Great Girton Girls No.16 – Sarah Marks / Herta Ayrton

After a recent reunion at Girton I decided to get a proper grasp on the history of the institution and read the standard text on the subject of which I had heard much, ‘That Infidel Place’ by Muriel Bradbrook. It’s particularly interesting because it was written in 1969 while revolution was in the air on campuses across the world. (The other name that used to come up a lot was Rosamond Lehmann, for her memoirs I suppose.) It was in ‘That Infidel Place’ I came across Sarah Marks.

On that same visit I noticed a portrait on a wall of a woman named Louisa Goldsmid. The name rang a bell and she turned out to be a forebear of mine, closing the circle. A founder of the college, she will be the subject of No.17. She supported Sarah financially during her career.

Phoebe Sarah Marks was born on 28th April 1854 in Portsea, Hampshire (England) and died on 26th August 1923 (at the age of 69). She was a mathematician, engineer, physicist and inventor. As a teenager she changed her name to Hertha and in due course married physicist and electrical engineer William Ayrton, so she ended up with the name Herta Ayrton and that’s what’s on her two relatively recent blue plaques. She got the name Hertha from the eponymous heroine of Swinburne’s poem.

Phoebe Sarah Marks (known as Sarah) was the third child of Levi Marks, a Jewish watchmaker who fled Tsarist Poland, and Alice Theresa Moss, a seamstress. Sarah’s mother was the daughter of Joseph Moss, a glass merchant in Portsea. Levi Marks died in 1861, leaving Sarah’s mother with seven children and an eighth on the way.

Two years later Sarah went to live with her aunts in London and be educated alongside her cousins. The aunts ran a school in NW London. She quickly developed a reputation for having a fiery personality.

By 1870 she was working as a governess, a profession closely connected with Girton and the rise of women’s university education.

Sarah got involved in the women’s suffrage movement while still a teenager. That’s how she met Barbara Bodichon, who went on to become co-founder of Girton. They came into contact while Sarah was a governess and she came to regard Sarah almost as a daughter. Bodichon paid Sarah’s fees and maintenance at Girton and supported her financially throughout her education and career. She ended up bequeathing her considerable estate to Sarah and Sarah marked her gratitude by calling her first child Barbara Bodichon Ayrton. Barbie as she came to be known was born in 1886. She became a Labour MP and died in 1950. Her own son was the artist, Michael Ayrton (1921-1975).

The Captive Seven (1949-50) by Michael Ayrton – Tate Gallery

Sarah/Herta went up to Girton College, Cambridge, in one of the early cohorts of undergraduates there. She studied Mathematics.

Her application to Cambridge was supported by the novelist George Eliot. Eliot used her as the model for Mirah Lapidoth in ‘Daniel Deronda’.

Jodhi May as the Jewess Mirah Lapidoth in Andrew Davies’ 2002 TV adaptation of ‘Daniel Deronda’

At Girton she set up the Mathematics club, led the choral society, and, ironically for the fiery personality that she was, founded the College Fire Brigade in 1879 (which persisted until the 1930s).

The Girton College Fire Brigade formed in 1879 to protect the the isolated buildings which were located 2 miles from the city centre

While still an undergraduate Sarah built a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure meter). She was taught by physicist Richard Glazebrook. In 1880 Sarah passed the Mathematics Tripos but was not granted an academic degree because the University awarded only certificates, not full degrees, to women at that time. Indeed until 1948! [See ‘The Steamboat Ladies’ post]

The following year Sarah/Herta passed an exam at the University of London, which awarded her a Bachelor of Science degree.  This links back to my relative Louisa Goldsmid whose forebears had helped found University College London, a constituent college of the federal University of London. Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid (1778–1859) was a Founder and Benefactor of UCL alongside the likes of Jeremy Bentham and George Birkbeck (my father, a scientist, from the other side of my family than the Goldsmids, in due course went to Birkbeck College to do his PhD in Organic Chemistry).

Back in London Herta made her living by teaching, as well as embroidery. She taught maths at Notting Hill and Ealing High School. She also ran a club for working girls. In addition, she devised mathematical problems for the Educational Times ‘Mathematical Questions and Their Solutions’ page.

In 1884 she patented a line-divider, an instrument for engineering drawing used for dividing a line into any number of equal parts and for enlarging and reducing figures. This was her first major invention and was of use not only to engineers but also to artists and architects. Her patent application was financially supported by that same Louisa Goldsmid and Barbara Bodichon. The line-divider was displayed at the Exhibition of Women’s Industries and received a good deal of press attention. Between 1884 and 1923 Hertha registered 26 patents: 5 for mathematical dividers, 13 for arc lamps and electrodes, 8 for the propulsion of air.

In 1884 Herta began attending evening classes on Electricity at Finsbury Technical College. These were delivered by Professor William Edward Ayrton, a pioneer in electrical engineering and physics education, and a fellow of the Royal Society. They ended up getting married the following year (6th May 1885). After their marriage she assisted him with physics/electricity experiments. She also began her own experimentation into the characteristics of the electric arc.

Electric arc lighting was in wide use in late 19th Century Britain for public lighting. Its tendency to flicker and hiss was a significant problem. In 1895/6 Hertha wrote a series of articles for ‘The Electrician’ linking these defects to oxygen coming into contact with the carbon rods used to create the arc. In 1899 she was the first woman to read her own paper (‘The Hissing of the Electric Arc’) to the Institution of Electrical Engineers. (Early in my career at Channel 4 I collaborated with the IEE on a long-running creative industries talent development project called IdeasFactory which I ran from 2003 to 2005.) Herta was elected the first female member of the IEE (alone in that status until long after her death – the second woman to be admitted was in 1958). In 1902 Herta published ‘The Electric Arc’, a summary of her research on the electric arc.

Portrait of Hertha by Helena Arsène Darmesteter who also died in 1923 and whose mother was the editor of the first Jewish women’s periodical, Marion Hartog Moss, presumably related to Alice Moss. She exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900.

