Regret of the damage done - RCPI's response to the Easter Rising
Over the last few weeks we have been
cataloguing letters to and from RCPI during 1916; interestingly there is one
topic that doesn’t make much of an appearance. In the 150 surviving letters for
that year, there are only 5 which make any reference to the events of Easter
Week 1916. This seems odd when contrasted with the importance put on the Rising
today, but in 1916, for RCPI at least, the Rising appears to have been little
more than an inconvenient disturbance.
The first letter contains only an oblique
reference to the Rising. Written on 4th May, in the week following
Easter Week, it is one of a small file of correspondence between RCPI and Mr M
F Cahill. Mr Cahill was the solicitor for Dr Aimai Maneckji Cooper, a
Licentiate of the College. Dr Cooper was in the process of changing her name,
and needed RCPI to update the College’s Roll of Licentiates and her diplomas.
On 4th May Mr Cahill wrote to ask if ‘matters are now in order in Dublin' and if would be safe for him
to send Dr Cooper’s diploma and cheque to the College.
Later in May, RCPI wrote two letters about
Dr Richard Hayes, a Licentiate of the College, who had taken an active part in
Easter Week. Hayes was the medical officer at the Battle of Ashborne, and had
been sentenced to 20 years penal servitude for his part in the Rising. At the
end of May, RCPI wrote to the Provost
Marshal, at Richmond Barracks, and the Judge Advocate General, in London, to
request a copy of the sentence passed on Hayes ‘for his part in the recent Irish rebellion’. No answer to these
letters has survived, and it is not clear why RCPI wanted the details
requested. It seems unlikely that the College was in favour of Hayes’ actions,
and it may have been they wanted to know if his conduct and sentence were
sufficient to consider removing him from the Roll of Licentiates. This concern
over conduct befitting the profession comes up again and again in the College’s
letters of this period. There are several contemporary examples of doctor’s
names being removed from the Roll of Licentiates for civil crimes, as well as
professional misconduct.
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Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
(RCSI Heritage Collections) |
The final two letters relating to the
Easter Rising are between RCPI and our sister College, the Royal College of Surgeons
in Ireland. Unlike RCPI, which had been little disturbed by the events of
Easter Week, RCSI was occupied by the rebels and some damage was done to the
building. On 2nd June RCPI held its first Business Meeting since
Easter. At the end of a long and, to judge from the minutes, fairly tedious
meeting the Registrar, Dr Kirkpatrick,
‘reported
that during the recent rising in Dublin some damage had been done to the Royal
College of Surgeons while in the hands of the insurgents’.
The College then passed
a resolution that they had
‘heard with
regret of the damage done to the Royal College of Surgeons during the recent
rebellion. The President and Fellows trust that if necessary the President and
Council of the Royal College of Surgeons will avail themselves of the hospitality
of this College’.
Dr Kirkpatrick, as
Registrar, wrote to Surgeons the next day to send this College’s condolences. Two
weeks later he received a reply ‘cordially
thanking’ the College for their condolences, and stating that they would ‘have gratefully accepted the hospitality
which has been so kindly offered’ had it been necessary. Presumably, over a
month after the rebels had surrendered, RCSI had already returned their
building to some semblance of normality.
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Letter from RCSI to RCPI, June 1916
(RCPI/2/3/1/58/T77) |
All of RCPI’s correspondence will shortly
be digitised and made available as part of the Letter of 1916 Project.
You can find out more about the medical
involvement in 1916, including the part played by Dr Richard Hayes, in our
exhibition Irish Medicine in War and
Revolution, which is open weekday 10am to 4pm in our building at 6 Kildare
Street.