Eugene Sheehy was born in Loughmore, near Templemore,
County Tipperary in 1882 or 1883. His father, David Sheehy, was an Irish Party
MP for South Meath, had previously been a member of the IRB and the Land
League, and was imprisoned six times during the Land War.
Eugene’s older sister, Hanna Sheehy, married Francis
Sheehy-Skeffington, the writer and political activist who was executed in
Portobello Barracks on the orders of Captain J. C. Bowen-Colthurst, the 3rd
Reserve Battalion Royal Irish Rifles, on 26 April, 1916.
Eugene’s younger sister, Mary Sheehy, married Tom
Kettle, politician, barrister and writer. He was with the 9th
Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers and was killed in action leading a company of
men, 9 September, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme.
The Sheehy family moved to Dublin when Eugene was four
years old and he grew up in the new family home in Belvedere Place. James
Joyce, a fellow Belvederian, was a friend of the family and often visited them.
Joyce was closest to Richard, Eugene’s brother, and he had an unrequited love
interest for their sister, Mary, and she was his poetic muse until he was
further inspired by Nora Barnacle
after June, 1904. The Belvedere
College Dublin List of Pupils 1832-1936
noted the entry of a Eugene Sheehy to the school in 1891, with an address at 11
Temple Street.
Both
Eugene and his father were supporters of John Redmond and Home Rule. An uncle,
however, also named Eugene Sheehy, a priest, was an ardent supporter of the
Land League and the Gaelic Athletic Association and later was a strong republican.
The Belvederian
of 1907 reported that Sheehy succeeded in securing a clerkship in the Supreme
Court in 1906. The Belvederian of the
next year, 1908, had proud news:
In the Final Examination in King's Inn last May he obtained
fourth place with a first class honours, barely missing Third Victoria Prize by
2 marks.
Sheehy
was a supporter of Irish theatre and demonstrated his interest and belief in
the Irish stage by contributing an article to The Belvederian of 1908 concerning William G. Fay, another Old
Belvederian, a well-known and popular stage actor of the Irish Literary Theatre
and the Abbey Theatre.
Sheehy
also worked as an attorney at the High Couth in Dublin before he applied for a
commission in the British Army in April, 1915. In 1916, he was living in
Dartmouth Square, Ranelagh. The
Belvederian of 1916 reported that Sheehy was active and prominent in
recruiting platforms for the army.
In
his book, May It Please the Court,
Sheehy wrote briefly about his experiences of the Easter rising in Dublin,
1916:
In April, 1916, I was with my battalion in Templemore
when word reached us, on Easter Monday night, of the Rising in Dublin.
Whilst two companies of the 4th Battalion RDF
occupied Broadstone railway station, Sheehy and his company took up positions
in Dorset Street and he remembered receiving friendly greetings from the local
population. Sheehy wrote:
I am very glad to be able
to state that the officers and men of the 4th Dublins behaved all
the week with great discipline and forbearance. As a result, the Battalion
suffered very few casualties; and I doubt very much if we inflicted any on
those opposed to us.
He
also noted the discipline of ‘Pearse’s soldiers’ that he observed. In an
offensive against an Irish Volunteers position in Kelly’s Lane near Broadstone,
the company’s adjutant, Duff Cooper, did not think ‘those mad Irishmen’ would
respect the Red Cross when Dr Louis Cassidy RAMC was to retrieve the dead and
wounded. Sheehy told him: ‘I know more
about the Irish than you do, and I am quite certain that they will not fire
upon the Red Cross.’ The Irish Volunteers withheld fire and the
stretcher-bearers did their work without further incident.
The Belvederian
of 1916 noted that Sheehy, a Second-Lieutenant at the time, led a company of
men down Denmark Street Great, past Belvedere House, his old school. While this
Eugene Sheehy was in British Army uniform leading his men, his uncle, Fr Eugene
Sheehy, was in the GPO supporting the Irish Volunteers. John Dillon, in a
letter to his mother-in-law, may have been referring to Fr Sheehy when he wrote
He [Rector of Belvedere Fr Fahy] confirmed the story
of the priest having gone into the G.P.O.—heard the Confessions of all the
garrison—found them full of enthusiasm and confidence—quite assured that they
were in the right—fighting for Ireland and ready to die for the cause.
Sheehy
noted that the change in public opinion following the rebellion was tangible.
He put this down to the resentment of the civilian population towards the
military, ‘the very gallant battle fought by some hundreds of badly armed men
against tremendous odds … and the savage execution of the heroic leaders’.
As
an Irish soldier in the British Army, who saw action in Dublin during Easter
week, Sheehy’s words are insightful, poignant and representative of a large
number of returning Irishmen from the battlefields of the Great War:
The Rising in Easter Week was a source of heartbreak
to me and to the many tens of thousands of Irish Nationalists who had joined
the British Army. We had done so at the request of our leaders—who were the
elected representatives of the people—and the vast majority of the nation
applauded our action. The Rising was not even approved of by the leaders of
Sinn Féin.
As the tide of Irish public opinion gradually changed
and hostility to England grew we did not quite know where we stood, or where
our duty lay. The threat of conscription in 1918, and the ultimate betrayal of
Redmond by the British Parliament made those of us who survived feel that the
thousands of Irishmen who died ... had made
their sacrifice in vain.
After
his time in Dublin during the rebellion, Sheehy was sent to join the 1st
Battalion RDF at the front in July, 1916. He was later transferred to the
Intelligence Corps. He was promoted to Lieutenant in July, 1917, and to Captain
in June, 1918. After his demobilisation in March, 1919, he returned to live in
Dublin. He later became a legal staff officer in the Irish Free State and in
1923 he was attached to the Law Department of the Army. In 1929 Sheehy was
appointed to serve as a judge in the Circuit Court for the counties Donegal,
Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan.
The Belvederian
of 1929 congratulated Sheehy on his appointment and featured the following
description of his character:
To a very wide circle of personal friends and
professional colleagues his natural and unique sense of humour has long since
earned for him the reputation of being the best after-dinner speaker in Dublin,
and on such occasions he invariably delights his audience with a topical poem
or a gentle satire in prose of his own composition and of high literary merit.
He
published May It Please the Court in
1951. He died in 1958.
