Skip to main content

Colonial Service Recruitment in Independent Ireland

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Irish Imperial Service

Abstract

Building on a detailed examination of Irish enlistment in Britain’s imperial services in the second half of the long nineteenth century, Chap. 5 takes as its subject Irish imperial services’ recruitment in Southern Ireland after independence in 1922. Although account is taken of the Indian civil and medical services, the British Colonial Service (BCS) forms the focus as the service in which the great majority of Irish citizens served. It assesses the extent of Irish enlistment in the BCS between 1922 and the Colonial Office’s closure in 1966 and takes a prosopographical approach to examine the religious and socioeconomic background from which enlistments were drawn. The factors which informed the decisions of Irish citizens to join the BCS are explored in detail.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Slevin to Brown, 11 June 1949 (MS in possession of David Brown, Antrim). In the event, Irishmen held Hong Kong’s chief justiceship for 20 of Slevin’s 30 years there: Gerard Howe (1950–1955) and Michael Hogan (1955–1970), who had been Palestine’s solicitor-general in Slevin’s time.

  2. 2.

    Irish Times, 22 October 1926, 8; [Irish] Times Pictorial, 27 July 1946, 4; Irish Times, 19 February 1934, 4; 15 July 1957, 6. See also Cork Examiner, 6 February 1952, 4.

  3. 3.

    Irish Times, 3 May 1922, 4.

  4. 4.

    The Erasmus Smith High School displayed photographs of former students serving in the ICS in its entrance hall to indulge its ‘special pride’ in their achievement. W. J. R. Wallace, Faithful to Our Trust: a History of the Erasmus Smith Trust and the High School, Dublin (Dublin: Columba Press, 2004), 151.

  5. 5.

    Kevin Flanagan, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Celtic Ineligible: Competitive Examinations for the Irish and Indian Civil Services in Relation to the Educational and Occupational Structure of Ireland, 1853–1921’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Sussex, 1977), 450–457. See also Christopher Shephard, ‘Cramming, Instrumentality and the Education of Irish Imperial Elites’ in David Dickson, Justyna Pyz & Christopher Shephard (eds), Irish Classrooms and the British Empire: Imperial Contexts in the Origins of Modern Education (Dublin: Four Courts, 2012), 172–183.

  6. 6.

    Heretofore, Irish probationers had been compelled to complete their probationerships at Oxbridge or the University of London. TCD’s school had produced 180 Civilians by 1912. R. B. McDowell, Trinity College Dublin, 1592–1952: an Academic History (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982), 234, n. 38.

  7. 7.

    Daily Express, 9 August 1862.

  8. 8.

    F. O. C. Meenan, Cecilia Street: the Catholic University School of Medicine, 1855–1931 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1987), 113.

  9. 9.

    Scott B. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj: Social Origins and Careers of Irishmen in the Indian Civil Service, 1855–1914’, Journal of Social History, 20 (1987): 507–529, 516.

  10. 10.

    Although the IMS was primarily a military service, its officers regularly served in civilian hospitals and performed other civil functions, including medical education and research.

  11. 11.

    Recruitment to the IMS was suspended between 1861 and 1864, as its amalgamation with the Army Medical Department was being debated.

  12. 12.

    Figures abstracted from data provided in D. G. Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service, 1615–1930 (London: W. Thacker, 1930).

  13. 13.

    Cook, ‘Irish Raj’, 510.

  14. 14.

    Irish Times, 25 February 1868, 2. This issue is discussed in Chap. 7.

  15. 15.

    Figures provided in Cook, ‘Irish Raj’, 511, 516.

  16. 16.

    David Dickson, ‘1859 and 1908: Two Moments in the Transformation of Irish Universities’ in Dickson et al., Irish Classrooms, 184–205, 190.

  17. 17.

    Sources: The Colonial Office List for 1862–1925; or General Register of the Colonial Dependencies of Great Britain (London: British Library, 1992); United Kingdom Medical Registers, 1859–1959 (London: General Medical Council, 1859–1959); British National Archives (TNA), Colonial Office files (CO), CO/429 Colonial Office: Patronage Correspondence, 1867–1919; The Times; Irish Times.

  18. 18.

