Michael Mallin
Photo: Michael Mallin
Born: 1 December 1874
Executed: 8 May 1916
1901 Census family
1901 Census Address: 12.1, Cuffe Street (Mansion House, Dublin)1
The 1901 Census return recorded the Mallin family. Michael’s father John, aged 46, is the head of the family, and his occupation was a house carpenter. He was married to Sarah, aged 47, a silk winder who cannot read. They had 3 sons recorded (Michael does not appear in the 1901 Census as he was in India on service with the British Army). Thomas (18) was following in his father’s footsteps and was also a house carpenter, John was aged 9 and Bartholomew was 6. There were 2 daughters, Mary (23) was a biscuit packer and Catherine was aged 12.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Dublin/Mansion_House/Cuffe_Street/1342648/
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai003797669/
Aged 34 at the time of the 1911 Census
1911 Census Address: 65.1, in Meath St. (Merchant's Quay, Dublin)1
The 1911 Census return recorded Michael Mallin aged 34, married for 8 years to Agnes Mallin who was aged 31. His occupation was a silk weaver. They had 2 sons in this Census - James (7), John (4) and a daughter Úna (2).
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Dublin/Merchant_s_Quay/Meath_St_/70083/
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai000159494/
Born in a tenement in the Liberties in 1974, Michael Mallin was one of 9 children. His father John was a boatwright and carpenter. His grandfather had a small boat-building yard at City quay in Dublin which had been in the family for 5 generations2. Michael went to Denmark Street National School. His uncle on his mother’s side was a Pay Sergeant in the British Army stationed at the Curragh and Mallin enlisted in the 21st Royal Scots Fusiliers as a drummer boy. He served 12 years in the British Army and received medals for his role in the Tirah campaign in India where he served for 6 years. While in India, he began to sympathise with the rebels the British Army were fighting. He returned home in 1902, (one year after the 1901 Census), and was apprenticed to his uncle, James Dowley, who had retired from the army and become a silk weaver. He married Agnes in 1903, whom he met while previously home on leave. Mallin became a qualified silk weaver (as we can see in the Census 1911) and also became secretary of a Trade Union. The address in Meath Street also served as a small shop where they sold tobacco, sweets and newspapers3.
A large number of his customers at the time were policemen who talked freely about their business, but an altercation with a police sergeant in the shop lost the police as customers. The shop went out of business due to his work with the 1913 strike and his part as Secretary of the Weavers’ Union. James Connolly appointed him as Chief-of Staff of the Irish Citizen Army, second in command to Connolly, to defend striking workers against the Dublin Metropolitan Police.
Under Michael Mallin, the branch which started with just under 15 men started drilling twice a week. He gave lectures on aspects of guerrilla and urban warfare and used his army experience to train the men. He became involved in the Irish Volunteers using fife and drum bands as a cover for training and arms trafficking. When Connolly was co-opted onto the military council of the IRB, Mallin and the ICA inevitably became involved in the Rising.
On Easter Monday, Mallin was in charge of the ICA force at St. Stephen’s Green with the Countess Markievicz as his second in command. This was not a good position to take as it was overlooked by the Shelbourne Hotel. It is also an open park with no cover except for the trenches that were dug out by the rebels. The British forces took control of the upper floors of the hotel and opened fire on the rebels in the trenches. Despite serious errors in military tactics, Mallin was admired and respected by those he commanded. Countess Markievicz later claimed that it was the faith shown by Mallin that inspired her conversion to Catholicism.
The ICA men retreated and occupied the Royal College of Surgeons to the west side of the Green where they held out, under intense sniper and machine-gun fire, until the order to surrender was delivered by Elizabeth O’Farrell. The garrison were marched to Richmond Barracks and there Mallin was separated from the rest of his men.
Michael Mallin was tried by court martial and at his trial he asserted that he had no knowledge of the Rising until that Easter Monday but he was found guilty and sentenced to death.
His family had believed he would be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, not death. His pregnant wife Agnes and brother Thomas went to see him before his execution. The conditions in the prison cell were not good. “There was a small grid in the wall above his head. There was little light. He had an old green blanket around him, and he said it was very cold. He had several days’ growth of beard and his eyes appeared to be fixed and glossy4”.
Mallin was a devout Catholic and he requested that “Úna and little Joseph, whom I will never hold in my arms again, are dedicated to the Church. I want them in the service of God for the good of my soul3. He hoped that his sons James (13) and John (11) would grow up to be big and strong and look after their mother. We can see that he is in a state of shock as he also displayed concern for the family dog, “Try and find the dog. I saw it when I was being brought to the Castle, but I was afraid to call it, in case they would shoot it3”. Mallin also requested that his wife never marry again.
When asked by his brother if the price was worth it he replied “It is worth it. Ireland is a grand country, but the people in it are rotters4. In his final words to his brother Thomas he said “I am dying in the hope that we have made Ireland a better Ireland for you to live in5”.
By his own admission, Mallin had left his family destitute and worried about how they would be provided for up until his final hours. Agnes and the children were helped by donations from the Irish Volunteer Dependents’ Fund and later by the IRA pension instituted by the new Irish state. She initially received £1 per week from the Dependent’s Fund and resented that she was allocated less money that other beneficiaries due to her husbands’ income at time of his death. Middle class widows were given substantially more money in spite of others’ more precarious circumstances6.
Agnes Mallin developed consumption after the execution of her husband and never completely recovered. She died in 1932 at the age of 54 from a bone disease that affected her spine and kept her bedridden for the last year of her life.
On 15th September 2015, Fr. Joseph Mallin, the son of Michael Mallin and the only surviving child of the executed leaders of the 1916 Rising celebrated his 102nd birthday. Born in 1913, Fr. Mallin was just two and a half years old when his father was executed in Kilmainham Gaol7. Like many of the sons of the executed leaders, he attended St. Enda's and had his fees paid for by a fund set up to support the leaders' families. The Pearse Museum have a photograph of Father Mallin as a boy playing a harp seated next to Margaret Pearse, the mother of Pádraig and William, and a basket containing both the Irish and American flags. Father Joseph Mallin has been a priest in Hong Kong since 1948. Father Mallin was chaplain at Wah Yan Primary School in Wan Chai and lives at the Wah Yan College for boys. His sister Úna also fulfilled his father’s wish and became a Loreto nun.
Sources:
Go to Michael O’Hanrahan
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