The
1916 Rising in the Clare Newspapers
The
Saturday Record, like the Clare Journal, was also published in
1916 by J. B. Knox and Son in Jail Street, Ennis. The newspaper was founded
in September 1885 and ran for half a century until September 1936. At
the time of the Easter Rising, The Saturday Record had only one authorised
agent in Dublin, at 75A Great Britain Street, and that was Thomas Clarke,
tobacconist and news agent, who signed the Proclamation and was shot at
Kilmainham Gaol on 3 May 1916.
The
Clare Champion, founded in 1903, and published weekly on Saturdays,
was edited by Sarsfield Maguire in 1916. Regarding itself as a national
newspaper as much as a regional one, the newspaper boldly espoused the
cause of Irish nationalism and tenant farmers’ rights. The newspaper
was suppressed for six months in 1918 by the military authorities for
publishing ‘seditious’ and ‘subversive’ articles.
It continues to be published in the twenty-first century.
The
Clare Journal and Ennis Adertiser commenced publication in Ennis
in 1778 when it was founded by John Busteed and George Trinder. The Clare
Journal was published by Frances Knox in 1916. A war-time shortage of
paper was one of the factors leading to the newspaper’s demise in
May 1917, together with a changing political and cultural environment.
The title of the newspaper was subsequently incorporated in The Saturday
Record and Clare Journal.
