Surveillance of the Easter Rising insurgent leaders by the Dublin Metropolitan Police in the months preceding the events.

ABOUT THE DH SOURCE :
Our research relies on data from the National Archives of Ireland website, more precisely on memos from the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) in the years 1915 & 1916. These memos account for surveillance by the DMP of key figures of the Irish nationalist movement. They are accessible on the website of the Irish national archives.

The scans of these memos are available (original version) along with a summary of their contents.

HYPOTHESIS :

We want to verify that the surveillance of the Irish leaders by the DMP intensified in the months leading up to the Easter Rising.

CONTEXT :

The Easter Rising was an insurrection that took place in April 1916, mainly in Dublin with skirmishes occurring in other counties. The Irish nationalists aimed to seize control of strategic buildings in the capital and establish an Irish Republic. It was organised by seven leading figures. The insurrection was violently repressed and all seven men were executed.

VISUALISATION :

For our hypothesis, we are counting occurrences of the names of the seven insurgent leaders in the memos of the DMP, and representing them using a line chart.

We went through the memos from the DMP, verifying if the following names were mentioned : Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Tom Clarke, Sean Mac Diarmada, Joseph Plunkett, Eamonn Ceannt and Thomas MacDonagh, from June 1915 to April 1916. If a name was mentioned several times in a single memo, we counted it as only one occurrence. We then expressed them as a percentage of the total monthly number of memos.

COMPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

During this period, all seven leaders were considered important figures, but some were mentioned a lot more than others, such as Tom Clarke, Sean Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh as opposed to James Connolly or Joseph Plunkett.

Importantly, one of the regular meeting places was Thomas Clarke’s shop, explaining why he was mentioned in most of the memos, even though his presence is not always explicitly mentioned.

Another element to mention is that unrest was growing in Dublin for several months before the rising, with an increased police activity but also a higher difficulty to track individuals.

CONCLUSION :

Upon examining the chart, we notice a clear upward trend in the average number of mentions in the memos, with March 1916 being an outlier, without changing the trend however. This seems to verify our hypothesis that the surveillance of the seven leaders intensified in the months leading up to the Easter Rising. We can surmise that the month of March saw fewer mentions of most of the names. The insurgents were likely preparing for the imminent revolt, and thus being more secretive.