Humphrey Bogart & The African Parrots of South London.

* This is a curious tale of animal invasion that I only recently became aware of, mostly through running in the parks of South London. It's a pretty well known one to Londoners, but I thought I might share.....

"Oo are you calling a pretty boy, then?" - Parrots of Telegraph Hill, London

 * Go for an early-morning run ....in the parks of South London and you'll see many sights, some of them scary, others curious (such as the stained mattresses that apparently roam the streets of Lewisham, seen standing against walls and in overgrown front gardens, frozen, troll-like, by the first rays of the rising sun).

You'll see bleary-eyed commuters rushing for the train, the occasionally late-night party-animal struggling home or homeless guys crawling out of improvised bivouacs under the shrubbery.

But what greeted me on one such run recently was something entirely unexpected. A flock of vermillion and emerald-hued parrots, swooping low over the crest of our local hill, against the backdrop of the London skyline.

I was literally stopped in my tracks. A flock of parrots? Half expecting to see a giraffe standing outside the off-licence at the bottom of the hill, I eventually ran on and got home to do a bit of googling.

And that's when I found out that there are an estimated 30,000 Feral Parakeets (not an '80s New Wave band, BTW) happily living (mostly) south of the river Thames, in suburban back-streets and the wide-open green spaces, parks and commons that you will find everywhere in London.

And the story of how they got here is fascinating.

Parrots In the Park - South London

The birds are mostly Rose Ringed Parakeets. although similar flocks of Monk Parakeets have also been spotted. They are an afro-asian bird, not something you would expect to see in Catford, Twickenham or Tooting Bec.

And the theories as to why they are here are many, some are almost as exotic as the birds themselves.

The birds may have originated from just one breeding pair released into the wild. And one popular story is that this pair were released by Jimmi Hendrix on Carnaby Street in London during a photo shoot in 1967.

However, there are also theories that a flock of parrots staged a breakout from an aviary during the great storm of 1987. Or that a container full of illegally imported parrots broke open at Gatwick airport in the early '90s.

My own favourite story is that they are all descended from parrots imported from Africa to England and featured in the studio scenes of the classic Humphrey Bogart/Katharine Hepburn movie The African Queen, shot by John Huston in a south London film studio in 1951.

As the story goes, when the movie was over, some studio tech simply opened the main doors and the birds flew out, to establish breeding colonies all over South London.

Given the Bogie connection, I'd like to sidle up to one of them and say; "You know how to whistle, don't ya?"

They have adapted to survive harsh London winters and managed to slot themselves into the eco-system (possibly by learning to love the most common South London food source, the Abandoned Kebab).

However, they got here, I've certainly come to appreciate them, especially during the current heatwave, when they add a bit of tropical colour to the blazing blue skies.

They certainly brighten up every early morning plod up and down the hills of south London. And added to my stock of Avian Tales of London, which also includes the true story of the Pigeons who have learned to ride the Underground.....

* If you want to know a little more - here's a link to a clip from a BBC wildlife doc that talks about the parrots ..... thanks for reading... - Clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4P_NhFlb5w

ENDS

The First Selfie - Robert Cornelius & The Dawn of Photography.

* I came across this arresting image, and the story of Robert Cornelius, recently. I have a pretty strong interest in early photography thanks to a friend who has revived Victorian glass-plate portraiture. A fascinating process that I blogged about Here

Cornelius is a dimly known but fascinating figure. Almost certainly the first man to turn the newly devised process of photography on the most interesting subject of all, ourselves.....

Robert Cornelius - Early Modern Narcissist  

It is a very modern, a very arresting image. A handsome, well dressed man, arms folded across his chest, stares into the lens of his camera. In stylish, high-cllared coat, with tousled, Byronic locks, his eyes, steadily regarding us, the unseen viewers.

The man is Robert Cornelius of Philadelphia in the United States. The year is 1839. And what we are looking at is almost certainly the first photographic self-portrait. The first "selfie".

Selfies recently became the latest social media trend, with everybody from Angela Merkel and Rihanna to Barrack Obama joining in the fun.

In this age of a camera in every pocket, with instant access to a global audience via smart-phones and social media apps, the selfie has become a symbol of our ongoing fascination with ourselves. And our need to share these images with as many people as possible.

Photography has become instant and disposable. It is estimated that upwards of 95 per cent of all the photographic images made since the dawn of the technology have been made in the past four years or so, since the mass adoption of smart-phones. How many of us have old phones, obsolete laptops or discarded digital cameras containing hundreds if not thousands of now forgotten snaps? Of holidays, nights out, gigs, or family reunions? Images of some of the most important moments of our lives, consigned to dusty drawers or attic storage. Unlikely to see the light again.

