‘Ours cannot be a secret society…’: The National Brotherhood of St Patrick in Newcastle upon Tyne, 1861-1864.

All but forgotten today, the National Brotherhood of St Patrick set the pattern for nationalist celebrations of St Patrick’s Day on Tyneside. But was it really a front for the Irish Republican Brotherhood rather than just a social club? This post will tell the story of this organisation and explore its relationship with the Fenians.

It is not known when Irish migrants first celebrated St Patrick’s Day publicly in Newcastle upon Tyne, but by the 1840s and 1850s the day was firmly in the hands of the Hibernian gangs, who, wearing green and white silk favours embroidered with shamrocks, marched behind their banners and bands before separating into their respective lodges to drink and eat.^[1] And, though one Hibernian banner in 1852 bore the portrait of the transported Irish nationalist leader, John Mitchell,^[2] these parades, whilst celebrating and demonstrating Irish Catholic solidarity, were not overtly nationalist and did not feature political speeches.

An entirely different St Patrick’s Day, however, was celebrated in Newcastle in March 1861. Then, in a packed hall decorated with evergreens and the motto ‘Erin go Bragh’ (‘Ireland For Ever’) Michael O’Hanlon delivered his lecture on the political history of Ireland – ‘her trials and triumphs; her patience and heroes’. The venue was the music hall in Nelson Street and in the audience were some five hundred Irish Catholic men and women for whom Tyneside was their home.[3] In his speech, O’Hanlon demanded ‘the restoration’ of Ireland’s ‘national independence’, and called on Irish women ‘to inspire their little ones with a love for their country, to tell them that their forefathers were martyrs for their country, and to teach them to lisp the words “Ireland and Independence”’. And O’Hanlon sat down to ‘deafening cheers’.^[4]

Born in Ireland about 1825, Michael O’Hanlon initially lived in Scotland before moving south, first to Morpeth and then to Newcastle, where in 1861 he was living with his Irish-born wife and family in Westgate and working as an unskilled factory labourer.[5] O’Hanlon’s first public forays into Irish nationalist politics had been in 1860 in response to the threat to the temporal power of Pope Pius IX,[6] and the call from Ireland for a ‘monster National Petition for the Repeal of the Union’.[7] By the end of the year, this factory labourer was president of the ‘Newcastle Committee of the National Repeal Association’, and a main speaker at meetings in Blaydon,^[8] North Shields,^[9] Sunderland,^[10] Durham,^[11] and Newcastle, where he called on the Irish ‘to shake themselves free’ of English rule.^[12]  The invitation to give the key speech for St Patrick’s Day in 1861 followed.

The origin of this novel celebration lay in the suggestion in the nationalist newspaper The Irishman by Thomas Neilson Underwood[13] to use the local organisations, originally set up to collect signatures for the National Petition, to arrange ‘banquets and debates’ to celebrate the ‘National Anniversary’ across Ireland and Britain, as ‘The Friendly Sons of St Patrick’ did annually in the United States of America.^[14]

In early March 1861 the National Brotherhood of St Patrick(NBSP) was formed in Dublin as a loose network of local branches with Underwood as president. It has been argued that the NBSP was viewed from its inception by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) as its entry into ‘open political activism’,[15] as demonstrated at the inaugural St Patrick’s dinner held in Dublin’s Rotundo on 17 March, when the three hundred diners sat down before the Fenian imagery of a phoenix rising from the ashes and flags evoking memories of the risings of 1798 and 1848.[16]

The Irish in Britain were not slow to follow suit and by 1862 it was estimated that there were some twenty to thirty thousand NBSP members in Britain. In Manchester, a branch opened on 17 March 1861 as ‘The Irishman’s Reading and News Room’, and five more branches soon followed.[17] In Newcastle, after the inaugural meeting, the branch met in the Nelson Street lecture room, where in September Denis Holland, editor of The Irishman, spoke on ‘The Destinies of the Irish Race’, ending with the lines from Thomas Moore’s Erin, Oh Erin: ‘And though slavery’s chain o’er thy morning hath hung; The full noon of freedom shall blaze around thee yet’. Michael O’Hanlon led the thanks to the lecturer, praising ‘his faithful, powerful public advocacy of the cause of our beloved, oppressed country’.^[18]

During this meeting, which had a number of local clergy in the ‘large and enthusiastic audience’, the chairman emphasised that ‘there was nothing sectarian’ in the Brotherhood. The stark comparison with the unashamedly sectarian Hibernians would not have been wasted on his audience.

