Irish American News Ohio

by Michael Finn
The recent visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Dublin was not the first royal visit to Ireland. In fact, it was the fourth visit by an English monarch to Ireland. Although the demonstrations against Elizabeth II this year were minimal, that has not always been the case.
Consider the visit in 1903 to Ireland of King Edward VII, the son of Queen Victoria, and the great grandfather of Elizabeth II. Edward was likable, sociable and outgoing, but he became known as a playboy interested in horse racing, shooting, eating, drinking, and other men’s wives. An event marked the preparation for his visit that has become known as the Battle of Coulson Avenue. As Irish battles are concerned, it was only a small dust-up on a Dublin Street, but what made it notable in Irish history were the participants. The key instigator of the fracas was Maud Gonne.
Maude Gonne was born Edith Maud Gonne, the daughter of a British Army colonel. She was born in England on December 20, 1865. After her mother’s untimely death she was sent to school in Paris. In 1886 her father passed away, leaving her independently wealthy.
Maud became interested in the Irish struggle for freedom. She joined Michael Davitt’s Land League, where she worked to save the homes of people who had been evicted, often spending her own money for supplies to build Land League huts for the evicted. She wrote, “It was the time of the evictions and I used to see people standing in front of their unroofed cottages from which the police held them back and weeping bitterly, I thought to myself, when I grow up I’m going to change all that.”
She provided money to Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Fein, to assist in the publication of his newspaper United Irishman. In 1902 she helped found the Celtic Literary Society, where she was Vice President. William Butler Yeats, the Nobel Prize winning poet, was President. Yeats became infatuated with Maud, writing the play Cathleen Ní Houlihan for her on the condition that she would perform the lead role.
She did, and her performance became legendary in Irish theater history. Although Yeats was infatuated with Maud, she did not feel the same toward him. Maud, however, was the inspiration for many of his poems.
In 1900 Maud founded Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Erin), whose goal was to counter English influence in Ireland and to support the Irish Language. The Inghinidhe’s first public demonstration was a Patriotic Children’s Party held in Phoenix Park to protest the visit of Queen Victoria to Dublin in 1900.
In 1903. Maud married Major John MacBride, who had fought with the Irish Brigade on the side of the Boers against the British during the Boer War. John would later play a role in the 1916 Easter Rising, being executed for his participation. Their son, Sean MacBride, would become the founder of Amnesty International and win the Nobel Peace Prize.
For King Edward’s 1903 visit, Maud enlisted the work of the Inghinidhe on several fronts. She was personally responsible for the decision of the Dublin Corporation not to present a formal address to the King. Her presence at a meeting held in the Rotunda before the visit started a near riot, which insured the matter was not approved and no formal recognition of the visit was presented to the King by the city.
In preparation for King Edward’s visit, Dublin was literally covered in Union Jacks. Lamp posts, shops and homes were decorated with the flag. Maud and the Inghinidhe, in an effort to enflame Dublin sentiment against the visit, had posters made up detailing the King of England’s coronation oath and its repudiation of the basic doctrines of the Catholic Church.
On July 20, 1903, just prior to the King’s visit, Pope Leo XIII died. There could be no official mourning of the Pope because of the preparations for the royal visit. One evening, Maud returned to her home on Coulson Avenue after a tiring day of putting up posters. She was thinking about there being no official mourning for the Pope and noticed the profusion of Union Jacks in her predominantly Unionist neighborhood. Maud took a broom handle and tied one of her black petticoats to it and hung it out of her second floor window. The next morning, her neighbors awoke to the black “flag” of mourning hanging among the Union Jacks.
It was then that the “Battle of Coulson Avenue” began. One of Maud’s neighbors called the police to complain about the display. Two policemen and three detectives were dispatched to Coulson Avenue. They ripped down the flag, despite Maud’s protests. With the help of her friend Maire Quinn and Maud’s formidable housekeeper, Mrs. Fitz, Maud replaced the flag with another black petticoat as the three women defended the house against further attempts by the police and neighbors to take down the flag.
All of this activity began to draw a crowd that soon divided into two camps. Some were cheering the efforts of the police to remove the flag and some were applauding the women’s efforts to keep the flag flying. Maud was yelling at the police from her window that no good Catholic Irishman would want her to take down the flag while the Pope lay in state in Rome. This seemed to have no impact on the police, who continued their efforts to remove the flag.
Meanwhile Dudley Digges, Maire Quinn’s fiancé, had left a note on the door of the Inghinidhe office advising all members to report to Coulson Avenue. As the word spread, scores of members and other interested parties arrived to help defend Maud’s petticoat. Some of the men brought hurly sticks with them as more police arrived and formed a cordon of officers across Coulson Avenue.
A few foreign news correspondents, looking for news of the King’s visit, got wind of the turmoil around Maud’s house and they rushed to the scene, insuring that the skirmish was reported in several foreign papers. Either as a result of the appearance of the press or the determination of the women, the police finally decided they were outnumbered and withdrew.
Maude died in 1953. It was written about her at her death, “She realized that only by freeing Ireland from English rule could the lot of the Irish people be improved and she devoted the remainder of her life to the Irish people.” Maud Gonne was a tireless worker for Irish nationalism serving Ireland from the time of the Land League until her death. She is often referred to as “Ireland’s Joan of Arc.” You can read more about her life of triumph, imprisonment and her many personal tragedies in the book Maud Gonne by Nancy Cardozo (New Amsterdam Press, 1978).
*J. Michael Finn is the Ohio State Historian for the Ancient Order of Hibernians and Division Historian for the Patrick Pearse Division in Columbus, Ohio. He is also Chairman of the Catholic Record Society for the Diocese of Columbus, Ohio. He writes on Irish and Irish-American history; Ohio history and Ohio Catholic history. You may contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .