Michael O'Hanrahan

16 Lives

by Conor Kostick

From a staunchly Republican family, Michael O’Hanrahan’s outwardly quiet and serious demeanour concealed a burning desire to see an independent Ireland.
He was instrumental in setting up the first branch of the Gaelic League in Carlow. Michael also helped found the workingman’s club in Carlow, which he left when they decided to admit a British soldier. After moving to Dublin, he played important roles in both Sinn Fein and the Irish Volunteers. As quartermaster of the Volunteers, he was responsible for the procurement of many of the arms used in the Easter Rising. Michael O’Hanrahan was also a talented journalist and novelist whose development was cut short by his execution in 1916.
In this new biography Conor Kostick brings to life a man who helped launch the 1916 Rising

Genres: History, Biography, Irish Literature

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 12, 2015

About the author

Conor Kostick was a designer for the world's first live action role-playing game, Treasure Trap. He is the author of many historical, political and cultural articles. Epic was his first novel and was awarded a place on the International Board on Books for Young People Honours list for 2006 and on the Booklist Best Fantasy Books for Youth list for 2007. Set in a fantasy MMORPG, Epic can be considered an early example of LitRPG. The sequel to Epic, titled Saga, was first published in Ireland in 2006. Conor received a Special Merit Award from the Reading Association of Ireland in 2009.

In 2018, Conor joined Level Up as commissioning editor to publish LitRPG books.

https://www.levelup.pub/what-is-litrpg

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael O’Hanrahan is one of the lesser known Easter Rising martyrs, but this has nothing to do with his importance to the Rising or to Irish Nationalism itself. It may be partially due to the fact that he was more of a work horse than a show horse, but the principal reason is that he (like Tom Clarke) was the most close-mouthed and self-effacing of revolutionaries. This was not due to modesty—although O’Hanrahan was modest—but because his responsibility as Quartermaster General required absolute secrecy.

O’Hanrahan, a cork-cutter from Carlow, came from a Fenian family. He was an excellent student, fascinated with language (he would later write two adventure novels), and joined the Gaelic League when he was twenty one. He soon was an enthusiastic teacher of Irish, founding a local Gaelic League Branch at Carlow (the first person of the working class to do so). By the age of twenty-six he was in Dublin, working with Maud Gonne and Arthur Griffith against the King’s visit to Ireland. Soon he was a member of Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. In his middle thirties (1913), he joined the Irish Volunteers.

O’Hanrahan was an able writer, but his principal strengths were his organizational skills, his self-discipline, his attention to detail, and his complete trustworthiness. As Quartermaster General his task was to store the supplies for the Rising—rifles, pistols, and bombs of course, but also boots, rations, medical supplies, etc.—secretly and securely. He was also an able second to Thomas McDonagh at Jacob’s Biscuit Factory during the Rising, but it is as a careful quartermaster adept at clandestine practices that O’Hanrahan should be best remembered.

Kostick does a good job of presenting the facts and creating a convincing portrait of the man. He is particularly good at describing his subject's duties as quartermaster and the conscientiousness with which he accomplished them. One flaw is that Kostick devotes too much time to a consideration of O’Hanrahan’s novels which--if the excerpts presented are a guide--he overrates in quality. But this is a minor quibble. This is an effective and absorbing biography.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conor Kostick

This is one of the books written by Historians at the Centenary of 1916 Easter Rising. Each book is a biography of one of the leaders who were executed by the British following the rising.

To my eternal shame as an Irishman I didn't know who Michael O'Hanrahan was when I picked up this book. He dedicated all of his short life to the cause of Irish freedom as did his sisters. He was the Quarter master for the Irish Volunteers during the rising and this book details the struggles he had in trying to provision the rising with the meagre finances and resources available to him.

I would be confident in saying that Michael O'Hanrahan is the least known of the leaders of the rising and I'm glad I read this story of his life. The book itself is well written and material is very interesting.