Archive of the Month
The Church of Ireland Gazette editions for 1915 digitized and fully searchable online
Archive of the Month – April 2015
To view the search engine click: https://esearch.informa.ie/rcb
The RCB Library has now released in full the weekly editions of the 1915 The Church of Ireland Gazette online, highlights from which are presented via this digital exhibition for April’s Archive of the Month. The permanent digital record which utilises Optical Character Recognition technology (OCR) is available and searchable via this permanent link. The 1915 editions add to those already available for the years 1913 and 1914, enabling further analysis of various aspects of the momentous changes that occurred in Ireland and now being marked in the Decade of Commemorations.
Regular followers of Archive of the Month will be aware that last year we launched a sponsorship appeal to continue the work of digitization of this important resource. Our efforts have come to the attention of the Irish government, and we are delighted to acknowledge the encouragement of the National Commemorations Programme (managed by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht) whose financial support has made possible the work presented here on 1915. Further support from other individuals will enable the work to continue over the next few years.
Further background about the history of the Gazette (including a full list of its editors) produced in conjunction with the digital release of the 1913 editions as the Archive of the Month for August 2013 is permanently available here. A quick guide to using the search engine is available here.
Users should note that the extent of the data is too large to provide online as a page–turnable pdf, but once they have identified an item of interest within a particular issue, it is possible to browse through the contents of that issue as each individual page appears as a thumbnail along the top of the search box.
The Gallipoli Campaign by the Allied forces began on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula on 25 April 1915, (and would continue for over 8 months until 9 January 1916). Five days after it began, the Gazette edition for Friday 30 April 1915 was published. Its by now weekly column “The War Week by Week” (narrating the latest news on the war) carried an interesting analysis of the operation to attack German and Ottoman naval vessels at sea, and land British and French troops on both sides of the Dardanelles Straits (of vital strategic importance as the main sea route into the Russian Empire).
Describing the delicacy of the operation and quoting directly from the latest War Office bulletins to most accurately describe what was happening, the piece (as with other columns of the same name throughout this year) bears the initials “W.B.W.” indicating that the editor himself, Warre B. Wells, was author of the text. As we have previously noted, Wells served as Gazette editor during the entire period of the First World War. A layman, in a letter to one of his clergy columnists in the Gazette, the Revd W.S. Kerr displayed as part of another Archive of the Month here Wells described himself as ‘imparted of Nationalist sympathies’.) and was noted for a pluralist and fair outlook. During the Great War he clearly supported Irish involvement in the military effort by endorsing and publicising active recruitment at every opportunity in his editorials and columns. Wells served as editor of the Gazette from 1906 and apparently only left the role at the end of the War when political tensions between north and south became more magnified, becoming editor of the Irish Statesman (a weekly journal promoting the views of the Irish Dominion League) in 1918. He wrote one of the first histories of the Irish Rebellion, 1916 – with N. Marlowe, A History of the Irish Rebellion of 1916 (Dublin, 1916) and its sequel The Irish Convention and Sinn Fein (Dublin 1918). His biography of John Redmond, whom he admired, was published in 1919.
In the same edition, a full two–page spread appeared promoting the Anti–German League, which campaigned and fund–raised in the UK and Ireland against the purchase of German and Austrian goods; employment of Germans for domestic or commercial work; contracts of any kind with German companies; and finally promotion of a boycott against any trader persisting in the stocking of German or Austrian goods”.
Dealing in one sentence with the biggest event to occur in within the republican movement in Ireland during 1915, and most certainly a national event, Wells was scathing of the sight of “six or seven thousand of the various Nationalist Volunteer organisations marching through Dublin in various stages of equipment to the burial of O’Donovan Rossa – a man convicted of treason–felony”.
Underlining the Gazette‘s political outlook at this time, the week before these events in Dublin, the paper had covered the Lord Primate’s address to over 8000 men of the Ulster Division stationed at Seaford in Sussex en route to the Front: “to see all these men who have volunteered for service on behalf of King and country … will not readily be forgotten”. Taking Daniel 32 as the text for his sermon, the archbishop had declared and justified their actions: “the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits”.
In the final edition of the year, 24 December 1915, Wells further dealt with the ‘awkward dilemma’ faced by Redmond and members of his party on the issue of compulsive recruitment, and categorically defended his right to interfere with and be involved in the political affairs of the United Kingdom.
A significant new feature introduced to the weekly Gazette from the 24 September 1915 was the “Roll of Honour of Clergy” which sought to illustrate the military service of clerical families, through publication of a series of portraits with accompanying biographical sketches of the sons, or near relations of Irish clergy who were either ‘bearing arms’, or had already ‘laid down their lives in their country’s cause’.
Perhaps, not surprisingly this new feature began with figures connected to the top tier of the clerical hierarchy, with the eldest son of the Lord Primate (the Most Revd John Baptist Crozier) who was Major Baptist Crozier, serving with the Royal Artillery, together with his detailed biographical profile, being the first of the series. Alongside Crozier, and more poignantly appeared the picture of Robert Bernard, the younger son of the Rt Revd J.H. Bernard, Bishop of Ossory, who, having served with the Royal Fusiliers in India, is reported in the biographical account as being killed in action on 26th April 1915 at Sedd–el–Bahr on the Gallipoli Peninsula, the day after the Fusiliers effected a landing on this beach.
The archbishop’s second son, the Revd John Winthrop Crozier, serving as an army chaplain with the 29th Brigade, was more fortunate, having landed safely at the Dardanelles in early August. Here he is profiled alongside Winslow Seymour Sterling Berry, elder son of the bishop of Killaloe, serving as a medical officer in charge or the 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers, who on 1 October 1915 was reported as “en route to France”.
The Roll of Honour became, as we shall see, a regular feature of the Gazette into 1916, and many other clergy down the ranks encouraged to submit photographs and sketches of their own sons and relatives so as to build as a catalogue of information and visual images. The complete roll of honour for 1915 may be easily accessed by entering “Irish Clergy Roll of Honour” into the search engine, and using this we have captured all of the entries for 1915 which are now available at this link, together with a list of the donors who have contributed to the Gazette digitization project fund to date.
On a lighter note, a special mid–summer supplement to the Gazette that appeared in the 30 July edition, encouraged readers not to forget their holidays “in spite of the stress and strain” of the past ten months. Given that many seaside resorts in England and Scotland were billeted with troops, readers were reminded to “spend a holiday in Ireland”, north, south, east and west. Some of the principal destinations accessible via Ireland’s extensive railway network, as well locations in Dublin were featured, along with prominent advertisements.
Overall then the contents of the Church of Ireland Gazette provide an invaluable insight to the opinions and attitudes of members of the Church of Ireland through changing times. Written and read by lay and clerical members of the Church north and south, access via the online search engine brings to life at the touch of a button how unfolding political events in Ireland and abroad were communicated to and received by members of this significant minority community on the island one hundred years ago.
To view the search engine click: https://esearch.informa.ie/rcb
www.gazette.ireland.anglican.org
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For further information please contact:
Dr Susan Hood
RCB Library
Braemor Park
Churchtown
Dublin 14
Tel: 01–4923979
Fax: 01–4924770
E–mail: susan.hood@rcbcoi.org