THEN AND NOW

New Zealand Tablet, 12 February 1914, Page 43

THEN AND NOW

THE FAMOUS ‘BOTTLE’ RIOT IN DUBLIN Many English papers have published vivid descriptions of the ‘ scene ’ at the great Covent Garden Theatre, London, when a band of daring and energetic suffragettes assembled in a box and delivered vigorous addresses to a huge ‘ Society ’ audience, amongst whom were the King and Queen.’ No doubt (says a writer in the Belfast Irish Weekly) the minutes occupied by the enterprising 'ladies in their megaphone harangues may fairly be described as ‘ exacting ’ ; but if ‘ soft words butter no parsnips,’ but make a song instead, the Duke of Buckingham, in Bellairs’ play, reminds us that ‘ angry words ’ do not matter ‘ they don’t break bones, nor give black eyes’ ; and the suffragettes at Covent Garden were in an argumentative rather than in a militant mood, for they employed no more dangerous missiles than leaflets of the usual ‘ Votes-for- • Women’ variety. This occurred in London on the evening of December 13, 1913. A much more remarkable .‘ scene,’ and one that has taken its place in the annals of modern Ireland, was witnessed in. the Old Hawkins Street Theatre, Dublin, on the evening of December 14, 1822 — just 91 years previously almost to the day. Then the King’s representative in Ireland no less a personage than the Marquis of Wellesley, elder brother of the victor of Waterloo —was assailed by political fanatics ; and the story of the ‘ Bottle Riot ’ is well worth recalling at this interesting epoch in the history of our country. In 1822, as to-day, an overwhelming majority of the people of Dublin City were Nationalists; but the Orange ascendancy who controlled its municipal fortunes were in power —and were industriously laying broad and deep the foundations of that ruin and decay ’ which was the only heritage bequeathed by them to succeeding generations. The Marquis of Wellesley was a liberal-minded man. He favored Catholic Emancipation and in 1812 he brought forward a motion favorable to the Catholics in the House of Lords. The motion was, of course,,rejected. Nine years laterin December, 1821— came .to Ireland

as Lord Lieutenant; and of his administration Henry Grattan, jun., son of the illustrious patriot, wrote at a later period:—‘When Viceroy in Ireland he showed himself a friend of liberty ; bub he was thwarted by subordinates, assailed by violence, overwhelmed with abuse, and impeded in the praiseworthy efforts ho made to extend equal rights and equal protection to all classes of the population of Ireland. But Lord Wellesley proceeded firmly on his course; and to him in a great degree is Ireland indebted for the successful opposition to religious bigotry and intolerance.’ King William’s famous equestrian statue —now restored and re-furbished, and established as ‘ a joy forever,’ if not exactly a thing of beauty,’ by a Nationalist Corporationhad held its place in College Green since A.D. 1701. When the Ascendancy ruled Dublin, it was their gracious habit to ‘ decorate ’ the monument with festive devices and ribald insults to the majority of the population each succeeding 12th of July. This petty practice often resulted in ‘ disturbances ’ ; and, on July 11, 1822, Daniel O’Connell addressed a letter to the Viceroy, requesting him to prohibit the annual display.’ The great lawyer maintained that the exhibition of The Customary Offensive and Blasphemous * mottoes '• was illegal, and a ‘provocation to tumult.’ Lord Wellesley had been regarded as a friend of the majority of the Irish people; but he had announced that his business was ‘to administer the laws, not change them.’ Though expressing disappointment, O’Connell accepted the situation. He wrote to the Marquis;—‘As you cannot alter, I respectfully, but firmly, call upon you to administer th /air, and to suppress an illegal and insulting nuisance. . . Tomorrow decides the character of your Excellency’s administration.’ Lord Wellesley was a fair-minded man; he was not strong-minded. O’Connell’s appeal, made in the interests of peace and order, embarrassed him. He did not wish to exasperate the Catholic people; he feared to rouse the wrath of the intolerant and dominant Ascendancy : so he tried the effect of private remonstrance on Alderman Bradley King, Grand Master Ellis, and other ‘ leaders ’ of the bigoted group. They spurned the Viceroy’s request : the statue was ‘dressed’ ’with the usual mottoes and, to quote from a historian of the period:—‘The police looked on without interfering. Orange insolence was rampant. The peace of the streets was disturbed. The favored Orange band were not only to dress the statue, but to yell and shout, and force the drivers of all vehicles to uncover their heads in passing the idol. Accidents happened in the confusion. Peaceable citizens were alarmed.’ Following upon Wellesley’s well-meant attempt to allay the fires of religious bigotry, the leaders of the Ascendancy seized the opportunity of fanning them into fierce flame. Archbishop Magee, of Dublin, issued an address, in the course of which he declared— ‘ The Dissenters (Presbyterians) have a religion without a Church, and the Papists have a Church without a religion.’ So the feud was kept alive until the sth of November came around ; and the Ascendancy decided to ‘dress’ King-William-on-Horseback again. On this occasion the Lord Lieutenant ‘ put his foot down ’ and on the morning of November 4 ‘ a body of troops surrounding -the statue prevented the Orangemen from dressing it.’ Wellesley had devoted wefeks and months to the task of ‘conciliating’ the infuriated masters of Dublin—and of Ireland. He had dined them at the Castle and dined with them at the Mansion House ; he had flattered and fawned upon them; but he had previously spoken in favor of Catholic liberty; and when he interfered to prevent a gross public insult from being offered to an overwhelming Catholic majority in the heart of their own city, the fury of the Ascendancy expended itself in successive paroxysms of vulgar abuse. The Rev.. Sir Harcourt Lees discovered that the Marquis had sold his soul to O’Connell, the Pope,, and the devil ’ ; and pamphlets denouncing the King’s representative fell from the i' loyalist ’ press fast as forged ‘ Papal Bulls ninety-on© years later. ,

Thus Ascendancy feeling grew more vengeful, and the night of December 14, 1823, came on, and the locale of the following ‘ lively ’ incidents was the Hawkins Street Theatre. What happened let the narrator tell: —• Every part of the house was crowded to suffocation. The dress boxes were radiant with female loveliness. The Marquis of Wellesley, his small but graceful person arrayed in scarlet, his intellectual head uncovered, soon entered the viceregal box, which was quite superb with velvet and gold, and, after bowing repeatedly to the audience, the majority of whom rose and received him with hearty acclamations, sat down on his gilded chair of state. Goldsmith’s amusing comedy, She Stoops to Conquer,’ had proceeded for some time, when disturbances commenced in the upper gallery. ‘A groan for Wellesley ‘No Popish Governors!’ ‘The Boyne Water!’ ‘Protestant Ascendancy!’ Such cries were shouted aloud. . . Every now and then riots continued to break out in the gallery. A considerable band seemed to obey a leader. ‘The glorious memory’ was called for. The band of disturbers would now retire to the back of the gallery to sing party songs and again come to the front brandishing bludgeons. In the interval between the comedy and the farce, * God save the King ’ and ‘ Patrick’s Day ’ were played by the orchestra, the latter of which was loudly applauded by the Viceroy and his attendants. Mingled groans and hisses and applause—a dissonant bedlam din, in short—resounded in the upper gallery. While the music was being played, an apple was pelted from the gallery at the viceregal box. Next an empty quart bottle was flung with great force by a burly carpenter named Handbidge, that struck with a loud sound on the top of the box just over Lord Wellesley’s head. Rebounding, the bottle fell into the orchestra, and, though nobody was hurt, the fright which seied the musicians put an end to their music. One of them held up the bottle, on which boxes and pit roared out, ‘ Seize the miscreant The old Marquis had fearlessly stretched his gray, high-domed head out of the box and looked up at the gallery, his penetrating eyes all aflame with indignation. In this tale of the Dublin ruled by the Ascendancy 91 years ago you may note the ‘catch-cries’ and the spirit of the ‘ Carsonism ’ that we read about in December, 1913. ' v : The bludgeon-men in the gallery had allies similarly armed in the pit, and these joined in the demoniac chorus. - Then, while the threatened statesman sat still in his box, ‘ a huge lump of wood was' dashed from the top gallery on to the box next the Viceroy’s, which, rebounding, Passed Between Him and the Chandelier, struck the proscenium, and finally fell on the stage. Confusion and tumult then ‘ reigned supreme.’ Women shrieked; men shouted aloud; panic-stricken people rushed wildly to the doors and, ’finally, a troop of soldiers arrived, and arrested five active disturbers. Three of these worthies were .subsequently brought to trial but a Grand Jury ‘of the right sort'’ threw out the bills. The Crown persisted in sending the cases to a petty jury, who easily managed to ‘ disagree,’ though the evidence was as conclusive against the accused men as it well could be. Similar occurrences have not been unknown. in courts north of Dublin within the past year or two. - Such was the Bottle Riot.’ It did not lessen ths Lord Lieutenant’s predilections in favor of the cause of liberty; it injured the cause of the noble, right reverend, and unreverend bigots who were the worthy predecessors of Sir Edward Carson’s ‘ Provisional Government’ ; and it is recalled now as an example of traditional Ascendancy spirit and methodsalso because the narrative proves that when Twentieth Century Suffragettes go to the playhouse on a political mission bent . they are more reasonable, ' better-mannered, ' and more humane than the Dublin Orangemen" who tried .to kill the representative of King George V.’s great-grand-uncle and namesake on December 14, 1822. •