Lynch, Patrick John

by Patrick Maume

Lynch, Patrick John (1875/6–1934), journalist and editor known as 'Jack' to friends, was born in Cork city in 1875 or 1876, the son of a musician, John Lynch, and his wife. He had at least two brothers and a sister. Lynch was educated at the Christian Brothers' schools, Cork, winning several exhibitions under the intermediate education system.

In his teens he became a journalist on the Cork Daily Herald, where he made the acquaintance of T. R. Harrington (qv); he was later described as Harrington's 'old friend and superior' (Timothy McCarthy to William O'Brien, 23 May 1900, O'Brien papers, UCC). They remained in contact after Lynch moved to Dublin in 1899, having been recruited by Timothy McCarthy (qv) to the staff of the Irish People, a weekly paper newly founded by William O'Brien (qv) as the official organ of the United Irish League, modelled on the by-then defunct United Ireland. While Lynch's official function was as editor of St Patrick's, a companion story-paper launched in March 1900 as a rival to the old established Shamrock and a means of keeping the staff occupied throughout the week, he served as McCarthy's deputy editor (St Patrick's sold 7,000–8,000 copies weekly, the Irish People c.16,000).

When the United Irish League faced suppression, Lynch was designated as temporary editor in the event of McCarthy being arrested. Lynch also reported on political events and seems to have circulated in journalistic and other circles to help keep the editorial side of the paper informed. (For example, in an undated 1901 letter McCarthy informs O'Brien '[Patrick] Pearse (qv) was called to the bar last year. He is English by training and I don't know if there is a tint of Irish blood in his veins – certainly he is no Nationalist – but he seems to have gone through some of [Eugene] O'Growney's (qv) books, as a friend of Lynch's to whom he was talking when we went out to dinner remarked, on Lynch's mentioning his name, that it was surprising how an Englishman had cottoned to the language. There are worse than him' (O'Brien papers, UCC)).

Brian O'Higgins (qv), who published much of his early verse in St Patrick's, recalled that when he came to Dublin in 1901 McCarthy and Lynch made a point of contacting and befriending him. O'Higgins noticed on weekly visits to the Irish People office that Lynch remained silent during McCarthy's vigorous efforts to convert O'Higgins from separatism to constitutional nationalism; much later, O'Higgins realised that Lynch was himself a separatist.

In November 1903 the Irish People and St Patrick's closed abruptly after William O'Brien fell out with his parliamentary colleagues. O'Brien made generous redundancy payments to his employees; Lynch received £150. Shortly thereafter Lynch was recruited by Harrington to the staff of the Irish Independent, which was about to be relaunched in January 1905 as a mass-market paper (of which Harrington would be editor). Lynch became art editor, in charge of layout and illustrations, and when the Sunday Independent was launched some months later Lynch became its first editor while also editing the established Weekly Independent. These were not so much separate papers as selections from the previous week's articles and editorials, combined with cartoons, stories and competitions. The presence of at least one cartoonist with separatist views (Frank Rigney, who emigrated to the USA in 1914) may reflect Lynch's political sympathies. His general radicalism should not be overstated; the Sunday Independent and Weekly Independent participated fully in the campaign against James Larkin (qv) and there is no evidence that Lynch dissented.

In April 1901 Lynch married Nora McAuliffe, daughter of a prominent family from Meelin in north Cork. They had a son (who became a priest on the Australian mission) and a daughter. The 1911 census shows the Lynches (with a maidservant) living at 65 Grosvenor Square, Rathmines. Lynch recorded himself as speaking both Irish and English. According to his obituarists he had a wide circle of friends and was known for his keen appreciation of music. The first of a series of tragedies which were to wreck Lynch's life came at the end of October 1918, when Nora died in the Spanish flu epidemic.

Lynch was not the only Independent Newspapers staff member to support Sinn Féin during the war of independence (there were IRA activists among the printers and clerical staff) and he crossed the line from support to participation in the IRA campaign. In late 1921 or early 1922 Lynch wrote a memorandum for the propaganda department of Dáil Éireann offering to act as 'Director General of Photographists', using his journalistic position as cover to take clandestine photographs of military, police and other officials of interest to the IRA and to obtain information on their movements. Lynch noted that such photography would involve considerable risk. Unfortunately for him, the memorandum was captured in a raid by the security forces; Ormonde Winter (qv) quotes it at length in his final summary of his Irish intelligence activities, noting 'Mr Lynch's somewhat sinister motives were curtailed by his internment' (Hart, 85).

On 8 April 1921 Lynch was arrested in his editorial office and spent the following ten months as an internee in Hare Park Camp at the Curragh, Co. Kildare. Although he had some opportunity to practise informal journalism (reporting a sports event as a correspondent) his mental well-being was severely affected by imprisonment. He was released in December 1921 after the signature of the Treaty and returned to Independent Newspapers, but resigned shortly thereafter. His Irish Independent obituarist states that he resigned because of ill-health, but Brian O'Higgins claims he was 'frozen out' by political hostility. (Lynch opposed the Treaty, which Independent Newspapers strongly supported; there may also have been a feeling that he had endangered staff. The fact that many of its staff, including senior executives such as Harrington, attended his funeral may reflect personal respect or the passage of time).

Lynch then joined the Republican Publicity Bureau. Shortly after the outbreak of the civil war he was arrested in a raid by the CID based in Oriel House. He was tortured, including beatings on the head, before being interned in Mountjoy prison and the Curragh. When released Lynch was insane and remained in this condition until his death, wandering Dublin and describing fantastic occurrences to strangers.

Patrick Lynch died of heart failure (possibly brought on by colon cancer) in Grangegorman Mental Hospital, Dublin, on 3 May 1934 and is buried in Glasnevin cemetery. He subsequently slipped from popular memory, probably because of the contrast between his political views and those associated with the Sunday Independent. His career serves as a reminder of the reservoir of separatist belief underlying much of the facade of conservative middle-class nationalism in Edwardian Ireland, and his fate was one of many unremembered tragedies in the post-war upheavals and the extra-legal brutalities of the civil war. His friend Brian O'Higgins recalled Lynch as 'one of the many unknown victims of treachery and surrender … [of] the brutality of degraded renegade Irishmen' (O'Higgins, 97).

McCarthy's letters to William O'Brien on the progress of the Irish People (1899–1903) in the William O'Brien Papers, UCC, contain many references to Lynch though the archive only has one letter from Lynch himself.