    Keith Haines, ‘Days So Good in Themselves: Campbell College and the Lure of Empire’ in Dickson et al., Irish Classrooms, 134–143, 134, 137; Wallace, Faithful to Our Trust, 151.

  19. 19.

    James H. Murphy, Nos Autem: Castleknock College and its Contribution (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1996), 95; Peter Costello, Clongowes Wood: the History of Clongowes Wood College, 1814–1989 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1989), 61.

  20. 20.

    Military Archives, Dublin, Bureau of Military History, Witness Statement 883, John McCarthy, 30 July 1953. ‘Shoneen’ (variant spellings ‘Seoinín’ or ‘Shawneen’) was a highly derogatory term used by Irish nationalists to describe compatriots seen as admiring and imitative of English upper-class ways.

  21. 21.

    Reporting the success of three past pupils in the 1898 ICS examination, the Clongownian noted that it was ‘a “consummation devoutly to be wished” that many Clongownians may be smitten with the desire of facing towards the distant East: and the present is the right psychological moment for them’. Clongownian, 7 (December 1898): 40. See also Timothy G. McMahon, ‘Irish Jesuit Education and Imperial Ideals’ in Dickson et al., Irish Classrooms, 111–123.

  22. 22.

    Moran described Clongowes Wood as ‘the eminent Tommy Atkins college’. Ciaran O’Neill, Catholics of Consequence: Transnational Education, Social Mobility, and the Irish Catholic Elite, 1850–1900 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014), 46.

  23. 23.

    Patrick Heffernan, An Irish Doctor’s Memories (Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds, 1958), 27. Heffernan himself joined the IMS.

  24. 24.

    Dickson, ‘1859 and 1908’, 204.

  25. 25.

    Samuel Haughton, University Education in Ireland (London: Williams & Norgate, 1868), 11.

  26. 26.

    Flanagan, ‘Celtic Ineligible’, 171.

  27. 27.

    Carmichael’s and Ledwich’s were amalgamated with the Royal College of Surgeons in 1889.

  28. 28.

    Over 90 per cent of Irish medical graduates were entered in the Medical Register. Greta Jones, ‘“Strike out Boldly for the Prizes that are Available to You”: Medical Emigration from Ireland, 1860–1905’, Medical History, 54 (2010): 55–74, 57; Flanagan, ‘Celtic Ineligible’, 293.

  29. 29.

    The percentage of Catholics in the profession increased from 35 per cent in 1871 to 41 per cent in 1891 and 44 per cent in 1901. Daire Hogan, The Legal Profession in Ireland, 1789–1922 (Dublin: Law Society of Ireland, 1986), 163; Flanagan, ‘Celtic Ineligible’, 278–280.

  30. 30.

    Clongownian, 1 (1895): 17; Senia Paseta, Before the Revolution: Nationalism, Social Change and Ireland’s Catholic Elite, 1879–1922 (Cork: Cork UP, 1999), 82, 84.

  31. 31.

    For example, 56 per cent of TCD law graduates listed on the college’s 1902 electoral register was resident in Ireland, compared to 39 per cent of graduates of the medical and divinity schools. Dickson, ‘1859 and 1908’, 199.

  32. 32.

    E. G. Sarsfield-Hall, From Cork to Khartoum: Memoirs of Southern Ireland and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1886–1936 (Kendal: Titus Wilson, 1975), 16–17.

  33. 33.

    Irish Law Times & Solicitors’ Journal, 43 (1909): 299.

  34. 34.

    R. C. Cox, Engineering at Trinity, Incorporating a Record of the School of Engineering (Dublin: Trinity School of Engineering, 1993), 46, 81–82.

  35. 35.

    A number of ‘scholarship boys’ also won through. Most notably, Sir Michael Keane, the son of a Kerry tenant farmer who entered the ICS in 1898 and served as governor of Assam in the 1930s, funded through exhibitions his education at Blackrock, Clongowes Wood, and the RUI. Blackrock College Annual, 9 (1938): 72–73.

  36. 36.

    Cook, ‘Irish Raj’, 517.

  37. 37.

    Jeffery, ‘Introduction’ to An Irish Empire, 23 n. 99.

  38. 38.

