The Inquest on the Death of Thomas Ashe

From a Speech Given by Aidan Arnold
26th August 2015

Tonight, I want to talk about an aspect of Thomas Ashe that is largely forgotten. Not about who he was, where he came from or what he did in 1916, but about the inquest on the death of Thomas Ashe.

About 25 years ago while browsing through an old second-hand bookshop I came across a booklet entitled The Death of Thomas Ashe, Full Report of the Inquest. It was published by J. M. Butler of 41 Amiens Street in 1917. This was a word-for-word record of the eleven days of evidence given at the inquest on the death of Thomas Ashe.

I attended, as did my three daughters, Corduff National School where Thomas Ashe was headmaster from 1908 until 1916. I wrote a play entitled The Legacy of Ashbourne based on this detailed record of the inquest. Along with a group of parents we put it on to raise money for Corduff School. My speech tonight is based on that factual record.

The Case for Both Sides

The State’s Case

The State’s case was that Thomas Ashe was serving a two-year prison sentence for sedition arising out of speeches he made in 1917. He refused to obey prison rules. With other prisoners he took part in what was described as a prison riot, breaking glass in the cells and damaging furniture before going on hunger strike.

The prison authorities were forced to act to maintain order. They had to force-feed him to protect his life but unfortunately he died in the process. What happened to him, they argued, was self-inflicted arising from his own actions.

The Case for the Ashe Family

The case for the Ashe family was that Thomas Ashe and the other prisoners had demanded to be treated as political prisoners and not criminals. To break their spirits the prison authorities had illegally removed the prisoners’ beds, bedding and boots from their cells. Their hunger strike had been sparked by this illegal action.

There was no riot. The only glass broken in the cells was the spyholes in the doors so prisoners could call out to each other. The force-feeding was brutally enforced and Ashe had actually choked to death as a result.

Witnesses

The witnesses included the Lord Mayor of Dublin who had intervened to help the prisoners and to stop them from being maltreated. The chairman of the Prison Board, Max Green, was called but refused to answer any questions, claiming what he called “Privilege” after every question. Various doctors were called in evidence. Most gave fair and balanced testimony but Dr William Henry Lowe, who had administered forcible feeding, was a particularly unconvincing witness.

Ashe’s next of kin was represented by Timothy Michael Healy, an experienced politician and legal expert. He had been a member of Parnell’s Nationalist Party.

Healy’s Summary for Ashe’s Next of Kin

“We have been investigating the death of a very unusual man, a death so tragic and a man so remarkable, that as we know his coffin was followed by 100,000 people.”

Healy stated that throughout the proceedings the prison authorities had not uttered one word of regret. Their case, he argued, was that the deceased was the architect of his own misfortune and had been treated with absolute legality.

“That case… is, I say now without apology, as false as hell itself.”

He maintained that Ashe had been left in a naked cell for two days and two nights without bed, bedding or boots.

“I don’t know what I have done to deserve this treatment.”

Healy argued that the stripping of the cells sparked the hunger strike and condemned the use of “privilege” to withhold information.

“The privilege to conceal responsibility. The privilege to hide the guilty.”

He concluded by urging the jury to find that Thomas Ashe loved life and that his life had been brutally taken from him.

Hanna’s Summary for the State

The State was represented by Henry Hanna KC, a lawyer of distinction who would later become a High Court judge.

Hanna criticised Healy’s conduct during the inquest and urged the jury to focus only on the facts.

“Do you believe if Thomas Ashe had taken the food offered to him… that he would be dead today? He would not.”

He maintained that the law obliged prison authorities to preserve a prisoner’s life through artificial feeding and that medical evidence showed death from heart failure following congestion of the lungs.

“Father, we made a great fight.”

“If I die, I die in a good cause.”

Hanna argued that Ashe knowingly risked death through his actions.

The Verdict

The jury found that Thomas Ashe died of heart failure and congestion of the lungs on September 25th.

They determined that his death was caused by the removal of his bed, bedding and boots, being left to lie on the cold floor for fifty hours, and being subjected to forcible feeding in his weakened condition after five or six days of hunger strike.

