The Great Ringsend Rescue

 

One hundred and thirty-five years ago in the latter part of September 1890, two Nationalist

leaders, Mallow born William O’Brien and Dublin native John Dillon, were arrested for their

‘Plan of Campaign’ that attempted to prevent evictions and improve rural living conditions

through the Land League. Both were members of parliament along with their party leader

Charles Stewart Parnell. However, the two men were no strangers to court appearances and

serving prison sentences.

O’Brien had been arrested in Roche’s Hotel, Glengarriff and conveyed to Cork and then onto

Tipperary while his MP colleague was arrested at his home in Ballybrack, Dublin and taken

under escort to Tipperary accompanied by a large British military force. They were charged

under the Coercion Act with ‘conspiracy to induce tenants of the Smith Barry estate not to

pay their rents.

Both men were however ‘given their liberty when released on bail’. The arrests came as news

emerged that the two men had booked passage to the United States to conduct a fund-raising

drive for the Land League and the Irish Parliamentary Party led by Stewart Parnell and this

was seen as a Governmental way of preventing their departure. The recently married O’Brien

along with fellow detainee John Cullinane hatched a new plan. In June 1890 he married Paris

resident Sophie Raffalovich, sister of the poet Marc Andre Sebastian Rafffalovich and the

daughter of the Russian Jewish banker. Following his release Dillon returned to Dublin by

train and was collected at Kingsbridge Station (how Heuston Station) by the Lord Mayor in

his carriage and a number of pipe and drum bands. On the steps of his house on North Great

Georges Street he announced his intention to go to Swinford the following Sunday to deliver

a speech. O’Brien despite the rumour that he was traveling on the train with Dillon to Dublin,

in fact went back to Cork.

John Murphy and his wife Mary Anne lived at 19 Thorncastle Street, Ringsend with the rear

of their home backing onto the River Dodder. His family were all involved in the local

fishing industry and boat repairs. He owned the trawler ‘St. Patrick’ named after the church

in Ringsend that he and his family attended. As darkness fell on Sunday October 4th, the

fishing trawler left Ringsend. On board were skipper John Murphy, William and John Junior,

his sons, Thomas McDonnell his son-in-law and Harry Blake. The trawler, its sails hoisted,

headed out into the River Liffey and onto Dublin Bay where he headed towards Bullock

Harbour in Dalkey. The ostensible reason given to the crew was that there were two

gentlemen coming on board about to enjoy a cruise on the trawler while she pursued her

ordinary fishing work. Then John senior explained to his crew the real reason for their sea

journey when O’Brien and Dillon boarded the boat along with the organiser of the escape,

John Cullinane. Cullinane was a publican from Bansha in County Tipperary and as a result of

his involvement would lose his pub licence.

Once on board Cullinane produced two pistols from inside his coat pockets and declared,

‘It is well we are not interfered with this night.’

As they rounded Lands’ End, the St Patrick became engulfed in calm seas. John Dillon,

instead of dining, kept watch on the bow to hear nearby vessels and raise the alarm if needed.

They arrived at Cherbourg, O’Brien’s new wife providing them with a contact when they

arrived. Cullinane retuned to Ireland on board the St. Patrick. On November 2nd the two men

reached New York, thanks to the men from Ringsend.

The two men were in the United States when the scandal about Parnell’s affair with Kitty

O’Shea broke as Parnell was named in the divorce case. They returned to France for a

summit with Parnell in Boulogne which eventually would see the demise of the Irish

Parliamentary Party. Their departure on December 13th from New York to Cherbourg was

announced in Indianapolis Journal. They said that following a cable from London they would

be departing the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago. In a sense of resignation as to the scandal

engulfing Irish politics, O’Brien told reporters in the hotel lobby,

‘In a short time, my movements will be altogether guided by a gentleman named

Andrews,"

Andrews was the governor of Clonmel jail. Dillon smiled grimly but said nothing.

O’Brien now with his wife travelled to Le Harve, while his colleague Dillon crossed back

over the Atlantic in early 1891. When the talks broke down in France with Parnell, O’Brien

and Dillon sailed across the English Channel to Folkestone on February 12 th and surrendered

to the police. They were returned to Ireland an imprisoned to serve the six months sentence

that was imposed on them in abstensia. In October 1891 Parnell passed away. O’Brien died

suddenly in London in 1928, while his fellow escapee, John Dillon died a year earlier, both

men sidelined by the events of 1916 and subsequent War of Independence.

When John Murphy died in 1919, five years after the death of Mary Anne in August 1914.

The news of his death was carried in Australian newspapers, and they reflected the time of

the ‘heroic escape.’ The Sydney based Freemans Journal reported,

‘In the meantime, much speculation and uneasiness troubled the people of Ringsend

especially the families of the men as to the absence of the St. Patrick. Three weeks,

however, elapsed before the trawler returned to the Liffey and the skipper was

congratulating himself on the secrecy with which the expedition was carried out.’

In October 1890, the Irish Times published an account of the escape under the title ‘The

Channel Voyage of The Trawler’ however to protect the identity of Murphy, his crew and his

boat, the newspaper article referred to the skipper as ‘Mr Clancy’ and the boat as ‘The New

Tipperary’. They lavished praise on Murphy by stating,

‘But for his daring, coolness, and skill, the cause might on the occasion have Davy

Jones or the Mermaids. He is known as an excellent seaman, and when the country

has a fleet of her own. which some day she is sure to have, there will be no difficulty

in finding the Lord High Admiral.’

John Murphy was interred in Glasnevin Cemetery.

The Unveiling of the James Plunkett Kelly Plaque, Bath Street Irishtown

 

(c) RDHS 2025

The Ringsend & Districts Historical Society were delighted to unveil a plaque at 20 Bath Street, Irishtown, the birthplace of author and trade union activist James Plunkett Kelly. The ‘Strumpet City’ author was born here in 1920 and this unique piece of local history was unveiled on Saturday November 1^st 2025.

 

The organising committee of the RDHS and Paul Brannock (facilitator) would like to thank the following people for their support with this project:

Dearbhla McCormick – The current owner of 20 Bath Street, who kindly provided permission to place the plaque on her home.

Valerie and the family of James who attended on the day

Robert Ballagh – Artist

Ruth Hegarty – Actor

Vincent McCabe – Actor

Angela Harding – Actor

Gerry O’Brien – Actor

(All of whom appeared in the 1980 RTE TV adaptation of Strumpet City)

Brian Murray – Actor sent his best wishes but was unable to attend.

The Merry Cobbler Pub and The Stafford Family for their sponsorship and hosting the after event.

The Staff of the Merry Cobbler

Joe Boland – Nephew of James

Gerry Burke – Fixing the Plaque

John J. Cooke & Sons – Woodworkers

Francis Harrison – Special Decorated Cakes

The Irish Labour History Society

News Four & Editor Louise Whelan

And to ALL those who attended on that very special day.

James Plunkett Kelly's granddaughter speaking at the unveiling

Thanks to Paul Brannock, Louise Whelan and Billy Ryan for the photos and video

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