1916 Eye Witness: 'It was then Pearse came out of the GPO and read the proclamation right in the mid

Joseph Mary Plunkett was of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. After the surrender, he was held in Kilmainham Gaol, courtmartialled and executed. His sister, Geraldine Dillon, recalled these events for a 'witness statement' she gave to the Bureau of Military History during the 1950s. She had married Thomas Dillon on Easter Sunday, and they were staying at the Imperial Hotel on O'Connell Street. This is an extract from her statement

Shortly after we got to the Imperial [Hotel], a telephone message came from my mother to tell us about the [Eoin McNeill] countermanding order, which she saw in the Independent. Rory O'Connor came in then and confirmed that news, adding that it was not settled what was actually going to happen, but that as far as he knew, the Rising was going on next day, at 12 o'clock.

From about 10 o'clock on Monday, we kept looking out the window of the front sitting room we occupied in the hotel. We had a complete view of everything. At 12.20 a company of Volunteers, about 100, wheeled round from Eden Quay, walked up the street, halted in front of the GPO, and turned left into the PO. We recognised Pearse, Connolly, McDermott, Willie Pearse and my brother... Liam Clarke dropped a bomb accidentally [on the] pavement of the doorway in the centre, and immediately he was carried away on a stretcher.

We watched the Volunteers stopping milk carts, and food carts, and bringing food into the GPO. At the same time, the staff of the GPO started to run out, hysterical girls screaming, clutching coats, etc. The tricolour was run up at the south front corner of the building and the recruiting posters ripped of the pillars with the bayonets to the cheers of the crowd at the pillar.

I saw a man driving up and getting out of a car and Tom [Dillon, her husband] said it was McBride. He was not in uniform, and gave an impression of being casual. He must have gone on to Stephen's Green afterwards. He had told Joe that he thought he would only bring discredit on the Volunteers if he joined before the fighting started, but he had got a promise that as soon as any fighting started he would be told at once. Joe had a long conversation with him on that earlier occasion during which he told him all his personal history.

They started to make a barricade in Prince's Street with motor cars commandeered from people going to Fairyhouse Races. When Rory [O'Connor] came over afterwards he told us stories about some of the owners – Army officers saying they would complain to the military authorities, etc. They then started to make a barricade in Earl Street by driving a tram into it. They tram-man could not get up enough speed around the corner to turn it over, though he tried several times.

It was at that stage that some cavalry men appeared up near the Rotunda and the crowd in the street, who were getting rather excited, started running about. A number of priests suddenly appeared from Marlborough Street, and started to shoo the people off the streets. Most of them went but a few refused to go. Then the cavalry charged down the street.

The GPO men had orders to hold their fire – Rory told me this – until they were opposite the building. But the Volunteers could not hold their fire, some of them fired before the cavalry got level. One man fell off his horse, killed by a bullet. We could see others being held on their horses by their comrades. Among the civilians was a tall man, dressed in black, at the foot of the Fr Matthew statue. He stood for what seemed a few minutes and then dropped dead. A horse dropped dead too, and the rider ran off down the street with the rest of the cavalry towards the quays. I think it was then Pearse came out of the GPO and read the proclamation right in the middle of the street.

I should mention that Joe told us that barricades were not intended as part of their defence plans. They were simply intended to interrupt free communication for the enemy, and facilitate it for us, to enable us to cross the street. The tram I mentioned was still in Earl Street, and they put a bomb into it but it did not go off. They put another one inside it and Joe came out of the GPO and shot at it with his Mauser from about 30 yards. The shot exploded the bomb and smashed the chassis, which now could not be moved, and served the purpose intended.

Joe was always engaged in keeping the efficiency of the organisation up to standard. He was never done reading history, in order to have the theoretical and technical knowledge necessary to avoid errors, and to take advantage of the conventional errors made by soldiers and governments. He made his plans always with an eye to mistakes the enemy would make.

The bomb that exploded in the tram smashed Noblett's window, and the crowd started to take out the sweets. They then started to break the other windows and general looting started. George came out of the GPO and asked for civilians to volunteer help to stop the looting. Some did volunteer and George handed them white sticks. It was no use. The "separation allowance" women began to gather in the street. They crowded round the Post Office, and abused the volunteers inside, throwing the glass from the broken windows at them. They knelt down in the streets to curse them. I remember one women kneeling with her scapular in her hand, screaming curses at them. George came out again and waved a big knife at them, which produced some effect...

My father [George Noble Plunkett] had managed to get to the GPO on Tuesday of Easter Week and had a long conversation with Connolly, who told him that he would like to re-write everything he had ever written in the light of what he now thought. He talked affectionately and enthusiastically of his comrades.

My father was arrested on the Monday following Easter Week, and my mother [Josephine Plunkett] filled her handbag with Woodbines, and with this passport got through cordon after cordon and got to the vicinity of the Castle with a view to making a row and getting the boys off. But she failed to reach it. She was arrested next day...

During my first visit to Richmond Barracks [where her father was being held], my father told me that the day Joe was courtmartialled, he saw him standing in the rain below his window in the barrack square. He knew he was to be shot, and they gazed at each other for about half an hour before Joe was moved off. My father was weeping as he told me this.p

Excerpted from Witness Statement no. 358, by Geraldine Dillon, in the Bureau of Military History (1913-21) collection