Thomas St George McCarthy from Bansha died on this day in 1943. He was one of the founding members of the GAA, being present at the Association’s inaugural meeting at Hayes’ Hotel in Thurles on 1st November 1884.
However, due to a ban the GAA later introduced prohibiting their members from serving with the RIC, he was largely airbrushed from history until 2009 when a granite memorial acknowledging his contribution to the GAA was unveiled by his previously unmarked graveside at Deansgrange cemetery in Dublin.
Thomas St. George McCarthy was born in Bansha on 9th June 1862, the son of an RIC County Inspector from Tralee. Thomas was educated at Tipperary Grammar School in Tipp Town and was an enthusiastic cricket and rugby player. Indeed, he went on to win a cap for the Irish rugby team when he lined out against Wales 28 January 1882.
In 1879, Thomas went to Dublin where he attended Michael Cusack’s Civil Service Academy, a cramming school in Gardiner’s Place which specialised in preparing young men for entry examinations into the RIC, as well as the army and navy, Trinity College, and medical and law schools. Cusack and McCarthy struck up a friendship and the young Bansha man took first place in the RIC cadetship examinations. In January 1883, he was transferred to Templemore as 3rd Class District Inspector.
There is some debate as to why exactly he was present at the founding of the GAA in November 1884. Some say that as a member of the RIC, he must have been a British spy, not least since his father was now one of Tipperary’s Residential Magistrates. Others say he was there simply because he was a sporting fanatic, and wanted to support anything that promoted sport amongst young people. It’s also possible he was there to support his friend Michael Cusack, or even that he happened to be in Thurles on the day and ran into the organisers and decided to take a seat. In any case, there is no record of McCarthy saying anything at the meeting.
As the GAA ‘spread like a prairie fire across the island’ in the following years, McCarthy was to be the only one of the seven founders to be excluded from honoured memory. The reason is very simple. The GAA soon prohibited any of its members serving with either the RIC or the British army. As a policeman, McCarthy was immediately affected. Known as Rule 21, the ‘ban’ stayed in place until 2001.
As a police officer, McCarthy moved around a lot. He was transferred to Fermanagh, Derry, Dundalk and Limerick amongst other places, before settling in Ranelagh, Dublin in later life where he regularly attended games at Lansdowne Road and Croke Park.
In 1934, the year the GAA celebrated its golden jubilee, it never recognised the fact that McCarthy had been a founding member and indeed that he was, at that point, the only founding member still alive. He died in Dublin on this day in 1943 and was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave at Deansgrange Cemetery.
Renowned RIC historian Jim Herlihy subsequently located the grave and set in motion the idea of rehabilitating McCarthy’s memory. On the morning of 18 November 2009, a granite commemorative stone was unveiled by McCarthy’s grave at a ceremony attended by PSNI Chief Superintendent Gerry O’Callaghan, Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy and GAA President Christy Cooney.
Sources:
https://www.tipperarylive.ie/news/home/661009/bansha-man-thomas-st-george-mccarthy-the-only-gaa-founder-excluded-from-honoured-memory.html
https://www.independent.ie/news/murphy-pays-tribute-to-gaa-founder/26583584.html
https://www.dib.ie/biography/maccarthy-thomas-st-george-a5585
https://turtlebunbury.com/document/thomas-st-george-maccarthy-1862-1943/
The Clancy brothers and Tommy Makem performed to a live audience of 80 million people on The Ed Sullivan Show on 12 March 1961, shooting them to stardom in the US.
Paddy and Tom Clancy moved to New York by way of Toronto after serving in the RAF during WWII. Arriving in Greenwich Village in 1951, they first established themselves as actors but soon setup their own production company. To raise start-up funds, they organised folk concerts,performing Irish ballads they’d known since childhood in their own exuberant style.
Liam Clancy, the youngest of eleven Clancy siblings, joined his brothers in Greenwich Village in 1956. In the 1960s, the New York neighbourhood of Greenwich Village dominated America’s music scene.The Village’s many colourful coffee houses and clubs were a hotbed for poets,songwriters and folk singers. On Sundays, when the clubs were closed, the musicians took to the streets with fiddles, banjos and guitars in-hand.
The Clancy brothers, along with Tommy Makem from Keady, Co. Armagh, formed a ballad singing quartet. Over the next fifteen years, they would record nearly twenty albums together.
In 1961, Bob Dylan crossed paths with the band when they performed in the White Horse Tavern. He loved the emotional rebel songs that they sang and began to follow the brothers around the Village so he could watch and learn from their act.
"I’d never heard a singer as good as Liam, ever. He was just the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my life - still is probably," Dylan says in the 1984 documentary ‘The Story of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem’. In his autobiography Chronicles, Dylan also explains how he wanted to write like the Clancy brothers too.
In March 1961, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem became overnight celebrities after appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show. The quartet had been signed up to play two songs but singer Pearl Bailey failed to show up so The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem were given her slot too. That night, 80 million Americans from Boston to L.A. heard the revolutionary sounds of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem – the performance lasted a record-breaking 16 minutes. “It was like getting a blessing from the Pope,”recalled Liam with a laugh.
Two years later came a historic sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. They even performed for JFK himself for St Patrick’s Day in 1963.
In May of 1990, Tom Clancy died at the age of 66; his brother Paddy died eight years later. Tommy Makem passed away in 2007 and Liam Clancy died in 2009, aged 74.
The Clancy Brothers legacy still endures to this day. They are credited with popularising Irish traditional music and songs in America and played a key role in Ireland’s traditional and folk music revival of the 1960s and 1970s. They influenced a host of other musicians including Dylan, Christy Moore and Paul Brady.
Sources:
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2024/0428/1443833-the-clancy-brothers-and-tommy-makem/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0428/1211260-how-the-clancy-brothers-inspired-bob-dylan/
https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/clancy-brothers-music