Newcastle’s NBSP branch committee continued to meet monthly and in July 1861 agreed to hold a public meeting ‘to establish a cheap reading and news room and library’.^[19] It is not known, however, if this venture was successful or if it had any influence on the founding of Newcastle’s Irish Literary Institute ten years later in 1871.

Meanwhile, the IRB was organising a piece of political theatre that would enthral nationalist Ireland. In January 1861, the exiled Young Irelander, Terence Bellew MacManus, had died in San Francisco.[20] The American Fenian Brotherhood and the IRB than decided to take his body back to Ireland and turn his funeral into a major propaganda event. An appeal was launched, with the NBSP leading the way, and money was raised from Ireland and across the diaspora, details of which were printed in the nationalist press. Thus, the editor of The Irishman was sent a letter enclosing fourteen shillings and sixpence raised from fifteen subscribers from Newcastle upon Tyne: ‘Small is the mite, but it testifies our love and appreciation of the noble struggle in which he engaged’.^[21]

In Dublin, the funeral in November 1861, ostensibly organised by the NBSP, was condemned by the Archbishop of Dublin, who forbad any of his clergy from attending or speaking. Ignoring the archbishop, some eight thousand people marched in the cortege to Glasnevin and forty thousand spectators lined the streets. And Father Patrick Lavelle of Partry, County Mayo, and soon to be appointed vice president of the NBSP, gave an impromptu oration.[22]

Newcastle’s St Patrick’s Day celebration in 1862 was again held in Nelson Street. Bernard McAnulty was in the chair and once again Michael O’Hanlon was the main speaker, telling the crowded hall that it was ‘the duty of every Irishman to do his utmost to secure the independence of his native country’.^[23] In spite of deepening clerical suspicion in Ireland of Fenian involvement in the NBSP, the day’s religious significance was not forgotten and the celebration included a speech on St Patrick’s conversion of Ireland, an appeal for a Catholic newspaper in the town and music from St Mary’s Cathedral brass band.

Newcastle’s St Patrick’s Day celebration in 1863 was a repeat of the previous year, and O’Hanlon, once again, gave an ‘animated speech’ on the current state of Ireland. Missing, however, from the reports of this event was any mention of the National Brotherhood of St Patrick, and joining the chairman, Bernard McAnulty, on the platform was Canon Eyre (later Archbishop of Glasgow) and four priests.^[24] Was their presence evidence of clerical pressure being brought to bear on the celebration’s organisers to dilute the event’s nationalist content?

In Darlington for St Patrick’s Day in 1863, ‘a musical and literary soiree’ was organised by the parish clergy ‘to provide a national entertainment’ and discourage indulgence ‘in drink and riot’. The Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle was in the chair, the songs ranged from ‘Oh, Erin, my country’ to ‘God bless the Prince of Wales’, and the evening ended with the British national anthem.^[25] Was this to be the approved diocesan pattern for future St Patrick’s Day celebrations?