Robert Cornelius was an early pioneer of photography. A self-taught genius at chemistry and metallurgy from his youth, he was fascinated by the new science of photography and began playing with the daguerreotype process (the first form of photography) while still in his teens.

The first photographs, because of the very long exposure times they needed (sometimes minutes rather than the fraction of a second needed today), were usually of of trees, buildings and other objects that didn't tend to move around a lot.

Even when exposure times came down, allowing for portraits of humans to be taken, they were told to sit very still and tended to have set, unsmiling faces (it makes sense, try holding a smile for more than five seconds, it can make you look like a maniac).

So what we got, when it came to photographic portraits, tended to be grim-faced, dressed-in-their-Sunday best, people, who were sitting for perhaps the only (expensive) photograph they would ever have of themselves.

Let's Get This Party Started

What Cornelius did was play with the silver nitrate process and lighting, difficult when it was decades before electricity (remember, when his self-made portrait was snapped, it was less than twelve months after an 18-year-old girl called Victoria was crowned Queen of England).

And on a bright autumn day in October, 1839, two decades before the start of the American Civil War, Cornelius set up his camera on the stoop outside his father's store in Philadelphia and took what is one of the first ever pictures of a human being and almost certainly the first self-portrait.

He had only recently turned 20 years of age. It was a great breakthrough in early photography, but also a moment that foreshadowed the modern age of self-obsession. Of course, self-portraits were nothing new. The Dutch master Rembrandt sketched or painted over 90 in his own lifetime.

Rembrandt Selfie - And Guess The Expression..Surprise?

But what Cornelius pioneered was the democratisation of the self-portrait. In the years to follow, you would no longer need to be a great artist,  with days or weeks to devote to looking into your own face. Gazing into your own eyes.

Cornelius gave up on photography after several years of running his own studios, to make his fortune in the family business. He still worked with light, but it was of the gas-light kind. And he lived long enough to see electric street-lighting illuminate the streets of his childhood.

What he left us was the first (or one of the first) photographic self-portraits. And written on the back is the legend; "The First Light Picture Ever Taken".

* Thanks for reading....

Fiends In High Places - Garth Brooks & Ireland's National Malaise

The Man Behind The Wire

* So who do we blame, lads? Because we've got to blame somebody.

Because this is fairly basic stuff, for feck's sake. The kind of thing they can do in most European cities - bloke in hat, band, big stage, hot-dogs - without it becoming the sort of months long, national crisis that has afflicted us ever since Garth Brooks announced he wanted to sing a few songs here. A move that has plunged this nation into the kind of crises, recrimination, fear and loathing normally seen in other countries after they lose a major war. How did Garth in Croker become our Vietnam?

Well, we've had the traditional piss-up/brewery brouhaha. Not what comes next? Oh yeah! The Blame Game!

Is it the promoters, who banked on City Council not defying the will of the people? The residents around Croke Park, who can put up with 40,000 Dub football supporters every Sunday but not Five Nights of A Dude In A Hat Shouting "Howdy Dublin!"?

Or is it the city fathers - those fiends in high places - who have ruled that it would be Cruel & Unusual Punishment - the creation of a Country n'Western Guantanamo Bay - to force them to do so?

The news that only three of the planned (and already sold out!) five Garth Brooks gigs in Croke Park this summer have been granted planning permission broke over our poor, benighted nation like a thunderclap this morning.

In homes all over our island, fathers, pale with suffering and emotion, switched off the valve radio, turned to look into the still-innocent, trusting faces of their children, and solemnly announced; "Well that's It. We're f***d".

Add it to the Roll of National heartbreak. Write it in the blood of those cruelly denied the chance to march through our glorious capital city, to follow in the footsteps of the great patriots like Pearse, Connolly and Limerick-Junction, wearing a pink spangly stetson and stuffing a chicken-fillet roll into their gobs. Play The Summer of '69 low in Coppers tonight, for there is no joy left on this island.

There will be no Brooks IV & V. There will be no day out in Dublin, for you, the sons & daughters of our blessed soil.

For unless you're holding tickets for Brooks I, II, or III, you are Children of a Lesser God.

She Is Silent, Now. Silent as the Grave of  O'Connell

But wait! Surely this is not the end! What are the alternatives?

Feck all. There's no money to be made in shifting the whole shebang across the river after three nights to do two at the Aviva.

And anyway- if you think the residents around Croke Park put up a fight, can you imagine the vast armies of Senior Counsels that would be assembled by the snobby feckers of Dublin 4?

Garth Brooks and his lawyers would be like Custer & the 7th Cavalry at Little Big Horn.

No. No. And thrice No. We dreamed too big. We wanted too much. A more realistic people, say, the Belgians, would have been happy with two or maybe three nights of a dude in a stetson singing about Pick Up Trucks.

But we, we persecuted Celts, with our long history of oppression and the British making us listen to Duran FECKING Duran and the Basterin' Spice Girls,, we let ourselves, for once, hope for more.

And now those dreams have gone down in flames. A nation mourns. And whinges. Joe Duffy is on tablets for his nerves.

Feck You, Garth Brooks. Feck. You. 

But this is only the start. The bad feeling and divisions unleashed by the injustice of Yer Man Up the Road and His Awful Dose Of A Wife having tickets for Brooks I, while the tickets YOU have for Brooks V are no more use than jacks roll, those divisions will once again tear this country apart.

The hatred between the Have Garths and The Have Nots will make the Civil War look like an episode of Nationwide (you know, that one about the Bee Keepers in Clonmel that your Gran recorded over the final of X Factor, the dozy cow. Seriously, she's already seen the thing five times. I think we need to get her checked out. No, YOU shut up).

People of Ireland! Resist the urge to follow the path to division and strife that condemned so many generations to the futility of brother against brother, Catholic against Protestant, Beyonce versus Brooks.

We have suffered a terrible blow to our nationhood today. But we have weathered worse storms in the past.

Let us join together to sing the words that sustained our forefathers through Cromwell, the Famine and countless Eurovisions.......

All together now...."Blame it on my roots......I showed up in boots.......and failed to apply for the proper planning permission under subsection 3.1 of the 1987 Outdoor Event Licencing Act..."

They don't write them like that, anymore......

A History Of Violence - And What It Means To Be A Man

* I was talking to a couple of male friends about how you don't really see a lot of pub fights anymore, not like the ones we used to see (or find ourselves mixed up) years ago. We couldn't decide whether we just getting older, or going to a better class of bar. But one thing we could agree on, the way our father's generation held themselves, reacted to aggression and dealt with other men who crossed them is no longer acceptable in modern society. And that's a good thing. But I do feel that it's resulted in a lot of confusion.... so this is a bit more personal than my usual stories, but don't worry, it'll be back to your regular service shortly.


* Son? You Need To Be A Little More Alan Ladd And A Little Less John Wayne

"Were You Looking at My Girlfriend's Pint?" 

* Here's a thing about me.... something that only those who really know me are aware of.... I have a nasty, volcanic temper. Always had, still do. 

It's a part of my make-up I only became aware of when I was a young teenager, when I got into my first serious schoolyard fight, with a guy who was a bit of a bully but really only a fool. And once we got into it, I felt a sudden rush of rage and adrenaline. I didn't want to hurt the guy, I wanted to kill him. And I might have really hurt him if some other kids hadn't dragged me off.

It was a very strange feeling, one that many boys become aware of in their first serious fight, the realisation that you have it within yourself to seriously hurt another person, that there is a deep well of anger that you were never aware of and can't really control. 

We grew up in a very old school, rough and tumble working class part of the city. And we learned from our fathers, when you are challenged, never back down. Never show weakness, always hit back. And hit back as hard and as fast as you can.   

It was drilled into us by the men in our family (I had six uncles on my dad's side alone) and by the Christian Brothers who gave us a rough education (if you don't know, the Christian Brothers educated generations of Irish boys - they were mostly hard, violent men. Sort of the Paramilitary Wing of the Catholic Church). We learnt it on the sports field, in hurling (the violently rapid Irish game with stick and ball). Guys with skill were admired, guys who were prepared to put their heads or fists into places they shouldn't were idolised. 

Many of the older men in our lives, fathers, uncles, grandfathers, teachers, sports coaches, had either lived through or were one generation away from a society bathed in terrible violence - the War of Independence and the bitter, fratricidal Civil War that followed. Or they had themselves been brutalised by the schools and the hard, poor, repressed world they grew up in. 

And they idolised Hard Men, from John Wayne and Jack Dempsey to the Old IRA - ruthless guerrillas, terrorists or freedom fighters - depending on your point of view.

In Cork, my home-town, many homes had a portrait of the Republican military leader Michael Collins, hanging next to ones of John Kennedy and the Pope - the Cork/Irish Holy Trinity.

Collins was a genius but also a ruthless killer. And Cork people were proud to have as their national hero a man who wasn't prepared to play by the rules of warfare. You send one of ours to the hospital, we send two of yours to the morgue.

