More ground needed, purchase of ground at Glasnevin.

Chapter III.

So great had been the demand for admission to Golden Bridge Cemetery as a last resting place, that O’Connell suggested the necessity of providing against a contingency which the possible exhaustion of its capacity might create. The committee thereupon looked for additional ground. Some was acquired near Militown; but an influential parson in that locality took an active part in obtaining signatures against the scheme. The costly machinery of the Court of Chancery was set in motion; an injunction was granted on the grounds that neighbouring inhabitants objected, the acquired land was abandoned, and the committee lost heavily on the transaction.

In July, 1831, the Burial Committee entered into negociations for the purchase of ground at Glasnevin, adjoining the Botanic Gardens the former residence of the poet Tickell. On 29th September, 1831, the deed was executed by which a title - since converted into a fee-farm grant - was obtained of nine statute acres at Glasnevin. On this historic ground the gnarled trunks of a once picturesque avenue of elms which are found in the more distant part of the cemetery recently acquired, mark the site of the old road from Finglas to Clontarf.

One of those unpopular obstructions known as turnpike gates stood on the Finglas road, and another on the road to old Glasnevin. It was represented to O’Connell that the heavy tax imposed on carriages by the toll-keeper would retard the success of the new enterprise. He got rid of the difficulty by making a new road to the cemetery immediately between the two old thoroughfares, and distant a few yards from both turnpikes.

This is the point where three roads now converge, opposite the male orphanage of St. Vincent de Paul. O’Connell’s successful ruse is said to have been the origin of a well-known remark attributed to him, that he would “drive a coach-and-six through an Act of Parliament.”

Archbishop Murray delegated to the Rev. William Yore, P.P. St. Paul’s, and afterwards Vicar-General, the duty of blessing the ground at Glasnevin. This rite was duly performed on 21st February, 1832. Dr. Yore continued to take a deep interest in both cemeteries, and throughout subsequent years his name is frequently found in the records of the committee. He had already taken an active part in promoting Golden Bridge Cemetery. As chaplain to Kilmainham Gaol, where it had been his duty to prepare for death prisoners - often convicted of mere larcenies - he was a specially familiar and most respected figure in the locality.

“Michael Carey; the first ever interred in this cemetery, 22nd February, 1832,” is inscribed on a tomb in Curran’s Circle. Richard Scott, [For a notice of Richard Scott see Sir Gavan Duffy’s “Young Ireland,” p. 738.] solicitor, the able conducting agent for O’Connell at the memorable Clare election of 1828, was buried on July 26th, 1835, aged 85 - the election which, as Peel in his memoirs admits, proved the turning point of the Catholic question. But the first important public funeral which wended its way to these grounds was that of Edward Southwell Ruthven, a Protestant. His father held considerable preferments in the then Established Church. Edward Ruthven had sat in Parliament for Downpatrick so far back as 1806, and is described, in 1831, as a “man of sound judgment, of talents, integrity, and intrepidity, and has been the constant friend of all liberal and good measures.” [“Picture of Parliament”; London: Steill, Paternoster Row, p. 81.]

O’Connell, when Member for Dublin, was fortunate in securing Ruthven as his colleague. Nearly connected with Sir Philip Crampton, a leading Conservative and man of European fame in the medical profession, the adhesion of Ruthven was cordially welcomed; while the Tories, on the other hand, lost no time in presenting a petition against his return. Although the “Picture of Parliament” states that “he is listened to with much attention in the House, and speaks well,” members seem to have listened with impatience to his speeches while his seat lay in jeopardy. This discourtesy usually assumed the form of persistent coughing, which led him one night to say, “I don’t know that within this House I can offer any cure for the cough by which honourable members are affected, but outside I shall not have far to seek for a remedy.” In the midst of these worries Ruthven died. Previous to this event, the Liberator, writing to Joseph Denis Mullen, a member of the Cemeteries Board, says (March 10th, 1836), “Poor Ruthven is very, very ill. There cannot be a more honest man than Ruthven.” As a tribute to Ruthven’s memory, O’Connell laid the foundation stone of a splendid monument at Glasnevin, which was raised by public subscription. Ruthven had royal licence to use supporters to his arms, as head of an old Scottish clan, and these come out well on his tomb. It records his eminent services in the cause of national progress.

