JANUARY 2006

edmund Rice (1.)

Edmund Rice, almost invisible within our history books, was in fact a character of great value for the Irish nation for education and an understanding of itself under oppression; features that enabled the Irish at a later date to proudly take their place among other nations with a wealth of educated professional men and artists and intellectuals.

Edmund Rice was born in Callan, County Kilkenny,2nd July 1762. His father a farmer tilled 200 acres and the large family was in comfortable conditions. However the Penal Laws were operative in those times; for instance Education was forbidden, so the Catholic children in Callan were dependent on an illegal hedge school in Moate Lane and here they learned for 2pence a week, reading,writing and basic mathematics.

Hedge Schools
Some degree of education is general in Ireland. Hedge Schools, as they are called, though they could be termed Ditch Schools - for I have seen many a ditch full of scholars - are everywhere to be met with where reading and writing are taught. Arthur Young 1776

Life in Callan and Waterford
Edmund lived the normal young life of a boy in Callan, helping on the farm, playing hurley. attending cross-road dances.Life that was nevertheless under an alien and oppressive government.He had an uncle, a businessman in Waterford who paid for Edmund to attend a Mr. White's school in Kilkenny that was itself under edict by Act of Parliament by William III.

The Act closed all Catholic Schools in Ireland and there were legal penalties for parents or guardians who sent children to any school other than a Protestant school. i.e. "No person of the Popish religion should publicly teach school under a penalty of £20 and 3 months imprisonment" and it further enacted that "the Statute of HenryVIII for the English order, habit and language and the Act of Elizabeth I for the erection of free schools for the education of Papists in the true religion (Protestant) be strictly enforced and put in execution."

Edmund Rice's education did not come easy, he, his fellow pupils and their teacher were brave people. In Kilkenny he learned not only reading and writing but French,Greek,geography,maths and Fencing - a necessary art, as the latter was described, an achievement that speaks for the social security of those times in itself.....

At the age of 17, his education completed, he set out and crossed the Quays at Waterford by ferryboat, going ashore at Love Lane (now Bridge Street.) Shouldering his trunk he walked through the maze of narrow lanes that comprised Waterford behind those Quays and entered Rice's Ship Stores in Royal Oak Lane. Little did he realise the part he was to play for change in people's lives thereafter. With youthful energy he plunged into work for his Uncle and within a few years was able to expand the business. He rented fields (a Gracedieu, as it was called) for grazing cattle for slaughter, supplying salted meat to the maritime merchants, and making ship's biscuit, and manufacturing sails in a shop in Frances Street. He was also tanning hides and making candles and eventually employed nearly 500 people. His honest reputation for ship's chandlery was very high and he had a large share of the available trade in the port where on average 1,000 ship per year with crews of 15 -50 men had to be supplied and ships provisioned. Waterford became the major port of the entire agricultural area of South East of Ireland and the trade that daily sailed with corn, pigs, cattle, glass, leather - and with the oppressive convict passages to Tasmania, Australia, Barbadoes and other British colonies. Poor wretches who were rarely hardened criminals, imprisoned for political resistance or trivial theft of essential food for a starving family. A cruel age which possibly has its mirror representation in England today where imprisonment of criminals and teenagers is at a higher rate than any other nation in the world per head of the population.

The population of Waterford was about 29,000. A population compressed into a city only one third of the size it is today. 24.000 of these were dispossed natives of Ireland who had no rights in the law since the Treaty of Limerick in 1690 and the Penal Laws that followed. These Penal Laws existed right up to 1920. Catholics were debarred from voting rights, nor could they sit on the Corporation Councils or become MPs (Ministers of parliament). No Catholic could sit on a Jury, buy land or lease land for any length of time. If dying a Catholic, and having a son who had turned Protestant, all the land inheritance went to that son whatever about the rest of the family. Otherwise all inheritances had to be equalised in a family, breaking up land holdings into farms that could not prosper. The size and cut of farmland can still testify to those practices today. At that time the Catholic holdings in Ireland of 14% were reduced to 5%. No arms could be carried for self-defense and no education was provided.

