An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir March / April 2023 www.military.ie/magazine 22 | THE TRUE STORY OF A BARRACK GRAVE, JOSEPH POOLE AND GRIFFITH BARRACKS BY SGT ROBERT DELANEY PHOTOS PROVIDED BY SGT ROBERT DELANEY T here are probably only a few members of the Defence Forces still serving who spent time in Griffith Barracks on Dublin's South Circular Road, though it is likely that those who did can recall hearing stories about the site's darker past when it was the capital's remand prison. Two executions took place there before the Richmond Bridewell, as it was then known, was adapted to become Wellington Barracks during the 1890s. Decades later when it had been renamed Griffith Barracks and was the home of the 5th Bn, the family of Joseph Poole, one of those executed, made the unusual request to the barrack CO to be allowed to search for his remains. Poole was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who was hanged for the murder of a Fenian informer in 1883. It was believed at the time and is now widely accepted that he was innocent and was sent to the gallows by a packed jury, a victim of the Crown's unjust legal system, because he was a Fenian. Poole was buried in an unmarked grave in the prison hospital yard in a place that was used later as a WC. Just four years after the execution, the prison was handed over to the War Office to become an army barracks and the first troops were quartered there almost immediately, though a programme of building works was undertaken in 1898 to make it more suitable for the military. The site was extended to the west to create a parade ground and prison buildings were knocked or converted to become stores, canteens, messes, and billets. The work was carried out by a Dub- lin builder named William Foley who was con- tracted to build or modify many of the buildings that served the Defence Forces until 1988 and have been preserved since on the campus of what is now Griffith College, and those in the grounds of the neighbouring National Boxing Stadium. At the time Foley knew there were burials on the site but must still have been surprised when his workmen discovered the grave of Poole whilst preparing the ground to build a company stores at the end of one of the old prison blocks. Work was halted and the Royal Engineer officer over the project, sought guidance from the authorities in Dublin Castle who wanted the matter dealt with quickly to prevent Nationalist Ireland taking advantage of the situation. A request by Poole's mother to have him reburied with his father in Glasnevin was ignored. The assistant commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police at the time was John Mallon, a man who played a leading role in the conviction of Poole, and he was particularly keen to have the remains reinterred quickly in a deeper grave elsewhere on the site. Contemporary newspapers show that the press was making much of Poole's innocence and they called to have the remains returned to the family. But Mallon got his way and on the 21st of September – a week after the grave was first dis- covered – the remains of Joseph Poole were reburied in secret, after dark, in an area of the barracks that was outside the old prison grounds. When Poole's elderly brothers approached the barrack OC to search for his grave in 1955, they were acting on information that was given to them by one of the labourers who was pres- ent that night in 1898. They dug in a corner of the barracks, south of the drill shed which was built by Foley more than a half a century earlier, but found nothing. This part of the bar- racks was separated from the bank of the Grand Canal and the public road beside it, by an iron railing, so it was visible to the public. It would have been almost impossible to conduct a burial in secret there. The evidence suggests that Poole's remains were reinterred in a corner of the barracks to the north of the drill shed in a secluded area that had become part of the National Boxing Stadium by 1955. A newspaper article Wellington Barracks The Company Stores

• Cover