The Howth & Kilcoole Gunrunning 1914 - The Limerick Connection:

Sir Thomas Myles

Desmond Hall, Newcastle West, County Limerick

7:30pm Thursday 14 August 2014

by Paddy Waldron

WWW version:

http://pwaldron.info/desmondhall/

Introduction

The Limerick people aboard the three gun-running yachts in 1914 came from very diverse social backgrounds:

Conor O Brien, his sister Kitty O Brien and their second cousin Mary Spring-Rice were all greatgrandchildren of Thomas Spring-Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle (1790-1866), whose statue stands in the People's Park, Pery Square:
They were aristocrats, Anglo-Irish, English-born, children of absentee landlords with large Limerick estates, members of the Church of Ireland
See 1881 Spring-Rice census return and 1881 O Brien census return
The O Brien siblings were also grandsons of a revered Irish nationalist leader, William Smith O'Brien
Tom Fitzsimons of Foynes Island was from the Catholic farming class
See 1901 and 1911 census returns
George Cahill of Barracks Cross, Corgrig was from the Catholic labouring class
See 1901 and 1911 census returns
Thomas Myles was from the commercial and professional middle class of Limerick city
See 1901 and 1911 census returns

Sir Thomas Myles (1857-1937)

Childhood in Limerick

The future Sir Thomas Myles was the third of eleven children born to John Myles (c1808-1871) and his second wife, Prudence Bradshaw (1833-1904)
He was born, probably over the shop in Catherine Street, on 20 April 1857 and baptised in St. Michael's Church on 27 May following.
The second child Anne Bradshaw Myles probably died in infancy as a younger sister born in 1864 was called Anna.
The family residence later moved to 13 Upper Mallow Street.
Tom Myles and his older brother Jack, although separated by more than two years in age, were both admitted to Trinity College Dublin on the same date, 22 January 1873, aged 17 and 15 respectively.
See Index to Trinity College Dublin student admission register, 1868-1879 and Trinity matriculation register, 1847-1876, Entrance books 1847-1876
Both brothers had previously been educated in Limerick by Rev. James John Hall (d.1874) the principal of the Diocesan School on Roxborough Road (completed in 1838 to a design by James Pain, but no longer extant)
Both Myles brothers shared sporting skills and interests (rowing, sailing, swimming, rugby, boxing, shot put, etc.)

The early Home Rule movement

Their College tutor was Dr. George Ferdinand Shaw (1821-99), an early Home Ruler

A generation earlier (1848), Shaw was present in the rooms of John Kells Ingram (1823-1907) in House 30 in Trinity on the night when the latter wrote The Memory of the Dead, better known as Who fears to speak of '98
Shaw was briefly the first editor of The Irish Times in 1859
Shaw's recent tutees had included Bram Stoker (1847-1912)
G. F. Shaw should not be confused with his apparently unrelated contemporary George Carr Shaw (1814-85), father of George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).
Not surprisingly, they were confused in their lifetimes, by the local laundry.
The two unrelated families got to meet each other as the laundry company mixed up the delivery so the Shaws of Synge Street got the sheets of the Shaws of Harrington Street
The Home Government Association was launched by Isaac Butt on 1 September 1870.
Besides Butt, the principal persons involved in the Home Government Association, all of them Irish Protestants, were Shaw, soon to be tutor to the Myles brothers; Major Laurence Knox, founder of The Irish Times and E. R. King Harman, from a leading landlord family.
By November 1873, there had been behind-the-scenes contacts between Fenian sympathisers, the Catholic Church and the Home Government Association.
Following a meeting called for by Dr. Keane, the Catholic bishop of Cloyne, and held in Dublin, there emerged a new body to replace the old Home Government Association.
This new organisation, which enjoyed Fenian and Catholic support, was the Home Rule League

Myles the Surgeon

Thomas's medical degrees were conferred in 1880 and 1881
He was resident surgeon in Dr. Steevens's Hospital from 1881 to 1884; and later associated with Jervis Street and Richmond hospitals
On Saturday, 6 May 1882, Dr. Thomas Myles, just turned 25 years of age, was summoned from Dr. Steevens's Hospital to the Phoenix Park to attend to the newly-sworn in Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and his Permanent Undersecretary, Thomas Henry Burke, who had been stabbed in broad daylight by the Invincibles.
Myles was one of six doctors who performed the post mortems - in the present U.S. Ambassador's Residence.
A new organisation, the Irish Protestant Home Rule Association, was founded on 21 May 1886, in the Castle Restaurant in Belfast's Donegall Place.
On 23 June 1886, Dr. Myles was involved in the noisy inaugural meeting of the Dublin branch of the Irish Protestant Home Rule Association, held in the Central Hall, Westmoreland street.
On 21 April 1888, at St. Peter's Church in Dublin, he married Frances Elizabeth (Fanny) Ayres, daughter of a deceased English-born clergyman and landowner, Rev. George Ayres (1825-1881) [Certificate].
Lady Myles's greatgrandmothers included a Sarah Hely of King's County mentioned in the Marriage Licence Bonds of the Diocese of Killaloe for 1777
Barack Obama's GGGGGGgrandmothers included a Sarah Hely of King's County mentioned in the Marriage Licence Bonds of the Diocese of Killaloe for 1761
Myles's first recorded private Dublin residence was 30 Harcourt Street
M.D. conferred later in 1888
Professor of Pathology, RCSI, 1889-97

By 1899, moved to 33 Merrion Square

The United Irish League (U.I.L.)

William O'Brien launched the nationalist United Irish League on 23 January1898
Its motto was "The Land for the People"
Its campaigns resulted in the Wyndham land act of 1903
Thomas Myles was clearly a supporter or a member
In 1899, Dr. Thomas Myles ran for the office of President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland for the three-year term, 1900-1902.
Myles took a libel action and obtained an injunction against his fellow candidate and Merrion Square neighbour Henry Fitz-Gibbon who claimed that Myles's association with the U.I.L. would 'associate the college with the promoters of anarchy and discord.'

Honours

President of R.C.S.I.
Honorary Freeman of the City of Limerick in 1900, during the three-year Mayoralty of John Daly, on account of his medical achievements
The others so honoured under Daly were Thomas J. Clarke (soon to marry Daly's niece), James F. Egan and Maude Gonne.
Along with Vincent Nash, the High Sheriff of Limerick, Thomas Myles was one of two Limerick men awarded knighthoods (Kt. Bach (1902)) in King Edward VII's coronation honours list, announced on June 26, 1902.

Myles's yachts

The gun-running yacht, Chotah
- 48 ton, 60 ft. cutter, engine powered
- Myles's own description:
  
  the Chotah was 60 ft. overall, straight stemmed, 14 ft. beam. She carried relatively more canvass but in a breeze when on a wind the side of the dining table was one moment on a level with your nose and the next in your lap.
Faith
- sold to Captain Otway Waller
Sheila
- seventy-ton ketch
- 62 tons by Thames measurement
- built to the order of Queen Victoria as a gift to Prince Henry of Battenberg, and launched in 1874
- ran ashore at Derbyhaven, Isle of Man, June 1933
Harbinger
- the finest of her class afloat
- his last ship
- value at his death £ 2,725 (house in Leeson Park valued at £ 2,050)

The crew of the Chotah

Sir Thomas Myles (owner) (b. Limerick)
James Creed Meredith (b. Dublin)
- B.L.
- future Supreme Court judge in Irish Free State
Hervey/Harvey Guy Francis Edward de Montmorency
- born in Gibraltar
- married Evelyn Buchanan in London 1907
- boarded Kelpie at Cowes, left after one night complaining of loudly ticking clock
- returned to Dublin and joined Chotah
- died 2 September 1942 in Torquay (no will)
George Cahill (transferred from Kelpie)
Tom Fitzsimons (transferred from Kelpie)

After the gun-running

On the very next day, Monday 3 August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany
In his Bureau of Military History Witness Statement, Seán Fitzgibbon reports that at a meeting in Dublin on that Monday, Sir Thomas Myles said he had a leader for the Irish Volunteers (who should take over the defence of Ireland and re-create Grattan's Parliament) in the person of General Sir Thomas Kelly-Kenny
- Kelly-Kenny spent the day sightseeing in Oxford with his nephew Fr. Matthew Devitt S.J.
- On 11 August 1914, Kelly-Kenny got a telegram summoning him to London to see Lord Kitchener
- On 12 August 1914, he met Kitchener and wrote in his diary:
  
  He wants me to report on the I[rish] V[olunteer]s. A Sergt. could to this. I declined. Correspondence shows what I think of this political trick to throw the responsibility on me of advising, or not, to take the I.V. into service and pay.
  
  I believe Redmond, and possibly Carson, are associated in this. On many grounds I immediately refused to undertake this matter. I said I would find out what I could about them and let him know.
- On 14 August 1914, Kelly-Kenny wrote his last diary entry and on 26 December 1914 he died.
- Kelly-Kenny centenary will be marked with a day of National Heritage Week events in his native Kilrush on Saturday 23 August next.
Sir Thomas Myles (like his older brother Jack) joined the Royal Army Medical Corps.
named on a plaque listing members of the Limerick Protestant Young Mens' Association who took part in the Great War, 1914-1918 'For King and Country'
on duty in Dublin at Easter 1916; briefly taken prisoner according to Witness Statement by James Clarke, who once brought Austin Stack to him for treatment for a football injury
did not allow any of the wounded to fall into British hands, except one
in 1917, gave medical evidence at the inquest on Thomas Ashe, according to Witness Statement by Kevin O'Shiel
After Matt Brady (father of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh) was shot and wounded in Longford on April 29, 1919, he was transferred to the Richmond Hospital, where according to Seán MacEoin's Witness Statement:
Dr. Michael Burke and Sir Thomas Myles took care of him till the Truce, many times locking him into presses and other places of concealment when the place was being searched by Black and Tans and other British forces.
signed a memorial to the Prime Minister, published in The Times on May 12, 1921, containing a new peace proposal
By 1932, moved to 32 Leeson Park
continued to pursue his professional duties and met the demands made upon his services until he was in his mid-seventies
died in the Richmond Hospital, July 14, 1937
buried at Dean's Grange with Lady Myles
Only the Irish Press obituary mentioned his gun-running exploits: “No One More Nationalist”: How Sir Thomas Myles Risked His Position For The Cause
For probate purposes, his yacht was worth more than his home at 32 Leeson Park; a neighbouring house (no.26) sold for €6.5 million in 2007.

On the beach at Kilcoole, a bronze plaque on a granite boulder reminds the visitor of the events that took place there in 1914. Sir Thomas Myles is named on the Kilcoole monument.

Mount Trenchard Memorial Committee

John Cussen (Newcastlewest, chairman)
Tom Toomey (Castletroy, secretary)
John Curtin (Ballyhahill)
Seán Diffley (Foynes)
Tim Donovan (Rathkeale)
Tom Donovan (Clarina)
Liam Dundon (Foynes)
Patricia Haselbeck (Lisnagry)
Seán Liston (Knockaderry)
Denis Nolan (Ballyhahill)
Seán Nolan (Ballyhahill)
Pádraig Ó Ruairc (Newcastlewest)
Seamas O'Sullivan (Broadford)
Paddy Waldron (Killaloe)

Provisional date for unveiling of monument: 2p.m. Sunday 21 September 2014.

Fundraising is ongoing.

Commemorative scrolls available from any committee member (suggested donation € 20).

Booklet to be published. More information on the gun-running participants welcome.