with many a kick and pound,

Trail his sides along the ground.

 

Go noble youths—and still may fame,

Prolong your virtues and your name

May. Irishtown, still own your merit,

And every Public-house your spirit!

But deign your scouts to call away,

Who, thro’ our streets, each morning stray.

Yelping their exorable oaths,

Aad straining, puppy-like, their throats.

Oh, take them with you, they're your own,

And leave to peace, and sleep, this town.

 

Theobald Wolfe Tone, a notable figure in Republican history and culture, was born in Dublin on June 20th, 1763, to Peter, a coach builder and Margaret Tone[2]. The eldest of sixteen siblings (only five reached adulthood), he graduated from Trinity College despite being a lacklustre student and serving a year’s suspension for participating in a fatal duel.

 

Meanwhile Martha (Matilda) Witherington was born on 17 June 1769 in Dublin, Dublin, to Catherine Fanning, age 28, and William Witherington, age 32. William, a wool merchant, lived with his family on Grafton Street. Wolfe Tone was taken by the beauty of the then fifteen-year-old and on July 21st 1785, he married Martha, then sixteen. Their wedding took place in St. Anne’s church on Dawson Street, not far from her home. It was Tone, according to Professor Patrick Geoghegan of Trinity College, who persuaded Martha to change her first name to Matilda. Matilda was the name of a character in a play Tone produced portrayed by Eliza Martin, the wife of an MP Richard Martin[3] whom Tone had fallen in love with and was disgusted that not only did she not leave her husband for him but she did have an affair with Mr Petrie in Paris which ended her marriage.

Their marraige entry from St. Anne's Church

While often spending time at his father’s home in County Kildare, Martha gave birth to Maria in 1786. Tone moved to London, without his wife and daughter, to study law but as with Trinity he was bored in college and was often distracted. His developed a love of the theatre and even planned and submitted planned for a British military colony on the newly discovered Sandwich Islands, today Hawaii. In 1790 with fellow authors Thomas Radcliff and Richard Jebb, he had a novel ‘Belmont Castle’ published.  Tone returned to Ireland in December 1788 on the promise of £500 from Matilda’s grandfather Reverend Fanning, and was called to the bar in July 1789. For a time he practised on the Leinster circuit but, as he recalled, ‘I soon got sick and weary of the law’.

 

In 1787, his son Richard was born but died two years later and this affected Martha both physically and mentally. In a bid to help his beloved wife, Wolfe in May 1790 moved his family from lodging in Clarendon Street to rent a small house on the sea front in Irishtown. This house was most likely located where today’s Bayview is located. In 1834, what the newspapers described as a ‘hurricane’ struck Irishtown washing away these houses on the Irishtown seafront including a local tavern known as the Merrion Arms owned by Michael Donnelly. In 1789 his father had been declared bankrupt following a legal and financial battle with his brother Jonathan. The house’s proximity to the popular St. Matthews protestant church was an added attraction for the Tone’s.

In July 1790 in the gallery of the Irish House of Commons, now the Bank of Ireland, College Green, he had met a kindred spirit, Thomas Russell. Russell was born in County Cork, his father was a decorated British army captain. After serving during numerous battles he was appointed to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham where his family lived with him. It was while Thomas Russell was staying here that he met with Tone and destiny. Both men were critical of Henry Grattan, feeling that his inaction was not creating meaningful reform in Ireland. Tone was to describe the encounter with Russell as "one of the most fortunate in my life". According to Richard Madden writing a memoir of Tone & his brother Mathhew in 1846,

‘In the summer in 1790, he took a little cottage…where in a small circle of friends, the opinions were discussed, extended and fortified, which had so important and influence on the fate of Ireland a few years later. The parties to those discussions were his friend Thomas Russell, his venerable father, Captain Russell, his own brother William, occasionally from the county of Kildare where he resided with his brother Matthew[4], who had lately set up a cotton manufactory at Prosperous.’

