10. The Wheeler Family

^* Walter Sexton was an original member of the club in 1901; Honorary Secretary from 1913 to 1933 and active until his death in 1941. He was a goldsmith, jeweller, silversmith and watchmaker at 118 Grafton Street.

^†A Russian, Boris Ivanovsky, driving an Italian Alfa-Romeo at an average of 75.02 mph won the 1929 race. He drove daringly and skidded here and there because he knew he was being pressed and had to take risks at the corners.

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Turf cutting

The new government turned up trumps when Harry conceived the idea of the first National Turf Cutting Competition. The object was ‘to bring the Turf Industry to the position which rightly belongs to it as one of the country’s greatest assets’. The turf producing communities were organised into co-ops by the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society in conjunction with the Turf Development Board.

As part of this campaign he initiated the competition, and persuaded members of the Fianna Fáil government (some of whom he had first met accepting their surrender in 1916) to honour the event by their presence.

The programme of the competition included seven contests. Of these, the first two, devoted to the ‘breast slane’ and the ‘wing slane,’ were the most prestigious. ‘Breast slane’ involved the cutting of sods, eleven by four and a half inches, from the face of the bog with the special type of spade used by turf-cutters. ‘Wing slane’ involved cutting from a lower level and placing the sods to dry in a different part of the bog. There was also a ‘footing’ competition—the building of sods in small piles of twelve or so for drying; a ‘camping’ contest—the erection of sods in ‘camp’ formation, so that the rain would run off the rounded roof, and wind get in beneath to hasten the drying process, and a bog-clearing competition— the clearing of the bog surface of the upper layers of earth and heather preliminary to the actual cutting operation.

Each team entering for the various competitions consisted of three persons— a ‘cutter,’ a ‘catcher’ and a ‘wheeler’. The major award was a silver perpetual cup, presented by Alex Findlater & Co. for the ‘wing slane’ competition. A cup for the ‘breast slane’ contest was offered by Odlums the flour millers of Naas and Sallins.

In April 1934 President de Valera cut the sod and inaugurated the first turf-cutting competition which was held at Allenwood, Robertstown, Co. Kildare. All the members of the Free State Executive Council, as well as deputies of all political parties, were present. The competition, which was the first of its kind in Ireland, and probably in the world, was organised by a representative committee, under the chairmanship of Harry de Courcy-Wheeler, ‘on nonpolitical lines, as a purely industrial and social event.’ Its object was to popularise the use of turf.

The President and members of the Executive Council were entertained to lunch in one of the marquees erected on the bog for the occasion and the No. 1 Army Band played musical selections during the afternoon. The day ended with a ceilidhe and an aireadheact. Seán Lemass, Minister for Industry and Commerce, spoke at the festival, and addressed the question of grates designed to maximise the benefits of coal being less effective with turf:

As a fuel peat is very suitable for a sitting room. In this connection it is worthy of note that fireplaces in most of the Georgian houses seem to have been constructed more for the use of turf than coal. They are certainly roomy enough to burn turf satis

THE WHEELER FAMILY

Éamon de Valera with Harry (above competitor 97) at the first turf-cutting competition in 1934.

factorily. Modern fireplaces, except those of the basket type, are not quite suitable for peat fuel. On basket fireplaces the turf burns as easily as it does on the hearth. The best type of turf grate or fireplace has yet to be discovered, but we understand that the Industrial Research Council is investigating the matter.

The festival was held again in 1935; this time Lemass said that he had been reliably informed that there was on exhibition in one of the Baltic countries a house and furniture completely made from peat, including even the carpets. He was pleased that such things could be done but he wanted to know if they could be done at a price that would permit of commercial exploitation. Rather oddly, given the rural setting, Eamon de Valera in his speech chose to give a lecture on commercial morality:

We have not had much experience as a people of widespread commercial activity— we have not had any long industrial tradition. Those people who have those traditions know that there is no such thing as getting rich quickly. If they try to do that they are going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. It is only by strict honesty, keeping to bargains, scrupulously fulfilling contracts and being in time with orders that we really can succeed in business. If we are going to be self-sufficient we must have a very high standard of commercial morality. If I were asked what is the greatest benefit that can be given to our people by our schools I would say that it is by teaching the simple virtues of truth, honesty and fair dealing, one with another.

