Tag: Glasnevin Cemetery

#OTD in 1847 – Daniel O’Connell, “The Liberator,” dies in Genoa.

15/05/2022.Reading time 3 minutes.

“No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation’s heart and leaves to Ireland not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream.” –Daniel O’Connell Eighteen […]

Read More

#OTD in 1883 – Execution of Joe Brady for the murder of Lord Cavendish in Phoenix Park.

14/05/2022.Reading time 4 minutes.

Brady was one of the Invincibles – a Fenian splinter group – that murdered the Chief Secretary of Ireland on his first day in the country. Four others were executed for the murders. Brady by all accounts was a mountain of a man. The Times wrote after his execution. “He was brought up as a […]

Read More

#OTD in 1916 – Joseph Mary Plunkett and Grace Gifford are married in the chapel of Kilmainham Gaol the night before he was to be executed for his part in the Easter Rising.

03/05/2022.Reading time 10 minutes.

Grace was the second youngest of twelve children. Her sisters, Nellie and Muriel, were also avid nationalists as well as converts to Catholicism. Muriel married Thomas MacDonagh, who was executed in Kilmainham earlier on the day Grace married Joe Plunkett. It was said of the Gifford girls: “whenever those vivacious girls entered a gloomy Sinn […]

Read More

#OTD in 1953 – Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, Maude Gonne MacBride died in Roebuck, Clonskeagh, and was later buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

27/04/2022.Reading time 5 minutes.

“More and more I realised that Ireland could rely only on force, in some form or another, to free herself.” –Maud Gonne MacBride The daughter of an Irish army officer and his English wife, Maud Gonne converted to republicanism by an eviction she saw during the 1880s, and became a speaker for the Land League. […]

Read More

#OTD in 1916 – Francis Sheehy-Skeffington was apprehended while trying to stop looting during the Easter Rising and was later murdered by the British without trial.

26/04/2022.Reading time 5 minutes.

Francis Skeffington, writer and pacifist, was born in Bailieborough, Co Cavan on the 23 December 1878 to Joseph Bartholomew Skeffington and his wife Rose née Magorian. The family moved to Co Down shortly after his birth. He was educated by his father, a schools inspector and enrolled in University College Dublin (UCD) in 1896. While […]

Read More

#OTD in 1916 – Easter Rising | The Battle of Mount Street Bridge, Dublin.

26/04/2022.Reading time 5 minutes.

Fuair siad bás ar son Saoirse na hÉireann! Commandant de Valera, Lieutenant Michael Malone of the 3rd Battalion, James Grace (Section Commander) and the other volunteers set out on the day of the Rising to march to Boland’s Mill. Their task was to secure Boland’s Mill and Mount Street Bridge, which was a well-known route […]

Read More

#OTD in 1921 – Thomas Trayner was hanged in Mountjoy Prison, captured during an ambush on Auxiliaries in Brunswick Street, Dublin, on 14 March 1921.

25/04/2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

Thomas Traynor was a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) hanged in Mountjoy Gaol during the Irish War of Independence. Traynor was born on 27 May 1882 in Tullow, Co Carlow, and was 38 at the time of his death. He was an experienced soldier having been a member of the Boland’s Mill garrison […]

Read More

#OTD in 1921 – Francis Xavier Flood (one of the six and youngest IRA Volunteers charged for crimes of high treason and murder) is executed by hanging in Mountjoy Gaol.

14/03/2022.Reading time 3 minutes.

Francis Xavier Flood, known as Frank, was a 1st Lieutenant in the Dublin Active Service Brigade during the Irish War of Independence. He was executed by the British authorities in Mountjoy Gaol and was one of the men commonly referred to as ‘The Forgotten Ten’. Flood was the son of a policeman and the 1911 […]

Read More

#OTD in 1965 – Roger Casement’s body is re-interred in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin.

01/03/2022.Reading time 4 minutes.

‘Self-government is our right, a thing born in us at birth; a thing no more to be doled out to us or withheld from us by another people than the right to life itself.’ Roger Casement was born at Sandycove, Co Dublin in 1864. He joined the British colonial service and was knighted in 1911 […]

Read More

#OTD in 1921 – Three IRA prisoners Ernie O’Malley, Frank Teeling and Simon Donnelly escape from Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin.

14/02/2022.Reading time 6 minutes.

Ernie O’Malley, Frank Teeling and Simon Donnelly escaped from Kilmainham Gaol. The escape was carried out under the orders of Michael Collins, and he had specific reasons for arranging the escape of each of the men. Simon Donnelly had only been in the prison for four days, but he was well-known to the authorities and […]

Read More