On search being made in the Registry of Deeds Office, it appears that the grounds now forming Prospect cemetery, as well as those occupied by the Nuns of the Holy Faith, and previously in the occupation of Captain Lindsay, D.L., were lands once attached to the Priory of St. Mary’s Abbey, Dublin. All the Church lands, as is well known, passed, at the Reformation, into Protestant hands, and it was in this way that Dr. Lindsay, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, and afterwards Bishop of Kildare, acquired the old monastic lands of Glasnevin.

For years the poor had suffered by the high scale of churchyard fees frequently exacted. The new Cemeteries committee made an equitable arrangement that ground should be placed at the disposal of the poor, and their graves carefully prepared, at the rate of two shillings and sixpence per head; and after the year 1846 this nominal charge was reduced to one shilling and sixpence. “The ground used in this class of interment,” observes the late Mr. Macdonough, Q.C., M.P., “would produce a far higher price if sold at the ordinary rates for single graves, but the advantage to the distressed of burial at a low rate is very great; it leads to speedy interments - important to the poor themselves, and to the public, in a sanitary point of view. The ground so used in Glasnevin is in a high part of the cemetery, with a deep, dry soil.”

Nor did the governing body lose sight of a principle greatly cherished by O’Connell, that all facilities should be afforded for the unrestricted exercise of religious rites by members of every creed. On the proposition of the Very Rev. William Yore, a Protestant Episcopalian chaplain received a yearly stipend to officiate at the burial service of all members of his Church. The Rev. W. Maturin, Rector of Grangegorman, discharged this duty until 1853. A surplice and Book of Common Prayer are kept on the premises at Glasnevin for the use of any Protestant minister who may desire to read within the grounds the solemn burial service prescribed by his ritual. For a lengthened period the number of Protestant interments averaged one in each week. Their graves ate intermingled with those of the Catholics; but a separate plot is provided to meet the desires of those who prefer to be interred apart. Of late years, however, Mount Jerome and Dean’s Grange have left the sexton at Glasnevin but little to do in this respect, The following are amongst some well-known Protestants who are buried at Glasnevin, and to most of whom a more detailed reference is due: John Philpot Curran, John Finlay, LL.D., Edward Southwell Ruthven, M.P., “Honest” Tom Steele, Frederick Wm. Conway, Richard Barrett, Sir John Gray, Thomas Neilson Underwood, B.L., Lady Murray, Robert Jefferson Hunter, A.B., William J. Dunbar, Robert Butt (son of Isaac Butt), Charles Stewart Parnell, M.P., Samuel Smyley, Loftus Plunkett, John Stuart Stevenson, and Captain William Law, Royal Artillery.

A handsome monument, dated June 23rd, 1874, records that Captain John Griffin and his brother William Lysaght Griffin - both sons of the Bishop of Limerick, and grandsons of “Pleasant Ned Lysaght,” the poet - are there entombed. Mr. Hepburne, father of Dr. Hepburne, F.R.C.S., surgeon to the Meath Hospital, expressed a strong wish to be buried at Glasnevin cemetery, and this desire was religiously carried out. He was the first of his family to be interred there; and his sister, Mrs. Shepherd, has since become an occupant of the same tomb.

Joshua Jacob (who afterwards became a Catholic) and Abigail Bail, who founded the sect of “White Quakers,” and formed a colony in historic Newlands, not far from the white-robed Dominicans at Tallaght, chose a pretty plot at Glasnevin, and were finally consigned to rest in it. It may be added that Mr. Stoddart, for nearly quarter of a century the esteemed assistant editor of the Irish Times, has what is technically called “a family plot” here, surmounted by a handsome marble monument. Nor has it been unusual for Protestant clergymen to apply to the Cemeteries’ Board for evergreens to decorate their churches on festival days, and such requests have always been acceded to with as much readiness as though the boughs were needed for distribution in Catholic Churches on Palm Sunday.

