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The 14 civilians killed or mortally wounded in Croke Park on Bloody Sunday were remembered at a ceremony at the stadium on Saturday, 100 years after their deaths.
In contrast to the maelstrom and bloodshed of the day 1920, Croke Park remained silent and dark for the ceremony, which preceded the final of the Dublin-Meath Leinster Senior Football Championship.
It was a cool, quiet afternoon without a gust of wind around the stadium, and a crescent loomed over Canal End.
For too long, Michael Hogan, the Tipperary footballer who gave the Hogan Stand its name, was the only name of those killed that day that is remembered 100 years ago. The others were an anonymous and amorphous group of victims.
However, there was no memory hierarchy on Saturday night. Instead, the names of the 14 who died were read in alphabetical order, starting with Jane Boyle, a butcher’s assistant, who was getting married that week and was buried in her wedding dress, and ending with Joe Traynor, the footballer. . Crazy captain of Young Emmets’ team in Inchicore who died when a bullet entered his back.
As each name was read, a torch was lit at the corner of Hill 16 and Canal End and a shaft of light projected into the skies over Croke Park.
The place where the crown was placed was the place where Michael Hogan was shot and killed.
In the parallel universe that used to be our normal lives, the centenary of Bloody Sunday was supposed to coincide with the second test of international rules between Ireland and Australia, with a packed crowd.
Instead, it was the emptiness that stood out, as Taoiseach Micheál Martin and President Michael D Higgins laid offerings.
Actor Brendan Gleeson, reading a script prepared by Michael Foley, author of The Bloodied Field, recalled a sunny Sunday 100 years ago when 15,000 people attended a wartime game when such occasions were rare.
At 3.25pm, the bullets grazed the lawn and the bullets jumped off the wall as people fell, shot to death or crushed.
“In 90 seconds, 14 people lay dead or mortally wounded in the fields and banks of Croke Park and on the streets outside,” he recalled.
“They are our family, our friends, our people. We remember them all. “
I remember by the grave
Earlier in the day, relatives of one of the victims, James Matthews, remembered him at his grave in Glasnevin Cemetery.
Mr. Matthews (38) was from a tenement house on North Cumberland Street in Dublin. He was married and had four daughters.
As was the case with many of those who were shot that day, their family did not have the means to erect a headstone, and it remained unmarked, and for the most part unremembered, until the GAA Bloody Sunday project erected a headstone on his grave in 2016.
His 95-year-old daughter, Nancy, attended that opening and paid a silent tribute to the father she never knew. Her mother was three months pregnant with her on Bloody Sunday.
Nancy died at the age of 97 in 2018 and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery near her father.
On the centenary of James’s death, members of his extended family visited his grave. His grandsons John, Martin and James Lynch attended. They put up a crown in the Dublin colors and put a Dublin GAA flag next to it.
The visit coincided with an announcement from the Abbey Theater that a grant had been created in the name of James Matthews to allow an artist to reimagine his life and death.
Relatives of James Matthews visit his grave at Glasnevin Cemetery
James Matthews was hit while trying to flee Croke Park during the shooting. He was shot while trying to scale a wall on the ground and later died of hemorrhagic shock.
“Under normal circumstances, we would have been at Croke Park,” said James Lynch, who is named after him. “It’s great that we have a royal tomb to visit.
“For my grandfather it was a normal Sunday and it ended in tragedy. The impact on our family was terrible. “
Dawn ceremony
James Burke (44), another of those killed after crown forces opened fire on Bloody Sunday, was remembered at a sunrise ceremony at the Ballinteer St Johns GAA club in South Dublin.
The Tricolor and the flags of Dublin and Tipperary were raised at dawn and lowered at 3 pm by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Mr. Burke, father of five. The granite base of your headstone will be moved to the club grounds in perpetuity.
In a statement to mark Bloody Sunday, British Ambassador Paul Johnston said it was a “day of reflection.” He also echoed the words of Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Ireland in 2011: “To all those who have suffered as a result of our troubled past, I extend my heartfelt thoughts and condolences. With the benefit of historical hindsight, we can all see things that we wish had been done differently or not done at all. “
Johnston, who was not invited to the ceremony at Croke Park, said there will be many opportunities to “reflect on the complex and difficult past” in the years ahead.
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