Although not an interview on Bill’s Highland Radio Castaway show, this is article is included here as one of Bill’s chance meetings that led to a chat over a cup of tea.
A Chat with a Stranger, 1971
Sometimes a smile and a nod with a stranger, can lead to conversation, and on several occasions I have been rewarded with fascinating life stories.
For instance, on a lovely morning in the Spring of 1971 I was strolling along Sydenham Avenue in Belfast when I stopped to converse with an elderly lady who was out in her small front garden snipping things with her secateurs. She had a pleasant cultured voice and wore her grey hair up in braids.
I was still in my twenties and she must have been about seventy, but we liked each other immediately and after a short conversation she invited me in for a cup of tea.
Her name was Kathleen Mahony. As we chatted I spotted a photograph on a table of a man in army uniform, whom she told me was her husband George who had died in March of 1964. They had lived most of their lives in India where George was a doctor in the British Army, and she went on to talk about their life in India and the story of George who had arrived in Dublin on 25th April, 1916, – day two of the Easter Rising, and it’s worth recounting. I did some research and this is a brief account of Dr. George Mahony’s part in the Rising.
While serving in Northwest India in 1914 and working on a cholera epidemic high in the hill country in the Himalayas, Dr. George Henry Mahony of the Indian Army Medical Service was sent tumbling down a precipice by the pony of his colleague as they negotiated a narrow path.
Forty feet down he managed to grab and cling on to a boulder and after a two-hour struggle, the Sikh bearers got a rope around him and hauled him to safety, though quite badly injured. After a long convalescence and recovery he sailed to Ireland on leave to his home in Dublin, arriving on Tuesday 25th April, 1916 at 10.30 a.m. in Harcourt Street Station after spending a convivial weekend with friends in Wicklow. It was day two of the Easter Rising.
Finding no cabs or taxis he started to walk towards St. Stephen’s Green in full uniform. A man advised him to cover up his uniform, as “The Shinners are out”. He hadn’t heard of the term and continued on his way, and crossing Dame Street and heading for the Quays, he was advised again “Not that way, the Shinners are there”.
A number of people offered him advice but a reverend gentleman on a bicycle stopped and introduced himself as Canon Hemphill, and told him that he was in grave danger walking around in uniform, and suggested he come home with him. After detouring rebel positions they reached Leeson Street where a woman standing in her doorway warned them “ Not that way, an officer has just been shot up there” and she added “and get out of that uniform at once for God’s sake”.
After lunch at Canon Hemphill’s home, he borrowed a ‘ mac’ to cover his uniform and set off for Ballsbridge attempting to reach his aunt’s home in Drumcondra. He found a garage and it took a goodly sum to persuade the owner to drive him to Drumcondra, as all his other drivers had gone into the city to see the ‘fun’.
Their car was stopped at the canal by several rebels who searched it for munitions and one asked Mahony to open his coat, where his uniform resulted in his being arrested immediately. At gunpoint they marched him to the offices of the Dublin and Wicklow Manure Co. The rebel officer there recognized the gorget patches and said “Oh so you’re in the Indian Medical Service”. When Mahony said he was, the officer replied “Sorry about this, but I have to take you prisoner. Incidentally, I was once stationed in Secunderabad myself”. Following a brief interrogation, he was locked in a small lavatory. After he had been brought a cup of tea, he was moved into a large office where three British soldiers were also prisoners.
Towards evening he and the other prisoners were marched to the GPO where Louise Gavan Duffy brought them tea and promised Dr. Mahony that she would try to get a message of his situation to his aunt in Drumcondra.
Mahony played three-handed bridge with Chalmers and King, fellow prisoners, for a while, then settled down to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame given to him by The O’Rahilly. Quartermaster Fitzgerald arrived and brought him on a tour of their ‘hospital’ on the ground floor where Mahony immediately started helping wounded rebels.
James Connolly was supervising the building of a barricade in Princes’ Street when he was hit by a bullet. Without allowing his men to know he had been hit, he strolled back to the GPO and quietly called Dr. Mahony who dressed and bandaged the wound behind a screen and was admonished by Connolly to say nothing about it as he donned his jacket and returned to the fray.
Connolly was later wounded in the ankle by a ricocheting bullet when outside the building. He crawled back to the PO where Dr. Mahony put on a tourniquet and they found some chloroform. Mahony released the tourniquet, fished out some bits of bone, and ligatured the small vessels and gave the patient and injection of morphia. Then he fashioned a splint with a foot-piece, and settled him down on a mattress on the floor of the GPO. Some time later Connolly called him over and told him with a smile “You know, you’re the best thing we’ve captured this week”.
In the last hours in the burning Post Office, Mahony was again called to tend to Connolly whose ‘cradle’ over his ankle had been smashed by a man falling over it. Mahony later wrote of the general situation: “I found it impressive. I could see no panic, no obvious signs of fear – and in the circumstances that would have been excusable, for parts of the building were already an inferno and the roof and ceilings had already given way in places. To me, in that hasty moment, it seemed that Pearse, in the way he held them all together, was a gifted leader and a man supremely fitted to command”.
There were sixteen wounded men that The O’Rahilly wanted taken to Jervis Street Hospital and Dr. Mahony was to accompany them. Mahony tried to persuade Connolly to come with them, to which the wounded leader responded brusquely “No, my place is with my men”,
At 6 p.m. the party moved out led by Capt. Martin O’Reilly, consisting of Father Flanagan, George Mahony, the sixteen wounded men and a few able bodied men to help carry the wounded, and twelve of the fifteen women who had stuck it out till then. They crawled through the tunnelled walls into the Coliseum Theatre in Henry Street, found a side door leading into Prince’s Street, and led by Fr. Flanagan the little procession, Red Cross flags held high, crept into Middle Abbey Street where they were fired upon until the flags were spotted. Capt. Orr of the Sherwood Foresters stepped forward with drawn revolver and shouted “ Bearer of the flag and one other advance and parley”. Fr. Flanagan and Mahony stepped forward and following a gesture by the priest, Mahony opened his coat to show the khaki jacket.
So ended the experience of a British Army doctor who happened to be caught up in the momentous events of Easter 1916.
When you look at the painting by Walter Paget, called “Birth of the Irish Republic” showing the leaders of the rebellion standing around James Connolly’s stretcher while the P.O. burns, take note of the man kneeling at the foot of the stretcher – Dr. George Mahony.
Kathleen became a good friend, who came to visit us in Raphoe on several occasions in the following years, and on one of those occasions she brought her manuscript of life in India which she left for me to read. It was not only an entertaining read but an historical document, and I suggested she have it published, but it didn’t happen – then. Kathleen’s party piece was Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, which she played for us on each visit to Oakfield Park.
She presented me with George’s cap badge and his Indian silver cigarette case. Then the cards and letters stopped coming and we lost touch. I loaned the cap badge and cigarette case to the Museum in Letterkenny as part of the 1916 exhibition.
A gentleman called Declan Warde was browsing through the 1916 Exhibition in Letterkenny and he spotted the cap badge and cigarette case.
He got in touch with me and gave me the contact number for Dr. Patrick Walker, Kathleen’s retired gynaecologist grandson. Long story cut short – I got in touch with Patrick, went to visit him in London and returned the cap badge but he insisted I keep the cigarette case. We talked about Kathleen’s manuscript which was in his possession, and it has now been published, called “Memoirs of a Memsabib” and the friendship with Kathleen has now stretched over three generations.
And all because I stopped for a chat…