They censured the Castle authorities for failing to act promptly and condemned forcible feeding as an inhuman and dangerous operation.

They found that Dr Henry Lowe had administered forcible feeding unskilfully and described the removal of the bed, bedding and boots as an unfeeling and barbarous act.

The jury tendered their sympathy to the relatives of the deceased in what they described as a sad and tragic occurrence.

Aidan Arnold
26th August 2015

Thomas Ashe: The Fingal Years

Aidan Arnold
7th March 2017

I want to take this opportunity today to salute a not forgotten but sometimes underestimated hero of 1916, a native son of Kerry and an adopted son of Fingal.

Although Thomas Ashe is rightly remembered as a Kerry-born Irish Nationalist, the Ashe (originally D’Esse) family came from France at the time of the Norman Conquest and settled in Devon. From there they crossed to Ireland, settling in Kildare in the 12th century. In the late 1600s or early 1700s their lands were confiscated when they refused to renounce their Catholic faith. One family member was hanged for rebellion during this period. Most of the family later moved to Kerry.

Many generations later Gregory and Ellen Ashe had ten children there, Thomas being the sixth. The American actor Gregory Peck was a cousin of Thomas Ashe.

When Thomas Ashe left his beloved Kinard and became principal of Corduff National School in Lusk, North County Dublin, in March 1908 at just 23 years of age, he was not moving as far from his family roots as one might think.

My own grandparents arrived in Corduff in 1902. I was born there in 1950 and grew up less than one hundred yards from Corduff School. When I married in 1976 I moved that same hundred yards, raising my own family facing the school and the house where Thomas Ashe lived during his eight years in Fingal. I attended Corduff National School, as have two further generations of my family.

When I first entered the school in 1955, Mary Monks — respectfully known as Miss Monks — was a living link to Thomas Ashe and the Easter Rising. She had taught with Ashe until 1916 as a junior teacher.

My abiding memory is of a lively white-haired teacher, friendly but firm. I vividly recall receiving my first slap across the knuckles with a wooden ruler for doing a subtraction sum backwards at about six years of age. Corporal punishment was still permitted in the 1950s, though Corduff practised it sparingly. The worst I recall head teacher Ned Dunne doing was losing patience, throwing a piece of chalk and shouting, “I wish it was a brick.”

Liberty Hall in Fingal

Thomas Ashe’s house adjoining Corduff School became a meeting place for leading political, sporting and literary figures of the time. Regular visitors included Maud Gonne, Sean O’Casey, Eamon De Valera and Michael Collins.

After one spirited gathering, someone jumped on a chair and wrote above the front door: “Liberty Hall.” The significance was unmistakable.

The original Liberty Hall in Dublin stood on Beresford Place and Eden Quay near the Custom House. It began as a hotel before becoming headquarters of the Irish Citizen Army. During the 1913 Dublin Lock-out, Maud Gonne and Constance Markievicz ran a soup kitchen there for workers’ families.

After the outbreak of the First World War, a banner hung from its façade reading:

“We Serve Neither King nor Kaiser, But Ireland.”

The Irish Worker newspaper, founded by Jim Larkin, operated from Liberty Hall from 1911 to 1914. James Connolly edited it during Larkin’s imprisonment in 1913. It was suppressed in 1914 under the Defence of the Realm Act — the same law later used against Thomas Ashe after the Easter Rising.

Formation of a Revolutionary

Ashe’s social conscience was likely shaped in Kinard under the influence of his parents and the oral storytelling traditions of the seanachai. Stories of the Famine and of landlord oppression were part of his upbringing.

His love of sport, music and Irish culture grounded him. Through involvement with the Gaelic League, the Irish National Teachers Organisation, and the trade union movement, he became further politicised. He was a supporter of Jim Larkin and a close friend of James Connolly during the 1913 Lock-out.

Recognising his organisational ability, the Gaelic League sent him to America from February to September 1914 to raise funds. There he met figures such as John Devoy and Roger Casement.