In June 1863, the Glasgow Free Press announced the formation of a society for the ‘moral and intellectual improvement’ of the Irish in Newcastle upon Tyne, and all young men ‘having a knowledge of the Irish and English languages’ were encouraged to join.^[26] This was followed by a letter from Joseph McGill to the editor of The Irishman announcing that a new branch of the National Brotherhood of St Patrick had been formed in Newcastle ‘to alleviate the sorrows and misfortunes of our poor enslaved country’. There was, however, no explanation – nor even mention – of what had happened to Newcastle’s original NBSP branch. And McGill added that ‘the means to be adopted for the emancipation of Ireland, I will leave to those whose circumstances may best direct attention; but God grant that the dawn of her deliverance from subjection and famine may come sooner than her present unhappy condition may augur’.^[27] This would have been read by many as a barely hidden reference to the Fenians then actively planning their rising.

On 28 June 1863, the new branch with some one hundred members elected Michael O’Hanlon as president and Joseph McGill as secretary.^[28] Initially relations with the local clergy appeared cordial, and a concert was held in July ‘under the distinguished patronage of the clergy… in aid of the distressed poor in Ireland’.^[29] In August 1863, however, the Dublin Synod finally condemned the NBSP as a secret society,[30] prompting Newcastle’s newly-named ‘Meagher’[31] branch to pass a resolution lamenting the condemnation and arguing that its members were ‘Irishmen as well as Catholics’.^[32] In his report of this meeting to The Irishman, McGill pointed out that branch meetings were attended by members’ wives and daughters, and so, he argued, ‘surely… ours cannot be a secret society when we are so largely patronised by the fair sex’.^[33]

In November 1863, Father McLaughlin, a Catholic priest in Glasgow succinctly noted his objections to the formation of a NBSP branch in his parish, objections that would have found widespread support amongst the diocesan clergy of Hexham and Newcastle:[34]

1^st, Because I foresaw it would be a nest of Ribbonism; 2^nd, Because it was solemnly condemned by the Irish bishops; 3^rd, Because I regarded it as illegal and treasonable.

McLaughlin also believed that the NBSP’s ‘members were not fully aware of the serious consequences in which their acts may one day involve them’.

Despite the Irish bishops’ condemnation, however, Newcastle’s ‘Meagher’ branch continued to meet, holding a concert in October 1863 that featured an exclusively nationalist programme of recitations and songs, including ‘The Trial of Wolfe Tone’, ‘The Exiles Call to Arms’, ‘The Saxon holds us slave no more’, and, sung by a member’s wife, ‘The Irish Emigrant’.^[35]

By March 1864, relations had so soured between the local clergy and the NBSP in Newcastle that two St Patrick’s Day celebrations were held, with the NBSP event held in ‘their own hall’ and the clergy-supported event in the town hall.^[36] The NBSP event was reportedly well-attended, despite a clerical ‘prohibitory order’ being issued, and the celebrations were held against a backdrop of signs bearing ‘Who fears to speak of ’98?’ and ‘An hour of liberty is worth an eternity of bondage’.[37] Two pikes, the symbols of Irish rebellion, were also on display in the hall and were ‘much admired’.

After St Patrick’s Day, NBSP activity in Newcastle increased. In April, Christopher Clinton Hoey, Dublin secretary of the NBSP and a Fenian, visited Newcastle to speak on Ireland’s ‘Struggles for Independence’ in 1798 and 1848.^[38] In May, the ‘Meagher’ branch was reportedly meeting ‘every evening… to fraternise in a friendly spirit with their unfortunate brother exiles’ and to discuss politics.^[39] And in June, the branch welcomed Father Lavelle, NBSP vice president and Fenian sympathiser, to Newcastle, whose talk ‘in aid of the poor of Partry’, prompted the formation of a committee to raise funds from across Tyneside.^[40]

This burst of activity, however, marked the end of the National Brotherhood of St Patrick not only on Tyneside but across Britain and Ireland, and its name and reports of its activities had simply vanished from the pages of the nationalist press by late 1864. This collapse was initiated by clerical opposition in Ireland and Britain that had come to see the NBSP as ‘a cuckoo in the Catholic nest’. It has been suggested however, that the withdrawal of Fenian support from the summer of 1864 was more important to that final collapse, as James Stephens, the Fenians’ chief, declared 1865 as the IRB’s ‘Year of Action’ and directed that all Fenian energies were to be diverted to the coming rebellion.[41]

But what had been the relationship between the NBSP and the IRB? Had the NBSP simply been an open society organising banquets and concerts or had it been the IRB’s ‘political wing’, enabling the secret revolutionary organisation to have a public face?

