Open and shut – An Irishman’s Diary about a short-lived newspaper of 1916

One hundred years ago this month, the already-crowded Dublin newspaper market acquired yet another new title – a weekly journal, published every Friday, called The Eye-Opener.

It was not a conventional newspaper. According to one contemporary verdict, it was a "blackmail sheet", which would imply that it was in the business of suppressing stories, for a fee, as well as printing them. But during a brief, inglorious career, it printed enough to create a stir, and to attract the attentions of libel lawyers. By its own account, at least, the Eye-Opener positioned itself on the high moral ground. It was especially concerned about threats, which it saw everywhere, to the virtue of Irish women. Next to this, it also posed as a business policeman, protecting the consumer against shoddy goods and practices. It affected to be patriotic too, although not in any republican sense. Despite the paper priding itself on being up to date with all the best rumours, there is no sense in its issues of February, March and April 1916 of the events about to engulf Dublin.

The editor, one Thomas Dickson, was a Scot who had moved to Ireland, and he may also have been a late convert to morality. A man of the same name and similar age had in the years immediately previous featured in a number of Dublin court hearings, several of them concerning a spurious business based in Camden Street – the "Associated Tea Company".

A typical complaint was from a woman in the midlands who, responding to a newspaper advertisement, had ordered and paid for six lbs of tea and a 20-piece tea-set from Dickson but never received anything. In fact, an investigation of the premises found it devoid of goods. But when he himself later sued The Irish Times for refusing to carry his ads, a judge alluded to his business reputation and threw the case out.

If this was indeed the same Thomas Dickson who became a campaigning journalist, he was unbowed by such experiences. His inaugural issue led with a front-page splash on the alleged misdeeds of another businessman, who was also a city councillor: “STARTLING EXPOSURE OF JOE ISAACS, J.P., T.C.  WHY HE MUST RESIGN.” Isaacs, described by the journal as a “Scotch Jew” who employed “sweated labour” (and an unspecified “German”) to turn out “cheapjack ready-made clothes”, was to be a running target until he sued for libel.

The first issue also editorialised about unnamed "human vampires", said to be molesting women everywhere in the city. And this combination of sexual and commercial misdemeanours set the tone for the Eye-Opener's three-month run.

In subsequent issues, it railed against “bogus dentists”, the misuse of “shamrock” stamps of imported goods, and the undernourishment of inmates at Richmond Lunatic Asylum (“MARGARINE FOR PATIENTS – BUTTER FOR OFFICIALS”).

But it also threatened to name a randy Protestant clergyman in Rathmines said to be instructing female visitors in matters other than religion; it warned a “prominent grocer’s assistant in Marlboro Street” that his assignations with “a certain publican’s daughter” in North Wall were being noted; and it described the modus operandi of an alleged dirty old man from “Sydenham Road”, who was noted for sitting beside women on the Dalkey tram and dropping things under their seats by accident.

The war in Europe featured occasionally, if only for its indirect effects on Dublin life. Thus a story about "Trotting" at Shelbourne Park hinted that the sport was a hive of enemy activity ("All the German sausage merchants in the city and county took part").

Another, using Britain’s exhortation to “Remember Belgium” as its starting point, then – typically – complained about the behaviour of a named Belgian refugee painter who was doing to the honour of the Irish woman what the Germans did to his homeland.

Of the impending rebellion, however, there was no hint. Instead, the last Eye-Opener – dated April 22nd, 1916 – promised an investigation in future issues of Dublin's theatrical revues. They were such a magnet for the lower class of female entertainer, it claimed, that "London's streets have become quite deserted, as far as loose women is (sic) concerned".

Alas, or otherwise, that exposé never happened. A few days later, as Dublin exploded, Dickson was one of those gathered in Kelly's Newsagents, near Camden Street, when the infamous Capt Bowen-Colthurst came calling. The editor of the Eye-Opener had written his last scoop. He was shot in Portobello Barracks next morning, alongside another journalist and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington.