We Go to Prison to Learn about the Easter Rising

On a recent sunny day, we betook ourselves to one of the most popular sites in Dublin: the Kilmainham Gaol. Although it functioned as a prison only from 1796-1924, Kilmainham Gaol has a lot of history. Its most famous prisoners were those involved with the Easter Rising of 1916. But there were also those arrested in four other Irish rebellions against the British and, for a time, Charles Parnell. At one point it even housed those prisoners for transportation to Australia. And, during the great famine of 1845-1850, people committed crimes to obtain housing and food rations in the Gaol. During this period, Dublin had the worst slums in Europe. And an 1847 law made begging a crime. And during this period, Dublin had the worst slums in Europe.

Men, women, and children all lived in Kilmainham Gaol, housed indiscriminately, at least until reforms of the late 19th century. Most of the prisoners’ crimes were non-violent and non-political (debt, illicit distilling of whiskey, counterfeiting, and theft). As with all prisons of the time, higher-class denizens lived better, some having their own possessions and hosting visitors. The prison closed in 1910 and thereafter housed military recruits and, during WW I, detainees. So captured rebels from Easter Rising came here as political prisoners.

The Easter Rising, a defining event in modern Irish history, involved occupation of the General Post Office by 150 troops, and the reading of a proclamation of Irish independence. The Irish Republican Brotherhood’s military council also established garrisons around the city centre. The British, not expecting any of this, took a few days to mobilise but soon did, and once they arrived, they occupied positions at the Royal College of Surgeons and the Shelbourne Hotel. Within a week the rebels were caught and imprisoned.

Fourteen of their leaders – including the seven signatories of the proclamation – were shot at the Gaol. This number also included James Connolly, wounded and kept in Dublin Castle. Eamon de Valera, one of the leaders who survived, was later a founder of Fianna Fáil (strong republicanists) and eventually the third president of Ireland.

Public opinion was originally not on the side of the rebels, not least because there was a war on and the rebels’ arms came from Germany. But many saw the execution of James Connolly – who would almost certainly have died of his wounds anyway – as excessive. The fact that the the court-martials were private, and that executions followed shortly thereafter troubled some. That no family members could see them also raised eyebrows. But it was the prisoners’ own writings, read after their deaths, which mostly brought public opinion around to the side of Irish republicanism.

The Sinn Féin party won many seats in the 1918 elections, but those elected refused to serve in Westminster, instead establishing an Irish Parliament and declaring independence in July 1919. Among their number was the Countess Markievicz, the first woman elected to the British Parliament. (She was involved in the Rising, imprisoned in the Gaol, and sentenced to death, but her sentence was commuted to life in prison. During a later amnesty, she obtained her freedom.)

The goal of the newly elected parliamentarians seems to have been simply to wait the British out, essentially holding themselves hostage as the Hungarians did with Austria. But the IRA pre-empted them, killing two British police officers. There was sporadic fighting until the Anglo-Irish treaty of December 1921. And that treaty sparked the Irish Civil War, on which more soon.