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Dublin City Council had a strong connection to the 1916 Rising through the involvement of elected members and Dublin Corporation employees, while the City Hall was a garrison building, held by the Irish Citizen Army. A new book, Dublin City Council and the 1916 Rising, published on 9 May, is the first detailed study of the impact of Dublin City Council on the 1916 Rising and in turn its effect on the council. The thirteen essays in this book, researched and written by experts in their field, explore the events and strategies leading into and following the Rising as it concerned the City Council.The book features biographies of 151 persons who were involved in the Rising and were either employed by the Council at the time, or subsequently. This wide-ranging book is essential for a complete understanding of the Rising.A number of elected members of Dublin City Council fought in 1916, including Councillor Richard O’Carroll, who fought with the Irish Volunteers at an outpost of Jacob’s Factory. Two of the men executed after the Rising – Eamonn Ceannt and John MacBride – were council employees. Ceannt, also known as Edmund T. Kent, was a valued employee in the Rates Department, while Major MacBride was the city’s Water-Bailiff. City Hall, the Corporation’s premier building, was garrisoned on Easter Monday by the Irish Citizen Army under Captain Sean Connolly, who in civilian life was an official in the Motor Registration Department; his brother Joseph Connolly, a member of Dublin Fire Brigade, fought with Michael Mallin and Countess Markiewicz at the College of Surgeons. Ever concerned with delivering information services, staff of Dublin Public Libraries also played an active role in communications during the Rising.The contributors are Sheila Carden, Shay Cody, Evelyn Conway, Donal Fallon, Las Fallon, David Flood, John Gibney, Anthony Jordan, Conor McNamara, Martin Maguire, Thomas J. Morrissey SJ, Seamus Ó Maitiú, Lawrence White, Padraig Yeates.The book is edited by John Gibney, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and the author of several books on Irish history. He has been a research fellow at the University of Notre Dame and NUI Galway. In 2012 he produced the acclaimed RTÉ Radio 1 documentary The Animal Gangs (broadcast July 2012) on the folklore of inner city Dublin. He has worked in heritage tourism in Dublin since 2001.The book is available from Four Courts Press and other bookshops.

The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Críona Ní Dhálaigh, launched the book 'Richmond Barracks 1916: We were there, 77 women of the Easter Rising' to a packed audience at the Chapel, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin 8, on International Women's Day, Tuesday, 8 March 2016.   This new publication gives voice to the 77 women who were arrested and held at Richmond Barracks following the Easter Rising. A leather bound edition of the book was presented to President Higgins and Lord Mayor Críona Ní Dhálaigh. The audience was entertained by an instrumental performance by Cora Venus Lunny and and Kate Ellis, poetry recitals by Jo Kennedy and Jane Clarke and Damien Dempsey singing Aunt Jennie.The 77 Women Commemoration Quilt was also unveiled at the event. This unique quilt commemorates the 77 women arrested after the Easter Rising and forms a link to the present through the 77 contemporary women who crafted each special panel.View the photo slideshow of the event below. View the photos on flickr.Lord Mayor Críona Ní Dhálaigh said:This excellent book, We were There, 77 Women  of the Easter Rising, shines a light on the women of the rising and in many ways unfreezes them, it shows their legacy of activism, in labour, nationalist and feminist politics. The legacy that many of us, women from all our different backgrounds have taken up.

This International Women's Day we remember the women of the 1916 Rising and their place in Irish history.  You can discover more about these women and their determined commitment to Ireland’s revolutionary movement in a new book Richmond Barracks 1916: We were there, 77 women of the Easter Rising.All over Dublin city on Easter Monday morning 1916 hundreds of women assembled and marched with their male comrades to their appointed garrison positions to take part in the uprising. Women of the Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan, the Clan na nGaedheal Girl Scouts and individual women spent the next few days running first aid stations, cooking, provisioning, fighting and, crucially, delivering dispatches and food between the insurgent outposts, running the risk of death as they dodged bullets in a city in revolt.After the surrender, seventy-seven of these women were arrested along with their male colleagues and taken to Richmond Barracks in Inchicore, a British Army stronghold on the southside of the city where they were held overnight in the married quarters of the Barracks. It is these seventy-seven women, representing a cross section of Irish society at a pivotal time in Irish history, whose histories, activism and legacies form the nucleus of this new book, published today by Dublin City Council.The book includes detailed biographies of the seventy-seven women accompanied by historical essays providing a deep and unique standpoint on how the Rising and the garrison battles were experienced by women and in particular the seventy-seven women.  The research reveals the motivations and the triggers that led to women becoming active in labour, nationalist and feminist politic, their politicisation in the period preceding the Rising and what happened to them after Independence.The book is available to borrow from Dublin City Public Libraries and can be bought in bookshops (distributor: Four Courts Press)Our 1916: The Women behind the Men image gallery also offers an insight into the integral role of women before, during and in the aftermath of the Rising. Although it is well known that Countess Constance Markievicz fought in St Stephen’s Green, other important roles played by Cumann na mBan and women such as Dr Kathleen Lynn, Elizabeth O'Farrell and Margaret Skinnider are perhaps less known. Read more about 1916: the Women Behind the Men. Photograph right: Margaret Skinnider wearing boy’s clothes. From Doing my bit for Ireland by M. Skinnider, New York, 1917.  (click on image to see more)