I never noticed this memorial before but I discovered that it was in very poor condition and easy to miss until it was recently restored or replaced.
Thomas O’Leary was a 22-year-old Dubliner and member of the anti-Treaty IRA when he was shot dead by the Free State Army in March 1923.
Thomas O’Leary fought in the Irish War of Independence [the Black & Tan War]. He opposed the treaty and went with the anti-treaty IRA in the Civil War. He was a member of the 4th Battalion, Dublin Brigade IRA. According to various accounts he was arrested at a friend’s house at Upper Rathmines Road on 23 Mar 1923 by Free State Army. His body was found the next day at Upper Rathmines. He had been shot 22 times [a bullet for each year of his life].
The jury at the subsequent inquiry came to the conclusion that O’Leary was “murdered by persons unknown … by armed forces, and that the military did not give us sufficient assistance to investigate the case.”
There is a building on Upper Rathmines Road which was opened as a Protestant And Orange Hall in November 1890.
The Westminster parliamentary borough of Rathmines had a unionist majority up to independence in 1922. The last Member of Parliament it returned was Maurice Dockrell.
For several hundred years Rathmines was the location of a “spa” – in fact a spring – the water of which was said to have health-giving properties. It attracted people with all manner of ailments to the area. In the 19th century it was called the “Grattan Spa”, as it was located on property once belonging to Henry Grattan, close to Portobello Bridge. The “spa” gradually fell into a state of neglect as the century progressed, until disputes arose between those who wished to preserve it and those (mainly developers) who wished to get rid of it altogether. In 1872 a Dr. O’Leary, who held a high estimate of the water quality, reported that the “spa” was in “a most disgraceful state of repair”, upon which the developer and alderman Frederick Stokes sent samples to the medical inspector, Dr. Cameron, for analysis. Dr. Cameron, a great lover of authority, reported: “It was, in all probability, merely the drainings of some ancient disused sewer, not a chalybeate spring.” Access to the site was blocked up and the once popular “spa” faded from public memory.
You must be logged in to post a comment.