We can remember without worshiping

I visited the church to explore a little story amidst the tangle of our centenary history, a story that sheds light on the complex interweaving of relationships between the diverse communities on these islands. It’s also a story that challenges those who believe memory is something that should be rationed rather than liberally shared.

Because this window is one of the few memorials to members of the Royal Irish Constabulary who were killed during the Revolutionary War. The window is dedicated “…in honorable and loving memory of Percival Lea-Wilson DI [district inspector] RIC who was killed June 15, 1920. Built by his wife”.

Percival Lea-Wilson was a well-born Londoner who had made his early career in the RIC and fell in love with a local girl, Marie Ryan, while stationed in Charleville, Co Cork. That it was a marriage of love is evident from the fact that, as a Roman Catholic, she applied for and received a dispensation for her marriage to a Protestant.

He joined the Royal Irish Regiment in 1915 and served on the Western Front. Stationed in Dublin at the time of the rising, he was put in charge of supervising the surrendered rebels in the Rotunda at the end of Holy Week.

Whether he was a brute by nature or brutalized by the war, he was brutal to his prisoners. He made the hundreds of prisoners lie on the ground and on top of each other and refused to let them move to relieve themselves.

He singled out Tom Clarke for the humiliation and had him stripped from the waist down while nurses at Rotunda Hospital watched from the windows above. Among his prisoners were young Michael Collins and Liam Tobin, who later became Collins’ director of intelligence. They promised each other to catch up with Lea-Wilson.

Four years later, when Lea-Wilson was stationed at the RIC in Gorey, they did. On a June morning, Lea-Wilson was walking home after collecting his newspaper and post from the Dublin train when he passed a group of five men gathered around a broken-down car. The men pumped five bullets into him and he died in the street.

On first telling, the story of the murder of Lea-Wilson is satisfying, like a good thriller. “I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you,” says Liam Neeson’s character in one scene in the film out of stock (The scene has been viewed nine million times on YouTube). We are programmed to inspire in demanding justice from the wrongfully injured.

But on closer inspection, the certainties of this statement evaporate. The evidence against Lea-Wilson is hardly reliable. As Liam Tobin reported on the humiliation of Tom Clarke (and others) in his statement to the Bureau of Military History: “Some people say they were undressed during the trial, and if my memory is at all reliable, it seems to me that this was the case.” In each case, the justice demanded was brutal, summary, and disproportionate.

But while Lea-Wilson’s death was shameful and his killing cowardly, his wife’s life afterward was one of quiet heroism. Deciding to study, she entered Trinity Medical School and became one of Ireland’s first female pediatricians. In that capacity she saved the life of at least one child: Willie Willoughby, the local historian in Gorey who told me her story.

Willoughby was born in 1942 with a cleft palate so severe that he could not eat. His parents could not get him to a hospital and the local doctor warned them that he was likely to die. But Marie Lea-Wilson, who was then working at Harcourt Street Children’s Hospital, heard of the plight of this little boy from Gorey, found him a bed, and got the treatment he needed.

But it’s her artistic patronage that she’s remembered for. Not only did she commission the Harry Clarke window for local Anglican Christ Church. On a trip to Scotland while mourning the loss of her husband, she found a cheap Renaissance painting in an antique shop and brought it home.

She later gave it to a Jesuit community on Leeson Street, who had comforted her in her grief. It hung there until the 1990s, when Sergio Benedetti of the National Gallery recognized it as the long-lost Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ. So the highlight of our national collection is in a way a kind of memorial to Percival Lea-Wilson.

A tremendous amount of good work has been done during the centenary decade, notably the democratization of access to the archives through digitization, the focus on previously neglected histories and trauma, particularly those of women and children, and the willingness of communities to explore and engage Remembering events in all their complexity and often with moral ambiguity.

But something went wrong in the treatment of the commemoration of the RIC and British Army dead. A poppy wreath placed on Mount Street Bridge to commemorate the 220 British casualties (including 28 deaths) there has been removed. An event commemorating the RIC has been cancelled. Most egregiously, a wall in Glasnevin Cemetery that simply listed the names of the dead on either side was repeatedly vandalized until the cemetery announced they were “discontinued”.

The Expert Advisory Group on Commemorations recommended in 2018 that “the organization of specific initiatives to commemorate the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) and to recognize their place in history should also be considered”.

I asked the Department of Culture, which runs the Decade of Centenaries program, if such events had taken place or were planned for 2023. They referred my inquiry to the Department of Justice, who brought my attention to “a Symposium on Justice in Ireland 1822-2022” which was due to take place this year but is now scheduled for next.

When Michéal Martin handed over the baton of the Taoiseach yesterday, one of his most important legacies was the development of the Shared Island Initiative. This, however, does not square with such a timid approach to commemoration that it may come as close as possible to acknowledging the RIC’s place in history to hold an academic conference spanning two centuries of policing, the outline of which is not even mentioned in the official program of the RIC .

Below the figure of St. Stephen on Marie Lea-Wilson’s window is a biblical quote: “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” This is quite a remarkable statement by a woman whose husband was shot in cold blood by her countrymen.

Perhaps Percival Lea-Wilson was a brute; maybe he had been brutalized. However, there was no justice in his murder. But Marie Lea-Wilson, née Ryan, went beyond that by giving back a life of healthcare and a remarkable artistic legacy to this country.

We try to share this island better. A necessary first step is to recognize that one can participate in the act of remembering without having to share the actual memories. The uncomfortable story of Percival Lea-Wilson, first commemorated 100 years ago this weekend, is a good example