General Michael Collins

As a very young child, I was ushered into the presence of veteran IRA commander Tom Barry, told to shake the hand of a man (then very old but still with a military bearing) who had fought and killed for Ireland.

So we learnt. Never back down. Always stand your ground. A man deals with problems with his fists. My own father was generally a very genial guy, but could go from 0-60mph in seconds. He had that thing which easily provoked men have, the face inside the face. In anger, the facial muscles would contract, the eyes widen and the jaw would stick out. He rarely if ever got into actual fights, but was always on his guard.

Jack Dempsey - What It Means to Be A Man

Of course, this always being on edge, this code that I learnt, led to some pretty stupid fights. I didn't know how to back down - mostly I was too scared to - and there was always the Red Mist. And it was around the age of 17, after coming home once again with a torn shirt covered in blood (not mine, as I was quick to reassure my mother) that I decided this had to change.

I remember seeing the great Alan Ladd movie Shane on TV roughly around this time and thinking; "That's what you want to be, the quiet guy who controls his temper. No pushover and nobody's fool, but not some Jack Palance eejit who just goes around causing trouble".

Always Ask Yourself; "WWSD?" (what would Shane Do?)

So I've learnt to manage my anger. If anything, I've gone a bit too far in the other direction and tried to be the most genial, the most easy-going guy you'll meet. Which causes it's own problems, firstly, because fools will often mistake kindness for weakness and secondly because when, on the very rare occasion I do give way to the rage, it can be like a dam bursting. And I am still fearful that if I lose control some day over some stupid, nothing incident, I could end up harming myself or others. Somebody pushes past me in a pub and I have to fight the urge to get in his face.

It still causes problems. I find it hard to back down, if somebody criticizes me, if somebody close to me points out a shortcoming, a mistake or unthoughtful behaviour, I feel that old rage, that Never Back Down! code, fighting to get out. The demon within. And I often have to go off for a bit and cool down. And realise that they were right and I'm in the wrong. So I need to deal with that.

It's not healthy. But is a situation that I think a lot of men my age find themselves in. We didn't really get a lot of great coping mechanisms from our fathers (or father figures) and now we are living in a society that (thankfully) tends to frown on men who settle minor problems with the offer of a fist-fight in the car-park.

There is a lot of confusion about what it means to be a man in this cockamanie world of ours. Strong but not rough, manly but in touch with your emotions, groomed but still recognisably a guy.

It's not a cop out or an excuse to say this. It just feels like men are getting a lot of contradictory advice. Are we supposed to be Gok Wan or Russell Crowe (or a mix of the two, say David Beckham)? Of course, most women would like the idea of having Beckham around, but could you put up with the three-hour wait to get at the bathroom mirror every morning?

And then there are the media role models - be more like Don Fecking Draper! Well, you try finding a tailor that good or the time to down a bottle of Scotch every day.

Movies and the media, of course, still glamourise Hard Men, even if it is often with a veneer of irony. And one of the hottest sports around right now is Mixed Martial Arts, basically cage-fighting, Boxing without the dignity, skill or intelligence. Packaged, showbiz-infused Ultra Violence for a generation of men who are not allowed to express themselves with their fists.

I was lucky in that I was mostly raised by my mother and my great Aunt Mamie - in fact, in was usual for boys where I came from to have a very matriarchal home, fathers were often absent, emotionally handicapped or simply not expected to join in with the child-rearing.

We drew the best in our characters from the women in our lives. And still do today.

And if you don't agree with me on that, I'll see you outside in two minutes.

ENDS - Thanks for reading....

 

A Matter Of Class - Sure Aren't We All Irish!

* Our former Glorious Leader - the Taoiseach who oversaw the crash with a pint in his hand on a song on his lips, Mr Brian "What Just Happened!?" Cowen told the banking enquiry that Ireland "does not have a class system".

Which is, as the Great English philosopher and social thinker Bertrand Russell would have termed it, "complete and utter bollix".

 I've long been fascinated by that peculiarly Irish National Myth - that unlike, say, the English, we don't really have a class system.

And this piece was initially prompted by a a story that blew up in Dublin awhile ago - some rich kid entrepreneur/social media maven  made a few disaparaging remarks about his fellow Dubs - the ones who didn't have a daddy who could afford a €40k a year private education for their little darlings.

Brian Cowen - bad cess to him -  got me thinking about this again.....

Blackrock College Boys - On Tour 

The Irish! Sure we've suffered a terrible time altogether down the years, mostly at the hands of our nearest neighbours. Perfidious Albion! But if there's one thing we can be sure of, we're all in the same boat. We don't have a class system like those snobby Saxons just across the water. Oh no! Millionaire or road-mender, Cabinet Minister or Cabbie, we can all sit down together in our local, enjoy a pint and talk about the football.

