A Limerick Hero far from Home
Most Irishmen with an interest in Scottish soccer will recognise the name Glasgow Celtic, but not many will be aware that it owes its very existence to the Edinburgh club Hibernian FC, founded as a charity by a Limerick priest in 1875. The 130th anniversary of his death occurs on 24th June this year.
Early Days
Edward Joseph Hannan was the second of 11 children born to John and Johanna Hannan ( nee Sheehy ) on a farm in Ballygrennan townland, Ballingarry, not far from St Patrick’s well. His death certificate gives his date of birth as 21st June 1836. The paucity of records from the period have made it difficult to track his early years, though a group of five veteran Hibernian supporters have undertaken the task. More of that later.
What is known is that he attended St Munchins junior seminary in Limerick when it reopened in 1853 after being closed for nearly three decades, and spent a maximum of 2 years there before moving to All Hallows in Drumcondra, Dublin, to complete his studies for the priesthood. All Hallows was the training ground for missionary priests who followed the Irish diaspora to all corners of the earth where Irish communities had exploded in the aftermath of The Famine. The brother of Edward Hallinan, from Fort William near Ballingarry, who would marry one of Hannan’s sisters, had left All Hallows after his ordination bound for the west coast of Scotland and the parish of Salcoats in 1853. Though the precise sequence of events is not clear, it is likely that the young aspiring priest was introduced or as a minimum recommended by Fr William Hallinan to Bishop Gillis of the Eastern District of Scotland who had begun to fund the education of priests at All Hallows given the lack of native Scottish priests and their inability to converse in Gaelic. All Hallows’ records show Hannan in 1855 as already being destined for Scotland. Upon his ordination in 1860, he was allowed to remain briefly at All Hallows as a director but was called to Edinburgh by Bishop Gillis in August 1861 due to the illness of several of his local priests.
After a short stint at what is now St Mary’s Catherdral, he transferred to St Patrick’s church in the Cowgate, known locally as “Little Ireland”, the insanitary and disease ridden slum area which housed the Edinburgh Irish Community. Most unusually, he was to stay there for 30 years, becoming Parish Priest in 1871. The poverty and overcrowding he encountered amongst his parishioners in the aging city tenements must have shocked him despite his no doubt having witnessed a similar situation in Dublin which at the time was on its way to becoming the slum capital of Europe. When the Irish immigrants fled their homeland, those with any money paid their passages to the likes of the USA and Australia, whilst those with little could afford only the short journey to England or Scotland.
Hibernian and the CYMS
Fortunately the censuses of 1871 and 1881 capture Hannan’s whereabouts and record that he remained living in the community for the full 30 years. The priests’ house adjacent to the church in which the priests still live today was built on his instruction; and it was there that he was joined for two short periods by his younger brother Joseph, who was ordained in 1879. His interest in education ( he joined the Edinburgh School Board in 1871 ) and in building bridges with the majority Protestant community in Edinburgh meant he played an important part in the civic life of the city. Within 4 years of his arrival, in order to provide his young male parishioners with a focus other than drinking, thieving and other iniquitous pursuits, he opened a branch of the Catholic Young Men’s Society ( CYMS ), the organisation founded in 1849 by Dean Richard O’Brien, also with strong Limerick links, who apparently attended the opening ceremony. O’Brien was not an uncle in the biological sense, as was once believed, given that Sheehy was Hannan’s mother’s name, but he may well have been a close friend of the family. A virtual uncle.
The Scottish Football Association was founded in 1873, a sign of growing interest in the game. One of Fr Hannan’s parishioners, 21 year old Roscommon born Michael Whelahan, suggested that a CYMS team be formed, with the express purpose of raising money to fund charitable donations for the poor and other good causes; players had to be tee total and members of the CYMS. On August 6th 1875, the centenary of the birth of Daniel O’Connell, Hibernian FC was founded in St Mary’s Street Hall, with “Erin Go Bragh” as its motto, and with Fr Hannan as its president and Michael Whelahan its first captain. One of Hibs’ all time greatest players, Pat Stanton, current president of the Hibernian Historical Trust, is a direct descendent of Whelahan.
Despite the esteem with which Fr Hannan was held among the burghers of Edinburgh, as typified by the Lord Provost being prepared, in 1869, to lay the foundation stone of the new Catholic Institute for the CYMS, the team struggled to gain acceptance from the predominantly Protestant establishment, but it did succeed in joining the Edinburgh Football Association in 1876 and the Scottish Football Association shortly afterwards, and indeed in winning the Scottish cup in 1887. Amazingly, the team followed its cup victory by beating the high flying Preston North End 2-1 a few months later in what was billed at the time as the Championship of the World. To put it in context, Preston went on to wallop Glasgow Rangers the following week 8-1 at Ibrox. Mind you, most of the world had not yet been introduced to association football !! But you can only play what is put in front of you.
