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'Something very unusual indeed was afoot . . .'

EYEWITNESS 1916

The following is an eyewitness account of the events in Dublin on Easter Monday April 24th, 1916:

A few minutes after 12 o'clock, I was coming into the city by tram from the North side. The street to all appearance were in their usual Bank Holiday guise. People attired in holiday garb were to be seen on every side, some making their way from the city, others - country cousins - who had come to Dublin to enjoy themselves. The trams proceeding towards the Poenix Park had on their side the legend "Zoological Gardens - half price today", and judging by their crowded state, many, old and young, were bent on availing themselves of the treat thus advertised.

Around Nelson Pillar [ where the Millennium Spire now stands] was the usual group of holiday idlers and just as I was idly wondering what attraction the [ Nelson's] Pillar had for the public, my attention was drawn by a slight commotion in front of the General Post Office.

The crowd there was not of large dimensions, but the people seemed to be agitated by some unusual happening. A small group was gathered around a young man in the uniform of a Volunteer - either a Sinn Feiner or one of the Larkinite Citizen Army - who was standing between two pillars under a portico. This young man had a rifle with fixed bayonet in his left hand while in his right he held a bright-edged axe . . .

Something very unusual indeed was afoot. Into the new porch of the GPO were crowding other men in Volunteer uniform, all of them armed after the fashion of young man who had stood under the pillars of the portico. Above the slight commotion in the street and the noise of the traffic could be heard the crash of breaking glass. The pavement was strewn with fragments from the broken windows. Along by the Prince's Street side of the GPO other men in similar attire and similarly armed were breaking in the windows. The door on to Prince's Street, through which the mail vans pass, was opened, and a considerable body of men in Volunteer uniforms passed through.

The majority of the onlookers seemed to regard the entire proceedings at this stage more or less in the light of a joke. In Abbey Street, other men in Volunteer uniform had taken possession of two licensed premises - those of Messrs Mooney and Mr John Davin - and were piling up furniture as though to form barricades inside the building and out on to the street.

At the corner of Bachelor's Walk, there was also the crashing of glass, some Volunteers, who had a hand-barrow outside, having broken into the premises of a retailer of gunpowder . In Westmoreland Street, nothing unusual was happening at the time, but from the directions of Dame Street, Parliament Street and Capel Street could be heard the ominous cracking of rifle shots.

From Tuesday, April 25, 1916

ON MAY 6, 1916, weeks after the event, The Irish Times published this account of the reading of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

Few people have heard of the beginning of the official declaration of an Irish Republic. Fewer stayed to the end. Though Sackville Street was fairly crowded at the time, the majority of people paid little attention to the doings of the rebels, and preferred the more practical process of looting.

At 1.30 there came from the [ General] Post Office a small man in plain clothes with a bundle of papers under his arm. Escorted by a guard of revolutionists, he made his way to Nelson's Pillar and began to speak surrounded by not more than 30 men.

"Citizens of Dublin," he said, "the last of the public buildings of the city is now in our hands. We have captured the General Post Office and on this memorable day, Ireland, as a Republic, has freed itself from . . . England."

The speaker then launched into the well-worn theme of Ireland's wrongs and England's oppression. The subject was evidently equally familiar to the orator and . . . his audience became progressively bored. A sweet shop was broken into, and nearly all rushed across the road to join in the spoil . . . "Isn't Clery's [department store] broken into yet?" asked one [ bystander]. "Hivins,it's a great shame that Clery's isn't broken."

On a rumour that this great event was about to happen, they moved over to the shop windows, and left the speaker finishing his peroration with no one to listen to him but his guard.

Like the revolution itself, the proclamation was a fiasco.