Some holiday - living through the Rising

The Man from Preston.

*From *the Preston Herald May 6, 1916

[Censored by the Press Bureau]

An eye-witness of some of the most thrilling events which occurred during the first three days of the Irish rebellion gave a vivid narrative to a *Preston Herald *representative. This was Mr F. J. Cronin, president of the Preston Irish Literary Society, who had gone home to Dublin to spend Easter with his people, on the day before Good Friday. His home is about two miles from the centre of the city.

“About the time the outbreak occurred,” he says, “I took a penny tram to the city, which I reached about 12.20. - I had been attracted by seeing about 100 fellows up a side street. They seemed to be nearly all lads. - I noticed that the gates of St. Stephen’s Green had been shut, and that three or four armed Sinn Feiners were inside, and the public outside. But nobody seemed to think that there was anything extraordinary happening. I got down at the corner of Grafton Street, and was astonished to see a policeman come up the street from College Green, hurrying as I never before saw an Irish policeman - they generally take their time very deliberately. Going up to another policeman, he said some-thing quickly, and then hurried on, the second policeman leisurely continuing his patrol as though nothing had happened. I remarked it to my sister at the time.

“The incident came back to me afterwards very forcibly when I was told that a policeman had rushed up to another about this point and said, “The Sinn Feiners have collared the Post Office”, to which the second constable replied, “Begorra, that’s queer work”, and then continued his slow march unconcernedly.

“Taking another tram, I got off at the Post Office, where there was a small crowd gathered outside. On the steps were three Sinn Feiners armed with rifles. Then I realised there was something doing, and r thought I would get into the Post Office and look around. The three fellows did not stop me, and I got through the swing doors, but a fellow inside pulled me up. Who are you? he asked, and I tried to look innocent, and said I had come to get some stamps. He said, Get out of here, and gave me a push and ran me out at the front of a revolver. That man was very like Connolly, but I won’t swear to him.

“By the time I got out again the windows were being smashed with the butt-end of rifles. That was about 12.30. They were giving out handbills, and I thought it wiser not to put one in my pocket. I proceeded on my journey, and returned in about half an hour. The trams had then ceased running, but I managed to get home.

“Meantime my father went into the town about 12.30 taking the car towards Phoenix Park, and he came to where the Sinn Feiners were firing across the river. He found a lot of women and children crying, and got them into Arran Quay Church out of the way. Then he proceeded on his own way, and saw a platoon of soldiers come from the Royal Barracks and march down the quay until they came opposite a lot of sheds on the other side of the river from which firing was taking place. He saw one of the soldiers fall, and then the other men got under the quay wall. As the soldiers came along the people cheered them, being delighted to see them. Another platoon came from the barracks, but this lot got on the same side of the river as the sheds, and went out of sight, as though they were trying to get behind the sheds.

“My father tried then to get back home, but he could not get through the main streets, and had to take to the back streets. He got into Clanbrassil Street, and there he found one of the narrow streets barricaded with overturned cars, wheelbarrows, etc. There were two barricades about 20 yards apart, and the Sinn Feiners were between them. However, they allowed him to go through, and he got forward to Portobello Bridge where he saw a remarkable incident.

“About half-a-dozen fellows, armed with rifles and bayonets, were coming towards the slope of the bridge, and behind them was a Military officer on horseback. The rebels evidently did not know he was behind them, and he was obviously ignorant of the state of affairs. Anyhow, he was about to ride past them when they turned on him, and he prudently backed away. They did not attempt to fire at the officer or to injure him, being apparently satisfied when he turned back. Those men went into a corner wine stores, Davy’s.

“At this point fighting took place across the canal, and the inhabitants coming from the city got on the bridge between the two fires. One man cycling up, in ignorance of the turn of events, got off his machine to question a policeman, and immediately the latter was shot in the arm. My father also saw a little boy shot at this place. Davy’s was cleared the same afternoon by the military, who also took possession of the bridge and stopped all traffic over it. I myself saw a soldier up a tree there in the afternoon, when Davy’s public house was pitted with bullet marks.