Which is, of course, as the noted 19th century German sociologist and philosopher Max Weber famously observed; "Total and utter bollix".

We do this, lie to ourselves, partly because we need to define ourselves by looking to the British and saying; "That's not us!". We would never be "oppressors" (bollix), we would never go out into the world and lie, steal and tax everybody's sheep (more bollix) and we would never develop the kind of rigidly defined, almost neurotic class system which has been in place in Britain since the Norman Conquest (thundering bollix).

We have very clearly marked class lines in Ireland. But unlike our much-maligned neighbours, we lack their admirable honesty and refuse to face up to this fact. We need to pretend that high or low, we're all the same. We're all ....Irish!

The asinine (with the accent on ASS) comments made on a Dublin food blog this week - about knackers in wetsuits swimming in the canal (I'm paraphrasing - but only a bit) kicked up a bit of a storm. And this Class War! kerfuffle was, for me, very revealing in a number of ways. 

* And by the way - if you are not familiar with Dublin - there's a tradition that once the sun starts shining - kids from the inner city don cheap wetsuits and improvise some extreme water-sports - using the old industrial remnants of cranes, warehouse roofs and canals. See vid below for a quick taste.

Now - let's get past the fact that these "Aren't Dubs just the WORST!" comments were made on a blog called "Lovin' Dublin!" - presumably that's only Lovin! the bits around "leafy" Dublin 4 - the bay area (but Not Dun Laoghaire, obvs) and South William Street (which really needs some gates to keep the chavs out, loike, seriously).

The comments in themselves, were pretty dumb and offensive. But they did express very commonly held sentiments. Hell, I've even made comments along those lines myself (but not in writing or online, obviously, I'm not a total spanner). I do think there is a lot wrong with life in the city centre of Dublin, and I lived there for 15 years.

But the reaction to Lovin' Dublin's casual class hatred - was far more interesting than the actual comments themselves. I think they showed up the weird fear we have of talking about class, prejudice, division and difference when it comes to ourselves. 

Ireland has a clearly defined class system. We have private schools, posh colleges. From the bars we drink in to the sports clubs we play in, our holiday destinations, our fashion choices, our friends, our social media and our tastes in music, movies and TV - it's always a class thing.

Try this for a quick test - you meet somebody and they tell you they're in Coppers every weekend - what do you immediately assume about them? (for those not in the know, Coppers is Dublin's infamous, can't-fail-to-score nightclub/tractor-enthusiasts-nirvana) 

You only have to open your mouth for people to (sometimes subconsciously) start judging and categorising you. Another Irishman, George Bernard Shaw, in his "Preface to Pygmalion" (a work, lest we forget, which was about class) observed;  "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him".

In Ireland, it is as simple as your choice of blue or red. The perceptions and tribal identities/stereotypes proclaim that Muster rugby fans are salt-of-the-earth types, Leinster fans are effete estate-agents who shop in Brown Thomas and wouldn't be seen dead outside SoCoDo (that's south county Dublin, like).

So could you take a Munster Rugby fan from darkest Limerick and - with the help of a Professor Henry Higgins - used extensive speech and deportment therapy to turn him into a Leinster fan? Funny you should ask - I'm developing a reality TV show on that idea as we speak, working title "From Snack Box To Corporate Box" ™.

Seriously, loike, would you look at the state of these Utter Oiks?

Want an example of how it works? Just look at Robbie Keane and Brian O'Driscoll, two Irish captains, sporting heroes. One feted and congratulated (and well rewarded with major advertising & media contracts) for his solid middle-class values and fragrant film-star partner, the other derided, often openly for what is perceived as his bling lifestyle, his Tallaght working class roots and his WAG wife. By the way, I'm talking about perceptions and stereotypes here, not the actual real-life human beings. Shouldn't need to be said but unfortunately, people will jump to conclusions. 

Why is Brian O'Driscoll fronting ad campaigns for pillar banks while you will never seen Robbie Keane in the same role? A few reasons, to do with profile, the fact that Corporate Ireland loves rugby and BOD's in-bred ease with the media and the business world. Brian's Their Kind of People. Robbie, most definitely, is not. 

The Hard Sell

You watch TV, listen to the radio or read newspapers in Ireland and you notice the strict class divisions, or at least the glaring absence of working class voices. And many liberals will believe that the Irish Times, for instance, should be made compulsory for all, in the way the working classes of the 19th Cent. had cod liver oil forced down their throats to prevent Rickets. 