    Cook, ‘Irish Raj’, 511.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 516.

  40. 40.

    Philip Mason, The Men Who Ruled India (London: Jonathan Cape, 1954), 284.

  41. 41.

    Michael O’Dwyer, India as I Knew It, 1885–1925 (London: Constable, 1925), 6.

  42. 42.

    Christopher Shephard, ‘“I have a Notion of Going Off to India”: Colonel Alexander Porter and Irish Recruitment to the Indian Medical Service, 1855–1896’, Irish Economic and Social History, 41 (2014): 36–52, 40.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., 44.

  44. 44.

    Sources: See n. 17. Additional data on the socioeconomic and religious background of Irish pre-1922 BCS recruits abstracted from Irish census and civil registration records, and newspaper reports.

  45. 45.

    Drawn from the Kilkenny Protestant minor gentry, Clarke served in the ICS from 1895 until 1924, while Dodd, an upper-middle-class Kerry Catholic, served one year in the Royal Niger Protectorate at the turn of the twentieth century. Kilkenny Archives, Maidenhall-Laviston collection, Loftus Clarke correspondence; Bodleian Library, Oxford (BLO), Commonwealth and African Studies (CAS), MSS.Afr.s.1995, Maurice de Courcy Dodd collection, 1898–1899.

  46. 46.

    Heffernan, Irish Doctor’s Memories, 48.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., 47–48.

  48. 48.

    TNA, Admiralty records, (ADM), 178/144, James to Flood, 25 August 1936 & Flood to James, 11 September 1936.

  49. 49.

    See, for example, TNA, CO/323/1023/24, ‘Irish solicitors: right to practice in colonies etc.’, 1928; TNA, CO/273/564/22, ‘Admission in Straits of Irish Free State barristers and solicitors: amendment of courts ordinance’, 1930.

  50. 50.

    Cook, ‘Irish Raj’, 511–512.

  51. 51.

    Forty-five TCD graduates entered the ICS between 1902 and 1921. Trinity College Dublin Archives [TCDA], Board meetings minutes [MUN/V/5], MUN/V/5/22/280-81, Seton to Barnard, 14 October 1922; Dublin University Calendar, 1946–1947 (Dublin, 1947), 479–482.

  52. 52.

    Ibid.; TCDA, MUN/V/24/287. A selection of teaching aids and in-house examination papers set by the school’s professor of Oriental languages, Col. E. G. Hart, can be found in TCDA, MSS 2723–2724, Eric G. Hart collection.

  53. 53.

    Irish Times, 5 August 1922, 4; See also ibid., 13 February 1922, 5; 28 February 1925, 6–7.

  54. 54.

    The problem of ICS recruitment in the 1930s was compounded by the fact that the newly unified Colonial Administrative Service presented an increasingly prestigious employment alternative for those seeking an overseas civil service career.

  55. 55.

    Data abstracted from Crawford, IMS Roll. The fall-off in Colonial Administrative Service recruitment after 1922 is discussed in Chap. 7.

  56. 56.

    Data on post-1922 Irish BCS officials cited in this chapter abstracted from The Colonial Office List for 1862–1925; or General Register of the Colonial Dependencies of Great Britain (London: British Library, 1992); Colonial Office List, 1925 (London: Harrison, 1925); The Dominions Office and Colonial Office List (London: Waterlow & Sons, 1926–1940); Colonial Office List (London: HMSO, 1946–1966); Colonial Agricultural Service List (London: HMSO, 1936–1939); Colonial Administrative Service List (London: HMSO, 1933–1939); Colonial Medical Service List (London: HMSO, 1936–1939); Colonial Legal Service List (London: HMSO, 1935–1939); Kirk-Greene: Biographical Dictionary; United Kingdom Medical Registers, 1859–1959 (London: General Medical Council, 1859–1959); United Kingdom and Ireland Register of Nurses, 1898–1968 (London, Royal College of Nursing, 1898–1968). Additional data on the socioeconomic, educational, and religious backgrounds abstracted from Irish census and civil registration records, and newspaper reports.

  57. 57.

    TNA CO/877/3, ‘Applications for colonial positions from persons resident in Irish Free State’, Furse, Departmental minute, 7 November 1925.