Tyrants throughout history have realised that an uneducated population is easily controlled - America was lost as a colony of Britain's because education was readily available to all and the educated revolted. In Ireland tithes had to be paid by every Catholic to support the Protestant religion - a Protestant Minister who lived in luxury. As it was they also supported their Catholic priests, priests who were not allowed to conduct a marriage and thus the population of Catholic children were illegitimate and unable to inherit property except according to the Penal Law, cutting one penny into half-pence for two brothers. Dominican and Franciscan priests usually practised and administrated in secret, and if caught they were heavily fined and transported for life.

Thus it can be envisaged that Edmund Rice's success in expanding his uncle's business benefited the Waterford Catholic population, and illegal priests found refuge in his establishments - as periodic searches were made house to house for such men. Edmund lived in a confined circle of wealthy Catholics but never forfeited his interests in the Irish population or his colonial status. When he married it was subsequently found that no record was taken of this - so it is assumed that the marriage took place in one of the illegal Mass Houses in the City.

Edmund Rice and his happy household was respected and prosperous, and he was known for his fair dealing and good humour. He lead a busy social life, social events and sports, and a hunt meeting that e led to a tragedy. An accident killed his wife when horses bolted, turning over her carriage as she and other wives were gathered to see off the hunt. She died after giving birth to a frail semi-paralysed child the same evening. Her early death had a profound effect on Edmund and he returned to live in his uncle's domicile, withdrawing from public life. His subsequent acts of charity disturbed his old acquaintances as he helped those who had fallen to the streets in poverty and squalor. Also he became friendly with Tadg O'Sullivan whose reputation as a poet, atheist, a reneged student priest, caused tongs to wag, and outrage among his peers when they found out that he was regularly seen in a tavern (The Yellow House Tavern) in deep discussion with this man.Edmund infact influenced this poet to return to the church and, in another case - by educating a prostitute he enabled her to alter her life and to die many years later known as a saintly woman.

Many merchant ships at this time had young African boys as slaves and when one arrived in Rice's shop one day beaten and bloody without his money after an attack on the Quays, Edmund provided his order and returned him safely to his ship. The Captain then began to beat the boy unmercifully with a short length of rope infront of Edmund who lost his temper taking the rope from him - this altercation developed into blows and the Captain landed on the Deck. Edmund had to buy the boy off to placate the Captain and he took him home. This boy worked but obtained an education in a kindly household. Edmund eventually set him up as a Grocer in George's Street where he prospered until his death in old age.

At 33yrs of age Edmund inherited his Uncle's business. Encouraged to marry again he rejected the idea. He concentrated on the business, ever expanding the workforce to help his fellow Catholics. Waterford was bursting at the seams with farmworkers coming in from the country to find work, "beggars were as numerous as flies in July"as the saying goes.

The United Irishmen's Revolt and Rice's change of direction.
Tom Paine's book "The Rights of Man" was read everywhere at that time to groups of United Irishmen forming in every town and village. In 1798 the citizens of Ireland revolted and the revolution was put down in a ruthless fashion. The cruelty was appalling,flogging, pitch-capping (boiling pitch tar poured on men's skulls and set alight, a fatal torture; or men's heads were placed in a metal cap filled with tar which was allowed to cool and then torn off scalping the victim) and many worse degradation than the author of this tale sees fit to mention. Execution or transportation was rife and executions happened on the New Bridge in Ross repeatedly. Two cousins of Edmund were killed there with excruciating cruelty - eventually being hung from the Bridge itself. John Cummins and William Kerwick were their names. Men for transportation were marched daily into Waterford and it was known that Edmund smuggled some out of the country to refuge in Newfoundland where local fishermen traded regularly.

One of these men, another cousin of Edmund's was John Rice a local folk hero known as "The Fox".A popular ballad, now lost, began with the following verse:

From Ballyhale to Sleivenamon,
They searched the woods as they went on,
The Corn fields of Galtymore,
They searched them o'er and o'er.
The ships and liners on the Quay,
The Ferryboats and schooners
As they went to sea...
But The Fox was never found.

The prisoners of the British lay on the Quays in chains and Edmund distributed bread and water, and nourished their children who had followed the marches and now ran wild about the City. They were of particular concern to Edmund Rice. These children, who became orphans as their relatives endured transportation, inspired him to use his wealth for education. He slowly sold his business concerns ensuring the security of all his employees, selling the entire business eventually to Thomas Meagher, father of T.F. Meagher, whose life will also be studied in this paper. In 1802 he was ready to carry out his visionary plan and he asked his wife's family for a stable they owned in New Street. There were bitter objections to residents of this fashionable area to this "foolish man Rice opening a school for the riffraff of the City." Infact what he did was illegal under the Penal Laws of the day - Rice never sought the necessary licence from the local Protestant Bishop.

