Joseph O'Doherty (24 December 1891 – 10 August 1979) was an Irish teacher, barrister, revolutionary, politician, county manager, member of the First Dáil and of the Irish Free State Seanad.
Family Joseph O'Doherty's father Michael O'Doherty was a prosperous entrepreneur from Gortyarrigan in the parish of Desertegney at the side of Raghin Beg mountain on the Inishowen peninsula, County Donegal. When he got married, Michael moved from Gortyarrigan to the town of Derry where he owned a hansom cab business and a chain of butcher shops, kept racing horses, traded in cattle, and supplied meat until 1916 for the British Royal Navy fort at Dunree.
Joseph's mother Rose O'Doherty () inspired him to become a revolutionary. O'Doherty was born at his parents' home at 14 Little Diamond in the Bogside district of Derry on Christmas Eve 1891. His brother, Séamus, was also a member of the IRB and took part in the events of the Easter Rising.
Education
He was educated at St Columb's College grammar school in Derry, and later studied at St Patrick's College, Dublin, where he qualified as a primary school teacher in 1912.
When he qualified as a teacher, Ireland was in the middle of the renewed expectations of Home Rule and the Home Rule crisis posed by opposition from Irish Unionists. The Joseph became well-soaked in revolutionary literature – partly through his interest in education which led him to read the articles and poetry of Patrick Pearse – and he became a subscriber to the Indian revolutionary newspaper Bande Mataram.
By 1913/1914, he was disillusioned with the Irish Parliamentary Party of John Redmond. With his teacher-training completed, O'Doherty taught for six months. He loved teaching and wanted to continue in this field, but was soon reluctantly persuaded by his elder brother Séamus O'Doherty to join the republican movement. He then joined the firm of Lawlor Ltd., of Ormonde Quay, Dublin, one of whose directors was Cathal Brugha, who subsequently became the first chairman and President of Dáil Éireann and the first Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army.
He later studied at Trinity College Dublin and was enrolled at King's Inns where he qualified as a barrister.
Rebellion Irish Volunteers
In 1913 O'Doherty joined the Irish Volunteers when the organisation met at the Rotunda in Dublin. He was a member of the Volunteers 'B' Company, 3d Battalion, Dublin.
At the start of World War I, over 90% of the Irish Volunteers joined the National Volunteers and thus enlisted in the 10th (Irish) Division and 16th (Irish) Division of the British Army to fight in Europe. This left the Irish Volunteers with a rump estimated at 10–14,000 members.
The Volunteers fought for Irish independence in 1916's Easter Rising, and were joined by the Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan and Fianna Éireann to form the Irish Republican Army a.k.a. the Old IRA.
O'Doherty founded branches of the Volunteers from Crossmaglen to Malin Head. He was given command of the Derry Volunteers in the buildup to 1916 Easter Rising and remained a member of the Executive until 1921.
Irish Republican Brotherhood Shortly after joining the Volunteers, Joseph's elder brother Seamus informed him of the existence of the secret revolutionary party called the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) of which he was a member. When Seamus asked Joseph for his opinion of secret organisations, Joseph replied that he thought secrecy was necessary to safeguard plans. Until then, he had no idea that the IRB existed and that his brother was a member. He was asked to join and was initiated into it by a close friend of the O'Doherty family, Seán Mac Diarmada who was the manager of the radical newspaper Irish Freedom. O'Doherty remained a member of the IRB until after the 1916 Easter Rising, and was specially mobilised by the IRB for the Howth Road and Killcoole gun-runnings.
Gun-running
In 1914, O'Doherty took part in the two audacious gun-running events at Howth and Kilcoole. The first landing took place on 26 July 1914 at Howth, when Erskine Childers and his wife Molly Childers smuggled 1,500 single-shot Mauser 71 rifles from Hamburg, Germany for the Irish Volunteers aboard their 51 ft gaff yacht, the Asgard. The guns, dating from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 were still functioning. They were later used in the attack on the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising.
O'Doherty unloaded the first consignment of around 900 Mausers and 29,000 bullets off the Asgard along with Bulmer Hobson, Douglas Hyde, Darrell Figgis, Peadar Kearney, Thomas MacDonagh and others. This happened in public view in broad daylight and quickly led to police and military intervention. While accompanying the weapons convoy on the road from Howth to Dublin, O'Doherty broke the butt of his gun in a skirmish with the security forces, but successfully evaded them. As the King's Own Scottish Borderers infantry regiment returned to barracks, they were accosted at Bachelors Walk by civilians who threw stones and exchanged insults with the regulars. The soldiers bayoneted one man and shot into the unarmed crowd, resulting in four dead and 38 wounded civilians in what became known as the Bachelor's Walk massacre.
O'Doherty was also involved in the second gun-running the following week, around midnight on 1 August 1914, when the volunteers landed 600 more German-made Mauser 71 single-shot rifles and 20,000 rounds of ammunition off the Chotah at the much more discretely located beach at Kilkoole, County Wicklow, and spirited them away under cover of darkness. O'Doherty was in the lorry that delivered that consignment to a cache at St. Enda's School (which Patrick Pearse had founded in 1908) and which was now located at The Hermitage at Rathfarnam in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains where Pearse was waiting for them on the steps.
Other operations In 1914 O'Doherty was one of a special group of IRB men mobilised under William Conway to frustrate a British Army recruiting meeting that was to be held at the Mansion House in Dublin. They were mobilised in Parnell Square with about 24 hours' rations and with arms, but the word came that a large group of British soldiers were in Dublin Castle and had taken over control of the area so that it would be impossible to get in, and the operation was called off.
In 1914, O'Doherty took part in a little-known operation in which the Irish Volunteers seized part of the 216 tonnes of guns and ammunition that had been delivered to the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force from the German Empire, in the Larne gun-running incident on 24 and 25 April of that year.
Soon afterwards, while attending a play at a theatre in Dublin with another member of the Volunteer Executive, O'Doherty was arrested in the lobby during the intermission. As they were about to be marched up to Dublin Castle, O'Doherty realised that they would both be tortured to reveal the location of the weapons caches and other information. Taking advantage of the soldiers being distracted by the crowd of onlookers who had gathered outside the theatre, O'Doherty ducked under the soldiers’ bayonets, leapt onto a passing tram, and escaped into the night. Days later, his friend's body was found, dismembered, at the Featherbed in the nearby Dublin mountains.
O'Doherty remained in Dublin until 1915 when his father asked him to return to Derry to manage the chain of butchers' shops business which he had recently bought there. After moving back to Derry, he joined the Derry branch of the Volunteers with Patrick McCartan who had previously edited the journal Irish Freedom in Pennsylvania, USA, and who was now in control of the IRB in the North. At McCartan's request in January 1916, O'Doherty took a delivery of arms via a trader named Edmiston & Scotts. The Derry Volunteer group also obtained quantities of .303 rifle ammunition which were delivered to Dublin, frequently by O'Doherty and members of his family.
1916 Easter Rising O'Doherty was charged by the Irish Volunteers Executive to co-ordinate the Easter Rising in Derry, and to wait for the signal to begin the planned operation. But to his great dismay on Easter Sunday morning, the Sunday Independent newspaper published a last-minute countermanding order by the Volunteers Chief of Staff, Eoin MacNeill advising the Volunteers not to take part. Although the rising did take place in Dublin, the Derry Volunteers did not participate due to confusion over this countermanding order and a subsequent breakdown in communications with Dublin.
The rising took place mainly in Dublin where it caused considerable damage. Although volunteer groups also took action in Kerry, Cork, Wexford, Kildare, Donegal, and Galway, a considerable section of the Volunteers did not participate – partly as a result of MacNeill's cancellation.
A total of 3,430 men and 79 women were arrested. 187 were tried under a series of courts-martial, and 90 were sentenced to death. 14 of them including all seven signatories of the Proclamation and were executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol between 3 and 12 May. The most prominent leader to escape execution was the Commandant of the 3rd Battalion, Éamon de Valera, partly because of his American birth. He subsequently became President of the Irish Republic.
Capture and prison
O'Doherty and his brother Seamus were arrested a few days after the Easter Rising and taken in handcuffs to Dublin where they were imprisoned in Richmond Barracks in Dublin. O'Doherty was sent soon afterwards to the Abercorn Barracks at Ballykinlar in County Down. He spent time at Belfast gaol, Derry gaol, and was subsequently moved to Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire (England), Wormwood Scrubs in London and the Frongoch internment camp in Wales, where he was sent as an Irish prisoner of war along with 1,800 others including Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith. Although he was not imprisoned in Mountjoy Gaol, he was one of the last people to speak to Pádraig Pearse (1879–1916) there (either as a visitor or through a window) before the latter was executed by firing squad.
In a filmed interview decades later, O'Doherty said "Those of us who were arrested were transferred in handcuffs to Richmond Barracks in Dublin, and subsequently transferred to England. Our crowd were marched between the files of a British regiment through the streets of Dublin, and several sections were stoned." [Quoted from a statement by him used (but not with his own voice) in the TG4 documentary film, "Internment Camp Frongoch".Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine:
Although the failure of the Rising was a major disappointment for the Volunteers, the Frongoch internment camp became known as the University of Revolution, where the inmates planned their successful strategy to establish the First Dáil in 1919. Among those interned there, 30 would become TDs (including O'Doherty, Richard Mulcahy, Michael Collins, Seán T. O'Kelly, Éamon de Valera). After a few weeks, however, their prisoner of war status and privileges were withdrawn, and O'Doherty was released in early August 1916
O'Doherty returned to Derry and helped his father re-open the head office of his family business. In December, he was contacted and asked to come up and manage the first republican paper that was published in 1916, The Phoenix.
German Plot