On returning to Ireland, Ashe immersed himself in recruiting and training young men in Fingal. His involvement in the GAA, the Gaelic League and the founding of the Black Raven Pipe Band became fertile ground for the Fifth Battalion of the Fingal Volunteers.

By early 1916 each member of the Fifth Battalion possessed some form of firearm.

An Educator Ahead of His Time

As head teacher in Corduff, Ashe promoted Irish language, culture, music and history alongside formal curriculum subjects. He believed education should equip children socially as well as academically — particularly those for whom primary school would be their only formal education.

He took special interest in children with disabilities, who at the time could easily be excluded from schooling.

Kitty Kelly, a former pupil struck by polio at age four, later recalled how her mother feared she would never attend school. Ashe ensured she was admitted.

“She thought I would never be able to go to school or read or write.”

Kitty described being wheeled to school in a bath chair donated by a local farmer, sitting by the turf fire in winter, and rolling downhill on the journey home.

Easter 1916

On Holy Thursday 1916, Ashe gathered flowers from the school garden and asked Mary Monks to place them before the Blessed Sacrament the following day.

On Easter Monday he commanded the Fifth Battalion of the Fingal Volunteers, tasked with disrupting communications in North County Dublin. By Thursday they controlled much of Fingal. On Friday they captured the RIC barracks in Ashbourne, preventing reinforcements reaching Dublin.

Eleven policemen were killed in the fighting. Two civilians, John Hogan and JJ Carroll, were also killed in crossfire. John Crenigan of Roganstown and Tommy Rafferty of Lusk died among the Volunteers.

Despite their success, word came on Saturday of the surrender in Dublin and Padraig Pearse’s order to lay down arms.

Imprisonment and Death

On May 11th 1916 Ashe was sentenced to death alongside Eamon De Valera, later commuted to penal servitude for life. He served time in Mountjoy, Dartmoor and Lewes Prison before release under amnesty in June 1917.

Two months later he was rearrested for “Causing Disaffection Among The Civilian Population” and sentenced to two years hard labour.

Less than a month later, following a hunger strike in Mountjoy Prison, Thomas Ashe died in the Mater Hospital as a result of force-feeding.

The Inquest

At the November 1st 1917 inquest, Timothy Michael Healy addressed the jury:

“Thomas Ashe is dead. Other nations will read about it in times to come… Thomas Ashe loved life and that life was brutally taken from him.”

The verdict condemned Dublin Castle authorities, censured prison officials, and described forcible feeding as inhuman and dangerous.

Legacy

In 1995 I wrote a play entitled The Legacy of Ashbourne based on the inquest. Corduff National School staged it to raise funds.

The legacy Thomas Ashe left to Fingal, Kerry, Ireland and beyond was one of personal sacrifice and political courage. This “humble, uncomplaining schoolmaster” deserves a permanent place of honour in our history.

Let Me Carry Your Cross for Ireland, Lord

Let me carry your cross for Ireland, Lord!
The hour of her trial draws near,
And the pangs and the pains of the sacrifice
May be borne by comrades dear.

But, Lord, take me from the offering throng,
There are many far less prepared,
Though anxious and all as they are to die
That Ireland may be spared.

Let me carry your cross for Ireland, Lord!
My cares in this world are few,
And few are the tears will fall for me
When I go on my way for you.

Spare, oh spare to their loved ones dear
The brother and son and sire,
That the cause we love may never die
In the land of our heart’s desire.

Let me carry your cross for Ireland, Lord!
Let me suffer the pain and the shame,
I bow my head to their rage and hate,
And I take on myself the blame.

Let them do with my body whate’er they will,
My spirit I offer to you,
That the faithful few who heard her call
May be spared to Roisin Dubh.

Let me carry your cross for Ireland, Lord!
For Ireland weak with tears,
For the aged man of the clouded brow,
And the child of the tender years;
For the empty homes of her golden plains;
For the hopes of her future, too;
Let me carry your cross for Ireland, Lord!
For the cause of Roisin Dubh.

Aidan Arnold
7th March 2017