She petitioned to present a paper to the Royal Society but was refused on the grounds of gender – in 1901 her paper ‘The Mechanism of the Electric Arc’ was read on her behalf by renowned electrical engineer John Perry. He proposed her as a Fellow of the Royal Society the following year but this was rejected by the Council of the Royal Society, who decreed that married women were not eligible to be Fellows. Two years on, however, she became the first woman to read a paper before the Royal Society (1904) when she was permitted to read ‘The Origin and Growth of Ripple Marks’ (which was published in due course in the Proceedings of the Royal Society). Herta presented six papers to the Royal Society between 1901 and her death, a final one in 1926 being delivered posthumously.

Herta was the first woman to win a prize from the Royal Society, the prestigious Hughes Medal for original discovery in the Physical Sciences (especially the applications of  electricity/magnetism). It was awarded to her in 1906 for her work on the electric arc, as well as on the motion of ripples in sand and water. She was the fifth recipient of this annual prize. It took until 2008 for the second woman to be awarded the medal.

In 1899 Herta was put in charge of the Physical Science section at the International Congress of Women which took place in London. The following year she delivered an address at the International Electrical Congress in Paris. In the wake of that success the British Association for the Advancement of Science allowed women to serve on general and sectional committees.

Herta’s work on vortices in water and air gave rise to the ‘Ayrton fan’/’Ayrton flapper’ which was used in the trenches of the First World War to dispel poison gas. She fought for its adoption and even organised its production, over 100,000 being used on the Western Front.

Ayrton anti-gas fan – waterproof canvas with cane handle. The back has a hinge so it can fit the varying shapes of the backs of parapets, corners of traverses etc. The fan is 89cm long, with a blade 47cm square, and weighs less than 0.5kg.

After the Great War, Herta helped found the International Federation of University Women (in 1919) and the National Union of Scientific Workers (1920).

Her death highlights the wonders of natural science – she died from the bite of an insect (and subsequent blood poisoning) at New Cottage, North Lancing, Sussex. She has a blue plaque at her London home at 41 Norfolk Square in Paddington, placed there in 2007, 84 years after her fatal sting.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? [1 Corinthians]

In February this year a second blue plaque was unveiled at the site of her birthplace at 6 Queen Street, Portsea.

In 2015 the British Society for the History of Science established the Ayrton Prize for web projects and digital engagement in the history of science. Which brings us nicely up to the present.

 

Advertisements

Coincidences No.s 212 & 213

No. 212  (27.03.18)

26th March 2018

I am working with a fellow producer in Covent Garden in his office. We are talking to a colleague from Glasgow-based Finestripe Productions who attended the Labour Anti-semitism rally outside Parliament last night. This prompts my co-producer to mention who his MP is (as he was prominent at the event).  “Where is the constituency?” Harrow he tells me.

I go round to my mum’s for dinner with my step-dad. We have arranged to go for a Chinese somewhere in Colindale. When I arrive the plan has changed. It is more of a family affair and we are going to a different Chinese. We drive through Harrow, on to Hatch End. (Not sure I’ve ever been here before.) I decide to phone my co-producer from outside the Chinese: “I think I may be in your manor.” I tell him the name of the restaurant. “Look opposite, slightly to the right. Can you see Wellington Road?” I can. “That’s where we live.”

No. 213 (26 & 27.3.18)

1962

I am watching a movie from the 80s, ‘Winter Kills’ starring Jeff Bridges. It strikes me that Jeff looks a lot like my old friend Adam D.

I get an email from Adam D for the first time in ages, about 70mm screenings of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ in his home town of Amsterdam – do I fancy flying over?

Coincidences No.s 210 & 211 – Radio radio

22.iii.18

It is 4.30 in the morning. I hear the cat out on the landing. I come out of the bedroom and it seems a bit frantic. I shoo it downstairs and as I follow it to lock it in the kitchen I notice movement in the downstairs hall. A mouse. I chase the mouse into the kitchen, close the door, open the back door and shoo it out with a brush.

I go back to bed and turn on the radio to lull me back to sleep. The programme on BBC World Service that comes on is talking about getting rid of mice and how do you know that you’ve got rid of them all.

24.iii.18

Nick Kegan / Jeff Bridges 1979

I decide to watch a slightly obscure 70s movie on Saturday night – ‘Winter Kills’. It is about the aftermath of the assassination of a popular young US president and the conspiracy theories which follow his shooting. The main character, Nick Kegan, bears more than a passing resemblance to Robert Kennedy.

I stop the movie to go into the kitchen to turn off the dinner. On the radio, which has been left on, is Robert Kennedy in an archive programme on BBC Radio 4 about the killings of both Kennedy (RFK) and Martin Luther King (MLK).

Robert Kennedy 1961

 

Principles of Adult Behavior

John Perry Barlow, Internet rights pioneer & visionary, went virtual on Wednesday this week, aged 70 after a long illness. Barlow was co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Bob Weir, one of the founding members of The Grateful Dead, said of him: “John had a way of taking life’s most difficult things and framing them as challenges, therefore adventures.” John wrote some lyrics for the Dead. He also wrote ‘A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace‘ in 1996 (on February 8th as it happens, so its anniversary lies between his passing and the publishing of this post). It opens:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

so something of the Ginsberg/Howl thing about it. It concludes:

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

John drafted a set of ‘Principles of Adult Behavior’.

1. Be patient. No matter what.
2. Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame. Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him.
3. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
4. Expand your sense of the possible.
5. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change.
6. Expect no more of anyone than you can deliver yourself.
7. Tolerate ambiguity.
8. Laugh at yourself frequently.
9. Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right.
10. Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.
11. Give up blood sports.
12. Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Don’t risk it frivolously.
13. Never lie to anyone for any reason. (Lies of omission are sometimes exempt.)
14. Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
15. Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that.
16. Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.
17. Praise at least as often as you disparage.
18. Admit your errors freely and soon.
19. Become less suspicious of joy.
20. Understand humility.
21. Remember that love forgives everything.
22. Foster dignity.
23. Live memorably.
24. Love yourself.
25. Endure.

Pretty wise and a number really resonated for me.

5. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change. – particularly useful in the age of Trump & Brexit

7. Tolerate ambiguity. – I’ve become increasingly conscious in recent times of the polarised tendencies of the ways humans think, drawn constantly to black and white rather than grey

16. Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun. – I’ve become particularly conscious of this in the realm of politics – listen out for those “I”s and you’ll be struck by how common it is and how much it makes you doubt the speaker

17. Praise at least as often as you disparage. – a little praise goes a long way from my experience

19. Become less suspicious of joy. – I’ve become fascinated by the word Joy in recent years. My daily motto is: I will enJoy my day. Many things that would benefit from a bit of Joy often are devoid of it for no good reason.

All 25 give food for thought. On the subject of which, a parting shot from JPB:

…in the years to come, most human exchange will be virtual rather than physical, consisting not of stuff but the stuff of which dreams are made. Our future business will be conducted in a world made more of verbs than nouns.

JPB at the Bar Cross Ranch

 

 

Omagh – 19 years on

Today is the 19th anniversary of the Omagh bomb outrage. To mark the day I have dug out the copy and materials I gathered with my trusty team for a Channel 4 microsite in 2004 (now long gone) which was created to accompany a drama by Paul Greengrass (who went on to direct the Bourne movies).

The look of the site can be seen here in this archive I made in 2009 on this self-same blog.

Below is the material I am bringing back to light for the record. Each contributor had been asked what Omagh meant to them and whether they see any silver lining in it at all (this was from 5 years after the outrage).

Inbetween I had filmed in the town for Barnardos, a year after the bomb, to highlight the work of child bereavement services. Roddy Gibson and Eddie McCaffrey, then of Emerald Productions, now of Middlesex University, accompanied me on a roadtrip for a location shoot which remains fresh in the mind. I particularly remember being told that there hadn’t yet been a big take-up of adult bereavement services in the wake of Omagh …but people had been coming forward during the year who had been caught up in the Enniskillen bomb. That had been twelve years earlier in 1987.

From the Channel 4 Omagh website (2004)

An item from The Guardian website from the day of transmission, a few hours before the Channel 4 Omagh site went live

The public announcement that followed the broadcast on Channel 4

Omagh Contributions

(Text in bold indicates extracts used or highlighted)

Thanks to the original contributors for their insightful and moving words which I recapture here for posterity.

Seth Linder

Seth Linder is a writer, journalist and campaigner. His books include ‘The Ripper Diary’. He lives in Rostrevor, Co. Down.

Like the assassination of President Kennedy, everyone remembers where they were when they first heard of the Omagh bombing. I was driving with my wife through the Mourne Mountains in County Down, and I think the isolated beauty of our surroundings only heightened the horror of what we were hearing on the car radio. As with the Dublin and Monaghan bombs in the Seventies, it was partly the scale of the tragedy that appalled people but it was also the perception that what was really being targeted was hope. For the first time in thirty years, a peaceful future was a tangible if fragile possibility. Yet, it now seems as though the one consolation to be drawn from the terrible events of that day is that, rather than sabotaging that hope, Omagh led to a greater resolve throughout Northern Ireland to achieve that peace.

For those who lost family or friends or suffered injury and trauma there has been precious little to bring solace over the years. As a journalist, I have interviewed many who have endured similar tragedy, such as those who lost relatives at Hillsborough or Bloody Sunday. Like the Omagh relatives, I am sure, their search for the truth is an essential part of the grieving process.. How can people be expected to finally let go until they feel they have achieved some sense of justice for those they have lost. It took a whitewash and thirty years of campaigning for the Bloody Sunday families to get their public inquiry. The Hillsborough families have not and probably never will receive justice. One could cite many other similar instances. With Omagh we have, yet again, failed as a society to make the one contribution we must make to lessen the burden for those who have suffered so terribly. We have failed to bring them the truth. It is still not too late for the Omagh relatives. I hope this drama helps their cause.

Peter Makem

Peter Makem is a poet and writer from Armagh. His volume of poems Lunar Craving has been described as “some of the finest lyrical verse by any writer since WB Yeats”. Other publications include The Point of Ripeness. He was formerly manager of the Armagh Gaelic football team.

The Omagh bombings are a perfect example of justice for sufferers and victim’s relatives being at the mercy of the many interests and forces that have accumulated over the past thirty five years. These include Secret Service, Special Branch, protection of agents, high legal costs and intimidation. Five years later the impasse is slowly beginning to unblock but only after the relatives themselves have taken vigorous control of their situation. Omagh, the worst atrocity of the entire troubles has most show up the inadequacy of legal redress.

My poem ‘But we were drunk then’ refers to incidents in history when people carry out acts they are later ashamed of and wonder what impulse drove them to it in the first place. The term “drunk” of course does not mean alcohol, but being temporarily carried away by intense ideals, impulses and beliefs. Sometimes when I think of Omagh, I feel I would like to read this poem out to the perpetrators.

But We Were Drunk Then

Cromwell fresh from Wexford town
And the dark set of blood.
Cromwell’s reassembled throng,
Brattle of armour, strike of shod
Return to the camp, line by line
For prayers of thanksgiving,
For hymn and victory song,
And into sleep, and night’s toss- Oh then?
But we were drunk then.
Somebody set us drunk.
Someone slipped drink into our glass.

Only should blinding light come
Would Pizzaro lament the Inca dead,
Or Titus mourn Jerusalem,
Or Herod grip his head in shame.
Only should light strike
Would Paul of Tarsus beg the dark
In skin locked at eyelid
And moan, and curse- Oh then?
But we were drunk then.
Somebody set us drunk.
Someone slipped drink into our glass.

Our piper’s fingers shaped the ancient
Impulse of the race, a first cry
From first born, the story went,
Departing from a lover’s balm
Moved off half soul, half body,
Tossed, twisting storm as calm
And every motion the possession
Of the vanished lover.
Our singers moved around that tune.
Dancers stepped it up the floor.

And dusk is full of beginnings,
High above the fulcrum
Beyond the starling and the plover
Glowing warrior and lover
Soar upon the shores of day
Until their wings fall away.
Only at the still pendulum
Might lips move, whisper pass- Oh then?
But we were drunk then.
Somebody set us drunk.
Someone slipped drink into our glass.

They live on Paradise, they
Moving under long oppression
Bring their flower in full blossom
Before the arc of dawn.
Rendered old, rendered young with pain
Stand attention to their dream,
And all that is not of Eden
Hated in the oppressor’s way
All who should feed the root
Of the forbidden fruit,

And war it is. War the call.
The tidal surge won’t turn
Until its moon is spent.
Prayers floats there, supplication
On the shore bound swell
And rock and great rock shaken.
After, the seas, the shrunken, penitent
Seas far out lap remorse- Oh then?
But we were drunk then.
Somebody set us drunk.
Someone slipped drink into our glass.

reproduced with permission from Peter Makem. (c) 2002 Peter Makem 

Katrina Battisti

Katrina Battisti is a theatre nurse from Omagh. She was in Omagh town centre at the time of the bomb.

Both myself and my husband, Shane, are from Omagh and were in town on the day of the bombing. We were trying to park the car and were redirected to another car park because of the bomb scare. On the way we stopped for forty seconds or so to let some cars pass. If we hadn’t, we probably would have been in the vicinity of the bomb when it went off as we were walking in that direction. People were screaming and shouting for help but there was so little you could do. I remember holding paper towels against a girl’s wounds to stem the bleeding. People got organised very quickly, Soon after, that girl was taken to hospital in a furniture delivery van. Our immediate worry was Shane’s sister, Eileen, who has a hairdressing salon opposite where the bomb went off. As we walked towards the salon we saw clouds of smoke, people were staggering around covered in blood, dazed and scared, and there was a terrible smell of burning flesh. I saw a body underneath the mangled wreckage of a car, though I could see no legs.

Eileen had not been injured by the bomb but the panic had brought on a severe asthma attack and we drove her to hospital, where I had actually been working until the day before. The Out Patients area had been turned into a mini treatment room. Cleaners were washing the blood from the floor and you could hear the noise of helicopters taking people away to other hospitals. Lots of off-duty staff and GPs had come in to help. I remember being told that one person had died and one person lost their legs and I was horrified even then. It was a while before we knew the full scale of the fatalities. Despite the shock, the hospital was well organised. Senior staff were taking details of patients and posting them on the noticeboards so relatives knew which ward to go to.

Omagh is a small town. If you don’t know someone, you know of them, so most people knew someone who had lost a member of their family. I just remember when we came home lying down on the sofa, and the impact of what had happened, all the horror, anger and grief we had witnessed, hitting me. I couldn’t sleep for a week and couldn’t get it out of my head for many months. It’s taken a long time for the town to recover physically and psychologically. It’s good to see some of the smaller shops which were destroyed coming back. We now have a two year-old daughter and a baby on the way. We can’t help thinking sometimes of that forty seconds or so we waited for cars and what might have been.

I think the one thing you can take away from that day is the way people rallied around and did all they could to help. There was a real community spirit and there is great admiration for the way the relatives have fought for justice. People like Michael Gallagher. They could have been overcome with hatred and bitterness but they have conducted themselves with such dignity. What people in Omagh can’t understand is what the bombers thought they could achieve. Omagh is a mixed town but it wasn’t a divided town before the bombing and it certainly isn’t now. If anything it has brought people even closer together.

Nell McCafferty

Nell McCafferty is a journalist, broadcaster and playwright – one of the most provocative, interesting activists and commentators in Ireland. She has written for publications ranging from the The Irish Times to Hot Press. Her books include ‘A Woman to Blame’, ‘Goodnight Sisters’, ‘Nell on the North: War, Peace and the People’ and ‘Peggy Deery’. She was born on Derry’s Bogside and now lives in Dublin.

We were on the first night of our holidays in Kerry when the news came in. The northerners separated  immediately into  a miserable  group. The television reception was grainy.  Next morning,  I went to Mass for the first time since childhood.  The priest spoke in Irish, and prayed  for the dead of Omagh. Afterwards, in the mist, locals confirmed that we had heard the numbers correctly. Trying to put a face on the little town,  I thought of  Stevie Mc Kenna, who used to entertain us in the Queen’s University  Glee Club with his rendition of a Russian dance. Phil Coulter was his pal, then , in the hope-filled  sixties. I do not believe that the bombers meant to kill civilians but their carelessness  was morally criminal. It  gets on my nerves that the families want to pursue  and hold individuals to blame, when all our energies should be directed towards resurrecting the peace process – and the contradiction of that is that I am still clanking my Bloody Sunday chains. So a small part of me cheers for the Omagh survivors who refuse to let any of us forget.

Gerry Anderson

Gerry Anderson is a radio and TV broadcaster. He has a daily show on BBC Radio Foyle/Radio Ulster.

Having lived in Omagh for short periods over the years, I developed a sense of the people who lived there. They were and are articulate, convivial and musical people. And, in a sense, people well accustomed to being passed over and ignored by governments that had consistently failed them. Consequently, no place less deserved the tragedy that befell them.

I was in Omagh a few days after this terrible event when thousands gathered to hear, among others, Juliet Turner bravely communicate with the people through music. It summed up for me the spirit of the people. No other town in Ireland would have permitted a young girl to stand up and sing what amounted to a modern/pop song on such a day.

Shoppers were killed at random but it is no accident that many of their relatives were so capable of graphically articulating their feelings and had the spirit to fight doggedly through the years to ensure that those who planned and planted the bomb would pay for their crimes.

These were ordinary people who rose above themselves. This is the ultimate legacy of Omagh; that ordinary people couldn’t and wouldn’t rest until justice was seen to be done.  

Eddie McCaffrey

Eddie McCaffrey is a video producer/director from Omagh.

When asked how they should be portrayed in a ‘promotional’ video, a

year after the Omagh bomb, the people of Omagh overwhelming told me

“tell the world we are ordinary, normal people”. Remaining true to

their own core belief, after all that they have been through over the

last 5 or 6 years, is testimony to the ‘extra-ordinary’ qualities of the

people of Omagh.

Tommy Sands

Tommy Sands is a singer, songwriter and social activist from Co. Down. Pete Seeger said of him: “Tommy Sands has achieved that difficult but wonderful balance between knowing and loving the traditions of his home and being concerned with the future of the whole world.” His songs have been recorded by Joan Baez, Dolores Keane, The Dubliners among many others. His recordings include To Shorten the Winter.

The fifteenth of August was the day we used to go to Warrenpoint to say prayers and paddle in the water. There was a cure that day, they said.

But I was in Milwaukee when the word came through.

Just about to go on stage. It was a festive event with ten thousand in the audience. They had just heard the news too. No one felt like singing yet we knew there was no other way to express such sorrow. Eileen Ivers played a lament on the fiddle. Like a keening song of old, not to make us sad but to let the sorrow out. To bring back life. There was a silence I had never heard before. I sang “There were Roses and the tears of the people ran together”.

Omagh was a defining moment. If there had been any doubts before that we needed to support a peace process there was none now. The last straw.  Out of the ashes came a prayerful permanence. Never again. Out of death came a thousand lives suddenly saved. The cure of innocence bestowed upon us all by Omagh Martyrs. 

Geraldine McCrory

Geraldine McCrory works for Barnardo’s in Omagh providing bereavement support for children and young people.

I feel that my personal reflections for 2004 are

centred on the fact that in the latter twelve months

Omagh has finally come to life again with lots of

regeneration of the main shopping area. The town

now has a ‘buzz’ about it and this in itself creates,

in my view a feeling of ‘hope’ and ‘trust’ which had

been lost to the town and its community for quite some

time.

I attribute this not only to the Bomb in Omagh but to

the aftermath in which the town, for almost three and

half years, had been subjected to regular bomb hoaxes.

These had the ability to make the town and community

come to a stand still and made us revisit the horrors

of the Bomb in August ’99- whether we wanted too or

not!

For me I see the cessation of these hoax calls as a

‘light at the end of the tunnel’. It affords the

opportunity for the town of Omagh and its local

community to begin taking baby steps towards progress

and moving from Fear and Darkness into Optimism and

Hope!

Dina Shiloh

Dina Shiloh is a journalist. She lived in Israel for 15 years.

In “The Diameter of the Bomb” Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai wrote of the way one bomb kills and injures a specific number of people – those who happened to be a few centimetres from the explosion – and how the bomb’s ripples of pain spread further and are felt by people all over the world. Amichai was writing of the conflict in his city, Jerusalem, but his words are equally resonant for the people of Omagh. The effects of a bomb are not only felt by the families of those who happened to be there at that precise moment, but by their friends, their work-mates, the wider community. Nearly six years after the Omagh events, people in Ireland are still feeling the repercussions of the bomb, yet they have been able to move towards a peaceful resolution of their conflict. Perhaps they can give hope to those in Amichai’s city, Jerusalem.

Colin Bateman

Colin Bateman is a novelist and writer. For a number of years he was the deputy editor of the County Down Spectator. As a journalist he received a Northern Ireland Press Award for his weekly satirical column and a Journalist’s Fellowship to Oxford University for his reports from Uganda. His novels include ‘Divorcing Jack’,  ‘Turbulent Priests’,  ‘Chapter and Verse’ and  ‘Driving Big Davie’. He lives in his native Co. Down.

Omagh was a horrible, horrible thing –  but as the years go by, unless you were personally involved,  it just gets added to the list of horrible atrocities that went before it. I don`t think there was any `silver lining` or any shift in public perception, there will always be mad bastards who want to kill innocent people to make a point. I kind of like the idea of the killers` children asking, `What did you do in the war, daddy?`  I`d like to hear that explanation.

Some Late Arrivals (which did make it to the site)

Eoin McNamee

Eoin McNamee is a novelist and poet. He was born in Kilkeel, Co. Down in 1961. He was educated in various schools in the North and at Trinity College, Dublin. Eoin has lived in Dublin, London and New York. His publications include The Last of Deeds, Resurrection Man, (made made into a feature film for which he also wrote the script), The Language of Birds, Blue Tango and The Ultras.

Eoin now lives in Sligo.

From: eoin mcnamee
Sent: 25 May 2004 14:19
To: Adam Gee
Subject: Re: Omagh – 5 Years On

Dear Adam
try this-its a bit more than 5 or 6 sentences, but they`re short sentences-give me a ring if theres any problem-home til about 4 then on
mobile
best
eoin
Ps marie is shy

The correspondances between the Omagh bomb and the Dublin/Monaghan bombings are striking, five years after one, thirty years
after the other.
These were mass killings of profound political effect, and, certainly in the case of the latter, political intent. The relatives and dead are
in each case alloted their role and refused any other. They face official indifference, incompetence and worse. There is a sense of other
agendas being pursued. What is particularly striking is the way that both sets of relatives have been forced to adopt unconventional
legal tactics to force conclusions-in one case, the inquest process, in the other the adoption of private prosecutions.
The parapolitical complexities which have dogged the North roll on, seemingly immune to change. There is no such thing as the
agendaless dead, it seems, when it comes to the north eastern corner of the archipegelo. We`re told to accept the future as bright, and
history as being a cortege from which we are to avert our eyes. Don`t enquire because you might find out the truth. And that would be the real catastrophe.

Brian Kennedy

Brian Kennedy is a singer and songwriter, a great ambassador of music for Ireland. He was born in 1966 and brought up on the Falls Road, Belfast. His recordings include Live in Belfast, On Song, Get On With Your Short Life and Won’t You Take Me Home. Brian performed in Omagh on 22nd May 2004 and wrote his contribution to this website the following day.

Sent: 23 May 2004 17:24
To: Adam Gee
Subject: OMAGH….a few words from Brian Kennedy.

Hey Adam, just played Omagh last night and it was a WILD show! My goodness,
it was great to see them in such fine form.
So here goes.

” It filled my heart to the brim to hear the people of Omagh sing again
after having so much to cry about. Singing seems to be a different kind of
crying altogether and although Omagh can never be the same again, their
voices rose with a mighty passion known only to those who have lost so much
and lived to see another hopeful day. I felt truly humble in the presence of
these people.”

Love Brian Kennedy.

x

Jeremy Hardy

Jeremy Hardy is a comedian and campaigner.

Omagh was such a sad, stupid, pointless atrocity, committed by people refusing to look at another way forward.

It was an attack on a largely harmonious town – a town which stands as a symbol for what Northern Ireland could be like.

It’s also time that people who want to investigate what happened look not only at the perpetrators but also at the failure of the RUC.

Eamon Hardy

Eamon Hardy is a Senior Producer at BBC Television. He has been involved with numerous landmark documentaries on Panorama and elsewhere including ‘Death on the Rock’, ‘A Licence to Murder’ and ‘Who Bombed Omagh?’ Eamon grew up in Kilkeel, Co. Down.

As a documentary film maker I’ve traveled the world to record some very painful stories, the human scars of war, famine and conflict; the 13 year old girl gang-raped by soldiers in Bosnia, the Palestinian mother who’d just lost her children in an Israeli missile attack. Of all the grief I’ve been witness to however, nothing has moved me more than the stories of the families in Omagh.

I was born and raised in the North of Ireland and still considered it home. I felt an instant and intimate understanding of these people’s lives. Michael Gallagher was a man I knew although we’d never met. His gentle, soft-spoken courtesy as he invited John Ware and myself into his home was that of family friends and relatives I grown up around.

His hospitality too, gallons of well brewed tea and plates of thickly buttered barnbrack, was the taste of celebrations and even wakes from my own childhood. The familiar comfort of his ‘good’ room with it’s china cabinet filled with Belleek pottery and Tyrone crystal could have been my mother’s.

My heart was disadvantaged even before this dignified man told the story of how, after the bombing, he went to search for his son Aiden. He found him. In the mortuary.

Kevin Skelton’s wife Philomena was caught by the blast as she sifted though the rails of a clothes shop. He found her face down in the rubble.

The Skeltons weren’t well-to-do people but were remarkable for their ordinariness and decency. Kevin described with such love a quiet but energetic woman, always on the go. Her sounds were the sounds of his life.

I’ll never forget the haunting description of his loneliness and grief. “It’s an awful thing”, he told us, “to walk into your home for the first time and hear the clock ticking.” For a long time after recording Kevin I heard that clock’s lonely echo.

Oran Docherty pleaded with his mother Bernie to allow him to go on a bus trip to Tyrone. He was only eight and had never been away on his own before. Bernie was reluctant but conceded in the end, as mothers do. After kissing him goodbye she stood at the door of her Donegal home to watch him disappear excitedly down the street. He hardly dared to look back incase his mum changed her mind.

The next time Bernie saw her son was in the mortuary at Omagh general hospital. Her description of seeing him in that moment wrenched the heart of every parent: “Whatever way his wee lip was, his bottom lip, to me it looked as if he was crying when he died”.

I’ve always considered it a privilege to come into these distraught people’s lives and give voice to their grief. I’ve often felt guilt. When the camera stops rolling and the lights go out our strange, fleeting acquaintance ends. We leave them alone with their broken hearts.

Adrian Dunbar

Adrian Dunbar is a film, television and theatre actor and producer. He grew up in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh. His screen credits include ‘Hear My Song’, ‘My Left Foot’, ‘The Crying Game’, ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’ and ‘The General’. He is currently appearing at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in The Shaughraun.

I got into a cab in Finsbury Park in London. The taxi driver, who was Irish and knew me, said: “that’s terrible what’s after happening in Omagh.”

What?
“Massive explosion. They’re saying a lot of people dead.”
I couldn’t wait for him to get me home. I got quickly to the phone. Two of my sisters, Roisín and Christina, and their families lived in Omagh.
“They are all ok,” said my mother “and so are Liam and John.”
I didn’t know it but my two brothers were also working in the town that day.

Two weeks later, my wife Anna and I visited Omagh. The shock in the town was still palpable. I looked into the river Strule and remembered as a boy how excited I was when told of the Swan mussels that lived there, and because the Strule was sandy, they sometimes contain pearls. I remember buying my first guitar, a Fender Jazz Bass, from Aidan McGuigan and the fun I had with Frank Chisholm and Ray Moore and Paddy Owens, on the road with Frank’s Elvis show.

Omagh was west of the Bann, overlooked, high unemployment, screwed by the planners, and now this. I said a prayer for the dead and for the living. A couple of months later I was at a party in Omagh. Without warning, a girl broke down in tears. No one rushed to her, a couple of her friends dealt with her calmly. “She was in the bomb” I heard someone saying and that was all.

Like those scary adults of my childhood who had never recovered from the horror of the First World War, old men who would shout and cower in the street, I could see that the people of Omagh would live every day with this tragedy.

May love find them wherever they are.

The homepage of the Channel 4 Omagh website

The design by Mark Limb

A letter to Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

X Strand Road

Sandymount

Dublin 4

Eire

23/04/2004

Dear Seamus

I am currently working on a project which I thought may be of interest to you (I was involved in the ‘Omagh: Where Hope & History Rhyme’ video made for the District Council a few years ago to which you so kindly contributed) and wanted to invite you to express your reflections on Omagh from five years on.

As you may know, Channel 4 has commissioned and now taken delivery of a drama on the bombing of Omagh and its aftermath (written by Paul Greengrass) and as part of the on-line programme support (on the channel4.com website) we are adding a reflective dimension to the project by including the thoughts of various people connected with Omagh and Northern Ireland in a variety of ways (not straight-forwardly political, mainly cultural) about what Omagh means to them from the perspective of 2004 and what (if any) silver lining they can see to this cloud.

The easiest way to contribute your thoughts would be by sending them in by email to agee@channel4.co.uk.

Otherwise we can speak on the phone and you can dictate your comments. Or of course a good old-fashioned letter to: Adam Gee, Channel 4 – 4Learning, 124 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2TX.

It would also be very helpful to get a photo/image to illustrate your contribution. Do you have an image of yourself, a book cover or something related to you which we could use for this? (Ideally an image you own the copyright in and are happy for us to use in this context. If however it belongs to a third party, then could you please also supply details of the copyright owner so we can clear the image properly for usage.)

I do hope you can find the time to share your reflections.

Kind regards

a d a m . g e e
c r e a t i v e / c o m m e r c i a l . d i r e c t o r
c h a n n e l 4 . 4 l e a r n i n g
0 2 0 . 7 3 0 6 . 8 3 0 6
0 7 7 8 7 . 5 0 1 1 4 8
agee@channel4.co.uk
http://www.channel4.com

Selections from the Channel 4 Omagh forum

every person should watch this as an education for our futures !!!!

i cant even begin to say how much that film has touched me. i remember the bomb happening, but i was only 11 so i dont really remember much about it. however, my heart goes out to all the families and victims of the omagh bombing. its events like this that make u realise life is precious, and you should treasure every moment

The integrity of Michael Gallager and all the Support Group members is a lesson to us all and an inspiration in a country where no doubt many other appalling deals have yet to come to light. Sensitively handled and superbly dramatised.

A magnificently made documentary, with superb low-key performances, sensitively portrayal of the events, and cleverly incorporation of all victims. I am 22 years old and in such a short life, I have seen many tragedies in my life. I also grew up in Ireland and after a while one gets used to it… Why should I get used to it?

this is exactly the sort of programme the BBC should be producing instead of gardening make overs and eastenders. well done channel 4.

Possibly the best piece of television to be aired in the UK in the last 10 years(or more). Brilliant in every aspect.The realism of the bombings and the grief process.The casting, the editing.especially the direction and camera work…..outstanding. Well written and punching their message home.
Six years now since I walked into my sitting room and flicked on “Sky News” to hear “Broken things ” being sung so poignantly at their commemoration service. Ten years this July since I buried my own dear son Sean.
Well done Channel 4….Well done

Thank you for being brave enough to make this programme. It is one of the best I have ever seen. I can’t see to type properly for my tears.

To all of you involved…..my thanks. To the families involved….I know you will never forget, or forgive but I hope that every day you feel a little better than the last, you are ordinary special people and a wider audience are listening tonight.

hello, i am 16 and have lived in omagh all my life. even though i was only young when the bomb happened, i can still remember it as if it was yesterday, things like that you will never forget, i have so much sympathy but also respect for anyone who was involed in the helping out during the bombing, sympathy for what they had to go through and the tragedy they had to experiance and respect for their courage. that day is a day i will remember always, it has left a scar in the hearts of many many people and no matter how much people get on with their lives, there will always be reminders. the people of omagh have grown stronger because of this tragedy. and hopefully all the families of the victims can get on with living their lives to the best they can. May peace stay with them and strength to move on.

Reading this board it seems to me that this drama on Channel 4 tonight has made a lot of people think. I hope it isn’t the triumph of hope over reality to hope that it’s made the right people, on both sides of the divide, think?

It seems that too much goes on behind our backs with the governments and political parties/groups and its the innocent who suffer from it

I can only agree with all the commendation for this excellent program. It stands as a chilling reminder of the the kind of priorities which rule the peace process though.

there was no good of any kind that came out of this terrorist act, nor the policing that was supposed to be there to stop it.

i left ni not long after this and unfortunatly those who initially seemed to be doing good for its future are back doing no good in other ways.

This was a very well produced programme which brought back many painful memories to me. I just hope that it can help remind those who hold NI’s future what they are there to do. They seem to need reminding.

Can C4 send every idiot polition in NI a copy of this for their collection and name it ‘never forget why!’.

I found it very moving and very well done.Well done C4,RTE,Irish film board.I only hope yesterdays ruling in Belfast about the real ira not being a terrorist group under the terrorism act does not affect the families court case against the RIRA.We need more TV like this.

As an ex RUC member the drama refuels the anger felt towards the ombudsman. The Nationalist political points scoring from Nuala Oloan.
Ask any Policeman how good an informer is, at the bottom of it he is a criminal, a liar and out to get money. The information from Fulton was crap, there is absolutely no doubt in that.
If Police were to act on all information, no one would go to work.
Ask the Ombudsman;
1/ how many threats came in regarding a second bomb in Omagh for several weeks after August 98?
2/ How many threats are there regarding threats to life in Northern Ireland right now in 2004?
Its an easy target the Police, not so easy doing the job, nobody wants to help and there are many double edged swords and pitfalls along the way.
My thoughts go out to the families concerned, they like many thousands in Northern Ireland will never get Justice. Those involved in the many crimes against innocent people over our history will be judged by their creator.

To the ex RUC gentleman. Few of us from the North who have any sence don’t know the excellent job the force does in protecting the people of Northern Ireland and the program cant have shown the individual act of RUC men in Omagh in 1998 that were so important in preserving the lives of those who survived.

Still I am sure you understand how difficult the lack of transparency must have been to the families involved.

Those families will be an inspiration to us all in the years to come thanks to programs of this kind. Scotsmen play films such as Braveheart to give them pride in their heritage but all Northern Irish people can be proud of the commitment of those families.

I was a member of the organisation that has been the subject of so much criticism in this programe. Indeed I was on duty that terrible day. Not at the time of the explosion but several hours after. We were brought in to search the damaged buildings for the injured or the dead. Most of the buildings were near to collapse. We risked everything to enter those buildings in the vain hope of finding people alive. We then spent the next five days digging through the rubble in the bomb scene trying to find evidence, to piece together the the device, in order to catch the perpetrators of this terrible crime. Unfortunately I don’t believe that I’ll ever recover from the experience.

Despite the contents of this programe, I know that we did our level best during those days to do what had to be done to bring those responsible to justice.

My thoughts are with those left behind.

The program has shown the RUC to be criticised at it’s leadership and intelligence level. Lets not confuse that with the many men and women of the service who worked so hard at that time. I saw a police officer crying that day. What those people had to deal with was awful, but they did it with dignity and great inner strength. Many of those officers are suffering to this day. I am sure that some must blame themselves for leading so many people to that end of town. I dont think any of us blame thos officers for anything. Those officers who were there that day are as much victims as the ordinary members of the public. They too were let down. Lets not forget that they too are people like the rest of us.