  58. 58.

    According to Blackall, he was from ‘Anglo-Irish stock on both sides’, his father being descended from ‘a Cromwellian adventurer who had a grant of lands in Co. Limerick’, while his mother’s family ‘belong[ed] to the Irish peerage’. BLO, CAS, MSS.Brit.Emp.s.447, Henry Blackall collection (Blackall collection), ‘British nationality: correspondence with Home Office re. my claim to retain it’, undated handwritten note, c. 1968; ibid., Introduction to collection, 10 July 1968.

  59. 59.

    E. K. Lumley, Forgotten Mandate: a British District Officer in Tanganyika (London: C. Hurst, 1976), 177.

  60. 60.

    Michael O’Connor, The More Fool I: a Piece of Autobiography (Dublin: Michael F. Moynihan, 1954), 12, 16.

  61. 61.

    Byrne subsequently served as governor of Sierra Leone and Kenya. Eunan O’Halpin, ‘Sir Warren Fisher and the Coalition, 1919–1921’ Historical Journal, 24 (1981): 907–927, 917–919.

  62. 62.

    TNA, CO/877/1, ‘Legal vacancies in Colonial Service’, Greenwood to Milner, 24 August 1920.

  63. 63.

    This was made possible by the fact that Irish candidates could present themselves without similar difficulty for interview in London, and any additional vetting required could be carried out through the Colonial Office’s network of Irish local contacts. TNA, CO/877/3, ‘Irish Free State applications’, Shuckburgh, Departmental minute, undated, c. October 1925.

  64. 64.

    TNA, CO/877/20/4, Shuckburgh, Departmental minute, 20 August 1940.

  65. 65.

    See n. 56.

  66. 66.

    Ibid.; R. F. Foster, Paddy and Mr Punch: Connections in Irish and English History (London: Allen Lane, 1993), 27.

  67. 67.

    For examples, see Erasmian, 19/7 (1925): 412–413; 19/8 (1926): 450–451; 21/1 (1930): 886–887; 22/3 (1931): 52–53; Columban, 60/2 (1939): 26–27; 61/3 (1940): 57–59; Old Columban Society Supplement, 7 (1943), 12 (1945), and 20 (1948), passim.

  68. 68.

    Miller was then Church of Ireland bishop of Cashel and Waterford. Erasmian, 19/9 (1926): 497.

  69. 69.

    Irish Times, 27 October 1926, 6.

  70. 70.

    See n. 56.

  71. 71.

    Ibid.; Ciaran O’Neill, ‘Education, Imperial Careers and the Irish Catholic Elite in the Nineteenth Century’ in Dickson et al., Irish Classrooms, 98–110, 99.

  72. 72.

    See n. 56.

  73. 73.

    For example, Clongownian, 10/2 (1923): 81–82, 88, 91; 10/3 (1924): 76, 81–82, 90–92; 10/3 (1925): 71–72, 90–92; 11/2 (1927): 66–82 passim; 11/3 (1928): 70–89 passim.

  74. 74.

    See, as examples, ibid., 11/1 (1926): 12; 13/3 (1934): 56.

  75. 75.

    Blackrock College Annual (1938): 72–73. See also ibid., (1930): 64; (1932): 80; (1934): 79, 128–129; (1937): 44–45; Belvederian, 6/3 (1923): 226; 7/2 (1925): 160; 7/3 (1926): 272–274; 9/1 (1930): 32–33, 43–44; 10/1 (1933): 43–44; Castleknock Chronicle, 45 (1930): 53, 61, 75; 46 (1931): 59.

  76. 76.

    On occasion, they actively encouraged it: see, for example, Belvederian, 12/1 (1939): 47.

  77. 77.

    Trinity News, 3 February 1955, 6.

  78. 78.

    Sources: see n. 17 and n. 56.

  79. 79.

    Tomás Irish, Trinity in War and Revolution, 1912–1923 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2015), 236.

  80. 80.

    McDowell, Trinity College, 430.

  81. 81.

    Furse took a dim view of this type of compromise. Visiting Montreal in July 1923, he confided to his diary: ‘French Canadians—rather bored with them. “Two flags—one heart”. All nonsense. There is only one flag in Canada.’ BLO, CAS, MSS.Brit.Emp.s.415, Ralph Furse collection (Furse Collection) 2/1 Canadian diary, 23 July 1923.

