The Army in Dublin on Bloomsday
On June 16, 1904, there were about 5,400 regulars of the British Army in Dublin and its immediate vicinity (the southern townships of Pembroke and Rathmines & Rathgar). Also resident in the area, were about 1,000 Army Reservists and about 2,300 part-time soldiers of the auxiliary forces: 200 members of the Imperial Yeomanry and 2,100 militiamen.
Routes travelled by characters shown by brown lines.
In the above map, War Office properties are shown in red. The principal barracks, along with their occupants, are listed below. Click on the links to learn about the regiments. All but two links are to the website of the National Army Museum, Chelsea, London. For the East Lancashire Regiment, the link is to the website of the Lancashire Infantry Museum, Preston. For the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, the link is to the website of the Fusiliers Museum, Warwick. Click on the icons for the museum website home pages.
Note that pages from these websites will open in a new browser windows.
1. Marlborough Barracks
Nominally an Irish regiment, but like all cavalry units, it had no fixed depot and recruited throughout the United Kingdom. Usually, young men who sought cavalry enlistment outnumbered unit vacancies and accordingly, recruiters for mounted regiments could be selective. The Inniskilling Dragoons gave preference to young Ulstermen.
2. Richmond Barracks
2nd Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders
"By the stern stone hand of Grattan, bidding halt, an Inchicore tram unloaded straggling Highland soldiers of a band."
n/ Ulysses (Gabler) 10: 352-53.
As noted by Gifford, this refers to the statue of Henry Grattan in College Green. Gratton was a late-eighteenth century leader of the Irish Patriot Party and made many notable speeches in the Irish Parliament that advocated Irish independence. The tram came from Inchicore where Richmond Barracks was located. Apparently, Joyce knew that Seaforth Highlanders were quartered there on Bloomsday.
In June 1904, the second battalion was commanded by LTC Sydney Bellingham Jameson. Joyce knew that a Jameson was then in command as notesheets for Cyclops contain the entry "Seaforth Highlanders (col. Jameson & officers)." The colonel was a great-grandson of the Scotsman who founded the Irish distillery that bears his family name. He was born at the family's Dublin estate, Airfield, on the Stillorgan Road, about 2.5 km southeast from the Grand Canal.
n/ "Cyclops" Notesheet 3, line 1 as shown in Herring's Joyce's Ulysses Notesheets in the British Museum (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1972), 91; Armorial Jamesons, a US Jameson genealogy website, www.famousjamesons.com.
In Ulysses, Jameson's was the whiskey of choice for Paddy Leonard, Bantam Lyons, Ned Lambert, and the musician, old Professor Goodwin. Major Tweedy and his friend Captain Groves preferred Bushmill's.
n/ Ulysses (Gabler) 8:1024-25, 12:1753, 18:696, 1333.
The regiment's depot was located at Fort George, Inverness and its recruiting territory was northern Scotland which included the Orkney and Shetland islands.
3. Royal Barracks
2nd Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles
One of eight Irish regiments. Its depot was in Belfast and its recruiting area, Territorial District 83, consisted of Counties Antrim and Down in northeastern Ulster.
4. Wellington Barracks
1st Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment
The regiment's depot was in the North England city of Preston and its recruitment territory was in Lancashire, about 45 kilometers north of Manchester.
5. Portobello Barracks (Rathmines & Rathgar)
4th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment
One of six regiments that recruited in Metropolitan London. Its depot was Hounslow Barracks, which was located about four kilometers east of the present-day Heathrow Airport terminals.
4th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
The regiment's depot was in Warwick and its recruiting territory was Warwickshire, including the City of Birmingham. In 1963, the regiment was renamed the Royal Warwickshire Fusiliers.
6. Beggarsbush Barracks (Pembroke)
Permanent staffs of the Dublin Royal Garrison Artillery (Militia), Royal Dublin City Militia, Dublin County Militia, A and D Squadrons, South of Ireland Imperial Yeomanry.
