The Meath 1916 Dead: James Fox

by Jim Gilligan

James Fox was one of the youngest combatants to die during the Easter Rising of 1916 when struck by gunfire at St Stephen’s Green on Tuesday 25th April. He was born in 1900, the second child of Pat and Margaret Fox, and lived in Drumree until 1912 or 1913. The Fox family had lived in the area for some time and Pat was the proprietor of the Spencer Arms public house, now Johnny Gilsenan’s, located beside Drumree railway station on the Dublin to Navan line.

James had two sisters, Constance, always known as Connie, who was a year older than James, Mary, usually called Mollie, born in 1910 and a brother, Thomas, born in 1902. Their mother was Margaret Collins, a native of Liverpool, whom it is said, Pat met on the hunting fields.

The family appears to have been relatively well-off in the early years of the twentieth century. The 1901 Census shows that the family consisted of Pat and his wife Margaret, their two children, Connie and James while Pat’s father James and his sister Bodelia were also resident. The family had two servants. There were a number of other buildings attached, including twenty-four stables. The pub at times functioned as a hotel and catered for those visiting from Dublin and further afield to take part in local hunts.

Fox Family 1901 Census

Outside of his public house and hotel business Pat Fox was very involved in politics and sport. As a young man he participated in numerous sports’ meetings, played football with Dunshaughlin St Seachnall’s and was captain of Warrenstown and later Drumree in the 1890s. It seems that he was also on the first ever Meath team when they lined out against Louth near Drogheda in 1889. When the GAA was practically dead in the county during much of the 1890s he regularly played cricket with Drumree. He also refereed boxing matches in the county. During one of those in 1910 he took part in a sparring exhibition with his young son James during the interval between bouts, which the press reported ‘evoked hearty applause.’

In politics Fox was a staunch supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party leader Charles Stewart Parnell and after the country split into pro and anti Parnellite factions he remained a loyal follower. Fox retained his faith in Parnell for the rest of his life, a decision which may not have been in the best interests of his business given the depth of division in nationalist Ireland. In later years he attended the annual Ivy Day ceremony to mark Parnell’s death and was one of only ten men who attended Parnell’s funeral in 1891 and the annual commemoration forty-nine years later in 1940.

James went to Culmullen National School between 1905 and 1908 but in September 1908 transferred to Dunshaughlin Boys’ National School, while his sister Connie enrolled in the Girls’ school. In 1911 when the family moved to Woodtown James returned to Culmullen National School, presumably because it was nearer his new home.

By then it seems the family business was in financial difficulty. Pat Fox himself in later life claimed that he fell on hard times due to his support for what he called ‘the national cause’. By January 1912, the licence of the Spencer Arms Hotel was transferred to a Joseph Langan, the family moved to Woodtown for a short while and soon afterwards left the area.

Move to Dublin and Liverpool

The family must have been in poor circumstances for Pat and his sons James and Thomas moved to Dublin while his wife Margaret returned to her native Liverpool along with the girls. Over the next couple of years Pat also spent some time in England. It was difficult to get work in Dublin and after the 1913 Lockout it was particularly so for anyone involved in trade union or radical politics. In Dublin Pat Fox continued his interest in politics, joining James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army. Connolly set up the organization to protect striking workers from the police during the Lockout of 1913. By 1914 Pat Fox was a member of the first Army Council of the Citizens’ Army.

It was hard to find work for young James too. This is seen in a letter from his father to his old friend PJ Murray in Dunshaughlin.

74 Thomas Street,

22nd Feb ’15

Dear Peter,

Just a line to know if you knew of anyone in the trade who would take one of my boys as an apprentice. Jim is a really good lad who does not fear work of any kind, & who would give satisfaction to any person who would engage him. I would be thankful if you would drop me a line at your earliest convenience as I am leaving here on next Monday.

Hoping self & family are A1.

Yours faithfully,

PJ Fox

James eventually got employment as a shop assistant in a branch of the Maypole Dairy in Dublin. Given his father’s views it was natural that James himself would become involved in nationalist organisations. He joined Fianna Éireann, a youth group for nationalist minded boys aged from eight to eighteen. Countess Markievicz and Bulmer Hobson established it in 1909 and its aim in 1912 was to re-establish the independence of Ireland, by teaching scouting and military exercises, Irish history, and the Irish language.

When the Rising was about to begin on Easter Monday, 24th April 1916, Pat Fox turned up at Liberty Hall. Frank Robbins, a member of the Irish Citizens’ Army, described what happened:

I was making for the ranks when Pat Fox caught my eye. He drew a youth about nineteen years towards me saying, ‘This is my lad; take him with you for the Irish Citizen Army. I am too old for the job’.