“On hearing my father’s story, I set off in the afternoon to find the barricades. As I walked up to the first of these one of the fellows eyed me suspiciously, and nodded rather suggestively to the others, but I strode up to it, though not feeling particularly comfortable, looked at it and turned back. I rather expected getting something in the back, but I got away all right.

“On Tuesday morning I was to have returned to England, so I drove down to Westland Row Station, but found it barricaded and guarded by rebels, so I had to go back. I overtook a battalion of soldiers marching in that direction, but I don’t know where they had come from. I went back home to breakfast, and later went up to O’Connell Street (Sackville Street). The Sinn Feiners were then in possession of practically every house on the right-hand side from the river up to the pillar, and I stood in front of the Post Office and watched them.

“They had put two strands of barbed wire across the street, in front of the Post Office, about seven or eight feet high. This was evidently intended to catch cavalry in the dark. There were neither soldiers nor police to be seen.

“The windows of the Post Office were barricaded with chairs and mailbags. You could see the young fellows sitting with rifles, and people looking on in curiosity, Lawrence’s shop was on fire, as also was Tyler’s boot stores. I thought it was getting warm, so I went towards home, and as I moved off I heard the sound of artillery.

“I never saw such a cool crowd in my life. The prevailing note seemed to be curiosity. Alarm or panic seemed to be quite absent.

“On Tuesday evening I got to St. Stephen’s Green. As I stood there I saw that as every motor-car came along a fellow ran out from the building and stopped it, a barricade being ultimately built of about nine motor cars. They forgot to stop the engine of one of these, and it was going all night with all its lights full on.

“I saw Sinn Feiners get into captured motor-cars and drive away with them.

“The policy of the rebels seemed to be to get hold of corner houses which commanded streets. One fellow, evidently an officer” came out of a house in York Street, and they threw him pillows and overcoats and so on, and he marched off to the middle of the road to settle down for the night.

“About seven o’clock I went into O’Connell Street. There was a crowd looking on, rather a poor-class crowd. About half a dozen shops had been cleared out. Even an Irish shop was ransacked.

“I am sure that up to that period at least the looters were not Sinn Feiners. I saw them put two armed men in front of shops to prevent looting. I heard of two-guinea boots going for eighteen pence, and of women in back alleys wearing seal-skin coats, and I myself saw urchins with tambourines and new umbrellas.

“One amusing sight I witnessed was two four-wheeled coaches, followed by two lorries filled high with vegetables, with Sinn Feiners sitting on the top and the drivers in silk hats and elaborate uniforms. The coaches and their drivers must have been commandeered.

“The visitors to the Hotel Metropole and the waitresses were looking down on the scene, with the Sinn Feiners sitting on the balconies on the first floor and the crowd gazing at them from the glass-strewn street below. The fire brigade was pumping water into Lawrence’s. There was then no military or police about.

“I was wakened at five o’clock on Wednesday morning by the firing of machine guns. About nine o’clock I went on my bicycle to Kingstown to inquire about getting back over the water. There were plenty of people on the same errand. I met some troops, including cyclists. When I got back I walked from Nassau Street round the front of College Green, and saw the military firing from Trinity College right up into O’Connell Street. Then I got round by Sinclair Road to the end of O’Connell Bridge, where there was a crowd of about 100 of us, and the bullets were hitting the wall above us.

“I turned out again on Wednesday afternoon - one could not stay indoors - where firing was still going on, and into Lower Mount Street. From a big detached house the Sinn Feiners were firing out of one of the windows. It was here that the incident of the little heroine took place of which I was a witness.

“I saw a soldier lying on the canal bridge apparently dead. Suddenly a woman came out into the open with what looked like a blue enamel jug. She ran down the canal bank into the firing zone and disappeared from view. Then a poor girl ran out on to the bridge while yet the bullets from rifles and revolvers were flying thickly from both sides. She put up both her hands, and almost instantly the firing ceased. Again the woman turned up, and she and the girl picked up the soldier, others then going out from the crowd to help to bring him in. He was taken into Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital.