Without clear evidence, however, it is not possible to say with certainty, though the relationship was close enough to allow the Fenian John Denvir to describe the NBSP as being the IRB’s ‘chief recruiting ground’ in Britain.[42] And it has been claimed that the NBSP ‘laid the foundation for north-west England to develop into the best organised Fenian district in Britain, with entire local branches reborn as Fenian clubs’.^[43]

Finally, it has been argued that the real importance of the NBSP lay in its promotion of ‘grassroots activism’, providing Fenians and potential Fenian recruits with ‘a forum for public political expression’ that had barely existed before, and that the Amnesty Association from 1869 assumed this role, allowing Fenians and constitutionalists to campaign for the same goal – the release of Fenian prisoners.[44]

On Newcastle’s Town Moor on Sunday 24 October 1869, over twenty thousand people joined an Amnesty demonstration.^[45] With the nationalist speakers on the platform was Michael O’Hanlon, who moved the vote of thanks to the Mayor of Newcastle for forbidding any policeman ‘to show his face on the Town Moor that day’, as this had prevented ‘any unseemly disorder’. And in 1872, O’Hanlon was elected chairman of Newcastle’s newly-formed Irish Home Rule Association.[46] Joining him were other former NBSP members, including Bernard McAnulty and Joseph McGill.^[47] So, whilst it is not known if any of these men or, indeed, any other members of the National Brotherhood of St Patrick in Newcastle were active Fenians, it is clear that the Brotherhood provided them with a significant public forum, where their nationalism could both develop and be expressed.

---

[1] Newcastle Courant, 20 March 1846; Durham County Advertiser, 23 March 1855. Also see Mike Cronin and Daryl Adair, The Wearing of the Green: A History of St Patrick’s Day (London, 2002).

[2] Durham County Advertiser, 19 March 1852.

[3] Built by Richard Grainger in 1838, this music hall, the façade of which survives to this day, was used for a wide range of activities, including concerts, lectures, and banquets. In 1861, Charles Dickens performed there. https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/NBL/Newcastle/MHall

[4] Newcastle Daily Journal, 19 March 1861.

[5] In 1861 of O’Hanlon’s four children the eldest was born in Scotland, the middle two in Morpeth, and the youngest in Newcastle. Ancestry.com. 1861 England Census Class: Rg 9; Piece: 3810; Folio: 105; Page: 46; GSU roll: 543190.

[6] See my earlier post ‘Sympathy for the Pope’: Irish nationalists in the North East of England and the threat to Pope Pius IX, 1860.

[7] The Nation, 28 July 1860.

[8] North and South Shields Daily Gazette, 20 September 1860.

[9] The Irishman, 27 October 1860.

[10] Newcastle Chronicle and Northern Counties Advertiser, 8 November 1860.

[11] Durham Chronicle, 18 January 1861.

[12] Catholic Telegraph, 1 December 1860.

[13] C. J. Woods, ‘Thomas Neilson Underwood’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://www.dib.ie/biography/underwood-thomas-neilson-a8764

[14] The Irishman, 26 January 1861.

[15] Marta Ramón, ‘National Brotherhoods and National Leagues: The IRB and its Constitutional Rivals during the 1860s’, in Fearghal McGarry and James McConnel (eds.) The Black Hand of Republicanism Fenianism in Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2009), p. 24.

