How The Irish Times covered this 'desperate episode'

Joe Carroll on how this newspaper reported on what it then described as a 'record of crime, horror and destruction'

For the early days of the Easter Rising, The Irish Times had the field all to itself thanks to having its office south of the Liffey. The rival Irish Independent and the Freeman's Journal were in the thick of the action beside the GPO and could not publish. The Freeman's Journal premises on Prince's Street was burned down. The Daily Express office in Cork Street opposite City Hall was actually occupied on Easter Monday by the rebels, and 26 of them eventually died there.

The Irish Times office was at 31 Westmoreland Street, near Trinity College and the Bank of Ireland. The paper had an independent power supply from its suction gas plant. The coverage of the fighting in Dublin was a tribute to the reporters who had to work under very dangerous conditions. The trade paper, Newspaper World, later paid tribute to The Irish Times for its coverage "of the memorable week when the continuing rifle and Maxim gunfire in the Westmoreland Street area made it impossible to venture around. Members of the several departments in the office were in attendance on each day but the paper was not published on the Friday and Saturday." The paper made up for this temporary gap with a Special Extra edition on May 1st.

On the Tuesday after the Rising, the paper reported on how the insurgents had occupied strategic buildings around the city, the resistance they met, the number of casualties and the beginning of the looting in O'Connell Street by what was termed the "Dublin underworld".

A "most shocking" event for the paper was the attack on the unarmed "Veterans' Corps" coming back from a route march in the Dublin mountains to Beggar's Bush barracks, where they were shot down by the insurgents stationed on the railway bridge and in houses around. The reporters and sub-editors were unsure how to describe the insurgents who were referred to variously as "volunteers", "rebels", "Sinn Féiners" and "revolutionists".

Editorially, the newspaper had no doubt where it stood. On the Tuesday, the editorial, entitled "The Outbreak" (see below), thundered that "an attempt has been made to overthrow the constitutional Government of Ireland". This "desperate episode in Irish history can have only one end", and the editor was trusting firmly on a "speedy triumph of the forces of law and order".

At this early stage, before Sackville Street (later O'Connell Street) had been partially demolished, the paper tried to show that normal life in Dublin was carrying on. The main news item was the opening of the Spring Show at the Royal Dublin Society in Ballsbridge and readers were also told about the latest production of the D'Oyly Carte company and the opening of the Feis Ceoil.

MORE SPACE WAS devoted in the first days to the conduct of the first World War in Europe, the Middle East and Africa than to the Rising. The Irish casualties in these battles were highlighted.

The restrictions on non-combatants in Dublin following the imposition of martial law prompted an Irish Times reporter to suggest to readers how to cope with having to stay at home instead of promenading around the streets in the evening. The father could "cultivate a habit of easy conversation with his family" or "put his little garden into a state of decency", do some "useful painting and mending about the house" or "acquire or re-acquire the art of reading", and who better then Shakespeare given that it was the tercentenary of his death?

As the fighting and destruction intensified, the reporters tried to stay detached and factual but there was no denying where their sympathies lay. Thus "Trinity College, Dublin, in the crisis, proved true to its traditions . . . the spirit of the few collegians who happened to be within the gates was indomitable . . . every graduate who could be rounded up answered the call." It was "surely a sign that Trinity had given itself wholly over to the military when one found soldiers playing football on the tennis courts."

Some Trinity students helped prepare the artillery for the shelling of Liberty Hall which the newspaper described as being "for many years a thorn in the side of the Dublin police and the Irish government. It was the centre of social anarchy in Ireland, the brain of every riot and disturbance". The students also captured a "Larkinite" spy who had infiltrated the campus.

There was also praise for the behaviour of the volunteers in the area of the Adelaide Hospital, where some of their wounded had been brought for treatment. "The insurgents in that part of the city seemed to be of a good type. No sign of liquor was ever observed on them and they were invariably courteous, while they refrained from abusing the convalescent soldiers in the hospital."

By the time of the Special Extra edition on the Monday after the Rising, the insurgents had surrendered the previous Saturday, so the editorial, entitled "The Insurrection" (see below), got down to analysing what it called "a record of crime, horror and destruction" by one side but "shot with many gleams of the highest valour and devotion" on the side of the "gallant soldiers". The editorial did "not deny a certain desperate courage to many of the wretched men who today are in their graves or awaiting the sentence of their country's laws."

For this last category, "The State has struck but its work is not yet finished. The surgeon's knife has been put to the corruption in the body of Ireland and its course must not be stayed until the whole malignant growth has been removed." Was this a call for the execution of those the paper called the "ring-leaders" and the "arch-conspirators"?

THE RIVAL Freeman's Journal, when it re-appeared on May 5th, saw it as a "bloodthirsty incitement" to the government. The Irish Times rejected this charge but later in the week made clear it supported the British prime minister, Herbert Asquith, when he refused to call for a stop to the executions while the last two signatories of the Proclamation still alive, James Connolly and Seán MacDermott, were awaiting their fate.

Across the river, the Irish Independent was back on the streets after a 10-day break, and in its editorial of May 10th pleaded for leniency for those who filled "only minor parts".

"When, however, we come to some of the ringleaders, instigators and fomentors not yet dealt with, we must make an exception." It was clear to readers that Connolly, who had been a bugbear to the proprietor of the Independent and of the Dublin tramway company, William Martin Murphy, was being referred to. "Let the worst of the ringleaders be singled out and dealt with as they deserve." Whether this reflected the views of the mainly Catholic business class and clerical readers of the paper is hard to know. Connolly and MacDermott were shot two days later.

The editor of The Irish Times must have been gratified by the letter in the edition of May 12th in which a reader wished "to express my recognition of, and gratitude for, the fearless way in which you are daily giving correct expression to the views of all loyal Irish people in this deplorable crisis".

The demand for The Irish Times was so great that it reprinted the issues of Easter Week when it was the only newspaper to be had. The Weekly Irish Times came out with a triple issue dated April 29th, May 6th and 13th. This issue contained a complete record of the Rising with full details of the fighting, lists of casualties and prisoners, sentences and deportations and pictures of the main personalities. The paper boasted that the issue was "enormously popular and had a colossal circulation which far exceeded anything ever previously claimed by any Dublin newspaper, morning, evening or weekly". (The Weekly Irish Times was a companion to the daily title, taking a longer look at the events of the week gone by. Often bought to send to family members abroad, it continued to be published until 1941, when it was replaced by the Times Pictorial.)

A year later, in 1917, the Weekly Irish Times published the 286-page Sinn Féin Rebellion Handbook, which reproduced the contemporary reports of the Rising and its aftermath with maps. But it also included later accounts of the courts martial, Roger Casement's landing, capture, trial and execution, two commissions of enquiry, full lists of those killed, taken prisoner, honours and promotions. It is an amazingly comprehensive account of every aspect of the Rising. It was republished in 1988 in facsimile form and is now a collector's item.