The Dublin City Artillery Militia was a very popular militia unit as in 1904 it had its full complement of 576, part-time enlisted men. It also had 16 of its 17 authorized part-time officers. The permanent staff consisted of two commissioned officers, one warrant officer, fifteen sergeants, and six buglers. Men of this unit fired the ceremonial salutes at Kingstown Harbour from the East Pier Battery.The Royal Dublin City Militia and the Dublin County Militia were respectively the 4th and 5th Battalions of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Combined, the two battalions had 1,521 of their authorized 1,744 officers and militiamen. The permanent staff of each 8-company battalion consisted of two commissioned officers, the regimental sergeant-major, nineteen sergeants, and eight drummers.Each of the two Imperial Yeomanry squadrons had as its part-time complement 5 officers and 110 enlisted men. There was one regular army Sergeant-Instructor for each squadron.In total, the five auxiliary units at Begggarsbush Barracks had as full-time, resident uniformed personnel, 6 officers, 58 NCOs, and 22 buglers/drummers (rank equivalent to private).
War Office Sources: Return Showing the Establishment and Numbers Present of Each Unit of Militia in the United Kingdom for 1904, 1905 [Cd. 2432; Imperial Yeomanry Training Return for 1904, 1905 [Cd. 2267]; Monthly Army List, December 1904.
The headquarters for Irish Command (III Army Corps) was on the grounds of the Royal Kilmainham Hospital, a nursing home for destitute and infirm army pensioners. The officer commanding was General Francis W. Grenfell (Baron Grenfell of Kilvey). The five infantry battalions in Dublin were constituent units of the 13th Infantry Brigade, headquarters at Dublin Castle. That brigade was effectively the Dublin garrison. The officer commanding was Major-General William F. Vetch. Vetch's immediate superior was Major-General Gerald de Courcy Morton, general officer commanding the Dublin Army District (7th Infantry Division). The Dublin District headquarters was at Curragh Camp, County Kildare, 45 kilometers southwest of central Dublin.
The cavalry regiment at Marlborough Barracks had 500 to 550 men and was a component of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade, headquarters at Curragh Camp. Each infantry battalion had 600 to 700 men. The regulars on the auxiliary force permanent staffs at Beggarsbush Barracks totaled 84. The six army combat units accounted for about 80% of the regulars in Dublin. The various headquarters, support units, and miscellaneous army establishments totaled about 900 regulars.
Sources: War Office, General Annual Report on the British Army for the Year Ending 30th September, 1904, 1905, [Cd. 2268]; Hart’s Annual Army List, Militia List, and Yeomanry List, 1905; Monthly Army List, July 1904.
Francis Wallace Grenfell, 1st Baron Grenfell (General, Irish Command, III Corps)
The above link is to a page from a Grenfell Family genealogical website. Francis Grenfell's biography is a transcription of his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1922-30, Oxford University Press. The page will open in a new browser window.
Gerald de Courcy Morton (Major-General, Dublin Army District, 7th Division)
Morton was born 1845 in Calcutta; his father was a barrister. Morton was educated at Eton and graduated from Sandhurst in 1863 and commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. In 1871, Lieutenant Morton was appointed aide-de-camp to the lieutenant-governor for the Punjab and after that assignment held various Indian Army staff positions. In 1889, Lieutenant-Colonel Morton was given command of the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers while it was in England. Two years later he was promoted to Brigadier General and placed in command of the Bundelkund District, Bengal Army. From 1895 through 1898, Morton served as Adjutant General of the Indian Army. In 1899, he was knighted (Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire) and given command of the Lahore District, Bengal Army. The War Office promoted Morton to Major-General in 1902 and placed him in command of the 7th Division, headquarters at Curragh Camp. His health deteriorated in 1905 and he died suddenly in April 1906 at the Curragh. Morton was married twice; first to Susan Grindall then to Ada Craster. Both were daughters of army officers.
n/ Kildare Observer, April 28, 1906; Who's Who, 1903.
William Francis Vetch (Major-General, 13th Brigade)
Born 1845 in Devonport (Plymouth), England; his father was a Royal Engineers officer. In 1864, he graduated from Sandhurst and was commissioned in the 102nd Regiment of Foot (Royal Madras Fusiliers), then a regiment of the Indian Army. In 1881, the regiment became the 1st Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers and in 1887, Vetch was appointed its commanding officer. He held that position through 1890. After leaving the Dubliners, Colonel Vetch served as Assistant Adjutant-General, North East Army District, and afterwards as Assistant Director-General of Ordnance in the War Office. In 1900, while at the War Office, he was promoted to Major-General. The War Office gave Vetch command of the 13th Brigade in 1902 and he retired four years later to London. In 1882, Vetch had married an Australian woman living in London, Janette Oliver.
n/ Who's Who, 1910.
Orphanage and boarding school for children of Irish soldiers, 1767 - 1921. Located in Phoenix Park. Click on the above link for the page on this website.
Dublin and The British Army
The primary reason successive governments maintained a large military force in Dublin was not to protect the city from foreign invasion, but to keep it out of the hands of Irish separatists. Indeed, the city's only coastal fort, Pigeonhouse Fort, was built to cover a withdrawal by sea should the army fail to hold the city against insurgents. By the middle of the nineteenth century, both the War Office and Westminster concluded that the idea of a fighting withdrawal from Dublin was ludicrous and the fort was converted to an ordnance stores facility. In 1897, the War Office sold Pigeonhouse Fort to the Dublin Corporation.
Paper by Henry Fairbrother read to the Old Dublin Society in 2016. Dublin Historical Record 70, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2017): 70-80. The above link is to the article in the JSTOR database. If you do not have institutional access to JSTOR you can get free personal access which allows you to read six articles per month.
No US government feared an insurgency in New York that would require Federal troops for its suppression. Even during the "anarchist" scare of the late-nineteenth century and the "Bolshevik" scare after the First World War, national leaders were confident that the NY Police Department and the New York National Guard would be able to "preserve order" in the nation's largest and most important city. The contrast between the presence of the armed forces in Dublin and New York is striking. Click on the above link for this website's page on the armed forces in New York.
Soldiers "On the Town"
[Bloom thinks of] "Maud Gonne's letter about taking them off O'Connell Street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital."
On June 3, 1904, the Freeman's Journal published a letter by Alfred Webb addressed to Maud Gonne MacBride. He complained of the disgraceful conduct of British troops, who during the evening, swarmed through central Dublin's principal streets. Maud Gonne's written reply, in which she concurred with Webb, was published three days latter. That same day, the Dublin Corporation Council, by a vote of 30 to 15, adopted a resolution that the streets should be clear of soldiers after a reasonable fixed hour.
n/ Ulysses (Gabler) 5:70-71; Freeman's Journal, June 6, 1904; The Times, June 7, 1904.
Click here to read the letters and view a map of the area discussed. The material, in a 201 kb pdf, will appear in a new browser window.
Gonne, a well-known Irish nationalist, also led an anti-army recruitment campaign and discouraged Irish women from consorting with British soldiers. Read her Daughters of Ireland handbill, "Irish Girls," distributed to female domestic servants throughout the Dublin metropolitan area in 1907. Click on the link and the document, a 459 kb jpg, will appear in a new browser window.
Part-Time Soldiers of the Black Watch in Dublin
In 1725, the general officer commanding the British Army in Scotland raised several militia companies to maintain order in the Scottish Highlands. Their primary task was to stop cattle rustling. Highlanders referred to this military police force as "the black watch." In 1739, these originally part-time units were amalgamated by the government to form the 43rd Highland Regiment of Foot. It was later renumbered the 42nd and in 1881 became the 1st Battalion, Black Watch (Royal Highlanders). On Bloomsday, the Black Watch Regiment consisted of nine battalions: 2 regular, 1 militia, and 6 volunteer force.
In Ulysses, Molly Bloom recalls how splendid the Black Watch looked on parade. "... the Black Watch with their kilts in time at the march past the 10th Hussars ..."
n/ Ulysses (Gabler) 18:400-01.
"In June 1901, Joseph Nannetti, the M.P. for College Green, Dublin, asked the Secretary of State for War about the status of some individuals who were being drilled at Portobello Barracks, Dublin. He was told that the men were volunteers, from the Volunteer Battalions of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and the Royal Highlanders who were drilling for the purpose of improving their military knowledge. As Nannetti pointed out, the legal status of these volunteers was, to say the least, ambivalent."
n/ Montgomery, "Thoroughbred Irishmen: Black Watch volunteers in Dublin," 101. See link to Academia at the bottom of this page.
Nannetti also raised the matter in Commons during Questions. (The link is to a page on the UK Parliament's website which will open in a popup window.)
Joseph Nannetti is mentioned multiple times in Ulysses. He first appears during Bloom's visit to the Freeman's Journal printing plant and office.
n/ Ulysses (Gabler) 7:75.
Ian Montgomery, "Thoroughbred Irishmen: Black Watch volunteers in Dublin before the First World War," The Irish Sword 29, no. 115 (2013): 101-21. The above link is to the open-access reprint on the website Academia. The site's owner is a U.S. corporation that "provides a platform for academics to share research papers." The webpage will open in a new browser window.
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