The son, Fr Joseph Mallin
‘Before 1916 there was despair in Ireland’

Fr Joseph Mallin, son of Rising leader Michael Mallin

Joseph Mallin was just two years old when his father, Michael, was executed at Kilmainham Gaol for his part in the Easter Rising. As Chief of Staff of the Irish Citizen Army, Michael Mallin was second-in-command to James Connolly.

Before he was shot, on May 8, 1916, Michael wrote to his family, telling his baby son: “Joseph, my little man, be a priest if you can.”

Joseph became a priest. He is now 98 years old and lives in Hong Kong, China. There, he works at the Wah Yan College, a Roman Catholic secondary school for boys run by the Society of Jesus, Ireland.

Joseph Mallin is the last surviving child of any of the Easter Rising leaders. In a letter for this project, dated July 2011, he recalled some of his memories of 1916 and the aftermath.

Fr Joseph also described a 2009 visit home to Ireland, and to Kilmainham Gaol, scene of his father’s execution.

“The young lady at the entrance mentioned the entrance fee. I couldn’t refrain from a wee joke. I said, ‘The first time I came here I didn’t have to pay entrance fee’ – but went on – “Ah, that time I was only two and a half years of age – and I was asleep.

“Later, when she leading round the prison and the group had dispersed, I told her who I was.” As he was just an infant, Fr Joseph remembers little of the year 1916, or the day he was first brought to Kilmainham.

“As I said to the young lady in Kilmainham, ‘I was asleep’. I know I was asleep on the metal stairway in the main hall. My sister told me that. A soldier came over and said he was very sorry for me. My first memory comes later.”

Father Joseph said his father, or the events of Easter week were not common topics of conversation in the years that followed the executions as his mother did not want to burden him. “Perhaps it was wise of my mother in those years not to speak of my father. She was very wise. Mrs Pearse and Mrs Austin Stack held her in a certain sort of reverence,” he said.

Michael Mallin was survived by his wife Agnes, his three sons (including Joseph) and two daughters, the youngest of whom was not born until four months after his death. Joseph explained: “The 1916 event took a toll on my mother’s health. I accidentally heard Surgeon Stokes say her breakdown in health was a ‘direct’ result of 1916.”

Educated at UCD, Father Joseph has spent his life devoted to religion and the pursuit of social justice. It has led him from Ireland to Tiananmen Square and beyond.

And he believes those who fought in the 1916 Rising did so for justice and Ireland. “You know before 1916 there was rather despair – you feel it in Yeats, Conor Sheehan and others,” he said, maintaining that their legacy helped to mold modern Ireland.

“They did shape the country. What is gained with little or no effort is not valued. 1916 did set an ideal.”