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On the evening of 23 March 1922, in the context of a bloody sectarian conflict that had been raging for almost two years, Owen McMahon locked up his pub on Ann Street with the assistance of his bar manager Edward McKinney. The Capstan was one of several pubs owned by Owen McMahan in Belfast, the others included the International at the corner of Donegall Street, the Century on Garfield Street, and the Great Eastern on the Newtownards Road in the east of the city.
McMahon and McKinney made their way towards the Antrim Road and to Kinnaird Terrace where McKinney was living with the McMahon family who had tea together before retiring to bed for the night. As they slept, loyalist gunmen posing as police officers sledgehammered their way into the house before gathering together the eight male occupants in the parlour room where they were chillingly advised “you boys say your prayers”. The gunmen opened fire murdering Owen McMahon, his three sons Thomas, Frank and Patrick, as well as Edward McKinney the bar manager. His other son, Bernard, survived the initial shooting but later died of his injuries on 2 April. Such was the horrific scene at Kinnaird Terrace that an ambulance man collapsed with shock on his arrival at the house. ‘The McMahon Murders’, as the incident became known, had ‘shocked almost the entire world’ according to Joe Devlin MP in the House of Commons who went on to quote from the pages of the Belfast Telegraph which reported the incident as ‘the most terrible assassination that has yet stained the name of Belfast’.
In retaliation for these and other Belfast murders, the IRA assassinated the former head of the British Army, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, and a subsequent British ultimatum to the Irish government sparked the first salvos of the Irish Civil War days later. The reluctance of the unionist Belfast government to pursue loyalist killers drove the rift between Northern Ireland’s two main communities even deeper, laying the foundations for the Troubles at the end of the twentieth century.
For this edition of the Historical Belfast I’ve been speaking to Ed Burke, Assistant Professor at University College Dublin about his latest book Ghosts of a Family where he has expertly uncovered the likely murderer of the McMahons in a case that has remained unsolved for over 100 years.I began by asking him what it was that attracted him to this topic as a subject for his new book…
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More Stories from Belfast City Cemetery is the latest addition to Tom Hartley’s ‘Written in Stone’ series of books that use the story of each of Belfast’s cemeteries to explore the dynamic history of our city and its people. From Catholic to Protestant to Muslim and Jew, from the great and the good to the poor and the destitute, each grave has multiple stories to tell. Since the publication of the previous edition of his Belfast City Cemetery book in 2014, Tom Hartley has continued to research the graves and the stories connected to them.
The new edition looks at further stories that tell the history of Belfast from the political strife of internment and conflict related deaths to those who lost their lives in industrial accidents in its shipyards and linen mills. It is the story of a dynamic city shaped by many fascinating and remarkable people.
Tom Hartley is, arguably, one of those fascinating and remarkable people himself.
He is perhaps best known for his political activism spanning over 50 years which saw him serve as General Secretary and the National Chairperson of Sinn Fein before being elected for the party as a City Councillor in 1993 and going on to be the city’s Lord Mayor from 2008-2009.
In his spare time, however, Tom pursues his love of history and is one of Belfast’s foremost public historians delivering tours and authoring books which highlight the importance of our burial sites as a repository of the political, social and economic history of Belfast.
Tom is supremely wise and endlessly witty – an absolute pleasure to sit down and talk history with. We met at the James Connolly Visitor Centre on the Falls Road, and I began by asking him about his first memories of the Belfast City Cemetery…
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If any street, area, or location were to symbolise the rampant neglect of our historical landscape then it surely has to be this one. North Street epitomises Belfast’s disregard for its own backstory. At the lower end is the derelict Exchange and Assembly Rooms, once Belfast’s most important building; at the other end is a huge sign on a gable end reminding passers-by that this is ‘The heart of old Belfast. Home to the City’s Oldest Buildings’.
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For this episode I’ve decided to re-trace some of my steps from last year.
But for now, we’re going back to the start - back to the very first article that I wrote which kicked off the series. Part of the fun of these articles was seeing how the editors would choose the titles after I’d submitted them. For this one on Donegall Street they opted for ‘Bleak Street’, and here’s why.
Early in 2023, while chatting with Eoin Brannigan – Editor In Chief at the Belfast Telegraph – we came up with a plan for a series of articles to feature in the newspaper. The series was directly inspired by Donal Fallon’s brilliant Three Castles Burning book A History of Dublin in Twelve Streets. “Do you think this could be done for Belfast?” Eoin asked me. “Absolutely!” I replied, and so I got to work on it straight away by selecting an initial list of 10 streets to go away and research. The idea was not to provide a dull chronological historical description of each street, rather it was to unearth interesting and lesser-known stories of people & events associated with each street and then attempt to weave them together. The end product, it was hoped, would offer a history of Belfast from the streets – an alternative history, if you like. For me it became a voyage of discovery with every passing street, and I’m pleased to say that the voyage isn’t over because the Belfast Telegraph has committed me to another 10 articles starting later this month. Each of these articles will be repurposed as bonus podcast episodes for subscribers on Patreon – so if you haven’t checked out the Historical Belfast Patreon yet now is the time to do so!
First World War Historical Walking Tour (Sunday 14th July)Support the show
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After a busy couple of months I’m back in the hot seat for Episode 36 and the first of 2024. Joining me for this one is Stuart Bailie. Stuart is a Belfast-based journalist and writer who has been working in the music industry since 1985, writing for the likes of NME, Mojo, Uncut, Q, Hot Press and Classic Rock. He is the author of several books including Trouble Songs: Music and Conflict in Northern Ireland which is essential reading for anyone from with part of the world with an interest in music.
Stuart’s most recent publication, however, is the subject of this episode. Terri Hooley: Seventy Five Revolutions was an opportunity for him to mark Hooley’s milestone birthday by delving into his archive of interviews and adventures to find reason in a turbulent Belfast life.
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Just when you thought that we knew everything that there is to know about the 1916 Easter Rising, yet more perspectives continue to seep from the archives and from locations more obscure.
A 49-page document, now in the archives of the Linen Hall Library, offers a sensational eye-witness account of the Rising written in long-hand and on Gresham Hotel headed notepaper. It describes the thrilling experiences of 38 year old James Mitchell, a teacher from The Mount in east Belfast. This is his story.
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'A masterful love letter' is how one reviewer has described the latest book by the prolific Professor Feargal Cochrane. Just when you thought that no more could be written on the history of this place, you'd be wrong, because 'Belfast: The Story of a City and Its People' is a timely and welcome contribution to the past, present and future of the place that many of us call home.
I have been itching to have this chat with Feargal ever since the publisher Yale University Press got in touch about the possibility of a podcast episode with the author. And then, of course, I read the book and had so many questions that I wanted to ask.
Finally then, after a long wait, I managed to get on a call with Feargal Cochrane and here's the result...
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On 13th November last year I was on holiday in Rome, on my way to St Peter’s Square in the Vatican City, when news reached me that Dr Eamon Phoenix had passed away. I was aware that he’d been unwell, nevertheless the news left me in shock and disbelief. Eamon was in my thoughts all of that day as I explored the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel. Later, I queued for admission to St. Peter’s Basilica and, once inside, I decided that I was going to say a prayer for Eamon and his family. I wouldn’t describe myself as a religious person, and those who know me will know that I’m not even from a Catholic background, but it seemed like an appropriate thing to do at the time. Because, for me, Eamon was a hero, he was everything that I wanted (and still want) to be, and for that reason this episode is very much a personal and anecdotal reflection on someone who I regard as our ‘Historian Laureate’.
*Excerpts Included from an event at Feile An Phobail on Thursday 3rd August 2023 and the Year '21 Podcast Journey from November 2022.Support the show
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For this episode I’ve come to St John’s Catholic Church on the Falls Road to meet with the Parish Priest Father Martin Magill. I’m not here to make a podcast episode about the church though, I’m here to find out more from Martin about a project he’s been working on looking at the history of Belfast street names…
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The biggest ship the world had ever seen, constructed by the world’s biggest shipbuilder Harland & Wolff; Titanic was (and still remains) something that Belfast is immensely proud of.
Belfast bore no shame from the tragedy of the ship’s sinking, for it was the blood, sweat and tears of our own that built it. “She was alright when she left here” was our tongue-in-cheek way of saying “We did our bit”, and suffered in the process. Eight Belfast lads lost their lives during the two-year construction period; I avoid calling them ‘Belfast men’ because the youngest was just 15 years of age – Samuel Scott from Templemore Street in the East of the city – only a child. Samuel had been employed as a ‘catchboy’ – a junior member of a riveting squad. His cause of death was recorded as a fractured skull. In many ways Samuel Scott and his 7 mortally injured colleagues are the forgotten collateral damage that was necessary to make Titanic a reality. In stark contrast to the luxury on board the ship and the billions of pounds and dollars that have swirled around the Titanic brand to this day Samuel Scott lay in an unmarked grave in Belfast City Cemetery until 2011 when Feile an Phobail (the West Belfast Festival) provided a headstone to remember him.
Titanic is arguably worth more to Belfast today than 111 years ago when she slipped out of Belfast like a palace on the sea. Our Titanic Belfast museum, which took longer to build than the ship itself, cost in excess of £100m and continues to attract millions of visitors who are keen to see and hear more about a tragic maritime tale that has been so often told. It’s said that well over 500 books have been written about Titanic in the English language alone – if you count assorted reprints and books in foreign languages the total number of Titanic texts is somewhere in the region of 1,000. You’d think, therefore, that not much else could be written which hadn’t been written before – and you’d be wrong, because my guest for this episode has managed to do exactly that and seemingly with great success.