I feel that if anything positive is to come of this programme it will be to remind those not living in Ulster that no one has ever been brought to justice for this atrocity and that just because we don’t hear about it in the news anymore it doesn’t mean that the suffering has stopped.

i also have lived in omagh all my life it is a beautiful town and there is not a day goes by that we suffer in silence about that awful day the fear of finding our loved ones dead and the guilt that we felt for finding them alive no film can ever show what we suffered and will continue suffering in silence no matter who is found quilty , if ever found quilty

I moved to Omagh from England shortly before the bomb, and was thankfully not allowed into the town that day as the police were in the process of setting up the cordon. I heard the bomb go off a few minutes later and my first reaction was of disbelief and confusion. I didn’t want to believe what was clearly obvious.
I watched the program this evening and found myself reliving aspects of that day and the months that followed. Thankyou for a necessary reminder of a day that should never be repeated and never never forgotten.
In the months that followed, I found on my trips back to England that everyone I came into contact with knew of Omagh. At the time I thought it a shame that Omagh was so well known for such an appauling reason, but I now find that when I speak to people on the phone from England, or when I visit England, everyone I meet appears to have never heard of Omagh. I have asked people “Do you not remember the bomb?” I find that they dont.
I actually find this far more disturbing than I would ever have imagined. That something so terrible can happen and capture the attention of so many people around the world and then be forgotten in so few years is a poor reflection of the world in which we live. We must remember so that we can learn. Forgetting the past to move forward to me is absurd.
Thanks again to the program makers for a necessary wake up call.

I’m from Omagh but moved to England in 1999. There’s not a single day that goes by that I don’t think of everyone at home. There are often tears. It was incredibly difficult to watch this programme tonight but I felt that Gerard McSorley, a native of Omagh, was excellent.
The question is, what can we do to help?

I would just like to say thank you to channel 4 and most of all the families of Omagh bombing for bringing this tragady more into the pubilc eye with a moving and heart felt documentary.
I am also disgraced in the way that the families were treated by the so called justice system.
Please let me know what actions we can take to help you fight for what is right.

Well done to channel 4 etc for highlighting the ongoing heartache of Omagh. I realise that with something so horrendous, much needs to be censored, but I was there, and the scenes from this program don’t even begin to show the true extent of the suffering. The hospital scenes in particular only showed the tip of the iceberg.
It was much much worse than that.
I had my reservations about watching this. I didn’t spend the last 5 and a half years trying to get those memories out of my head just to have them all brought back, but I was really impressed by the sensitivity shown by the film makers. This was painful, but compulsive viewing.
This was a well written, well researched peice. Well done channel 4.

As a grown man i don’t think i have cried in a long time, but watching that last night just made me very emotional. I’m not from Omagh and don’t for one second pretend to feel the same as those families but i was sadden and sickened.

I have never felt so emotional about any piece of drama.

Well done Channel 4 for making such a touching and thought provoking film. It can’t have been easy.
I have nothing but admiration and respect for the victims’ families, who retained their dignity and courage whilst coming up time and again against those who just wanted to ignore them for the sake of the peace process. In my view, there can be no peace until they are heard and the lessons are learnt.

Strength

I love this photo from the news this week

 

Brummie Saffiyah Khan takes on the EDL mentality

Making films not throwing bombs

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

I was standing under this poster at the foot of Waterloo Bridge on a Skype call to Germany, homeland of Fassbinder. The poster was on the wall of the BFI/NFT advertising a new season of films. The bridge is the next road bridge down the Thames from Westminster Bridge. The call was to fellow participants of Berlin-based Documentary Campus and we were discussing the films we are all working on.

I was Skyping from my phone on the street because I had an adjacent meeting about the creation of an app to address the global problem of 10,000 children dying every day from preventable diseases. I had no time between the call and the meeting so had to dial in from the open air.

The other call participants commented on the noisiness of the London streets – sirens, helicopters, traffic. I said this was just normal for London (which it often pretty much is along the river there). Then one of the callers from Germany said no it’s not, there’s been a terrorist attack. For a moment I hesitated to see if it was some kind of joke, the same reaction as one or two of the other participants. But then it became clear he was not joking, that the site of the attack was around Westminster.

A strange way to learn of such a tragedy.

This was the blood red sky in the direction of Westminster as I left the meeting.

This was the blood red sky as I reached the river under Waterloo Bridge.

This was the view towards Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament. The blue lights were still flashing.

A second big indiscriminate attack on the multicultural population of this greatest city in this grim period for the world. Innocent bystanders from Brittany and Romania, Lancashire and Lord knows where, no more than the perpetrator knew where. This beautiful view in stark contrast to the ugliness of the act and the ‘thinking’ behind it.

Do the Right Thing: Google v Morality

OK Google, did the Holocaust happen?

4 reasons to read The Sellout

So we had our 15th Anniversary Book Group gathering last night and the book in the spotlight, The Sellout by Paul Beatty, was highly praised by all but one of our number, getting 9s and even 10s in our scores (for Literary Merit and Enjoyment), one of the most popular choices in the whole decade and a half.

My review on Goodreads: A dense and intense tour de force with shades of Catch 22 (absurdity), David Foster Wallace (intensity) and Candide (humanity), filled with insight about how black people are seen and see themselves in the USA (and beyond).

Here are 4 good reasons to read this standout satirical novel:

(i) On lawyers:

The Chief Justice meekly raises his hand.

“Excuse me, Mr Fiske [the defending lawyer], I have a question…”

“Not right now, motherfucker, I’m on a roll!”

 

(ii) On education:

Two hundred kids quieted instantly and turned their attention deficit disorders toward me.

 

(iii) On weed:

“What the fuck is this, dog?” Puppet coughed.

“I call it Carpal Tunnel. Go ahead, try to make a fist.”

Puppet tried to ball his hand but failed.

 

(iv) On intellectuals:

The meetings consisted mostly of the members who showed up every other week arguing with the ones who came every other month about what exactly “bimonthly” means.”

Classic satire in the heritage of Waugh and Swift that’s laugh-out-loud funny.

Enemies of the People