Do I have a chip on my shoulder? Maybe. But then again I'm no longer sure what class I am myself. I was brought up on a terraced street in the city centre of Cork, but my dad was a self employed Small Builder (he was around 4'5''), later a taxi driver, who always had cash and gave us a pretty comfortable upbringing.

When we were kids, our mother wanted to give us every opportunity to progress - so she paid for what were then called Elocution Lessons - basically to make sure we didn't have a "flat Cork accent". I'm glad she did. Because speaking like many of my neighbours would have been a disadvantage for me in the media (even my relatively light Cork accent has caused some problems down the years). 

Since the age of 19, I've worked in (occasionally) well-paid newspaper and TV gigs. I've travelled far and been lucky to experience a lot. So I was working class. Now I'm not? It's confusing.  

Anyhow - have a think about it. Ya posh fecker. Owning a laptop like you're the Big Man.

And while you are - have a look at this excellent short film from Motherland Films in Dublin about inner city Dublin's long tradition of Extreme Watersports.

See it here Becoming Men

Thanks for reading - Joe 

  

The New London Irish - The Latest Wave - But This Time It's Different

Some Come From Ireland - Some From Deepest, Darkest Peru

* HI - as you may know, I've recently moved from Dublin to London. I'll be aiming to work between the two, but for the moment, London is where I'm at and I really like the city. It's one of the world's greatest and you could spend years exploring it.

I did live here briefly a good few years ago. And back then, there had been a wave of emigration thanks to the crippling recession that hit Ireland in the '80s.

They had joined the Irish who came here after the second world war - the '50s generation who colonised Camden & Kilburn and raised kids like George O'Dowd - AKA Boy George - as tough a London Irish kid as you'll ever find. They were working class, rough, tough, close-knit, with strong connections to Ireland. Most gave their kids the best education they could afford, and planned for them to get on in the world.

·      And Second and third generation Irish are still making their mark felt in Britain. The incoming director of GCHQ, the UK’s secretive cyber-spying agency, is Robert Hannigan, the son of Irish parents who settled in Yorkshire. Not much is known about the career civil servant, beyond the role he played in the Good Friday peace talks. But Hannigan is said to be a GAA fan who regularly watches hurling and football games on TV and he is married with two children.  

The UK's top spy - Robert Hannigan - The Man Who Came In From Kilcoe

The numbers of Irish living in the city and the rest of the UK had actually started to decline sharply in the noughties, as those who came after the war died off and many of those who came in the '80s moved back to Ireland, drawn by our Celtic Tiger, economic miracle. Which, of course, turned out to be a lie, told by thieves, morons and spivs. Or in the case of Bertie Ahern, our former Great Leader, a deeply strange, strange man.

Now that I'm in London, I cannot believe the amount of Irish people that are here. You see them everywhere, hear them everywhere. I'm constantly running into my fellow countrymen and women. But this is a different generation from the ones that came before. They are mostly bright, confident, well educated and have high expectations. They value themselves and their skills. But they also do their best to help out other Irish, newer arrivals, friends of friends. There is still a major Irish network, or series of networks all over the city.

I think that's great - but we should worry that for Ireland - many of the best and brightest - those who got sick of the corruption, the dysfunction, the rank stupidity and paralysis in much of the way Ireland is run, well, they voted with their feet. The young people with get up and go have got up and gone.

Anyhow! I talked to some of the New London Irish and wrote a piece about it for The Irish Independent Newspaper.

And if you click the link below - you can read it....

The New London Irish - Irish Independent

Thanks!

The Night We Burnt Down Rio - 2,500 Munster Farmers Against the Emperor of Brazil (PART 2!)

* Hi - this is the second part of a cut-down chapter from my last book - Murder, Mutiny & Mayhem - The Blackest Hearted Villains from Irish History.

The book is available on Amazon/Kindle etc - it's got 11 stories like this - have a look here Murder, Mutiny & Mayhem

This particular story is about a long-forgotten, frankly bizarre episode in Irish history, when the Emperor of Brazil tried to import thousands of farming families from Munster in Southern Ireland, to be used as soldiers and colonists in his wars and territorial struggles with Argentina.

An Irish mercenary soldier called Col William Cotter was sent to Ireland in 1827 by the emperor to recruit over 2,500 farmers and their families. Cotter told them they were going to a new life on free farms in a land of milk and honey - what they found on their arrival after sailing in an armada of ten ships out of Cork - was very different........

