A 1916 diary....NOT in the news (April 10 - 16, 1916)

As the date of the Rising rapidly approached, this is what was happening behind the scenes 100 years ago this week

Monday April 10

• Irish Volunteers organisers Ernest Blythe and Liam Mellows arrived in England after being deported from Ireland. Mellows would be secretly returned to Ireland in time to play a key part in the Rising in Co Galway.
• Regional Volunteers organisers Terence MacSwiney (Cork), Alfred Cotton (Kerry, but restricted to living in Belfast) and John Neeson (Drogheda) visited Dublin. MacSwiney arrived at 11pm by train to Kingsbridge (now named Heuston Station after executed rebel Seán Heuston.) Cotton was seen by police detectives visiting IRB Military Council member Tom Clarke’s Dublin shop for half an hour at 2pm, as were Patrick Ryan, Seán McGarry, Ned Daly and Joseph McGuinness later, after Clarke went home. The address was one of many in Dublin used for delivery and despatch of Irish Volunteers secret messages.
• At Volunteers headquarters on Dawson Street, Dublin, Éamon de Valera, Michael and John O’Hanrahan, Eimar O’Duffy, Bulmer Hobson, Con Colbert, Ned Daly, Thomas MacDonagh and Jennie Wyse Power were seen.