Asiatic cholera, which invaded Ireland for the first time 1832, laid thousands low. The whole fabric of society shattered. A glimpse of the havoc made is seen by a visit to “Bully’s Acre,” Kilmainham, where tombstones abound with the date of 1832. It is recorded by Major Childers, in his “History of the Royal Hospital,” that, within ten days, 500 burials took place here at that time. But this statement pales before that of Dalton, who declares that during the six months that the cholera raged in Dublin, 3,200 burials were made in “Bully’s Acre.” [“History of the County Dublin - 1838,” p. 631.] It is not surprising that in July, 1833, the committee of Prospect cemetery should have found it necessary to acquire additional ground. Ere long the cry for more again arose, and in 1836 the dimensions of the place were further extended. Three hundred and fifty-eight pounds had been given, as a fine, in 1831, besides a large rent, afterwards fined down by a payment of £1,250. Further sums of £3,000, £773, and £3,450 were paid for acquiring lands in fee. Up to 1878, the total number of interments amounted to 295,081; and more land becoming again necessary, it was secured by two large payments. The extent of land enclosed in 1892 was 58 acres and 36 perches, and an elaborate system of arterial drainage was at once introduced at Glasnevin.

The fact has long been notorious that at funerals of the lower orders in Ireland the use of alcoholic drinks had been freely indulged in, mainly with a view to deaden grief; but too often with results which cause pain still more poignant to every sensitive mind. The evils to be dreaded by the opening of public houses in the immediate vicinity of Prospect cemetery led the Board to oppose with vigour the granting of licences for the sale of drink, and it was a wise regulation of the committee to restrict the time for funerals to the earlier hours of the day. When they were not always successful in this effort, they bought up the ground on the opposite side of the road, and thus prevented the erection of houses from which intoxicants might be supplied. A large fortune had been realized by the owner of a public house which - soon after the cemetery had been opened - was established at the old entrance-gate, and when, in 1878, the committee decided on closing this gate, and making the new entrance near Finglas, they were threatened by the owner with legal proceedings on the plea that she would lose a lucrative business by the change!

The land opposite the new entrance, which the committee deemed it wise to secure in 1873, embraced 49 acres, for which £9,845 was paid, exclusive of legal expenses, to the late Captain Lindsay. The fields thus acquired are clearly marked on the map of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, as also subsequently acquired lands - 29 acres-known as “Violet Hill,” including one field described as the “Bloody Acre.” This serves to fix the spot where the army of King Roderick O’Conor - lulled into a false security, and daily expecting a surrender from the starving Anglo-Norman garrison in Dublin -was surprised and slaughtered by a sortie led by Strongbow. The lands sold by Captain Lindsay to the Cemetery were known in the locality as the “Bishop’s Fields,” his father haying been Bishop of Kildare. It is somewhat of a coincidence that nearly all the landed Proprietors from whom the Board of the Catholic Cemetery bought were Protestant divines. Several thousands were paid to the father of the Rev. Francis Carroll, A.M., and also some thousands to the Rev. Alexander Taylor, while a heavy rent - over £130 annually - was paid to the Rev. Thomas Long, A. M., rector of the historic parish of St. Michan’s, and custodian of those wonderful vaults in which human remains, after several hundred years, are still undecayed. This annual rent is now extinguished by payment of the bulk sum of £4,250: similarly, a head-rent of £14 2s 8d., payable out of the same lands to the “Incorporated Society of Ireland for Promoting Protestant Schools,” has been extinguished by a further payment of £566 19s. 8d. When the liabilities incurred in the purchase of ground and the necessary works, were discharged, the committee arranged, after the due management and care of the cemeteries had been provided for, to lay by yearly a sum out of the surplus revenue to liquidate ultimately the rents and like charges for which the land is liable; and this wise policy now forms the provision in a bye-law, by which a proportion of the sums received for grants of plots sold in perpetuity during each year, shall be funded annually for payment, extinguishment of rents, and to provide for the perpetual care and maintenance of the cemetery. The balance remaining in hands after meeting current expenditure, goes to charitable educational purposes. From the commencement of the labours of the committee, in 1831, down to the year 1899, the funds devoted to charitable purposes amount to nearly £14,000. The following is an extract from the official record of the sums thus applied:-

  £ s. d.

