Easter Rising Stories

ON THIS DAY

18 October

1791. The United Irishmen are founded

Samuel Neilson, one of the Belfast founders. This is a portrait after Charles Byrne, not the meeting.

On 18 October 1791 the first Society of United Irishmen held its inaugural meeting in Belfast. Thomas McCabe chaired it. Theobald Wolfe Tone, who had come north with Thomas Russell on 11 October, preferred the name United Irishmen to Brotherhood. He helped draft the resolutions and the declaration. A first gathering had already met on 14 October. The declaration asked for an equal representation of all the people in parliament, and said that no reform would be just unless it included Irishmen of every religion. Samuel Neilson, Henry Joy McCracken and Russell were among the Belfast men. Tone was a Dublin Anglican. Many of the others were Presbyterians.

They were not, that evening, announcing a rebellion or a republic. The public programme was parliamentary reform, the inclusion of Catholics, and an end to English control of the Irish government. Tone’s private letters had already gone further. In July he had written of separation from England. That was not the programme adopted in the room, and it was not yet shared by everyone there. The secret oaths, the French alliance and the rising of 1798 came later. A Dublin society followed on 9 November. The Northern Star began in January 1792. The men of 18 October founded a political society. The revolutionary movement grew out of what happened to it afterwards.

1920. Seán Treacy is buried at Kilfeacle

On 18 October 1920 Seán Treacy was buried at Kilfeacle, in County Tipperary. He had been killed on Talbot Street on 14 October. The papers of the 19th reported the funeral as having taken place the day before. The raid at Fernside had been on the night of 11–12 October. Dan Breen was still wounded. Four days after the shooting, Treacy was in the ground in his own county. He was twenty-five.