The team became the major source the CYMS’s charitable donations, and if you read any of the books written about Hibs, it feels as if every week they were asked to play a friendly game in the name of some charitable cause; and agreed to. If a game attracted 4000 fans, which was not uncommon, paying sixpence each on the gate, typical takings were of the order of £100 ( roughly €13500 in today’s money ). Fr Hannan continued in his role as life president until he his death in 1891 ( see below )
He was clearly thought well of by the Catholic Church. One newspaper cutting from 1877 tells of him leaving Edinburgh for Rome on the occasion of the Papal Jubilee with over £2000 ( €280k ) in donations from the congregations of several of the Scottish Dioceses. Shortly after his own jubilee, in 1885, he was elevated to the position of Canon within the newly formed diocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh.
One of the coincidences from the time is that James Connolly must have been one of his parishioners for the first 14 years of his life; and a further two once he had returned from his army service. Fr Hannan may well even have baptised him in 1868. The legend has it that Connolly was actually present when Hibernian was founded and that he carried the kit for the team.
The Final Years
As Fr Hannan approached his 52nd birthday, he could not have foreseen the series of crises which would befall him and his children, the CYMS and Hibernian. In the summer of 1888, Glasgow Celtic, newly formed with the help of charitable donations from Hibs to its founder Brother Walfrid, was hijacked by second generation Irish businessman John Glass who could see the potential to make money from football; Celtic offered financial inducements to more than half the Hibs team, at a time when paying footballers was outlawed, and rocked the very foundations of the club. At a talk at Parkhead given by Jim Craig on the 50th Anniversary of the Lisbon Lions great success, he admitted in my presence that a shameful part of Celtic’s history that is not publicised for obvious reasons, was the way they poached more than half of the Hibs team and a couple more from Renton in 1888; and sent both those clubs to the brink.
If that wasn’t enough, Fr Hannan was caught in the crossfire between Rome, the Irish Bishops, the Home Rule movement and the Land League. In August 1888, his Archbishop, William Smith, instructed him to remove the president of the CYMS for his open support for Home Rule and the Plan of Campaign. The CYMS was in chaos. The knock on effect was that the Hibs’ highly competent secretary had to step in as CYMS president, and within 6 months had absconded to the USA with £260 of the CYMS funds. Fr Hannan was left holding the empty piggy bank, which he felt that it was his personal responsibility to replenish.
Bad was to become worse. The new secretary of Hibernian lacked his predecessor’s organisational competence. As the quality of the playing staff declined, Hibs found themselves homeless since the lease on Hibernian Park, home for the previous 10 years, had not been renewed. The means of raising money for the CYMS and its charities had been choked off.
And finally, Canon Hannan would have been well aware of the war being waged between two factions of the Catholic Church over the soul and the future direction of All Hallows. In his time there, it had been a purely voluntary organisation reporting to no one in the Catholic Hierarchy, but in the 1870s, when support for the Fenians was strongest, it acquired a reputation for poor administration and indiscipline, much to the annoyance of Cardinal Cullen. By 1891 the issues had reached the Pope. A month after Hannan’s death, he announced that a new chapter would begin with the college to be run by the order of the Vincentians. Hannan must have been greatly saddened by the civil war for control of his Alma Mater.
So by the spring of 1891, he did not have his troubles to seek. He succumbed to a flu bug in May that year, but instead of convalescing sufficiently, returned to duty too quickly. His weakened defences were then breached by pneumonia. On medical advice he went to stay with friends in the fresher air of Dunfermline, some 18 miles north of Edinburgh, but he lasted only a short time and died on 24th June with his younger brother, now a priest at Denny, in attendance. His body was returned to Edinburgh by train over the engineering marvel that is the Forth Bridge, opened only the year before, and built, ironically, by many of his parishioners. His funeral took place two days later, attended not only by a Who’s Who of the Catholic Church in Scotland, but also by many in public life who were not of his faith, among them MPs, City Councillors, members of the School Board and the City Parochial Board. The procession is reported as having comprised some 2000 mourners, with thousands more lining the one and a half mile route from church to cemetery. He is buried alongside his brother in the Grange cemetery in Edinburgh. A bust of him can be found at Hibernian’s home ground of Easter Road, whilst memorials to him are kept in the entrance to St Patrick’s church.
Not bad for a country lad from Ballygrennan.
by Mike Hennessy Published in the Limerick Leader on the 26th June 2021 www.Limerickleader.ie