“It was a throbbing incident that brought tears to the eyes, and the crowd cheered the little heroine. Several more soldiers were hit, and again the little girl ran out and brought them in time after time. I saw about eight soldiers taken into that hospital wounded, and I helped one in myself along with others of the crowd. The man I helped with was reached by a little girl before we got him in, and she pushed an apron down his trousers to staunch the blood. He was shot in the small of the back and in the thigh. He was a Sherwood Forester, and the little girl was crying over him.

“I turned back out of Crown Street and took two left turns to get to Baggot Street. In my new position I could not see the house, but I could see the soldiers, who were lying in the shelter of the railings popping away at the house. I saw a man cross the road with his hands up. I got on my “bike” and got within a hundred yards of the place, where there was another little bridge over the canal. This bridge was lined with soldiers, and the local residents were on the road bringing out trays with refreshments and cigarettes for the soldiers. I saw the military give a rifle to one old chap, a civilian, who I suppose must have been an old soldier, and he started blazing way, while a dog he had with him kept up a vigorous barking.

“The fusilade became terrible here, chimney pots and things were dropping, and then a big gun got to work from somewhere. We were supposed to be out of range but I saw one man suddenly whip his sleeve up - he had got a graze, I suppose - and an officer came to order us away just as we became aware that the Sinn Feiners had got on the roof of a house. In that locality I saw nurses carry away 20 or 30 wounded. It was getting dusk when I left, and the firing was still going on.

“Asked for his opimon of the rebels as a class, Mr. Cronin said a very big proportion were mere boys of 16 and all of them were of the poorer classes - the Larkin crowd. There were no well-dressed men amongst them, although the Sinn Fein movement has within it a great number of better-class people. He saw one lad so small he could not keep pace with the others he was marching with. He heard it declared there were few Dublin followers amongst them. He saw many Sinn Feiners in the crowd who had kept out of the rising. He believes the rebels for the most part did not know what they were going into, but that a few Socialists of the most violent type used them as tools, and that they thought they were just out for the usual drill until they found themselves “in the soup”, as it were.

“Within an hour of the rising” added Mr. Cronin, “the Irish Republican flag and another flag I did not know, a green, white and pink affair, were flying from the Post Office.

“A nurse I know in St. Vincent Hospital told me she saw Countess Markievicz in male attire commanding the fellows on the Green; also that the military refused to allow wounded Sinn Feiners to be taken into the hospital. A lad of 17 who did get in, a very poor lad, was asked how he came to get into the business, and he said he did not know.

“The Sinn Feiners had taken possession of the Royal College of Surgeons, and one fellow who was brought out from there went away in an ambulance with a priest.

“When the insurgents found a lancer dying, during Monday, they brought a priest to him. I could get no confirmation of the stories of priests being killed, but one priest whose name was mentioned in that way, I ascertained, was alive and well.

“I heard that Father Fitzgerald, accompanied by an escort of his own congregation, went to the Post Office and asked the rebels to come out, but they refused. They had gone too far then, of course.

“The inhabitants everywhere hailed the troops with delight, and all along the route from the landing stage the soldiers were handed out refreshments and cigarettes.

“The troops who landed on Thursday morning, after travelling all night, did not know where they were. One asked me if he was at Le Havre. Most of them thought they were in France. One was going to send a postcard home from “Somewhere in France” till he got enlightened.”

Describing the difficulty of getting away on Thursday. Mr. Cronin said he was marched with about 30 or 40 others, led by a policeman, to a boat, “like a lot of undesirable aliens being deported.” They had to undergo various scrutinies, searchings, and cross-examinations, One man was coming to Liverpool to get to Cork, being unable to make the journey by rail from Dublin.

Mr. Cronin, sen., came to England at the week-end. He states that the detached house referred to as one of the Sinn Feiners’ forts on Wednesday was ultimately taken by the aid of hand grenades, and he heard that 17 prisoners were secured there.

Food was getting very scarce towards the week-end. On Thursday butter was said to be 4s. a lb. in Kingstown, and people were standing in queues outside the provision shops, to be let in one by one. Only one newspaper, the “Irish Times”, was published, and it contained nothing about the rebellion. It stated that there had been a fire in Lawrence’s, but gave no cause. There was no news of any sort from the outside world in Dublin for days.

A few “Daily Mails” got to Kingstown on Wednesday, and were hired out at so much a time.