Children of the Rising: The untold story of the young lives lost during Easter 1916

by Joe Duffy

Children of the Rising is the first ever account of the young lives violently lost during the week of the 1916 long-forgotten and never commemorated, until now.

Boys, girls, rich, poor, Catholic, Protestant - no child was guaranteed immunity from the bullet and bomb that week, in a place where teeming tenement life existed side by side with immense wealth.

Drawing on extensive original research, along with interviews with relatives, Joe Duffy creates a compelling picture of these forty lives, along with one of the cut and thrust of city life between the two canals a century ago.

This gripping story of Dublin and its people in 1916 will add immeasurably to our understanding of the Easter Rising. Above all, it honours the forgotten lives, largely buried in unmarked graves, of those young people who once called Dublin their home.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

237 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Joseph "Joe" Duffy is an Irish broadcaster employed by Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). He is the current presenter of Liveline, an interview and phone-in chat show broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 on Mondays to Fridays between 13.45 and 15.00.

There is more than one author with this name on Goodreads. See also Joe Duffy.

Reviews

[Reading Corner · Rating 2 out of 5]

The fact 40 children died during the rising and many civilians is heart-breaking and their stories are incredibly sad but this book is just terribly written.Joe Duffy's writing failed the stories behind these children's lives as he just makes it painful to read.

Where he lacks information on the children, he rambles on about minuscule details of their lives that seem pointless to mention but only to fill up pages.This aspect makes the book boring and I kept finding myself zoning out.

The book though is definitely well researched and has plenty of references and eye witness accounts throughout the stories.The pictures are a pleasant touch, despite there lack of relevance at times but they were nice to examine.

The children's stories were sad and interesting but Joe Duffy was not the person to write their story.I didn't really enjoy this book and was is worth €25?Definitely not.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book a few years ago but felt I had to come back to it now (January 2025) because current events elsewhere (do I really need to spell that out?) make it impossible not to. It is too easy to condemn, without context, without reasons, without history. Those who start rebellions in urban areas are, like those who suppress them, just cookie-cutter, identikit, badmen, doing dreadful things to innocent victims. The dead are dead and the reasons for their deaths are too complicated to bother understanding. Of course those caught in the cross fire continue to die. Do you compare the 40 children who died over 6 days of 1916 to the 186 who died over 30 years of the Northern Ireland Troubles or the 74 who died in the first week of January 2025 in Gaza. Or do you accept these deaths as negligible compared to the numberless children who died in the Shoah, Stalin's Ukrainian famine, or Pol Pots Cambodia?

The point is once stripped of context the dead are just victims. They have no agency. It is reductive and in denting the dead their own agency denies them dignity.

The dead children of 1916 deserved to be remembered but, like many other groups and individuals were forgotten. I can assure you that when I was at school in Ireland back in the 1970s dead children, unless identifiable as a 'British atrocity' were not in the story (but then neither were women except as suitably silent nurses or nuns ministering to the men). Certainly no one was told that for the brave middle class leaders of 1916 the women of the Dublin slums and their numerous barefoot children were barely human and unworthy of being considered Irish.

I mention barefoot because so many of Dublin's children were barefoot back then and remained so until after WWII. The poverty of Dublin remained Dickensian long after it vanished in the UK.

I congratulate the book for telling and resurrecting stories but it is not a good or well written book. I would love to give it many stars but can't and my three reflects respect for its subject rather than the way it is told.

Many of those dead children died working, or searching out food - they were not passive, did 'not go gentle into that good night' but died struggling to survive. Did they die so that all could be 'changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born'? I don't know but they deserve to be remembered but won't be because we remembered heroes, or monsters (who can name one victim of John Wayne Gacey? or the dead boys of Srebrenica?).

There is much to learn from the dead children of 1916 but it won't be learnt from this book.

[Russell Court · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I borrowed this book I was told, 'it's a great story but Joe Duffy wasn't the man to write it' and as I read it I couldn't help agreeing. The stories of the 40 children is heartbreaking and sad. Joe just seems to want to drag the story on and on so we get digressions, tangents and anecdotes that distract from the story and made me feel impatient.
Granted there is very little detail on some of the children and so he probably felt he needed to 'fill it out' a bit. But as I finished the book I wondered if the editor wouldn't have been better to focus Joe on the task in hand and leave the tangents to separate chapters.
Still I'd say 'read it and don't get annoyed but feel free to skip a lot of paragraphs'.

[Paul Roper · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an avid reader of Irish History and cultural books, this one was slightly off the beaten path. The subject matter, children murdered during the 1916 Irish Rebellion, is told in a very straightforward manner, and the writer has done a lot of research, the photos are excellent. I definitely recommend it.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important look at the young children who died during the 1916 Easter Rising.

[Poetry Review · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting and sad topic. Terribly written.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A horrifying account of the 40 innocent children who died during the Easter Rising. A beautifully written book, the horror of the living conditions almost paled in comparison to the disregard by both the British and Irish governments, as well as the American Irish community, had for the families of these innocents. It is important that we remember the civilians lost during our commemorations this year just as we remember the countless people trapped in war zones and the many children who are robbed from us by violence, hunger and disease.

A must read for those interested in Irish history.

[Janice Salmon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this as a book to read on the train to Belfast. I wish there was more detail about the children and there families but too much time has passed to get many details. On the hundredth anniversary we will be approximately three to four generations from the true story. These people were mostly the poorest of Dublin and grew up in a society that was well used to losing a large number of their children to death. But this does not mean they did not mourn for the ones they lost during this week long battle.
As a visitor to Ireland I wish the author had added a city map to help me understand and visualize what he was describing.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know, this is the first book about the Rising that I've read at all, and it really puts you there in Dublin, in the fancy pharmacy or the foul tenements. Definitely a good read if you want to know what the Rising was like on the ground.

[Ted Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched, moving account of the child victims of Easter Week 1916.

[Niamh · Rating 5 out of 5]

cant wait to get this book altough lots of people think 40 children died but it was 41 children but no1 knows the name of it, it was a baby infant