1916 PART 2 THIS WEEK
THIS supplement looks at the differing narratives of some of the Sligo men involved in the events surrounding the 1916 Rising. One hundred years on from these cataclysmic times, not just the insurrection in Dublin, as nearly 500 Sligo men had answered John Redmond’s call to enlist to fight in the First World War. Living and dying in the severest conditions - whether on a scorched rocky outcrop at Gallipoli or the rat infested waterlogged trenches at Flanders, and if lucky to survive, returned home to a very different Ireland.
Sligo, with its history as a garrison town, had young men fighting on opposing sides during the 1916 Rising, and the push and pull of these histories reveal the complexities of these times, which can be seen in the lives and deaths of two such Sligo men. 25- year James Gormley, Royal Irish Constabulary, who was shot in Ashbourne, Co. Meath during Easter week, while a 17- year- old, Michael Savage, survived the Rising - fighting alongside Pearse and Connolly in the GPO - only to be killed three years later in one of the first ambushes of the War of Independence. Constable James Gormley’s last letter to his sister, Kate ( see the transcription of this letter on page 16), where he wrote about his struggle with the request from his family to return to Ballintogher to work on the family farm. In this letter, dated to the 10th, April 1916, he wrote: ‘ It would not be worth giving up a good job to be in mud and dirt the remainder of my life.’ Two weeks later he was fatally shot at Ashbourne, Co. Meath. While Martin Savage ( pictured), came from a family of thirteen, from a small farmstead in Streamstown, Ballisodare, and escaped to Dublin to work in a shop on the North Strand. On Easter Week, he fought alongside Pearse and Connolly in the GPO, and although he survived the Rising, on release from Knutsford Detention Barracks in Cheshire - he rejoined the volunteers only to be fatally shot at the ambush at Ashtown, Co. Dublin, 19th, December, 1919. Sligo historian, Michael Farry looks at the reaction to the 1916 Rising of Major Charles O’Hara, from the ‘ Big House’ at Annaghmore House, near Collooney - the seat of the O’Hara family. Padraig Deignan, looks at Unionism in Sligo and the contemporary reactions to the aftermath of 1916.
Leo Leyden’s feature is on Patrick McDermott, a Volunteer who raised one of the flags over the GPO on Easter Week and quietly lived out his days in his native Carrigeens, Maugherow, Sligo. In his two articles, Cian Harte looks at a forgotten rebel from Ballygawley and takes a look at the ambush on 24th April, 1916 at Ashbourne, Co. Meath.
By May 1916, when the tide of public feeling began to change towards the men and women involved in the 1916 Rising, with the first reports of the executions of the signatories of the Proclamation, Sligo man and entrepreneur, Tadhg Kilgannon, screened images of the devastation of Dublin at his cinema, the Picture Theatre on Thomas Street, Sligo. Some of the stills taken from the original newsreel are printed here; where Sligo men and women could see, at first hand, the utter destruction of their capital city.
Sligo streets and place names are marked by the men and women that took part in the 1916 Rising; Markievicz Road, Markievicz House, Martin Savage Terrace, Seán MacDiarmada Railway Station, where also, Sligo born, William Partridge had served his apprenticeship as a young railway man. The next supplement will look at the multi- layered histories of the women incarcerated in Sligo Gaol during 1916 - a microcosm of the hard times and impoverishment that existed at this time in Ireland. It will also look at Sligoman, Michael Barrett, active in Co. Galway during 1916 and the Sligo born socialist, William Partridge, also a man, who from the outside, appears to embody all these contradictions, born to a Irish Catholic mother and an English Protestant Railway man, who from all accounts, fought with great bravery during Easter Week 1916 at the College of Surgeons, alongside Countess Markievicz and Michael Mallin. Although in a weakened state, and under a hail of bullets, he carried Margaret Skinnider to safety - one of the only women to be shot during combat on Easter Week - she was shot three times, during her attempt to burn down houses on Harcourt Street. Countess Markievicz was so impressed by Partridge’s kindness and integrity, she cited him when she converted to Catholicism. William Partridge was raised in Sligo town for the first six years of his life, at No. 6 Chapel Street - a poet and a socialist - he became politicised through the unfair working conditions on the railway and also the unsanitary conditions of tenement Dublin. A prominent Trade Unionist - he played an important role in the 1913 Lock- out. Partridge’s first wife, died soon after she gave birth to a daughter, possibly caused from the unsanitary conditions of the terrace of houses where they lived in Kilmainham. A man, who although, woke up sick on the day of the Rising, fought bravely, only to die a year later from his enfeebled condition exacerbated by his incarceration.
The only commonalty between these stories are the lack of choices available to these young men and women in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Many of Martin Savage’s brothers and sisters had immigrated to the States, never to return. These hard won choices were ‘ a fragile thing,’ as can be seen by James Gormley’s poignant letter to his sister, Kate, written two weeks before his death - where he struggled against his mother’s request for him to return to the farm in Ballintogher, as he says himself, to work ‘ in mud and dirt the remainder of my life’ - a costly decision in retrospect - a choice that cost him his young life.