Merchants Quay today is just one long red brick shopping centre but over 100 years ago the quayside was adorned with a varied selection of businesses, shops, pubs, and at No. 4 Merchants Quay - the HQ for the Cork branch of The Irish Citizen Army.
What Merchants Quay looked like in the 19th and early 20th Century
Labour leader Jim Larkin often stated that the roots of the Irish Citizen Army stemmed from Cork City. It was during the 1908/09 coal porters and dockers strike that the labour movement militarised when a workers defence force was established to protect the strikers from the batons of the peelers.
Uniform of the Irish Citizen Army
The business men affected by the strike established the Employers Federation and set about locking out the striking workers. This lock out which lasted from 1909 to 1908 was the first lock out, (before the more infamous one in 1913 Dublin) and some call it "D'real Lockout!"
Newspaper of the Citizen Army, edited by Cathal O'Shannon who lodged upstairs at the Wallace Sisters Shop, Cork City.
The Irish Citizen Army first fully organised a Cork branch in 1914. From its roots in 1909 as a simple workers defence group armed with just sticks, it was now a force to be reckoned with as seen in the advertisment in the Irish Worker newspaper:
REBELCORK!
YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU!!
JOIN THE IRISH CITIZEN ARMY, CAPTAIN MACKEY SECTION.
4 MERCHANTS QUAY CORK.
LIVE & DIE IN IRELAND.
LEARN TO SHOOT STRAIGHT, THE CAPTAIN MACKEY RIFLE RANGE IS NOW OPEN AT ABOVE ADDRESS WHERE MEN ARE TRAINED FOR IRELAND AND IRELAND ONLY!
The Cork branch of the Irish Citizen Army was named after the Fenian Captain Mackey who led a daring raid on a British military martello tower in Cork harbour in 1867, and later died in an explosion on the River Thames London.
Drilling and rifle practise took place at No.4 Merchants Quay on Tuesdays and Friday nights and Sunday afternoons.
Merchants Quay today.
Thomas "Corkie" Walsh was one famous Cork member of the Irish Citizen Army. He was a stonemanson by trade and brother in law of Thomas MacCurtain, the Sinn Fein Lord Mayor of Cork murdered by the RIC in 1920.
"Corkie" Walsh.
During Easter Week 1916 Walsh was part of the Dublin City Hall garrison. Following the Easter Rising, "Corkie" was sent to Frongoch with the other arrested rebels but while he was there his health declined.
The grave of Walsh in St Finbarrs Cemetery.
Walsh was released in 1917 but in poor health. He died from pneumonia in March 1918 at the age of just 36.
The Wallace sisters , Shelia and Nora, were well known Republicans and Labour activists on Leeside. They were also memebers of the Irish Citizen Army. They ran a small newsagents shop at St. Augustine Street where the likes of James Connolly and Countess Markievicz would pay a visit to anytime they were in Cork. They sold labour and republican pamplets and newspapers. They also organised parades and rallies such as May Day workers day.
The Wallace sisters organised the womens and youth section of the Cork Irish Citizen Army until 1921 when they, and other Cork Citizen Army members joined the IRA's fight against imperial rule.
The Wallce Sisters shop.
The old Connolly Hall, (the large red brick building)
The large red brick building on the Lower Glanmire Road was named Connolly Hall and remained the HQ for the Cork Labour movement for over 50 years.
In May 1923 Jim Larkin, freshly released from New York's Sing Sing Prison, made a welcoming return to Cork with an event held in his honur at Connolly Hall. When he arrived at the train station (Kent Station) he was met by a number of bands and many supporters who walked him the short distance to Connolly Hall. Because the crowd was so large, not everyone could fit inside the buidling so, Big Jim Larkin did what he did best - he gave a rousing speech from a top floor window to those gathered on the Lower Glanmire road.
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