user: Write an article with the title: "'Things were never quite the same': stories from the 1916 Easter Rising"


assistant: Nearly 100 years ago, and just over a week after the rebellion, the leaders of the Easter Rising were shot dead at dawn. After occupying the General Post Office and other nearby buildings in the centre of Dublin, the republican rebels’ efforts to fight for Ireland’s freedom were crushed. In what is considered the beginning of the end of the British empire, those days of brutal fighting during Easter week paved the way for Irish independence just a few years later.

Though nearly a century has passed, the memories of the years between the Easter Rising and founding of the Republic of Ireland live on. Descendants of those involved recall what living in such turmoil was like for their family and share what the events mean for them today.

Bernard “Barney” John Duffy was still a child when he acted as a runner-boy for the Irish Republican Army during the rebellion against British rule that followed in the years after the Rising. Born to Patrick and Ellen Duffy in Waterford on 26 July 1903, Barney and his five siblings lived in a tenement building on Brabazon Street in an area called the Coombe. At the time of the insurrection he had finished school and, aged 12, volunteered as a messenger delivering information from the Boland’s Mills rebel outpost. With Éamon de Valera in command it was the beginning of Barney’s life-long loyalty to “Dev”.

Bernie Duffy, a lecturer in English in Hamburg, Germany, and grandson of Barney, after whom he is named, said it’s difficult to know exactly what Barney felt at such a young age. “Within earshot was one of the bloodiest engagements of the rising – the Battle of Mount Street Bridge. Although De Valera’s command saw no direct action they were heavily shelled in the fighting.

“They were dangerous and deeply divided times, and one did not wear their politics on their sleeves if they wanted to live long,” said Bernie. “What we do know was passed on in conspiratorial hush from great-aunts: tales of hidden guns, house­ searches and dubious goings­-on. One story recounts how during the war of independence, a 19-year-old Barney was at a card game when the Black and Tans (formally known as the Royal Irish Constabulary Special Reserve) suddenly raided. The men were subject to arbitrary detention and an officer executed one of the card­ players with a pistol­ shot to the face. It later transpired that the hapless victim was a British army soldier at home on leave.”

The brutality apparently had a sobering effect on Barney. By the time the civil war came about in 1922 he had no interest in getting involved. He had his children to think of.

But it’s difficult for Bernie to speak of Barney without remembering his other grandfather Johnny Quinn, who served with the RAF during the second world war. “Both my grandfathers played their role in history and I am proud of them for that, but neither were fighters and I’m grateful for that too.” For Bernie, the lives of both his relatives help reflect the complexity of feelings for Irish people when it comes to Ireland’s relationship with the UK.

Barney and Johnny only met once or twice before Barney died. “I have often wondered what they made of each other at those meetings,” said Bernie. “One thing I can be certain of is that on those occasions no words would have been wasted on politics­ about who fought or who served the British. ­ It was neither an issue or up for consideration. They were family.”

For Bernie, his generation is of a different kind to his ancestors. “I’m the kind of Irishman who rolls his eyes or excuses himself from the table at the slightest hint of sectarian talk. I’ve never met an Englishman I didn’t like even after three years of living in the UK. I don’t think in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’ at all. ­ We are perhaps the most closely related of two cultures anywhere in the world.

“The Easter Rising of 1916 is part of our identity. It’s not simply about the the moral superiority, brutality, treachery or martyrdom that took place on both sides. ­ It’s about the experience of the common people and those who came after them to carry those memories.”

Patrick “Whacker” Reid, formerly a docker before the rebellion, was in Boland’s Mills during Easter and staged a one-man mutiny when he refused to surrender. As told by his grandson Michael Reid, a teacher in Liverpool, Patrick somehow escaped and eluded the surrounding British army and made his way to the docks. After finding his way to Liverpool he spent most of his life active in trade union affairs and at the time of his death was chairman of Harold Wilson’s Huyton constituency organisation.

Their home was riddled with bullets

Margaret Nowlan and her carpenter husband Tom remember the time when Tom was shot in the head by the Black and Tans. As told by their granddaughter Paula Webb Stainton, a music curator in Cambridge, Tom was walking from their home in Pearse Street when a lorry full of the Black and Tans pulled up and started shooting. Though Tom was hit in the head he survived.

Paula recalls another moment when Tom was lucky not to have been killed. “There was an IRA sniper on the roof near where they lived and when the British soldiers arrived and started shooting a bullet went through the window by Tom. It certainly was an anxious time for them as when they moved to Leeson Street their home was riddled with bullets.”

Other members of Paula’s family helped the rebels’ efforts in any way they could. Her great-aunt Mary Nowlan lived on Penrose Street, Ringsend, and hid rebels who came up from Cork. She ended up marrying one of them. As children, Paula’s parents often met Countess Markievicz selling jam to raise funds for the freedom of Ireland. “It’s amazing what memories can be unlocked when you start asking questions,” she said.

Sheridan Flynn’s great-grandfather, Michael Sheridan, was a journalist and part of the Laois Volunteers. Michael’s father was a newspaper owner in Castlebar, County Mayo, but became bankrupt and had to sell the family valuables. He then moved to Portlaoise with his family before the Easter Rising to work as a journalist for the Nationalist.

On Easter Sunday, Michael and other Laois Volunteers were tasked with destroying part of the Abbeyleix-Portlaoise railway line to stop British military reinforcements from reaching Dublin. It was also during this operation when the first shot of the insurrection was fired.

A media professional in London, Sheridan says very little about the events of 1916 is discussed in his family. “Though my grandfather Martin Sheridan [Michael’s son] was an anglophile, at heart he spoke with pride about his father’s contribution to Ireland’s independence. His earliest memory is visiting Michael in internment as a child.

“Martin was a thoughtful nationalist. He understood that Britain brought many positive aspects to Irish life. Architecture, education, and the railway network. Yet he had an intellectual grasp of Irish language and Irish literature. However, as a republican and dedicated Christian, even he maintained that the fighting was a high price to pay for independence.”

Not everyone who took part in the Easter Rising held a combatant role. Robert Shaw Wayland was the physician at the children’s hospital in Harcourt Street which was used as a military hospital. At the time he had a young daughter, Olive, who remembers being surrounded by a lot of noise.

Pat Martin, who works in IT support in Reading, says one of the first memories of her grandmother, Olive de Winter Smith, was being covered on the floor by her nanny during a spraying of bullets. In an account told to Olive’s son (Pat’s uncle), she recalls how she was only nine when the rebellion broke out and how one day she found a bayonet and a round of ammunition in their garden.

“The first thing we knew was a loud banging in Hatch Street, just about 300 yards from us. It was a barricade being built,” she said. “Of course we all had to stay indoors except father, who still had to attend to patients. It was very hot.”

In what must have been a terrifying time for a child, Olive remembers the presence of snipers. “They were on the rooftops and we were afraid they might drop in through the skylight,” she said. “I remember being sent off to bed at my usual time and feeling very much alone in the nursery [at the front of the house on the fourth floor under the roof] and coming down and sitting at the bottom of the nursery steps where I could hear sounds of the family.

“One day I was playing with the Charles children who lived two doors from us and we were up in the sitting room when we heard some shots. We looked out and saw a woman lying in a pool of blood on the pavement across the road. Very shortly afterwards the matron and nurses came from the children’s hospital with a stretcher and took her away. Later an old woman from the stables at the back of some houses came and picked up a bag of flour from the pool of blood, hid it under her shawl and made off with it. Things were never quite the same again.”