Street Scene from Rio - 1820s

**** The Irish settlers arrived in Rio de Janeiro between December 1827 and January 1828.

They were arriving into a city already seething with resentment against the ‘Irish mercenaries’
brought across the sea to fight a deeply unpopular war.  Brazilian newspapers, politicians and businessmen opposed to the war against the Argentines to the south had poisoned local opinion against the Irish. The German soldiers and settlers who had preceded them were already pariahs in the city and had fought running battles in the streets with the nativists and African slaves.

One English resident of Rio recorded the sight of the bedraggled Irish landing on, what must have been for peasant farmers from Waterford and Cork, a very foreign shore.

‘Mothers with their infants at their breast, young girls approaching womanhood, and athletic labourers in the prime of life were all landed in a state of almost utter nudity’.

And almost as soon as the gang-planks had lowered, the Irish settlers discovered that Colonel William Cotter had sold them a pack of lies; the agents of Dom Pedro tried to immediately press gang them into regiments that were shipping out for the still-smouldering border regions in the
south.

Their women and children would have been left stranded on the docks and William Cotter, their only mediator with the Brazilian authorities, was nowhere to be seen.

After much confusion, the Irish were marched between files of local militia to the barracks at Barbonos Street ‘amid the taunts of the populace and the jeers of multitudes of negroes, shouting
and clapping their hands at the unexpected apparition of the “white slaves", as they pleased to denominate the unfortunate Irish’, was how one contemporary witness described the scene.

After a welcome like that, William Cotter’s promises of great opportunities in a new land of plenty must have started to ring hollow. When they reached the overcrowded, squalid barracks, they found that their living quarters and food fell far short of the standard promised by William Cotter. Their new life in Brazil had started badly and it was about to get a lot worse.

The Irish violently resisted attempts to put them into the imperial army uniform and sought help from the British ambassador, Robert Gordon. Gordon was an ‘ill-mannered and obstinate Scot’ in the view of Dom Pedro, but the British minister in Rio knew his duty and Dom Pedro was dependent on British goodwill for his plans for both Brazil and Portugal. Gordon immediately lodged a strongly-worded protest with the Brazilian court and after further pressure from the British, the Imperial army backed down on plans to press-gang every Munsterman who could shoulder a musket.

Dom Pedro of Brazil - Not A Munster Fan

Fewer than four hundred Irishmen eventually joined the Imperial army and any plans for creating an Irish Legion had to be abandoned. As they were too few to become a separate unit, the Irishmen were integrated into the Third (German) Battalion of Grenadiers and found themselves sharing the ranks with that equally-disgruntled band of recent arrivals. Who did not speak their language - but hated the Portuguese.

Meanwhile, the war on the Argentine frontier was fizzling out, thanks largely to their countryman William Brown and his destruction of Brazilian naval forces, so the Irish who did sign up never made it to the front.

The Munster settlers were now stranded in Rio with no real protectors and little or no help from
the authorities who no longer needed them to fight their war. Nothing was done to move them to the farmlands they had been promised. They lived in squalid, disease-ridden barracks and shacks and depended on the help of two British doctors, Dixon and Coates, for medicines and food relief.

The enslaved Africans – called ‘moleques’ – were in the majority in the Imperial capital, and they had their reasons for harbouring a violent antipathy towards the Irish and German settlers and mercenaries. As the poorest class of people in Brazil, the moleques took a ‘fiendish delight in tormenting the destitute Irish’, according to the Irish-born churchman Robert Walsh, calling them the ‘escravos brancos’ or ‘white slaves’ and brawling with them in the street. Abandoned, starving and unarmed, the Corkmen responded by forming ad hoc street gangs and fighting the Africans with sticks and stones through the back allays of Rio.

After six months of escalating tensions, the Brazilian government, under increasing pressure from the British and concerned about the gangs of Irish that were now threatening civil order started to look for ways to ship them out. Colonel William Cotter made a brief reappearance on the scene, charged with chastising his rebellions Irish recruits, but his presence only served to inflame the Irish migrants who felt they had been cheated and lied to.

On 15 March 1828, 101 families of Cork and Waterford emigrants left Rio on the Victoria for Salvador, a town further up the Atlantic coast of Brazil. They arrived in early August and settled as farm labourers in Taperoa, near Valença. Some struggled on to build a new life for themselves, others kept travelling northwards towards the United States.

Rio In The 1820s - Sugarloaf in the Background 

In June, the remaining eighty or so Irish serving in the Grenadier Battalion decided to join a large band of their German comrades in a violent mutiny: on the morning of 11 June, a party of fourteen mutinous German grenadiers left their barracks at Sao Cristovao to capture their hated Brazilian commander on the streets of Rio. The Brazilian major, tipped off to their approach, managed to barricade himself into a police station. The Germans stormed the police station, but the major escaped on a fast horse. The soldiers were spotted by a large party Irish soldiers and the two forces joined up and started rampaging through the streets of downtown Rio.

