In previous articles on Old IRA emigrants, the majority were anti-Treaty men excluded from military pensions and even jobs in the Free State till the mid 1930s. Or getting away from old enemies. But former National Army troops were not all immune from the poor economic situation after the Civil War and some also took the boat overseas for a better life. One was Patrick Lambe whose pre-Truce service was followed by six years in the National Army. Here we have a look at his life which, sadly, ended at a relatively young age In New York.
Origins and Background
Patrick Julian Lambe was born on 26 July 1901 to John Joseph Lambe and Anastatia Francis ‘Tess’ née Julian who lived over a drapery shop at 18 Lower Sackville (now O’Connell) Street. He was the couple’s first son. In all there were nine children born, girls and boys, five of whom survived. Patrick’s father (originally from Co. Tipperary) ran a Ladies’ and Childrens’ Outfitters. His mother was a Kilkenny woman.
The Lambes were relatively well-to-do. By 1911 they had moved to live on Spring Garden Street, North Strand. Unusually for those times of badly over-crowded, poor quality dwellings in Dublin, they had nine rooms for eight people including a domestic servant. It is also notable that Patrick and two of his siblings attending school were bi-lingual, an uncommon ability in the city. Come 1916, it was probably as well they had left Sackville Street, when their former home was destroyed, along with most of the street, during the Rising.
John J. Lambe continued in the Drapery business and, after leaving school, Patrick went to work in his father’s shop, now located at 87 Talbot Street.
Dublin Brigade – and a Family Clash
As a young lad, Patrick would have seen the emergence of a more advanced form of nationalism than the Home Rule movement. The Irish Volunteers were formed when he was twelve and held parades in public, as did the Irish Citizen Army. At fifteen, young Lambe experienced the Rising and we can imagine him going to look at the smoldering remains of his old family shop and home on Sackville Street. As fate would have it, lads working as Draper’s Assistants like Patrick were well represented in the Dublin Volunteers.
In September 1917 he joined his local C Coy, 1st Battalion Dublin Brigade, serving under Capt. Sean Flood. Patrick took part in all his unit’s parades and was regarded as a good Volunteer always available when called upon. However, his republican affiliations were very much at odds with his father’s political views and there was a falling-out. It meant Patrick had to leave his employment and move out of home, but he stuck to his convictions and remained an active Volunteer.
During the War of Independence, among the jobs he was on were:
- an attack on military lorries and armoured car at the Technical College on Bolton Street;
- outpost duty for the successful Kings Inns raid for arms in which a small British Army detail were overpowered and tied up;
- an attack on two military dispatch riders at Granby Row;
- several ambushes on military vehicles in the Dorset Street area, a hot spot for IRA attacks.
In his Military Pension application, Patrick said he was Squad Leader in charge of medical men under Lt. V. Gagan and had received his First Aid cert in 1919. He also stated he ran Mark Williams Billiards Rooms, 27 North Frederick Street which was used for communications with ‘The Orchard’, Dorset Street (perhaps a pub, presumably used by the IRA) and, sometimes, the Hotel Plaza, Gardiner’s Row (Dublin Brigade HQ).
For the destruction of the Custom House, Patrick was on first aid duties and distributed dressings to some of the wounded. He evaded arrest and remained at liberty until the Truce.
Truce and Civil War
Afterwards he stayed on with as he termed it “1st Battalion Loyal Volunteers” (loyal to IRA GHQ, i.e. Pro-Treaty). Lambe was among a minority in his Battalion to do so, as most of his comrades followed the Republican stance taken by Dublin Brigade’s senior officers. Patrick may well have made this decision on his own without influence from superiors. But it is interesting to see that his own O/C at that stage was Squad man Frank Bolster, a staunch Collins man.
Patrick joined up with what was to become the National Army on 26 June 1922, two days before the attack on the Four Courts. The new Army was being hastily formed at that time and he formally enlisted at City Hall on 14 July. Few other details are available for him during the Civil War period.
The Army Census (November 1922), shows 2nd Lieutenant Patrick Lambe at Wellington (later Griffith) Barracks with Tom Ennis’s 2nd Eastern Division. He was single, home address his parents’ house at 47 Lindsay Road, Glasnevin – with his mother named as next of kin. The Lambe father and son had obviously mended their relationship.