  82. 82.

    Lumley, Forgotten Mandate, 176.

  83. 83.

    TCDA, MUN/V/6/6/162, Appointments Association annual report for year ending 30 September 1932.

  84. 84.

    See n. 56.

  85. 85.

    By midsummer 1945 Furse had received a preliminary indent for 2600 recruits from the colonial governments, rising to almost 5000 by May 1948. By October 1952, the number of BCS appointments had exceeded 10,000. Ralph Furse, Aucuparius, 278–279.

  86. 86.

    For examples of Irish press advertisements, see Irish Independent, 16 November 1946, 2; 21 June 1947, 2; Irish Press, 14 December 1951, 11; 19 June 1952, 4; Irish Times, 30 June 1953, 9; 5 August 1954, 9.

  87. 87.

    See n. 56.

  88. 88.

    Cork Examiner, 25 June 1951, 4.

  89. 89.

    See n. 56. Established in 1908, the NUI comprises University Colleges Dublin, Galway, and Cork, and St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. UCD was the direct successor to the Catholic University of Ireland.

  90. 90.

    Irish Independent, 17 November 1947, 2. The presidents of TCD and University College Cork also attended this conference.

  91. 91.

    Irish Times, 10 May 1950, 4.

  92. 92.

    See n. 56.

  93. 93.

    TCDA, MUN/V/5/27/71, 22 March 1950.

  94. 94.

    See, for example, Trinity News, 1 December 1955, 6–7. Trinity News (Careers Supplement), 1, 6; Trinity News (Careers Supplement), January 1958, 7 and (Agriculture Supplement), 20 February 1958, 5.

  95. 95.

    TCDA, MUN/V/6/10/16, 21 February 1961. The BCS was renamed Her Majesty’s Overseas Civil Service in 1954.

  96. 96.

    Anna Crozier, Practising Colonial Medicine: the Colonial Medical Service in British East Africa (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 51.

  97. 97.

    Independent Ireland boasted four university medical schools (University Colleges Galway, Dublin and Cork, and TCD), and two Dublin-based private schools, the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Apothecaries Hall.

  98. 98.

    Irish Times, 16 July 1925, 6; Greta Jones, ‘The Rockefeller Foundation and Medical Education in Ireland in the 1920s’, Irish Historical Studies, 30 (1997): 564–580, 571.

  99. 99.

    Laura Kelly, Irish Medical Education and Student Culture, c.1850–1950 (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2017), 226–227.

  100. 100.

    Data on the interwar period gathered by Greta Jones and cited in O’Connor, Irish Officers, 90.

  101. 101.

    BLO, CAS, MSS.W.Ind.s.23, ff. 19–30, W. K. O’Mahony, ‘Reminiscences of the Leeward Islands, 1931–1934 and 1945–1948’, 1.

  102. 102.

    Irish Press, 23 April 1943, 1; Irish Times, 17 September 1953, 5. See also Irish Press, 15 November 1955, 2.

  103. 103.

    See, for example, Journal of the Irish Medical Association, 30/175 (1952), 30/180 (1952), 31/183 (1952), 32/191 (1953), 33/198 (1953). The ‘situations vacant’ section of this journal is unpaginated.

  104. 104.

    Helen O’Shea, ‘Irish Legal Geographies in the Era of Emergency: Independent Ireland, Colonial Kenya and the British Colonial Legal Service’, Éire-Ireland, 51 (2016): 243–265, 248.

  105. 105.

    Irish Law Times & Solicitors’ Journal, 70 (1936): 231.

  106. 106.

    Cork Examiner, 3 December 1956, 6.

  107. 107.

    See, for example, Irish Independent, 16 November 1946, 2; 1 March 1947, 2.

  108. 108.

    Irish Times, 16 July 1925, 6.

  109. 109.

    Irish Independent, 17 November 1947, 2.

  110. 110.

    Connacht Tribune, 24 September 1955, 21; 1 October 1955, 8.

  111. 111.

    National Archives of Ireland (NAI), Department of Foreign Affairs files (DFA) 233/199, Gleeson to Department of External Affairs, 20 June 1945.

  112. 112.

    NAI, DFA/233/199, Ryan to DEA, 13 November 1945; Ellison to Department of Posts and Telegraphs, 11 March 1947; Secretary, Department of Justice to DEA, 11 April 1947; NAI, DFA/233/199, Maher to DEA, 12 January 1946.

  113. 113.

    Connacht Tribune, 1 October 1955, 8.

  114. 114.

    TNA, CO/877/30/9, Higham to Whittle, 2 February 1950.

  115. 115.

    TNA, CO/877/22/12, Rogers to Mackay, [undated] August 1949.

  116. 116.

    See, for example, Irish Times, 30 August 1950, 7; 20 October 1951, 11; 28 December 1951, 8; Irish Press, 13 November 1951, 4; 4 April 1952, 6; 24 January 1953, 11;

  117. 117.

    Lumley, Forgotten Mandate, 177.

  118. 118.

    BLO, CAS, MSS. Ind.Ocn.r.6, G. J. O’Grady, ‘“If you sling enough mud”: being an unbiased account of the life and work of a civil engineer in Malaya’ (unpublished memoir, 1945), 13.

  119. 119.

    Quoted in Charles Jeffries, The Colonial Empire and its Civil Service (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1938), 150.

  120. 120.

    BLO, CAS, MSS.Brit.Emp.r.4, P. A. Clearkin, ‘Ramblings and recollections of a colonial doctor, 1913–1958’, 21.

  121. 121.

    Ibid., 16.

  122. 122.

    O’Connor, More Fool I, 17.

  123. 123.

    A. G. H. Smart, ‘An Impression of Life in the Colonial Medical Service’, St Thomas’s Hospital Gazette, 37 (1939), 123–126, at 123.

  124. 124.

    Jeffries, Colonial Empire, 149, 154.

  125. 125.

    TNA, CO/877/16/15, Furse, ‘Record of a meeting of the Public Schools’ Careers’ Association’, 19 May 1938; Crozier, Practising Colonial Medicine, 59–62.

  126. 126.

    BLO, CAS, Furse collection, 5/1 African diary transcripts 1935–1936, 10–11 December 1935.

  127. 127.

    See n. 56.

  128. 128.

    Hallinan’s brother, Edward, was Victoria’s godchild. O’Shea, Ireland and the End of Empire, 188–189; Colonial Administrative Service List (London: HMSO, 1939), 106.

  129. 129.

    Colonial Legal Service List, 1935 (London: HMSO, 1935), 19; Kirk-Greene, Biographical Dictionary, 148, 344, 98; Colonial Office List, 1925 (London: Harrison, 1925), 623; Irish Independent, 11 October 1954, 8; Thomas F. King, ‘Gallagher of Nikumaroro: the Last Expansion of the British Empire’ (https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/25_GallagherNiku/25_GallagherNiku.html, accessed 2 June 2018).

  130. 130.

    Clongownian, 11/1 (1926): 12; Trinity News, 1 December 1955, 7.

  131. 131.

    Irish Times, 7 October 1986, 9. Daly and Figgis was founded in 1899 by two Irish lawyers, O. B. Daly and E. K. Figgis. Figgis established the Kenyan Irish Society in 1924 ‘to keep the Irish in Kenya in touch with their Irish roots’.

  132. 132.

    ‘I have lots of friends and acquaintances amongst the local settlers … quite a number of [whom] came from Ireland. The O’Hagans, La Poers, Lyons, Carberrys, Jenkins, Moloneys, Trenches.’ BLO, CAS, MSS.Afr.s.487, Martin Mahony collection, Mahony to father, 6 October 1926. Mahony was a newly appointed assistant district officer in Kenya at the time.

  133. 133.

    TNA, CO/877/8/20, ‘Admission of dominions-trained nurses to the Colonial Nursing Service’, undated, c. April 1933.

  134. 134.

    Helen Callaway, Gender, Culture and Empire: European Women in Colonial Nigeria (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987), 5–6.

  135. 135.

    Kirk-Greene, On Crown Service, 49.

  136. 136.

