Author: brendan.teeling@dublincity.ie

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NO FLUNKEYISM HERE! The Patriotic Children’s Treat of 1900

Photograph of a page from the Irish Daily Independent from 2 July 1900. The headline reads 'PATRIOTIC CHILDREN'S TREAT. A SPLENDID GATHERING'.

On 29 June 2024 Dublin City Council will host a ‘Picnic in the Park’ to mark the unveiling of a plaque to commemorate the Patriotic Children’s Treat, which took place in Clonturk Park on 1 July 1900.

Queen Victoria visited Dublin from 3 to 27 April 1900, and got a mixed reception. The visit was welcomed by many: Dublin Corporation made a ‘loyal address’[i], and one report described ‘a tempest of fervent acclamation’.[ii]

Nationalist voices were, however, loud in their opposition to the visit. The Corporation having adopted the ‘loyal address’ in March, in April a motion was proposed by the Home Rule MP Timothy Harrington, stating that the address did not amount to ‘an abandonment of our claim for National self-government’ and that ‘so far as the vast body of the, people are concerned, there will be neither contentment nor loyalty in this country until our National Parliament is restored’. This motion was adopted with forty-nine councillors in favour and only nine against.[iii]

Outside the Council Chamber, the reaction wasn’t as polite. During the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, the Lord Mayor, Thomas Pile, who had promoted the loyal address, was booed and hissed, and stones were thrown at his coach, breaking the windows.[iv]

As part of the festivities around the Queen’s visit, a ‘children’s entertainment’ was held in the Phoenix Park, with some estimates putting the number attending at 30,000.[v] The children’s entertainment attracted particular attention from nationalist women, led by Maud Gonne, who claimed that only 5,000 of the 35,000 children in Dublin ‘had allowed themselves be used for a Unionist demonstration’.[vi]

As a reward to these children, a Committee was formed, chaired by Maud Gonne, to provide a ‘National treat’, in which all the children could take part.[vii]

Originally planned for Bodenstown, on Wolfe Tone’s birthday, 20 June, the event took place on 1 July 1900, at Clonturk Park, Drumcondra.

The children and stewards gathered at Beresford Place at noon and marched to Drumcondra, with some estimates of 25,000 to 30,000 taking part. As they marched, the children held poles with signs reading ‘Patriotic Children’s Treat – NO FLUNKEYISM HERE’.[viii]

Twenty-five wagons were required to bring the picnic to Clonturk Park; 1.5 tons of biscuits, 1.5 tons of sweets, and 50,000 buns were supplied, along with 300 dozen bottles of minerals, not forgetting 80 casks of stone beer.[ix]

All-in-all, it was judged, in the words of the Irish Independent, a ‘splendid gathering’.

The Ladies Committee which organised the Children’s Treat remained active, and by October 1900 had become Inghinidhe na hEireann (Daughters of Ireland). In 1914 it merged into Cuman na mBan.[x]

[i] Dublin Corporation Minutes 1900/248.

[ii] ‘The Queen’s visit to Ireland’ in Tunbridge Wells Journal, 19 Apr. 1900, p. 4.

[iii] Dublin Corporation Minutes 1900/268.

[iv] ‘St. Patrick’s Day: Lord Mayor’s Procession’ in Irish Daily Independent, 19 Mar. 1900, p. 6.

[v] ‘The Queen’s visit to Ireland’.

[vi] ‘Patriotic Children’s Treat’ in Freeman’s Journal, 30 Apr. 1900, p. 6.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] ‘Patriotic Children’s Treat: a splendid gathering’ in Irish Daily Independent, 2 July 1900, p. 6.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Senia Pašeta, ‘Nationalist Responses to Two Royal Visits to Ireland, 1900 and 1903’ in Irish Historical Studies, xxxi, no. 124 (1999), pp 488–504.

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James Plunkett, author

Photograph of a Dublin City plaque. on a red brick wall. The plaque is made of granite and has a blue base with the Dublin City Council logo on it. The text on the plaque is in both Irish and English and in English it reads 'James Plunkett 1920-2003 writer lived here'.

 This plaque commemorates the author James Plunkett, author of Strumpet City.

Find this plaque on Google maps.

James Plunkett Kelly was born in Sandymount, Dublin, on 21 May 1920. He was educated at Synge Street CBS, and, following the death of his father, became a clerk in the Dublin Gas Company. There he joined the Workers’ Union of Ireland (WUI), becoming a union official and working alongside James Larkin.

During the 1950s, Plunkett became a regular contributor of talks, short stories and radio plays to Radio Éireann, which he joined in 1955, eventually becoming the head of RTÉ’s features department in 1968.