According to his own autobiography

“My wife's health continuing still delicate, she was ordered by her physician to bathe in the salt-water. I hired, in consequence, a little box of a house on the seaside, at Irishtown, where we spent the summer of 1790. Russell and I were inseparable, and, as our discussions were mostly political, and our sentiments agreed exactly, we extended our views, and fortified each other in the opinions, to the propagation and establishment of which we have ever since been devoted. I recall with transport the happy days we spent together during that period; the delicious dinners, in the preparation of which my wife, Russell, and myself, were all engaged ; our afternoon walks, and the discussions we had as We lay stretched on the grass. It was delightful! Sometimes Russell's venerable father, a veteran of nearly seventy, with the courage of a hero, the serenity of a philosopher, and the piety of a saint, used to visit our little mansion, and that day was a fete. My wife doated on the old man, and he loved her like one of his children. I will not attempt, because I am unable, to express the veneration and regard I had for him, and I am sure that, next to his own sons, and scarcely below them, he loved and esteemed me. Russell's brother, John, too, used to visit us ; a man of a most warm and affectionate heart' and incontestably of the most companionable talents I ever met. His humour, which was pure and natural, flowed in an inexhaustible stream. He had not the strength of character of my friend Tom, but for the charms of conversation he excelled him and all the world. Sometimes, too, my brother William used to join us for a week, from County Kildare, where he resided with my brother Matthew, who had lately commenced a cotton manufactory at Prosperous, in that county. I have already mentioned the convivial talents he possessed. In short, when the two Russell’s, my brother, and I, were assembled, it is impossible to conceive a happier society. I know not whether our wit was perfectly classical or not, nor does it signify. If it was not sterling, at least it passed current amongst ourselves. If I may judge, we were none of us destitute of the humour indigenous to the soil of Ireland ; for three of us I can answer, they possessed it in an eminent degree ; add to this, I was the only one of the four who was not a poet, or at least a maker of verses : so that every day produced a ballad, or some poetical squib, which amused us after dinner ; and, as our conversation turned upon no ribaldry nor indecency, my wife and sister never left the table. These were delicious days. The rich and great, who sit down every day to the monotony of a splendid entertainment, can form no idea of the happiness of our frugal meal, nor of the infinite pleasure we found in taking each his part in the preparation and at-James's, on the one part, and Russell and myself, from my little box at Irishtown, on the other. If the measure I proposed had been adopted, we were both determined on going out with the expedition, in which case, instead of planning revolutions in our own country, we might be now, perhaps, carrying on a privateering war (for which, I think, we have each of us talents,) on the coasts of Spanish America. This adventure is an additional proof of the romantic spirit I have mentioned in the beginning of my memoirs, as a trait in our family; and, indeed, my friend Russell was, in that respect, completely one of ourselves. The minister's refusal did not sweeten us much towards him. I renewed the vow I had once before made, to make him, if I could, repent of it, in which Russell most heartily concurred. Perhaps the minister may yet have reason to wish he had let us go off quietly to the South Seas. I should be glad to have an opportunity to remind him of his old correspondent, and if I find one, I will not overlook it. I dare say he has utterly forgotten the circumstance, but I have not. " Everything, however, is for the best," as Pangloss says, " in this best of all possible worlds :" If I had gone to the Sandwich Islands, in 1790, I should not be to-day chef de brigade in the service of the French Republic, not to mention what I may be in my own country, if our expedition thither succeeds.

 

But to return. Shortly after this disappointment, Russell, who had for two or three years revelled in the ease and dignity of an Ensign's half pay, (amounting to 28/. sterling a-year,) which he had earned before he was twenty-one by broiling in the East Indies for five years, was unexpectedly promoted by favour of the commander-in-chief to an Ensigncy on full pay, in the 64th regiment of foot, then quartered in the town of Belfast. He put himself, in consequence, in battle array, and prepared to join. I remember the last day he dined with us in Irishtown, where he came, to use his own quotation, " nil clinquant, all in gold" We set him to cook part of the dinner in a very fine suit of laced regimentals. I love to recall those scenes. We parted with the sincerest regret on both sides ; he set off for Belfast, and shortly after we returned to town for the winter, my wife's health being perfectly re-established, as she manifested by being, in due time, brought to bed of our eldest boy, whom we called William, after my brother.”

(From Page 38 ‘Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone’. Written by himself.)

It was obvious that the discussions held in the house in Irishtown formed the basis of the revolutionary movement that would culminate in the 1798 rebellion. According to Seamus McManus’s book ‘The Story of the Irish Race’,

“One of the truths presently discovered by the keen minds which canvassed these things, that summer of 1790 at Irishtown, was that England, through the instrumentality of the "Protestant Ascendancy," had kept her hold on Ireland by the deliberate fostering of religious differences. Ergo it followed that if Dissenters and Catholics could be persuaded to make common cause, the "Protestant Ascendancy" would not only suffer a rude shock, but the supremacy of its "owners and inventors," the English Government, would meet with an immediate downfall. The first task, therefore, of anyone who wanted to free Ireland was to unite Catholics and Dissenters”.

The immediate result of the Irishtown talks was that in October 1791 in Belfast the Society of the United Irishmen was founded. The founders were Wolfe Tone, James Napper Tandy, Thomas Russell, Samual Nielson and Henry Joy McCracken. According to the BBC Website,

‘The United Irishmen wanted to see democratic change in Ireland believing this could heal the religious divisions that had harmed the country. They promised to unite Catholic, Protestant (Anglican) and Dissenter (the name given to Presbyterians who were viewed as dissenting from (disagreeing with) the Anglican Church).’

Matilda with her son and daughter.

On June 13th, 1795, the Tone’s sailed from Belfast crossing the Atlantic to the US arriving in Philadelphia in early August. He immediately made contact with the French authorities in Washington. As a result, on New Years Day 1796 he sailed to Le Harve, France. Mrs Tone and family travelled the following October. They made their way to Paris and Wolfe Tone began negotiations with the French Government to organise an invasion force to free Ireland from British rule.

One of the informers to help the British defeat the United Irishmen was Thomas Reynolds who in 1784 had married Martha Witherington’s sister.

 

Intriguingly in August 1790, the same month that Russell moved to Belfast to join his regiment in the British Army. Towards the end of August the Wolfe’s left Irishtown , moving to a flat on Longford Street and within nine months his son William Theobald Wolfe Tone was born. On August 12th, 1790, in the Dublin Evening Post newspaper a homage to Irishtown appeared in the paper under the pseudonym ‘Volbond’ which could easily have been Tone’s farewell to the place where revolution was born.

 

Tone was arrested following a failed attempt to land French troops near Derry and following a one hour trial in Dublin on November 10^th, 1798, he was sentenced to death. While awaiting his execution day in prison, on November 19^th he slit his throat and died. His body was given to his family was he was interned in Bodenstown, County Kildare. Matilda remarried a Thomas Wilson and died on March 18^th 1849 in Georgetown near Washington DC.

---

[1] Scented ointment

[2] Nee Lamport

[3] Later founder of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

[4] Matthew was hanged in the aftermath of the failed French naval invasion.