A small portrait drawing of the first of these martyrs, 33-year-old labourer James Nolan, appeared in the 3rd September 1913 issue of the Irish Independent.
It does not appear to have been published since.
Rather than being a “Lockout Martyr”, the North Strand man was described in the 1913 news report as “The Strike Victim” — hardly surprising considering that William Martin Murphy was the owner of the newspaper in question.
It is nice to finally put a (highly respectable looking) face to one of the fatalities of that bitter industrial dispute.
Nolan died from horrific head injuries received on 30th August 1913 during a baton charge in the Eden Quay area not far from Liberty Hall, a building he regularly frequented as a member of the ITGWU.
Various eyewitness accounts of his death exist, some contradictory.
The most striking is perhaps that of military man Robert Monteith in his 1932 book Casement’s Last Adventure.
He wrote: “I witnessed the murder of Nolan. He was walking quietly down Eden Quay when he was met by a mixed patrol of Dublin Metropolitan Police and the Royal Irish Constabulary. The strength of the patrol was about thirty-five, all more or less drunk.
“One of the constabulary walked from the centre of the road on to the sidewalk and without the slightest provocation felled the poor man with a blow from his staff.
“The horrible crunching sound of the blow was clearly audible fifty yards away. This drunken scoundrel was ably seconded by two of the Metropolitan police, who, as the un- fortunate man attempted to rise, beat him about the head until his skull was smashed in, in several places.
“They then re-joined their patrol, leaving him in his blood. For saying, ‘You damn cowards’, I was instantly struck by two policemen and fell to the ground, where I had sense enough to lie until the patrol had passed on.”
Somewhat inebriated himself, the unfortunate Nolan had just left a city centre public house only to get caught up in one of the many riots which engulfed Dublin that bloody weekend.
After being brutally struck down, he was left lying unconscious on the quayside for around 20 minutes until an ambulance finally arrived, before being brought to the nearby Jervis Street Hospital.
Nolan never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead the following morning, a few hours be- fore the infamous ‘Bloody Sunday’ riot on Sackville (now O’Connell) Street during which hundreds of people were injured.
More than 10,000 people attended his funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery on 3rd September — a terrific demonstration of strength by the beleaguered ITGWU.
A large banner reading ‘In memory of our murdered brother James Nolan’ was draped across the front of Liberty Hall at the time.
At an inquiry into his death two days later, a jury determined that Nolan had indeed died from a baton blow, but that “the evidence was so conflicting that they were unable to say by whom the blow was inflicted”.
That same day, another ITGWU member caught up in the Dublin riots on 30th August, James Byrne of Lower Gloucester Street, also died from serious head injuries shortly after his release from Jervis Street Hospital.
Among the other martyrs of 1913 were teenagers Alicia Brady and Eugene Salmon
Brady was a 16-year-old Irish Women Workers’ Union member shot in the wrist by a strike-breaker during a Great Brunswick (now Pearse) Street scuffle on 18th December 1913. She died two weeks later from tetanus.
Salmon was a 17-year-old ITGWU member who was killed during the Church Street tenement disaster on 2nd September 1913 while trying in vain to save his four-year-old sister Elizabeth, having successfully saved his five other younger sisters from the crumbling four-storey building moments before. At the bottom of the Liberty Hall commemorative plaque is the famous ITGWU slogan, “An injury to one is the concern of all.