My reply was: ‘Right you are, Pat. Good-bye.’

Little did I know that in less than twenty hours this youth was to breathe his last in this life in the cause of Ireland’s freedom. Young Fox was handed over to Commandant Mallin before I took up my allotted position.

Michael Mallin, whom Pat Fox knew, was the man in charge of the group that was to take St. Stephen’s Green. Of course Robbins was mistaken in thinking the youth was nineteen, he was in fact just sixteen years old.

St Stephen’s Green was a difficult location to defend as high buildings surrounded the park on all sides. Mallin’s second in command was Countess Markievicz. Once inside the park the volunteers started digging trenches and fox-holes so that they could get below ground level. James Fox and James O Shea, an Irish Citizens’ Army man from Dublin, dug a trench looking out towards Dawson Street.

In O Shea’s own words: We dug for a couple of hours and made a nice job of it, putting some bushes around it as camouflage. We made a shelf for bombs and the shotguns of two lads who came to the trench, by cutting into the earth.'

Early in the morning, probably before dawn, O'Shea sent James Fox back to the centre of the Green and soon after British machinegun fire from the Shelbourne Hotel and other buildings raked the Green from left to right and back again, hitting the railings and the grass. As the bullets ripped into the Green everyone in the park was pinned down, and, to run for better cover was to risk death. However, James did seek better cover and ran towards the railings. As he did he was hit a number of times and a bullet to the head killed him instantaneously. Soon after Michael Mallin withdrew his forces from the Green and took over the Royal College of Surgeons building where they remained for the rest of the week until the order to surrender came from Patrick Pearse in the GPO.

Sometime after his death James was taken to Mercer’s Hospital, near where he died. His death wasn’t registered until 17th May and his body was eventually returned to Drumree for burial. There is no account in any of the local newspapers of the funeral but the coffin probably travelled by rail to Drumree and local tradition says that members of the Lynch and other local families met the body and the Fox family at Drumree station. James was buried in Knockmark Cemetery but his resting place was unmarked until 1935 when the IRA Memorials’ Committee erected an imposing headstone in his memory. It was unveiled on 19th May following a parade from Dunshaughlin.

Frank Robbins recalled meeting Pat Fox some time after the Rising and he remembered their conversation as follows:

I wondered what his father would have to say to me if we ever met again. We did meet again many months afterwards when he greeted me with tears in his eyes and a warm handclasp saying, ‘My poor boy, my poor boy.’

The only reply I could make was ‘Don’t worry,

Pat, he died bravely.’

The old man brightened up very much with these few words of consolation.

Pat Fox after his son’s Death

Following James’ death Pat moved house regularly, leaving Thomas Street to live at various stages in Drumcondra, Parnell Street and Cabra. By 1924 he was living at 24 St. Patrick’s Road, Drumcondra with his surviving son Thomas, who worked as a builder’s labourer and was earning about £3 a week. Pat himself had been unemployed for the previous year and had only occasional work in Dublin and Liverpool. He now began a lengthy ten-year correspondence with the Pensions Board to try to get a pension but to do so he needed to prove that he was dependent on James at the time of his son’s death. The authorities decided that he was only partially dependent on James and despite a long battle he received just a once off gratuity of £50. His final bitter letter to Éamon de Valera, then the President of the Executive Council, equivalent to Taoiseach, ended:

'If I had some job of trust, such as Caretaker, or something of that sort of work that would keep me out of poverty in the end of my days, I would be satisfied, but Sir, like many others who perhaps did more than their share, I am to be cast aside while traitors and hirelings are living in luxury on the blood of Irish heroes.'

The family suffered further tragedy in 1928 when their daughter Mary (Mollie) died in Liverpool at the age of 18. Pat Fox seems to have lived in Dublin for the rest of his life, although it is likely he also visited Liverpool regularly. He survived until 1945 when he died in the Harold’s Cross Hospice in Dublin. Though living away from Drumree for over three decades he was buried there, probably alongside his son James, but there is no reference to this on his headstone. His other daughter Connie died in 1985, aged eighty-seven years, while Thomas died in 1975.

On Easter Sunday 2016 James Fox’s role in the 1916 Rising was remembered with Mass in Culmullen, the launch of a booklet on his life and the unveiling of a stone naming the bridge over the M3 Motorway at Readsland the James Fox Bridge, Droichead Shéamus Mhic and tSionnaigh.

* Information courtesy Jim Gilligan and Dunshaughlin and District Historical Society