A true Dubliner

Published March 23rd, 1954

He has a Dickensian, ghost-of-Christmas-past look about him, this über-dapper gentleman with his crisp collar, his neatly-rolled umbrella, his gleaming leather gloves and those debonair waxed moustaches.

Who is he? Most people probably won’t recognise him. And yet the article which accompanied this photograph in the spring of 1954 begins: “If you woke a Dubliner in the middle of the night and asked him the name of the Lord Mayor, it is long odds that he would mutter, without opening his eyes; ‘Alfie Byrne’.”

The piece celebrated the 72nd birthday of the man who had been elected Lord Mayor of Dublin a record 10 times between 1930 and 1955. To get to the beginning of Alfie Byrne’s extraordinary story, however, you need to go back to 1882 – a mere dozen years, as it happens, after the death of Charles Dickens – when he was born, the son of a Dublin docker. He sold theatre programmes and worked in a pub before buying his own bar, The Vernon on Dublin’s Talbot Street.

He entered politics at the age of 27 and after a spell on Dublin Corporation was elected MP for Dublin Harbour in 1915. After the Treaty he was elected to Dáil Éireann as an Independent TD.

For the majority of Dubliners, however, Alfie Byrne was a civic rather than a political institution. In his quasi-Victorian garb he was an instantly recognisable figure on the streets of the capital, famous for his habit of greeting everyone he met with a handshake – or, if he was on his bike, a wave of his hard hat.

Our portrait is a more formal affair, a study in shades and textures of black which captures the razor-sharp pinstripe of the suit trousers, the soft wool of the overcoat, the well-worn leather of the gloves. The subject himself seems to materialise out of the darkness behind him; or perhaps he’s about to fade into it, since he would die just two years after this picture was taken. He has not been forgotten by his native city, however. Many artefacts and documents associated with him can be seen at The Little Museum of Dublin on St Stephen’s Green.

Arminta Wallace

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