His first published was ‘The mother’, which appeared in the The Bell in 1942, and many other works followed, including the play ‘The risen people’ in 1959.

Plunkett’s best known work is Strumpet City; published in 1969 it sold over 250,000 copies worldwide and was translated into several languages. Paperback rights were bought for £16,000 and the seven-part dramatisation of the novel, adapted by Hugh Leonard and screened by RTÉ, is regarded as one of the highpoints of the station’s dramatic output. 

Strumpet city was followed by Farewell companions (1977), a semi‐autobiographical account of Dublin life between the 1920s and 1940s, and The circus animals. Neither achieved the success of Strumpet city, though some critics thought Farewell companions superior. In 1987 he published a collection of essays, The boy on the back wall.

James Plunkett died on  28 May 2003.

Veteran Dublin City Councillor Mary Freehill, who was friendly with the Kelly family, proposed that the plaque be erected. It was unveiled on 21 May 2024 at 25 Richmond Hill, Rathmines, on what would have been his 104th birthday.

You can read more about James Plunkett in the Dictionary of Irish Biography.

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Three plaques unveiled in March and April 2024

Dublin City Council is pleased to have unveiled three plaques over the past two months.

On 20 March the Lord Mayor and the Assistant Chief Fire Officer unveiled the third in a series commemorating Dublin firefighters who were killed in the line of duty.

Fireman John Kite died on 20 March 1884 while attending a fire at 10 Trinity Street; he was the first member of the Dublin Fire Brigade to be killed in the line of duty.

On 23 March the Lord Mayor, Daithí de Róiste, and the President of the GAA, Jarlath Burns, unveiled a plaque at the Drumcondra AFC club house, Richmond Road, commemorating Clonturk Park as the venue for the All Ireland finals in 1890, 1891, 1892, and 1894.

Most recently, on 5 April 2024, the Lord Mayor unveiled a plaque to mark the site of Devlin’s Pub, one of the main locations for meetings of GHQ Headquarters of Intelligence during the War of Independence.

The next plaque to be unveiled, on 21 May, is for James Plunkett, author of Strumpet City.

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Devlin’s Pub – meeting place of GHQ Intelligence

Photograph of a Dublin City Council plaque commemorating Devlin's Pub, Parnell Street, Dublin 1.

This plaque marks the location of Devlin’s Pub, which stood on the site of what is now the Point A Hotel, Parnell Street, Dublin 1.

In mid-1919, Derry born Liam Devlin relocated from Glasgow with his family of seven children to a public house that he bought at 68 Parnell Street, Dublin. Within a few weeks he had offered the use of upstairs rooms to Michael Collins.

The pub quickly became one of the main locations for meetings of the IRB Headquarters of Intelligence. It was a significant location during the War of Independence. Meetings were held daily at the pub, attended by Michael Collins, Frank Thornton, Liam Tobin, Emmet Dalton and many others of the leadership of the Volunteers and the IRB.

As many as eight to ten Volunteers and Officers were accommodated there every night during this period. Devlin was himself an Intelligence Officer and was entrusted with the safe keeping of National Loan Funds.

Michael Collins waited here for news about the abandoned escape and later execution of Kevin Barry. He was also in Devlin’s Pub on the morning of Bloody Sunday. The pub was the location of the Mutiny, which threatened the very survival of the Free State, led by Liam Tobin, in March 1924.

The plaque was unveiled by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Daithí de Róiste, and John Healey, grandson of Liam Devlin, on 5 April 2024.

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Clonturk Park – venue for the All Ireland Finals

Photograph of a Dublin City Council plaque commemorating Clonturk Park as the venue for All Ireland Finals, at Richmond Road, Dublin 3.

This plaque, at the Drumcondra AFC clubhouse on Richmond Road, Dublin 3, commemorates Clonturk Park as the venue for the GAA All Ireland finals in both hurling and football for 1890, 1891, 1892, and 1894.

The matches played at Clonturk Park included landmark occasions such as Cork’s first All Ireland championship in hurling, and Dublin’s first in football; the first football final between Dublin and Kerry, and the only win by a Kerry team in the hurling championship.

The 1893 final was transferred to the Phoenix Park because the grass at Clonturk had not been cut for the occasion.

After Clonturk Park’s era as the preferred GAA venue in the city came to an end, the All Ireland final of 1895 was the first to be played on Mr Butterly’s amusement grounds on Jones’s Road, the venue now better known as Croke Park.

The plaque was unveiled by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Daithí de Róiste, and Uachtarán Cumann Lúthchleas Gael Jarlath Burns, on 23 March 2024.

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Kite, John – Dublin Fire Brigade

Photograph of a Dublin City Council plaque commemorating Fireman John Kite, at 10 Trinity Street, Dublin 2.

This plaque, at 10 Trinity Street, Dublin 2, commemorates Fireman John Kite, the first member of Dublin Fire Brigade to be killed in the line of duty.

Just before 9.30pm on the night of 20th of March 1884, the Fire Brigade were alerted to a fire at 10 Trinity Street, now Cotswold Outdoors. Firemen from two nearby fire stations – Coppinger Row off South William Street and Whitehorse Yard off Winetavern Street, were on the scene in minutes.

The building was on fire at basement and ground floor, and on the third floor. Firemen entered the building at ground level and from a wheeled escape ladder to the third floor.

The fire was quickly under control when without warning, the building collapsed burying nine firemen inside under masonry, timber and slates. Remaining firemen outside the building, with assistance from police and soldiers from the nearby Ship Street Barracks, set about removing the rubble to find the missing firemen.

Eight were rescued, many with serious injuries, but unfortunately one fire fighter, John Kite, lost his life. His death was reported by the Dublin City Coroner to have been due to ”suffocation in the ruins of a house while carrying out his duty”.

He was the first Dublin Fire Brigade fire fighter to lose his life while on duty. Fireman John Kite was survived by his wife Eliza and six children.

The plaque was unveiled by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Daithí de Róiste, and Assistant Chief Fire Officer Michael Reilly, on 20 March 2024.

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Brennan, Maeve – writer and journalist

A photograph of the Dublin City Council commemorative plaque for Maeve Brennan, at 48 Cherryfield Avenue, Ranelagh, Dublin.

This plaque, at 48 Cherryfield Avenue, Ranelagh, commemorates Maeve Brennan, columnist with the New Yorker magazine and writer of short stories.

Maeve Brennan, once described as ‘the greatest Irish writer you never heard of’, was born in Dublin on 6 January 1917, second of four children of the journalist Bob Brennan, who would go on to found the Irish Press.

The family lived at 48 Cherryfield Avenue, Ranelagh, Dublin, from 1921 until 1934. The house is the setting for many of her stories.

After her father was selected as Ireland’s ambassador to Washington in 1934, Maeve Brennan completed her secondary and third level education in Washington and moved to New York to work in a library. There her literary talent was noticed by the editor of New Yorker magazine. For three decades she contributed to the New Yorker and had two critically acclaimed collections of short stories published in 1969.

While fighting a losing battle against financial and mental health problems, she retreated into obscurity and spent her last years in a home for the elderly in New York, her talent unknown to her carers and, in the end, herself.  It was only after her death in 1993 that her work was anthologised and recognised by a new generation of writers and critics, placing Maeve Brennan among the best Irish short-story writers since Joyce. Her works have been accepted into the canon of twentieth century literature:

The plaque was unveiled by the Lord Mayor of Dublin on 6 January 2024.

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O’Leary, Jerome – youngest victim of Bloody Sunday 1920

A photograph of the Dublin City Council Commemorative plaque for Jerome O'Leary.

This plaque commemorates Jerome O’Leary who, at 10 years old, was the youngest of those killed at Croke Park on Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920.

Find this plaque on Google maps.

The plaque reads:

JEROME O’LEARY
1910-1920
A Maraíodh i bPáirc an Chrócaigh ar Domhnach na Fola
A CHÓNAIGH ANSEO
Killed at Croke Park on Bloody Sunday
LIVED HERE

On the morning of 21 November 1920 fourteen suspected British intelligence personnel were killed, and one fatally injured, by the IRA.

That afternoon, as a reprisal, a force of Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), including the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, opened fire on the crowd attending a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Tipperary at Croke Park. 14 civilians were killed in the attack.

The second or third bullet fired killed 10-year-old Jerome O’Leary from Blessington Street. The boy was sitting on the wall at the Canal end of the pitch and was shot through the right side of his head.

Jerome was buried in Glasnevin where for many years his grave went unmarked. As part of its Bloody Sunday Graves project in 2019 the GAA erected a headstone for Jerome in Glasnevin.

Jerome O’Leary lived at 69 Blessington Street, where the plaque was unveiled by the Lord Mayor on 20 November 2023. The plaque was proposed by Mr Pearse Turner.

A detailed account of Bloody Sunday may be found in History on Your Doorstep volume 3, written by Dublin City Council historians-in-residence and available from any branch of Dublin City Libraries, or online at https://www.dublincity.ie/library/blog/history-your-doorstep-volume-3.