Their ranks swelled by Irish civilians, the mob started looting shops and bars, burning houses and terrorising the indigenous poor people of Rio, the cariocas. The Irish mob included women and children, who helped to burn up to a hundred houses and businesses, killing or maiming many of the occupants; within hours, ferocious street battles involving the Munstermen, Germans, local militias and black African slaves had erupted across Rio. The Irish soldiers and their families raged through the streets, shouting ‘Death to the Brazilians!’ and ‘Death to the Portuguese!’

Resentment had broken into the worst communal violence seen in Rio. The Irish mob shouted that they would drag Dom Pedro from his palace and string him from the nearest tree.

The Emperor’s Minister of War, Barroso responded by telling his troops; ‘Kill them all. Give no quarter to anybody. Kill the Irish! Kill those foreigners!’

Some Irish civilians and soldiers did hold back from the rampage; at Praia Vermelha, today the popular ‘Red Beach’ of Rio, underneath the Sugar Loaf mountain, an officer called Colonel MacGregor managed to restrain his Irish/German infantry battalion, but he could not persuade his men to help put down the rioting and the battalion stayed out of the street battles that went through the night and into the following days.

The Irish from the Third Battalion took the lead in the rioting and went after Colonel Cotter.

After months of hardship and lies, they wanted a reckoning with the Irish soldier of fortune they accused of selling them into slavery. The mob chased Cotter and his officers out of the Campo de Santana area of downtown Rio and attacked a police post, killing six policemen. In desperation, the authorities issued arms to the civilian population, including the slaves (an unprecedented measure - who could say they would not turn the weapons on their masters?). For the first time ever, the African population of Rio was allowed to practise their secret capoeira form of unarmed combat on the streets as they went up against the Irish mob that was armed with muskets, sticks, stones, machetes and bottles. After forty-eight hours of pitched battles, the Cork and Waterford men withdrew to their barracks and barricaded themselves in.

Brazilian troops were rushed to the capital and Dom Pedro appealed to local British and French naval commanders to land sailors and marines to help them. On 12 and 13 June, the rebel barracks were put under siege by a multinational, multi-coloured force of slaves, soldiers, sailors and marines. British and French forces, stationed on ships in the harbour, had agreed to act as holding troops at strategic points around the city to allow Imperial forces to be freed up to take on the Irish and Germans. The mutineers and their families were told to surrender; some did, but many decided to fight to the end. The episode ended in carnage, with as many as a hundred and fifty soldiers of fortune, both German and Irish, cornered and killed in their barracks. Hundreds of Brazilian  soldiers and hundreds more local civilians also died.

The surviving Irish and German mutineers were marched through the streets, back to the harbour where they had arrived earlier that year, and crammed into disease-ridden prison hulks. By this stage, Emperor Dom Pedro was desperate to rid himself of his rebellious Munster subjects and in July 1828 and with the help of the British, arranged for around 1,400 of the immigrants to be put on boats for Ireland and Britain. Perhaps as many as four hundred other Irish remained in Brazil as farmers and eventually settled in the southern provinces of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.

This leaves some six hundred Irish immigrants unaccounted for, most of whom probably met their death in Rio, in the surrounding regions or on ships bound for some sort of sanctuary.

The emperor Dom Pedro blamed the entire incident on the minister for war, Barroso, whom he accused of inciting the mutiny and doing nothing to suppress it.

Large parts of Rio were devastated, hundreds were dead and mutilated bodies littered the streets. The Emperor’s best regiments had been battered by the mutineers and his plans to bring thousands more settlers from Ireland were in ruins. His forces, assaulted on land by Irish farmers-turned-mutineers and on sea by their countryman Admiral Brown, were in no shape to carry on the war. Dom Pedro was soon forced into a humiliating and costly concession to the French, who were looking for compensation for ships and cargoes blockaded in Rio harbour during the Napoleonic wars. And there was further humiliation for the Emperor when he was forced to concede the loss of the provinces that made up Uruguay, which became the independent state it is today.

Dom Pedro’s gamble on Irish and German mercenaries and his trust in unscrupulous men like Colonel William Cotter had backfired in grand style. There are no further accounts of Colonel William Cotter in Brazilian history. In the style befitting the man, he slipped out of the story, almost certainly weighed down with a large commission for selling out his countrymen.

****** Thanks for Reading - Joe O'Shea