On 23 September of the following year, Patrick married twenty-year-old Mary Elizabeth ‘Lillian’ O’Mahony, the daughter of a Waiter who lived at 14 Belvedere Avenue, off Gardiner Street. The happy couple made their vows in St. Agatha’s Church, North William Street and he moved in with her at her parents’ house. By early 1924 he had been made 1st Lieutenant, serving on the D.A.A.G’s Staff, Dublin Command. However in the major Army Reorganisation shortly afterwards, he like many other officers retained, was downgraded to 2nd Lieutenant.
He was then posted to A Coy, 21st Battalion Dublin Command at Collins (formerly Royal) Barracks and in late 1926 spent some time as a patient in the Officer’s Ward, St Bricin’s Military Hospital.
Patrick was awarded a Military Pension in March 1927 recognising five-and-a-quarter’s years service at Lieutenant grade. He also applied for a Disability Allowance (no details) but this was not allowed. He resigned from the Army in March 1928, conduct and character Clear.
New Horizons
By that stage, the Lambes were parents to a boy and a girl, John Joseph (born 1925) and Mary Anne ‘Maureen’ (1926). Leaving them in the temporary care of Patrick’s parents, the couple took the R.M.S. Celtic from Liverpool on 28 July 1928, bound for Boston and New York. Landing in New York on 7 August, the Lambes organised a place to stay and Patrick began work as a Bookkeeper while Mary Elizabeth got a job as a Soda Dispenser. They filed Naturalization Petitions which confirm their basic personal details.
Not long after, Mary Elizabeth got sad news from home. Her mother passed away on 19 December.
Hard Times
A year later (1929) they were living on Columbus Avenue, New York and Patrick’s occupation had changed to Elevator Operator in an apartment building. This was at the start of the Great Depression, very well named and a time of deprivation and desperation for millions of workers in the USA. There was financial panic, factories shut, jobs disappeared. The unemployment rate exceeded 20% and ordinary people suffered badly from poverty.
Breadlines, literally, formed on city streets. The Lambes could not have avoided being caught up in this wave of human hardship. Patrick did well to hold down any type of job.
Together Again
Mary Elizabeth Lambe returned to Dublin for a while to arrange for their children to join them and the 1930 U.S. Census shows Patrick lodging in Long Beach, NYC and doing clerical work. His wife brought their two kids over in April 1931, sailing from Belfast this time. The American economy remained in trouble until the mid-1930s, with another recession in 1937/8 before slow and steady recovery began. Those times must have been very tough for the family, but they stayed in New York and got on with things.
The four of them appear all together again on Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan NYC in the 1940 U.S. Census. Patrick’s job is recorded as an Elevator Operator. He had become a US citizen in May 1940, six months before the USA would be forced into World War 2. That conflict would eventually transform the country’s economy to the word’s biggest and create the first global superpower. Despite the disruption caused by conscription, employment and industrial output soared. But that would take years and not everybody would benefit. Patrick, for one, did not. In 1943 his Draft Registration card showed he was unemployed while he and family were living on Long Island.
An Echo from the Past
The previous year he had enlisted in the New York Guard, a force set up to substitute for the State’s National Guard which was mobilised for Federal service. A voluntary service, the Guard was needed to comply with the NY State Constitution’s requirement that troops be available to the Governor for the protection of life and property of the citizens of New York. By 1944 the force had reached a strength of approximately 25,000 officers and enlisted men.
While attached to Company B, 12th Regiment, perhaps Guardsman Lambe was reminded of his younger days when he had volunteered for the IRA and National Army in troubled times in his former land?
Maybe he even told his buddies some old war stories? But he would not have had any medal to show them until 1947 when his 1917-1921 Service Medal with comhrac bar arrived in the post.
An Early Demise
The 1940 Census was to be the last time the family was recorded together. Their son John Joseph enlisted in the US Marine Corps in December 1942, went off to war serving until 1946 and married on his return to civvies. Maureen got married and moved out. Sadly, ten years later Mary Elizabeth is listed as a widow.
Patrick Julian Lambe had died on 4 June 1948 aged just forty-six, survived by his wife of twenty-five years and two grown-up children. He was laid to rest in Mount Saint Mary Cemetery, Flushing, Queens, NYC. Back in Dublin he had been pre-deceased by his father in 1933 and mother in 1945, both buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
The Lambes who left Ireland for the USA have all passed away. One of their descendants is Mr. Rinaldi who lives with his wife Demetra in the U.K. Thanks to them we have a nice family photo of Patrick, Mary Elizabeth, John Joseph and Maureen Lambe taken many years ago.
Patrick is another Custom House Fire Brigade man remembered overseas more than at home. Hopefully his name will now be slightly more recognisable in his native country.
Des White
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