On one of these occasions de Valera confided in Harry that he, Dev, was extremely fortunate in 1916 not to have been arrested by him. On being queried why, Dev reminded Harry that all the leaders that he arrested had been executed!

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In 1938 The Irish Independent opened its lengthy coverage by recording that ‘Four hundred men carrying sleans, which glinted in the fitful sky—the march past of competitors—providing a striking scene at the National Turf-cutting Competitions at Allenwood, Robertstown, Co. Kildare yesterday.’ It noted that thousands of people were present in the morning at the opening ceremony by the Minister for Local Government, Seán T. O’Kelly, who said that

in the last five years the term bog-trotter had become one of patriotism and honour. This change of opinion was chiefly due to the great work of turf development undertaken by Major de Courcy-Wheeler and his committee. He understood that an effort was being made to make these competitions international. He also said that five years ago they were made aware that in the bogs of Ireland they had a treasure, and thousands were successfully put to work in co-operative societies. There is no limit to the good that work will do. Good clean work will be made available for thousands of men and the public will have a cheaper and cleaner fuel than coal and when the bogs are exhausted there will be a lot of new land on which crops can be grown.

During the Emergency (1939–45) shipments of coal to Ireland were restricted, as Britain needed all that they could produce for the manufacture of munitions. The Bog of Allen, and the skills honed by the Turf-Cutting Competitions, provided the solution. An army of turf cutters housed in temporary accommodation along a twenty mile stretch between Newbridge and Edenderry cut turf for Dublin’s half million inhabitants. Twenty-nine new wooden canal barges were ordered and the stock conveyed to Phoenix Park and built into enormous ricks on both sides of the main thoroughfare—now named the New Bog Road.

However, there was a cloud on a far off horizon that would take some sixty years to cast its shadow. In 1938 the new Turf Development Board had learned from their visits to Russia and other countries that better and cheaper turf could be obtained by machine cutting. Over the next thirty years Bord na Mona became an increasingly efficient lifter of turf, and was a major employee in the midlands. But there was a price to pay.

Half a century later (August 1998) a circular from the Chairman of the Irish Peatland Conservation Council landed on my desk:

As I write to you the great Bog of Allen is no more. In front of me stretches the vast brown expanse of a dead bog—consumed by our modern need for energy. This brown desert was once a magnificent wilderness area that stretched from the outskirts of Dublin to the Shannon River. Here was an Irish Eden for plants, insects, birds and mammals. We will never explore this lost landscape or learn about the wealth of animal and plant life that was found in it, nor the secrets it contained.

Alas, we were warned. In an edition of the Lady of the House in 1903, the year 2003 was predicted: ‘The bogs of Ireland during the next century will be completely used up for fuel and manufacturing purposes, and a wealth of gold ornaments and antiquarian remains, drawn therefrom, added to our local museum collections’.

THE WHEELER FAMILY

Great-Uncle George

Little was spoken about Surgeon Wheeler’s eldest son, George. He had a degree from Trinity, but he was disinherited and banished to Australia, or so the story goes. History does not record his misdemeanour. Perhaps he had an affair with one of the domestic servants, a common reason for banishment. Family tradition has it that he never actually left No. 32 Merrion Square, which was a large house with plenty of people milling around. On Sundays at least a dozen people would sit around the dining room table. Surgeon Wheeler carved the baron of beef while the maids brought the vegetables up from the kitchens. Unobserved by the carver, one of the plates, well-laden, would leave the room and be brought upstairs to the servants’ quarters in the attic. Here George had been secreted away by his mother. Years later, in 1900, he married Christina Oliversson of Southend which suggests he finally went away to England. He died in 1924 aged fifty-three. His funeral was well attended by the family.

Great-Uncle Gerry

Great-uncle Gerry was born on 8 July 1877 and educated in Trinity College Dublin (BA 1897). He became a regular soldier, and rose to become Lt.-Col in the 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the Welsh Regiment. He served in South Africa 1899-1902 and in the First World War, and was mentioned in dispatches. He married Margaret, younger daughter of Colonel Edward L’Estrange of Sligo. He lived happily in retirement in Foxrock and was an expert bee-keeper.

Great-Uncle Billy

Great-Uncle Billy, Surgeon Wheeler’s fourth son, was a quite different matter. He was a colourful character whose full title was Surgeon Rear Admiral Sir William Ireland de Courcy-Wheeler.^* Billy was born on 8 May 1879 at 32 Merrion Square. He was destined to achieve the same high honour as his father, being elected President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland for 1922-4. He studied medicine at Trinity College where he gained honours and prizes as well as fully participating in university life. At a meeting of a debating society, he presented a bear’s skull excavated in Connaught. ‘The Bear to which the scull belonged’, he said in a modish comment aimed at the Land League, ‘lived contemporaneously with primitive politicians in the West of Ireland and, if we believe in Darwin, it is hard to see why the politicians survived and the bears became extinct.’

If Billy was guilty of the complacency engendered by good fortune, fate supplied a drastic corrective, an accident in St Stephen’s Green in which a spiked railing damaged an eye beyond recovery. The sight of the other eye was threatened temporarily by sympathetic ophthalmia. His medical studies were interrupted by the necessary treatment and by protracted litigation in the action

^* Many of his escapades are recorded for posterity in J.B. Lyons’s History of Mercer’s Hospital and in An Assembly of Irish Surgeons, Lives of Presidents of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in the 20th century on which this account of his life is largely based.

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against the Board of Works, which was eventually settled in his favour. Then, greatly to his credit, he resumed his studies still determined to follow a career in surgery. Graduating in 1902, he became FRCSI in 1905, having meanwhile visited Doyen’s Clinic in Paris and spent three months with Kocher in Berne.

Billy was just twenty-five and relatively inexperienced when appointed honorary surgeon to Mercer’s Hospital in 1904, one of a group of young appointments, so that Mercer’s became known as ‘The children’s hospital’. But the Governors’ decision to appoint such a youthful staff was justified by their appointees’ performance. Billy’s reputation as an operator and teacher was soon established. He published many surgical papers including the book Operative Surgery which went to four editions.^* He gained international renown in the surgical world. Sir John Lumsden^† spoke of him as ‘The man who made Mercer’s’.

He married Elsie Shaw, the eldest daughter of Lord Shaw the first Lord Craigmyle^‡ in 1909 (no connection with his mother’s family of Shaw). They lived in 23 Fitzwilliam Square and had two children, Tom and Desirée. Billy was surgeon-in-ordinary to the household of the Lord Lieutenant.

Despite his personal charm, some of those in close professional contact found him demanding, irascible and overbearing. He was, for instance, not always polite about the professional skills of his colleagues: indeed it is said that he always wore a small crucifix around his neck, so that if he was knocked down in the street he would not be taken for surgery to the Adelaide Hospital. Nor did his own mishap make him sympathetic to the misfortunes of others. The anaesthetists who worked with him included a Dr Morrison, known to his colleagues as ‘Sticks Morrison’, because disablement by poliomyelitis made him dependent on two sticks. During the course of a difficult operation, Wheeler noticed his hampered movements. ‘I’m afraid, Morrison, you are not up to this kind of case.’ ‘Well, Sir William, it’s a case of the blind leading the halt.’

During the First World War Billy was consulting surgeon to the War Office. He was surgeon to the Duke of Connacht’s Hospital for limbless soldiers and placed his private nursing home, 33 Upper Fitzwilliam Street, at the disposal of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade and the British Red Cross as a hospital for wounded officers.

He was mentioned in dispatches for courage in treating wounded soldiers under fire during the Easter Rising. On Easter Monday, ignoring snipers he made his way across St Stephen’s Green to Mercer’s Hospital to attend an officer with a chest injury. Two days later he attended a soldier at the corner of Dawson

^* The Wheeler-Butcher collection of medical books is housed in the Mercer Library of the RCSI. He also provided for the annual award of the Sir William Wheeler silver Memorial Medal in surgery.

^† Sir John Lumsden KBE, MD, visiting physician to Mercers 1897-1939, Board member 1939; chief medical officer to Guinness brewery.

^‡ Lord Craigmyle was formerly Lord Shaw of Dumfermline. He was a Law Lord and formerly a Liberal MP who, when he retired from the bench in 1929, became Lord Craigmyle. He was in Dublin recuperating from major surgery (performed by his son-in-law) when he got caught up in the 1916 Rising.

THE WHEELER FAMILY