Gareth Russell is a Belfast-based historian, novelist and playwright. In 2019 he published his account of the Titanic disaster titled The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era. It was named a ‘Book of the Year’ by The Times newspaper and a ‘Best History Book of 2019’ by The Daily Telegraph – no mean feat…
And so when thinking about the Titanic and Belfast’s connections to it I figured there would be no better person to speak to than Gareth.
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Joe Biden, the 46th president of the United States, will begin a five-day visit to the island in Belfast next Tuesday and it got me thinking about previous visits to Belfast by US presidents. There haven’t been many, and you might be hard pushed to name them all, but each have been important in their own way, some more than others, and generally they have all been dominated by one issue; peace for Northern Ireland.
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When we think of the Dutch and their association with football it immediately evokes images of Johan Cruyff and his iconic ‘Cruyff turn’, Van Basten’s almost impossible goal in 1988, Ruud Gullit’s ‘sexy football’, Ajax winning the European Cup in 1995, and the famous ‘sea of orange’ that accompanies the Netherlands national team wherever they play. It really is a world away from our own domestic football scene here in Northern Ireland where the prospect of a Tuesday night fixture away to Warrenpoint Town doesn’t quite have the same appeal as what the Netherlands can offer.
And yet recently I’ve come across a Dutch historian who is so fascinated by the history of football in Belfast that he has decided to write a book about it – in Dutch, and for a Dutch audience…
Wouter Schollema is from the Frieseland region in the north of Netherlands. Through his studies at the Groningen University Wouter gained a keen interest in the history of Ireland and, in particular, the more recent history of Northern Ireland.
Football-wise he supports a club called Cambuur who, if the Dutch Erdivisie is turned upside down, are one of the top teams in the Netherlands… In reality they’re about the be relegated to the Dutch second-tier. At Cambuur, Wouter provides stadium tours for visitors and he is also the Dutch language teacher for the foreign players at the club.
Over the last year or so Wouter and I have struck up a friendship due to our mutual interest in football and so I thought it was only right that I should invite him onto the podcast to talk about his book, and I began by asking him where his fascination with Belfast comes from.
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The story of the UVF’s dramatic 1914 gunrunning operation at the height of the third home rule crisis is one that has often been told. What is less well-known about the UVF’s gunrunning story, however, is the fate of the man who provided the weapons. Bruno Spiro, a German Jew, was arrested in Hamburg in 1936 by the Gestapo and charged with what were described as “serious allegations”. He was taken to the notorious Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp in Hamburg where he allegedly took his own life...
Thanks to Elise Bath from the Wiener Holocaust Library for providing some much-needed context to this story.Support the show
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You would be forgiven for being completely unaware of the rich Jewish heritage that exists in Belfast. Despite being a relatively small community today (less than 100 and still declining…) the Jews of Belfast have left an indelible mark on the history of our city.
For Episode 27 of the Historical Belfast Podcast I’ve been speaking to Steven Jaffe, Director of the Jewish Heritage Project.
Link for Jewish Heritage Project: https://www.belfastjewishheritage.org/
Patreon link: www.patreon.com/historicalbelfast
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For this episode of the Historical Belfast Podcast I visited St. Matthew’s Parish Church, consecrated 150 years ago on 11 March 1872. I chatted with Sam Guthrie (Queen’s University Belfast) who has been busy working on an exhibition about the social history of St. Matthew’s and the surrounding community of the Shankill.
Your support on Patreon would be hugely appreciated:
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Standing weathered and tall at the Lisburn Road end of Sandy Row is the district’s Orange Hall; now over 150 years old.
Episode 18 of the Historical Belfast Podcast takes a closer look at the history of the hall which has acted as a community centre for generations of people living in Sandy Row.
This Sandy Row mini-series is brought to you in collaboration with Belfast South Community Resources and also with the support of the South Belfast Urban Village Initiative. If you’re enjoying the episodes please remember to give the podcast a rating and to share on your social media.Support the show
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Last month I was extremely privileged to join with a panel of 6 esteemed historians in a meeting with HRH The Prince of Wales in Belfast City Hall. The location was significant because almost exactly 100 years previous, King George V (Charles’ great grandfather) visited Belfast to open Northern Ireland’s first parliament in the same building. Charles was acutely aware of his great grandfather’s contribution and invited historians to comment on the impact made by King George’s speech in the context of island-wide violence and tumultuous Irish politics.
The event will be commemorated by Belfast City Council on Tuesday 22nd June when a re-creation of the speech will be made for a live stream. There will also be an unveiling of two chairs, used on that day by King George V and Queen Mary which have since undergone some specialist conservation work. A talk on the matter will also be provided by the brilliant Dr Eamon Phoenix, and finally a performance of a specially commissioned play by Terra Nova productions which will explore the speech in more dramatic detail.
Had I been aware of all this before I started researching the episode I probably wouldn’t have written it, but nevertheless I’m here now and so are you – so here it is, Episode 16: The King’s Speech.Support the show
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The first in a new mini-series dedicated to the history of the Sandy Row area in South Belfast. This mini-series is brought to you in collaboration with Belfast South Community Resources and also with the support of the South Belfast Urban Village Initiative. There will be 10 episodes in total covering various themes from Sandy Row orangeism, to the formation of Linfield Football Club, the infamous riots with The Pound in the 19th century, and a few more besides. The first release, however, remains in keeping with the current 80th anniversary of the Belfast Blitz covered of course more generally in the previous episode of the podcast. Blythe Street off Sandy Row took a direct hit from a high explosive mine during the Easter Raid of 1941. The destruction was terrible and the tales of loss are heart wrenching. This is the story of The Blitz in Blythe Street…
Thanks to Scott Edgar from www.WartimeNI.com
Reference for Hazel Collins testimony: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/42/a4508642.shtmlSupport the show
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This month’s episode of the Historical Belfast Podcast is brought to you in conjunction with the Northern Ireland War Memorial museum on Talbot Street who have kindly given me access to their oral history archive. I am also extremely grateful for the research and writing of the late historian Jonathan Bardon on this subject and, as such, this episode is dedicated to Dr Bardon.
80 years ago, in the course of 4 Luftwaffe attacks during the Second World War, lasting 10 hours in total, 1,100 people died, over 56,000 were homes damaged, and 100,000 people were made homeless.
The first attack on Belfast came on the night of 7th April. The docks area was attacked with great accuracy, though residential housing was hit too. The ‘docks raid’, as it became known, was small in comparison to the Easter Raid which followed on the night of 15th April, and the focus of this episode.
Northern Ireland War Memorial - World War II Museum Belfast (niwarmemorial.org)
Delia Murphy - The Spinning Wheel: (4) Delia Murphy - The Spinning Wheel - YouTube
Blitz sound effects: (4) LONDON BLITZ 1940 - ORIGINAL AUDIO - YouTubeSupport the show
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One Saturday Before the Great War, thirteen players from Glentoran Football Club, industrial workers to a man, each of them living in the cramped housing of Ballymacarrett, became the unlikely heroes of a tale which is scarcely believable.
Those not familiar with the story are to be forgiven for thinking that Sam Robinson, a writer and Glentoran fanatic, has let his imagination run wild during these gruelling months of lock-down, however the reality is quite the opposite. Sam has spent many months trawling through online archives including those of foreign countries, tracking down individuals, and writing an historical account of the underdogs from East Belfast on the European stage. The comedy element of the pub crawls and players going AWOL helps us relate to the players as people that we recognise – they weren’t the professional footballers of today, but normal people like you I – and excited to see the world.
The winning of the cup in Vienna was the high water mark of the story – in many ways, the events surrounding it almost made the cup irrelevant, such were high stakes. The glory of Vienna was followed by a dark twist – heading into the mouth of the First World War the Glentoran party were forced to “run like hell” to escape being caught up in the opening exchanges of the conflict.
When the war eventually did begin, some of the Glentoran players served in the British Army. Indeed, some of the players who they had faced on the tour served also, but on the opposing side – Hertha Berlin, for example lost 36 men in total during the Great War.
And as if that wasn’t enough, when the Second World War began in 1939, some of the characters in this story became victims of the Holocaust, while one man was executed for an attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler. You literally couldn’t make it up…
The Second World War touched Glentoran too of course, the club was virtually destroyed during the Belfast Blitz, including the Oval grounds, the kits, the records, and the trophies all lost except one which sat on the chairman’s mantle piece – the Vienna Cup.
Welcome to Episode 12 of the Historical Belfast Podcast, this episode being dedicated to Sam Robinson’s new book on the Glentoran side that toured Europe in 1914 and brought home a cup won in Vienna. Copies of the book can be obtained by contacting Sam via the ‘One Saturday Before The War’ Facebook page – also, if you’ve any further information to add to the story, particularly on the players, Sam would be delighted to hear from you.
If you’re new to this podcast, please check out the previous 11 episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast content, and most importantly, share the episodes on your social media, it really helps people to find it.
After reading the book myself, Sam joined me on Zoom for a chat and I began by asking him how his relationship began with Glentoran Football Club...
(Bless 'em All piano version by Calikokat Piano: (4) Bless ‘Em All – Piano - YouTube)Support the show
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