[16] Freeman’s Journal, 19 March 1861. In 1858, the newly-formed Irish Republican Brotherhood used the Skibbereen Literary and Phoenix Society as a front. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa was a co-founder of the Phoenix Society. Frank Rynne, ‘Permanent Revolutionaries: The IRB and the Land War in West Cork’, in Fearghal McGarry and James McConnel (eds.) The Black Hand of Republicanism Fenianism in Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2009), p. 56. Also see Patrick Maume, ‘Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://www.dib.ie/biography/odonovan-rossa-jeremiah-a6719

[17] Mervyn Busteed, The Irish in Manchester c.1750-1921 Resistance, adaptation and identity (Manchester, 2016), p. 125. Also see Gerard Moran, ‘Nationalists in exile: the National Brotherhood of St Patrick in Lancashire, 1861-5’, in R. Swift and S. Gilley (eds), The Irish in Victorian Britain: the local dimension (Dublin, 1999), pp. 21-35.

[18] The Irishman, 5 October 1861. Holland also spoke in Sunderland at a meeting at which a local NBSP branch was formed.  The Irishman, 5 October 1861.

[19] Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 9 July 1861.

[20] Owen McGee, ‘Terence Bellew McManus’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://www.dib.ie/biography/mcmanus-terence-bellew-a5267

[21] The Irishman, 19 October 1861.

[22] Busteed, The Irish in Manchester, p. 208. Also see C. J. Woods, ‘Patrick Lavelle’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://www.dib.ie/biography/lavelle-patrick-a4697

[23] Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 22 March 1862.

[24] Newcastle Chronicle and Northern Counties Advertiser, 21 March 1863.

[25] Darlington and Stockton Times, 21 March 1863.

[26] Glasgow Free Press, 13 June 1863.

[27] The Irishman, 20 June 1863.

[28] Glasgow Free Press, 4 July 1863.

[29] The Irishman, 11 July 1863.

[30] The Nation, 19 September 1863, Glasgow Free Press, 26 September 1863.

[31] Thomas Meagher (1823-67) was a Young Ireland rebel, who later commanded the Union’s Irish Brigade during the American Civil War. E. P. Cunningham, ‘Thomas Francis Meagher’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://www.dib.ie/biography/meagher-thomas-francis-a5776

[32] The Irishman, 10 October 1863.

[33] The Irishman, 10 Octobe. 1863.

[34] Catholic Telegraph, 7 May 1864.

[35] The Irishman, 24 October 1863.

[36] Glasgow Free Press, 26 March 1864.

[37] James Stephens (1825-1901), co-founder of the IRB, lies in Glasnevin cemetery under the inscription ‘A day, an hour of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity in bondage.’ Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 2 August 1909.

[38] Glasgow Free Press, 30 April 1864. Christopher Clinton Hoey (c.1831-1885) was The Irishman’s London correspondent. Elizabeth Tilley, The Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Cham, Switzerland, 2020), pp. 102-4.

[39] Glasgow Free Press, 14 May 1864.

[40] Glasgow Free Press, 18 June 1864. This visit was after Lavelle had been suspended from his priestly duties by the papacy and had sought ‘refuge’ in Britain. Woods, ‘Patrick Lavelle’, https://www.dib.ie/biography/lavelle-patrick-a4697

[41] Busteed, The Irish in Manchester, p. 209, Ramón, ‘National Brotherhoods’, p. 30.

[42] John Denvir, The Irish in Britain from the Earliest Times to the Fall and Death of Parnell (London, 1892), pp. 178-9.

[43] Busteed, The Irish in Manchester, p. 209. Also see William J. Lowe, ‘Lancashire Fenianism, 1864-71’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 126 (1976), pp. 156-85.

[44] Ramón, ‘National Brotherhoods’, pp. 30-1.

[45] Newcastle Daily Journal, 25 October 1869.

[46] In 1871, Michael O’Hanlon was a books and clothes dealer. In 1881, he was a book seller. Ancestry.com. 1871 England Census: Class: RG10; Piece: 5074; Folio: 7; Page: 8; GSU roll: 848423; 1881 England Census: Class: RG11; Piece: 5047; Folio: 25; Page: 43; GSU roll: 1342217.

[47] The Irishman, 13 January 1872.