**For the first decade, dating from 1831 … ** 632

In the next 10 years, to 1850 … 777

In the next 10 years, to 1860 … 2,096

In the next 10 years, to 1870 … 4,312

In the next 10 years, to 1880 … 896 10

In the next 10 years, to 1890 … 709

In the year 1891 … 617

In the year 1892 … 818

**In the year 1893 … ** 879 6

   

Allusion has made to the fact that it had long been a practice of the medical profession to visit graveyards at night, in order to exhume bodies for anatomical dissection.

Indeed, there was practically no other way, except by theft, to attain their scientific object. Frequent and, at times, sanguinary collisions took place between the “Sack ‘em ups ” and the “Dead Watchers,” in one of which the son of Dr. Kirby, President of the Collegeof Surgeons, was shot dead. The rural graveyards of Kilgobbin, Killester, and Churchtown present to this day, in their battered tablets and tombstones, traces of the fusilades which once disturbed their solitude. The Freeman’s *Journal, *of 1830, records a regular pitched battle in the old Protestant graveyard at Glasnevin. A hundred were interchanged, and it was only when a watcher rang out an alarm peal from the church tower that the besiegers decamped. The ground, it is added, was white with snow, on which “might be traced drops of blood” Some modern visitors to the cemetery seem puzzled by the five picturesque watch-towers which, crested and ivy-mantled, rise at different points of the boundary walls; but the wisdom of erecting them is now obvious. In some church-yards, traffic in corpses had been successfully carried on by bribing the sexton - nicknamed the “Knave of Spades” - and the Board of the cemetery prudently administered an oath to its employees enforcing hostility to a system which had added a new terror to death. “The dead experience the wrongs and not the rites of Sepulchre ” said a shrewd cynic; “which is enough to make them rise from their graves; and so they do, too often.” It is a matter of history that the body of Laurence Sterne was stolen and sold to Cambridge University. As at Golden Bridge, firearms were now provided for trusty sentinels, and formidable Cuban bloodhounds to bear them company. These precautions had become the more necessary because in 1832 “Bully’s Acre” - so long the happy hunting-ground for body-snatchers - was closed by order of the Government. It was in “Bully’s Acre” that an untoward calamity had befallen Peter Harkan, a well-known Dublin surgeon, and hitherto a very successful resurrectionist. A party of watchers having suddenly rushed forward, he succeeded in getting his assistants over the cemetery wall, but when crossing himself, his legs were seized by the watchmen, while his pupils pulled against their opponents with such effect that he eventually died from the effects.

This historic spot, which finally became the site of inglorious struggles, claims a word or two before this chapter closes. “Bully’s Acre” embraces nearly four English acres, and is famous for a gigantic headstone which marks the grave of Murrogh O’Brien, who fell at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. In 1838 a fine sword of the 11th century was found at the base of this monument. St. John’s Well, and its alleged virtues, attracted crowds of rude visitors, who tramped in their thousands across “Bully’s Acre.” In 1755 General Dilkes became master of the Royal Hospital, and tried to stop the trespass by enclosing the cemetery with walls, levelling the graves, and “even burying the ancient monuments.” The mob cried, “Down with the wall of ‘Bully’s Acre.’” It fell before them like a house of cards, and the place once more became a common-land. General Dilkes’s life was threatened: an attack upon the Hospital itself was made, headed by the Liberty Boys. They burst in the western gate, which the sentry had sought to close, and in the attempt he was seriously wounded. General Dilkes called together the more active of the pensioners, who, fully armed, marched down the Elm Walk. A battle between missiles and muskets continued for some time; but the mob were opposed to men who were trained soldiers. The leaders of the rioters fell dead, many were wounded, and the Liberty Boys beat a retreat. It was deemed wise, however, to relinquish the design of enclosing “Bully’s Acre.” Here Emmet is said to have received sepulture. It may be mentioned that a portion of “Bully’s Acre” was cut off in the construction of the Great Southern and Western Railway.

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