The Act of Union of 1800 forbade the formation of any religious order but the school opened in 1802 . For the crime of opening a school not under the control of the Established Church he himself could have been transported. The philosophy of the British ruling classes had been for centuries to forbid education to all working people. An educated working class was a direct threat to the Establishment, as the American losses proved. Rice planned to give education free of charge, and to his peers this was open rebellion. As he was 40 yrs of age they hoped he would soon tire of the experiment but they did not know their man ! The Stable was overcrowded all day and he also gave night classes to adults. He began to look for a suitable property to build a permanent school. His Stable school was successful and the responnse by his pupils was avid - for although illiterate hadn't they remained educated from ancient times by their strong hold on music, poem and story? His greatest reward was to see them learn to read and write so eagerly.

Mount Sion establishes the Christian Brothers ; and Bishop Hussey.
He was able to buy a property, though opposed by the local Catholic Bishop who also planned to buy this very property himself. It was a disused Chapel in Barrack Street. On the 1st of June 1802 the foundation stone of Mount Sion school was laid on this site. There was no turning back !

However it was necessary to get the support of the Catholic Clergy and he had to apply to Bishop Hussey who had opposed the purchase. The Bishop would only agree if the property was designated a parochial property and Rice paid a rent to him ! So that is what Rice, a fine and determined character, carried out for nearly 20 years - he paid rent on his own property.

So Bishop Hussey blessed the site, the completed school and residence. Within a month Bishop Hussey died. This strange man, it was discovered, had provided in his will for 2,000£ to be given to Mount Sion School. Bishop Hussey had been trained in Salamanca and had been appointed Chaplain to the Spanish Embassy in London where he was friendly with many Tory Party politicians, and none of them were friends of Ireland. He was sent again to Spain by Pitt, but there he failed in the diplomatic task to persuade Spain withdraw from allying with France in the American War of Independence. Pitt's next task for Bishp Hussey was to persuade disaffected Irish soldiers be loyal to the Crown, and he carried out this mission to all the military barracks in Ireland. Again he failed. However he was made first President of Maynooth College founded and funded by the British in 1797. Then he was appointed Bishop of Waterford and he was the first Bishop since the Reformation to be publicly consecrated, and this was in St Nicholas Church, Francis street, Dublin. Thus he became what is known as a "Castle Catholic"

Mount Sion School



Edmund Rice thought that a hungry body housed a dull mind - so he fortified his school children against this with a small Bakery and Tailor's Shop housed on the premises. All families in want received a loaf of bread a day and the scholars were clothed by the Tailor. The school day began at 6.00am and closed at 10.00pm after the adult night classes.

In 1823 there were 600 boys receiving free education at Mount Sion. Voluntary workers flocked to the school and the reward was to see the Irish children and men achieve literacy and maturity as citizens of Ireland. The personality of Rice created and kept this Order of Christian Brothers alive although it had to operate outside the laws. Rice was a quiet, brave, gentle man who lived for Ireland and her people. He saw in all people of all races, colour and creed, the face of Christ. A rare man of whom Waterford can be very proud. And yet this man is absent from the history books or mentioned in only one line.

On the 5th September 1820 Pope Pius VIII issued a brief establishing Brother Rice's Institute under a Superior General. All Brothers were asked to travel to Waterford to accept the brief. However the Bishop of Cork forbade those in his area from doing so and many obeyed this instruction. These men under the Bishop of Cork formed the Presentation Brothers and continued under the diocesan authority until 1898.

Edmund Rice lived until he was 83 and none of his eventful life was wasted - he died at Mount Sion on 28th August 1844, and people from all walks of life mourned his passing. There is no monument to this great man in the City. Before his death he used sit in a wheelchair in the garden there and talk to the boys - one day he was heard to say to a group of teenagers: "I came to Waterford to found a fortune and I found it in you boys." In August 1944 his remains were re-interred in the Mausoleum of Mount Sion Garden and then moved again in 1979 to the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrement at Mount Sion School, Barrack Street, Waterford.