    Colonial Service recruitment pamphlet no. 9, ‘Information regarding appointments for women’, (March 1945) reproduced in Kirk-Greene, On Crown Service, 196–197.

  137. 137.

    Anne Marie Rafferty and Diana Solano, ‘The Rise and Demise of the Colonial Nursing Service: British Nurses in the Colonies, 1896–1966’, Nursing History Review, 15 (2007): 147–154, 147, 150; Kirk-Greene, On Crown Service, 50.

  138. 138.

    See n. 56.

  139. 139.

    Louise Ryan, “‘I had a Sister in England”: Family-led Migration, Social Networks and Irish Nurses’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 34 (2008): 453–470, 460.

  140. 140.

    Irish Times, 26 February 1954, 5.

  141. 141.

    Colonial Medical Service List, 1936 (London: HMSO, 1936), 12; http://maltaramc.com/ladydoc/m/murphylj.html, http://maltaramc.com/ladydoc/a/ahernmj.html, accessed 5 June 2018; Irish Independent, 20 October 1947, 15.

  142. 142.

    See n. 56.

  143. 143.

    BLO, CAS, Furse collection, 5/1 African diary transcripts 1935–1936, 10–11 December 1935.

  144. 144.

    BLO, CAS, MSS.Ind.Ocn.s.372, Hilda E. Bates, ‘It is something …’, 63. Founded in 1881, the North Borneo Chartered Company administered the territory on Britain’s behalf until 1946 when it was made a Crown colony.

  145. 145.

    Joyce Delaney, No Starch in My Coat: an Irish Doctor’s Progress (London: Peter Davies, 1971), 109–110.

  146. 146.

    Jennie Evans, The Last Colonial Judge: the Memoir of Cuthbert Whitton (Leicester: Troubador, 2018), 40.

  147. 147.

    Silvestri, Ireland and India, 125.

  148. 148.

    See n. 17.

  149. 149.

    On Northern Irish Unionist attachment to empire, see Donal Lowry, ‘Ulster Resistance and Loyalist Rebellion in the Empire’ in Jeffery, An Irish Empire, 191–215.

  150. 150.

    Haines, ‘Days So Good’, 140.

  151. 151.

    Ibid., 137. See also Irish Times, 27 July 1928, 8; David H. Hume, ‘Empire Day in Ireland, 1896–1960’ in Jeffery, An Irish Empire, 149–168, at 158.

  152. 152.

    Portora remained a popular school choice among Protestants from south of the Irish border, and several ‘Southern’ BCS enlistments were also educated there.

  153. 153.

    Sources for statistics: see n. 56.

  154. 154.

    Sources for statistics: see n. 17 and n. 56.

  155. 155.

    BLO, CAS, MSS.Afr.s.1872/24, H. G. Calwell, ‘Personal reminiscences of the Colonial Medical Service’, 1.

  156. 156.

    BLO, CAS, MSS.Afr.1872/75, R. S. F. Hennessey, ‘Learning about disease in Uganda: 1929–1944 and 1949–1955’, 1.

  157. 157.

    Calwell, ‘Personal reminiscences’, 1; Hennessey, ‘Learning about disease’, 3. Sir John Wallace Megaw was IMS director-general and had been himself educated in what was then Queen’s College, Belfast.

  158. 158.

    Quoted in Owen Smith, ‘Denis Parsons Burkitt CMG, MD, DSc, FRS, FRCS, FTCD (1911–1993): Irish by Birth, Trinity by the Grace of God’, British Journal of Haematology, 156 (2010): 770–776, 775.

  159. 159.

    TNA, CO/877/3, ‘Applications for colonial positions from persons resident in Irish Free State’, Antrobus, Departmental minute, 21 October 1925.

  160. 160.

    NAI, DFA/141/76, Belton, Departmental minute, 21 May 1938.

  161. 161.

    See, for example, NAI, DFA/2/34/45; NAI DFA/233/199, Gannon to DEA, 19 September 1945.

  162. 162.

    NAI, DFA/41/40, McConnell to Walshe, 5 October 1933.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Gannon, S.W. (2019). Colonial Service Recruitment in Independent Ireland. In: The Irish Imperial Service. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96394-5_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96394-5_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-96393-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-96394-5

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics