Francis Sheehy-Skeffington
| Francis Sheehy-Skeffington | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born |
23 December 1878 Bailieborough, County Cavan |
| Died |
26 April 1916 (aged 37) Portobello Barracks, Dublin |
| Other names | Francis Skeffington, 'Skeffy' |
| Alma mater | University College Dublin |
| Organization | United Irish League, Irish Women's Suffrage and Local Government Association, Irish Citizen Army |
Political movement | Women's suffrage, Pacifism/Anti-conscription, Irish independence |
Francis Skeffington (23 December 1878 – 26 April 1916) from Bailieborough, County Cavan, was an Irish suffragist, pacifist and writer. He was a friend and schoolmate of James Joyce, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Tom Kettle, and Conor Cruise O'Brien's father, Frank O'Brien. He married Hanna Sheehy in 1903, whose own surname he adopted as part of his name, resulting in his being known as Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, and sometimes referred to as "Skeffy".
Early life
Skeffington was the only son of Joseph Skeffington and Rose Magorian, of County Down. His parents were married at the Roman Catholic Chapel at Ballykinlar in 1869. Skeffy was educated initially at home by his father, a school inspector, and later by the Jesuits at St Stephen's Green before enrolling in University College Dublin (UCD) in 1896. His closest companions at college were James Joyce and Thomas Kettle. He was individualistic in disposition and unconventional in temperament, refusing to shave and wore knickerbockers, long socks and, as an ardent proponent of rights for women, he wore a badge that read Votes for Women. He organised a petition to lobby for women to be admitted to UCD on the same basis as men shortly after he married. He was a well-known figure at UCD and active in student politics and debating societies including the Literary and Historical Society, which he became auditor of in 1897.[1]
Career and politics
When he graduated he worked as a free-lance journalist. His wife, a teacher, was the primary breadwinner. They joined the Irish Women's Suffrage and Local Government Association and the Young Ireland Branch of the United Irish League (the constituency element of the Irish Parliamentary Party). They also supported the Women's Social and Political Union which lobbied for women's rights in Britain.
In 1908 his book Michael Davitt; Revolutionary, Agitator, and Labor Leader was published.[2] In 1912 Skeffington co-founded and was a joint editor of The Irish Citizen newspaper, issued by the Irish Women's Franchise League, and he made contributions to various publications in Ireland, England, France and North America.
During the 1913 Dublin Lock-out he became involved in a peace committee intended to reconcile both factions. He became a vice-chairman of the Irish Citizens Army when it was established in 1913 on the basis that it would have a strictly defensive role and he resigned when it became a military entity.
Sheehy-Skeffington testified to a tribunal as a witness to the arrest of the leading trade unionist Jim Larkin on O'Connell street and the subsequent police riot against a peaceful crowd that had occurred on the last weekend of August in 1914.[3] His testimony stated that he was in the street with a group of women caring for a person that had already been assaulted by the police when a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police charged towards this group with his baton raised. He reports that it was only because he called out the policeman's number that the man was dissuaded from the violence he had so clearly intended. He said that he was later abused by a gang of policemen showing clear signs of intoxication in the yard of the police station at College Green where he went to make his complaint and that their officers had no control over their behaviour.
He campaigned against recruitment on the outbreak of World War I and was jailed for six months.
1916 Easter Rising
Sheehy-Skeffington supported Home Rule but was not a supporter of the Irish Volunteers. He and Hanna took opposing positions towards the Easter Rising – he advocated his pacifist principles and preferred civil disobedience while Hanna brought food to the rebels located at the General Post Office and the Royal College of Surgeons. On 24 April he had gone to the aid of the first British soldier to be shot during the Easter Rising, Guy Vickery Pinfield (1895-24 April 1916), a Second Lieutenant (TP) 8th (King's Royal Irish) Hussars. According to a statement by Skeffington's wife: "When the outbreak began on Easter Monday my husband was near Dublin Castle. He learned that a British officer had been gravely wounded and was bleeding to death on the cobblestones outside the Castle gate. My husband persuaded a bystander to go with him to the rescue. Together they ran across the square under a hail of fire. Before they reached the spot, however, some British troops rushed out and dragged the wounded man to cover inside the gate."[4]
Arrest and murder
During the week of the Easter Rising, Sheehy-Skeffington, who had been living at 11 (now 21), Grosvenor Place, Rathmines, Dublin, was concerned about the collapse of law and order. On the evening of Tuesday, 25 April, he went into the city centre to attempt to organise a citizens militia to prevent the looting of damaged shops.
He was arrested for no stated, or indeed obvious, reason while returning home, by members of the 11th East Surrey Regiment at Portobello Bridge along with some hecklers who were following him, and, after admitting to having sympathy for the insurgents' cause (but not their tactics), he was held as an enemy sympathiser. Later that evening an officer of the 3rd battalion Royal Irish Rifles, Captain J. C. Bowen-Colthurst (a member of a County Cork family of the landed gentry), sent Sheehy-Skeffington out with an army raiding party in Rathmines, held as a hostage with his hands tied behind his back. The raiding party had orders that he was to be shot if it was attacked.[5]
Bowen-Colthurst sought out "Fenians". He went to the home and shop of Alderman James Kelly at the corner of Camden Street and Harcourt Road, from which the name "Kelly's Corner" derives. Mistaking the Alderman (who was a Conservative) for a rebel, the soldiers destroyed the shop with hand grenades. Bowen-Colthurst took captive a young boy, two pro-British journalists who were in the shop – Thomas Dickson and Patrick MacIntyre – and a Sinn Féin politician, Richard O'Carroll, all of whom he had shot. Skeffington witnessed the two murders on the way to Rathmines. The two journalists were killed with him the following morning. Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington was not told about her husband's detention or his death and only discovered what had happened four days later, when she met the chaplain of the barracks. Bowen-Colthurst attempted a cover-up and ordered the search and ransack of Skeffington's home, looking for evidence to damage him. This event resulted in a Westminster-ordered cover-up, as a result of which Bowen-Colthurst was detained in an asylum for eighteen months. He would later retire to Canada on a full pension.
Major Sir Francis Fletcher Vane
A Dublin-born major in the Royal Munster Fusiliers, Sir Francis Fletcher Vane, was in overall charge of defence at Portobello Barracks but was not present when these executions took place. He arrived shortly afterwards, and was horrified at what had unfolded. He recognised the killings as murder, and called Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington.
He reported his views (that Bowen-Colthurst was mentally deranged) to the deputy commander of the garrison, Major Rosborough. Rosborough telephoned Dublin Castle and was told to bury the bodies. Vane subsequently travelled to London where he met Lord Kitchener in Downing Street on 3 May 1916. A telegram was sent to Sir John Maxwell, commander-in-chief of British forces in Ireland, ordering the arrest of Bowen-Colthurst, but Maxwell refused to arrest him.
Burial
...had been put in a sack and buried in the barracks' yard. The remains were given to his father on condition that the funeral would be at early morn and that I be not notified. My husband's father consented unwillingly to do this on the assurance of General Maxwell that obedience would result in the trial and punishment of the murderer.Re-interment took place on 8 May 1916 at Glasnevin Cemetery.[6]
Public inquiry, conviction and release of Bowen-Colthurst
Bowen-Colthurst was eventually arrested on 6 June, charged with murder and court-martialled.
An inquiry, chaired by Sir John Simon, took place on 23 August 1916 at the Four Courts which concluded that the proclamation of martial law does not confer on officers or soldiers any new powers, but is a warning that the Government, acting through the military, is taking such forcible and exceptional measures as are needed to restore order. The measures taken can be justified only by the practical circumstances of the case. The shooting of unarmed and unresisting civilians without trial constituted murder, whether martial law has been proclaimed or not. Failure to understand and apply this elementary principle seems to explain the free hand which Capt. Colthurst had been exercising.[7]
Bowen-Colthurst successfully pleaded insanity arising from shellshock as a means of escaping a potential murder conviction. His court martial became a cause celebre and provoked a political furore which culminated in a Royal Commission of Enquiry into the murders.[citation needed] He was sent to Broadmoor Hospital briefly and then to a hospital in Canada. He was deemed 'cured' 20 months later on 26 April 1921 and was eventually released with a pension at the age of 40.[8]
Sheehy-Skeffington's wife was offered financial compensation by the British government of the day but she refused this. Vane was dishonorably discharged from the army in the summer of 1916 owing to his actions in the Skeffington murder case.
Francis Sheehy-Skeffington was survived by his wife, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington who became increasingly nationalist-minded and his son (then aged 7) Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, who attended the secular Sandford Park School with his cousin Conor Cruise O'Brien, (because Hanna refused to send her son to any school with a pro-Treaty ethos,) and eventually played a moderate role in Irish politics.
Personal papers
The personal papers, details of which can be accessed online, of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and his wife Hanna were donated to the National Library of Ireland.[9]
Works
- Michael Davitt, revolutionary, agitator and labour leader, 1908 (accessible from Internet Archive).
- A forgotten small nationality : Ireland and the war, February 1916 (Internet Archive).
- A Forgotten Aspect of the University Question. Privately printed, Dublin 1901 (published with The Day of the Rabblement by James Joyce.)
References
- ↑ http://www.ucd.ie/lnh/about/L&H%20auditors.pdf
- ↑ Book review by James Connolly
- ↑ The full text of this testimony can be found in the book: Larkin, James. In the footsteps of Big Jim. Tallaght : Blackwater Press,1996
- ↑ http://generalmichaelcollins.com/Michael_Collins_own_Story/12SHEEHY_SKEFFINGTON.html
- ↑ Redmond, Dara (26 August 2006). "Officer who exposed pacifist's murder". The Irish Times.
- ↑ Talbot,, Hayden (1923). Michael Collins' Own Story. Hutchinson and Co. pp. 95–115. Retrieved 11/05/2010.
- ↑ "Royal Report : Arrest and subsequent treatment of Mr. Francis Sheehy Skeffington, Mr. Thomas Dickson, and Mr. Patrick James McIntyre". Enhanced British Parliamentary Papers on Ireland 1801 – 1922. Retrieved 26 August 2006.
- ↑ Caulfield, Max. The Easter Rebellion Dublin 1916. ISBN 1-57098-042-X.
- ↑ "The Sheehy-Skeffington Papers". National Library of Ireland. Archived from the original on 4 October 2006. Retrieved 27 August 2006.
External links
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