Michael Mallin: silk weaver Credit:Lorcan Collins
According to a recent article in
Irishcentral.com: On the eve of the 1916 Rising, Michael Mallin played
the flute in the four-piece Workers’ Orchestra during a recital for the
Irish Citizen Army in Dublin’s Liberty Hall. The next morning, Easter
Monday, the planned rebellion began and Mallin commanded a garrison in
St Stephen’s Green and, later, the College of Surgeons. As he prepared
to lead out his men, Mallin, father to four young children and husband
to a pregnant wife, turned to James O’Shea and, foreseeing his end,
said: “We will be dead in a short time.”
Many of the 1916 leaders, including James
Connolly, Patrick Pearse and Eamon de Valera, are seen as founding
fathers of the Irish State. But Mallin, who became Chief-of-Staff – and
second-in-command to James Connolly – of the Irish Citizen Army and
was executed by firing squad for his role in the Rising, has been
relegated to a footnote.
In a new biography – the first in a
projected 16 Lives series by the O’Brien Press to publish biographies,
between now and the centenary, of all 16 men executed after the Rising –
historian Brian Hughes offers a vivid insight into a forgotten figure.
Short and dapper, Michael Mallin was a music
teacher, devout Catholic and teetotaler who spoke in a gentle voice.
He loved reading the history of South American and ancient Europe as
well as the novels of Joseph Conrad. But he was also strict, impatient
and frustrated by those whose commitment and discipline fell short of
the high standards he set for himself. He had a strong sense of right
and wrong, disliked swearing and his political and religious beliefs
were easily offended.
Mallin was born in a tenement in the
Liberties area of Dublin in 1874 at a time when whole families
frequently lived in a single room. At 14, he joined the British army.
While serving in India, his political beliefs changed dramatically. He
began to sympathise with the rebels the British army were fighting and,
in parallel, he believed that British rule in Ireland could only be
removed by physical force.
Back in Dublin at the turn of the century,
Mallin worked in various jobs – including setting up a chicken farm and
opening a cinema – but his time as a silk weaver proved most
significant. As secretary of the Silk Weavers’ Trade Union, he helped
them strike for four months until their demands were met.
Shortly after, James Connolly appointed Mallin as Chief-of-Staff of the Irish Citizen Army, set up to defend striking workers against the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP).
Shortly after, James Connolly appointed Mallin as Chief-of-Staff of the Irish Citizen Army, set up to defend striking workers against the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP).
Mallin’s exclusion to the margins of the
Rising’s history partly stems from two factors. The first relates to
his failure as a garrison leader. Occupying St Stephen’s Green, an open
park with almost no shelter, was militarily questionable but ordering
his men to dig trenches – possibly influenced by newsreel from the first
World War – was pure folly.
Worse, Mallin didn’t attempt to take the
nearby Shelbourne Hotel. When the British occupied this building, they
pounded the rebels in the Green and Mallin retreated to the College of
Surgeons. But, barely one week after the start of the Rising and
subdued by the British onslaught, Mallin surrendered – breaking down as
he read the order.
Like most of the other garrisons, as
Mallin’s men were marched to Dublin Castle by British soldiers they
were jeered by Dublin citizens outraged by this attack on their city in
what was seen as a cowardly betrayal of Irish men fighting on the
Western Front. (By 1918, over 200,000 Irish men would fight and almost
30,000 would lose their lives in the first World War.) On Grafton
Street, an angry mob attacked Mallin’s garrison and a British officer
threatened to shoot the protesters before they finally withdrew.
On May 5 1916, Michael Mallin’s field
general court martial took place. His conduct during this is the second
reason the Dubliner has been largely written out of Irish history.
During his defence, Mallin claimed that he had no prior knowledge of
the Rising; that, when he arrived at the Green, Countess Markievicz
ordered him to take charge of the garrison.
This was a blatant fabrication: Markievicz
was, in fact, Mallin’s deputy in the Green (she actually wore an old
Citizen Army tunic of Mallin’s). In a desperate attempt to avoid the
death sentence, Mallin probably reasoned that the British would not,
because of her gender, shoot Markievicz but it was a very risky gamble
and, as Hughes suggests, “particularly dishonourable”.
In September 1916, under the headline “Destitution Killing Irish”, the New York American newspaper published a letter written by Mallin, on the evening before his execution, to Alderman Thomas Kelly.
In September 1916, under the headline “Destitution Killing Irish”, the New York American newspaper published a letter written by Mallin, on the evening before his execution, to Alderman Thomas Kelly.
The article aimed to raise funds in the US
for the dependants of those killed during the Rising and the letter
places Mallin’s treacherous behavior during his court martial in
context.
“I have left my wife and children absolutely
destitute,” he writes inconsolably, and Hughes argues that this was
Mallin’s primary motivation in seeking to mislead the jury. While the
letters of more celebrated 1916 leaders, written as they awaited the
firing squad, emphasize their commitment to die for Ireland, Mallin’s
reek of a humanity and awareness informed by the burden of his imminent
death on his family.
Before his execution at Kilmainham Gaol in
the early morning of May 8th, Mallin wrote to his wife that “this is
the end of all things earthly” and touchingly enclosed the buttons of
his tunic. The letter profoundly shaped the lives of his young son and
daughter. Mallin asked his wife to dedicate Joseph and Una to the
church and they subsequently joined the Jesuit and Loreto order,
respectively.
If you take a train through south Dublin,
you’ll pass Dun Laoghaire railway station. The station is officially
called ‘Mallin Station’ but, tellingly, this title is almost never
used. In a compassionate biography, Brian Hughes helps bring an
unfairly neglected figure of Irish history alive on the page.
‘Michael Mallin’ is available from the O’Brien Press website: http://www.obrien.ie/
British
soldiers opposite Liberty Hall after the suppression of the Rising. A
flute, believed to have been played by Mallin before the Rising, was
found in Liberty Hall when the building was searched by British
soldiers. Credit: Lorcan Collins.
