25 November 1999 Edition
Remembering the Past: Erskine Childers
Robert Erskine Childers, republican propagandist and author, was born in London, England in June 1870.
Reared at Glendalough House, Annamoe, County Wicklow, the home of his cousin, Robert Barton, he was educated at Haileybury and Trinity College, Cambridge and in 1894 secured employment as a committee clerk at the English House of Commons.
A skilled yachtsman, in 1903 Childers published The Riddle of the Sands, a fictional account of Greman pereparations to invade England, based on his experience of sailing holidays in the Baltic.
The following year he married Mary Ellen Osgood of Boston and in 1910 he resigned from the House of Commons to devote himself to political work.
On the day of the Howth gun-running, 26 July 1914, Childers sailed into Howth harbour, County Dublin, in his yacht, the Asgard, with 900 rifles and 14,000 rounds of ammunition, purchased in Germany by Darrell Figgis for the Irish Volunteers.
He served in the British navy during the First World War, but after demobilisatuion he ebandoned his earlier Home Rule sympathies and became totlly committed to the republican cause and the establishment of an Irish republic.
Settling in Dublin in March 1919, he joined Sinn Féin and during the following months he worked closely with George Gavan Duffy and Sean T. O'Kelly in Paris in their efforts to secure for Ireland a hearing at the Peace Conference.
He was elected to Dáil Éireann as TD for County Wicklow in 1921 and in March of the same year, following the arrest of Desmond Fitzgerald, he was appointed Minister for Publicity and editor of the Irish Bulletin, a republican newssheet founded in November 1919 to counter false British propaganda during the Tan War.
One of the proncipal sceretaries to the Irish delegation in London during the Treaty negotiations from October to December 1921, Childders strongly opposed the Treaty. He supported the republican side during the Civil War and was appointed IRA Director of Publicity and editor of the short-lived republican newspaper, the republic of Ireland (Poblacht na hÉireann).
While visiting Barton's home at Annamoe, County Wicklow, in November 1922, he was arrested by Free State troops and imprisoned in Wicklow Jail. Transferred to Portobello Barracks in Dublin, where he was brutally tortured, he was court-martialled in camera on 17 November under new draconian legislation, on a charge of possession of a revolver (which had been given to him by his former comrade, Michael Collins) and sentenced to death. A week later, while an appeal was pending in the High Court, he was shot by firing squad in Portobello Barracks.
In addition to The Riddle of the Sands, Childers' other published works included, War and the Arme Blanche (1910); the Framework of Home Rule (1911); Military Rule in ireland (1920); and The Constructive Works of Dáil Éireann (1921).
Erskine Childers was executed on 24 November 1922, 77 years ago this week.
Reared at Glendalough House, Annamoe, County Wicklow, the home of his cousin, Robert Barton, he was educated at Haileybury and Trinity College, Cambridge and in 1894 secured employment as a committee clerk at the English House of Commons.
A skilled yachtsman, in 1903 Childers published The Riddle of the Sands, a fictional account of Greman pereparations to invade England, based on his experience of sailing holidays in the Baltic.
The following year he married Mary Ellen Osgood of Boston and in 1910 he resigned from the House of Commons to devote himself to political work.
On the day of the Howth gun-running, 26 July 1914, Childers sailed into Howth harbour, County Dublin, in his yacht, the Asgard, with 900 rifles and 14,000 rounds of ammunition, purchased in Germany by Darrell Figgis for the Irish Volunteers.
He served in the British navy during the First World War, but after demobilisatuion he ebandoned his earlier Home Rule sympathies and became totlly committed to the republican cause and the establishment of an Irish republic.
Settling in Dublin in March 1919, he joined Sinn Féin and during the following months he worked closely with George Gavan Duffy and Sean T. O'Kelly in Paris in their efforts to secure for Ireland a hearing at the Peace Conference.
He was elected to Dáil Éireann as TD for County Wicklow in 1921 and in March of the same year, following the arrest of Desmond Fitzgerald, he was appointed Minister for Publicity and editor of the Irish Bulletin, a republican newssheet founded in November 1919 to counter false British propaganda during the Tan War.
One of the proncipal sceretaries to the Irish delegation in London during the Treaty negotiations from October to December 1921, Childders strongly opposed the Treaty. He supported the republican side during the Civil War and was appointed IRA Director of Publicity and editor of the short-lived republican newspaper, the republic of Ireland (Poblacht na hÉireann).
While visiting Barton's home at Annamoe, County Wicklow, in November 1922, he was arrested by Free State troops and imprisoned in Wicklow Jail. Transferred to Portobello Barracks in Dublin, where he was brutally tortured, he was court-martialled in camera on 17 November under new draconian legislation, on a charge of possession of a revolver (which had been given to him by his former comrade, Michael Collins) and sentenced to death. A week later, while an appeal was pending in the High Court, he was shot by firing squad in Portobello Barracks.
In addition to The Riddle of the Sands, Childers' other published works included, War and the Arme Blanche (1910); the Framework of Home Rule (1911); Military Rule in ireland (1920); and The Constructive Works of Dáil Éireann (1921).
Erskine Childers was executed on 24 November 1922, 77 years ago this week.