NINETY-ONE years ago this week, the new chief secretary, Ian Macpherson, awoke in his official residence in the Phoenix Park to his first working day in Ireland. The previous morning, Monday, January 20th, 1919, he had landed at Kingstown and travelled to the viceregal lodge to greet the lord lieutenant, Lord French, and in the afternoon he had been sworn in as a member of the Irish Privy Council.
Today, he would hold meetings that would be attended by some of the most important men in Ireland, including the under secretary, the lord chancellor, the attorney general, the solicitor general, the chief commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, his colleague the inspector general of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and the commander-in-chief of the army.
The press censor, Lord Decies, was meanwhile drafting a letter of resignation which he would later forward to Lord French. He wrote that he had done enough in the post, which he had held since June 1916, and was tired of it. He might also have been anticipating a possible move by the government to dismiss him, following an interview he had given recently to the New York Times.
Perhaps unwisely, he had opined to the reporter that while Ireland was more prosperous than at any time in the past, and there was plenty of food, and men had wages to buy it, recruitment to the army had dried up because the government would do nothing for the folks left at home. He had also complained that the Irish education system was very poor because salaries were too low to attract competent teachers. For good measure, he had added that the most serious grievance in Ireland was the neglect of the question of housing for the working classes.
In the event, he needn’t have worried. The next day, French rejected his resignation.
The censor knew he had a busy evening ahead because there would be a sheaf of documents from the editors of the newspapers covering the meeting in the afternoon of the Sinn Féin Parliament or “the Dáil Éireann” as some called it. He would have no problem with the “provisional constitution” or its fantasies about ministers and departments, or the portentous “appeal to the free nations” whose liberation the Sinn Féiners had tried to obstruct during the war – but the “declaration of independence” and the “democratic programme” would go directly into the bin. Some of the documents would be written in Irish or French but that would be no problem for his staff.
Across the city, flags that had been flown at half-mast yesterday to mark the death of Prince John, the youngest son of the king and queen, were being hoisted to full staff to formally welcome home 350 members of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who had been prisoners of war in Germany. They would be treated to lunch in the Pillar Room of the Mansion House by the committee that had sent them food parcels and clothing while they were incarcerated.
At 2pm, they would march to the Theatre Royal via Dawson Street, St Stephen’s Green North and Grafton Street, which was already ablaze with bunting. At the theatre they would be joined by 400 soldiers who were being transported from the various Dublin hospitals and entertained to a variety show and a film starring Charlie Chaplin.
IN CORK,the chairman of the Munster and Leinster Bank, Sir Stanley Harrington, was in ebullient mood. At the half-yearly meeting of shareholders later in the day, he would be able to announce a dividend of 18 per cent and deliver an upbeat assessment of the economy. "Ireland", he would say, "was never before possessed to the same extent of financial resources with which to extend and enhance her industries", and he would hope that these resources would be "widely deployed to lay a sure foundation of solid and lasting prosperity".
In Kingstown, an ex-German submarine was being put on display at a cost of 6d per view, with proceeds going to naval charities. In Tipperary town, two constables, Patrick McDonnell and James O’Connell, were being assigned to escort duty for a horse and cart conveying gelignite valued at £11, and the property of the county council, from the barracks to a quarry at Soloheadbeg, three miles away. By lunchtime, their dead bodies would be lying on the road and the group of masked men who had killed them while seizing the gelignite would be “on the run”.
In Dublin, the lord mayor, Laurence O’Neill – who had made the Mansion House available for the “Old Dubs’” banquet at noon, the meeting of the Dáil in the afternoon, and a Sinn Féin reception for dignitaries and the press in the evening – was pleased to learn that passports had been issued for a delegation he intended to lead to offer the freedom of the city to President Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. He wasn’t at all perturbed that the president had not indicated if he would accept the honour.
Across the country, people who had obtained some of the 1,000 admittance tickets for the meeting of the “feisirí” (members) of Dáil Éireann were boarding trains for Dublin. According to one newspaper, they included “many ladies and a good sprinkling of Roman Catholic clergymen”. Most of the ticket holders were Irish but two American sailors, an Australian army chaplain and “several coloured soldiers” would also gain admittance. The ticketholders’ enthusiasm might have been dampened if they had known that almost all of the proceedings in the Round Room would be in Irish, a language that most of them, like most of the 29 feisirí, didn’t understand.
Happily, Charles Burgess, or Cathal Brugha as he now called himself, who was said to have been wounded 14 times during the rebellion in 1916, would move the agenda forward at a brisk pace once he was elected to the chair, and the proceedings would last only 95 minutes.
Afterwards, some would go home. Others might go to see Aladdin, the pantomime in the Empire, or a double bill of plays by Lennox Robinson and Lady Gregory in the Abbey, and a favoured few would stay on to join in toasts to "the Irish Republic" and "the press" in the nearby Supper Room.
January 21st, 1919, would be an eventful day.