Greg Daly
Cmdt Michael Mallin One of Ireland’s oldest priests, the last surviving child of any of the 1916 Rising’s executed leaders, has contested the official record of his father’s trial.
Cmdt Michael Mallin, who headed the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) rebels at St Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons during the Rising, was executed on May 8, 1916, allegedly after claiming that his troops had in reality been commanded by his deputy, Constance Markievicz.
Hong Kong-based Fr Joseph Mallin SJ (103), however, has donated an 18-page testimony to Kilmainham Gaol, in which he describes his father as “a religious man, a man of faith, with deeply-held Christian values” and calls his father’s court-martial record, which was sealed until 1999, “profoundly wrong”.
Challenges
He challenges how the record reports Cmdt Mallin as having denied ever having a commission in the ICA, saying: “The Countess of Markievicz ordered me to take command of the men as I had been so long associated with them.”
Detailing contradictions between the trial record and the historical context, Fr Mallin notes that the record was written by Brig. Gen. Ernest Maconchy, the president of the court martial, and that his account of Mallin’s actions and surrender was not signed by the defendant or the other two court martial judges.
In the document, written with the aid of Cmdt Mallin’s grand-nephew Seán Tapley, Fr Mallin speculates that Brig. Gen. Machonry was motivated to paint Cmdt Mallon in a poor light as he regarded him as “a treasonous former soldier”.