Alois Hitler met Bridget when she was 19 and impressed her by telling her he was a wealthy hotel owner but, in fact, he was working as a waiter in Dublin, but still managed to win Bridget's heart ; her father was against the relationship because Alois "had no prospects..."
In 1910, the young couple ran off to London and got married, and Bridget’s father threatened to charge Alois with kidnapping, but he finally backed down after Bridget pleaded with him to accept her new husband ; the newlyweds settled in Toxteth, Liverpool and had a baby boy, William Patrick Hitler.
In 1914, Alois went to Germany to try and become a businessman, but Bridget refused to travel with him as by now he had become violent towards her and she feared for the safety of their son.
Alois' business plans were immediately disrupted by the outbreak of World War One and he decided to abandon his young family back in England and stay in Germany - he actually married again, was found guilty of bigamy but was let off when Bridget intervened and the two were divorced.
Bridget moved to London and raised her son on her own, and opened her house up to lodgers to make enough money to survive.
By the early 1940s, William Hitler was a grown man in his early thirties and had not seen his father since he was a toddler. However, he saw the potential of cashing in on his surname...
His uncle, Adolf Hitler, was becoming one of the world’s leading figures having become the leading politician in Germany.
William and his mother moved to America, where William worked as a public speaker and lecturer on his famous uncle. However, Hitler’s Nazi Germany then started the Second World War, and millions of men were killed at their hands.
Bridget and William were now ashamed of their family name and changed it to Stuart-Houston and mother and son lived out the rest of their lives in America.
Bridget once claimed that Adolf Hitler had lived with her and her husband in Liverpool for a short time in 1912-13 and she wrote a book, 'My Brother-in-Law Adolf', that described her relationship with her husband and brother-in-law, and claimed she was the one who advised Hitler to trim the edges of his moustache off, giving him the iconic look we are all familiar with.
However, expert historians have rubbished Bridget's claims that Hitler had ever stayed in England ; there is apparent evidence that he was in Vienna at the time Bridget claims he was staying with her and his brother in Liverpool, and they accused Bridget of making the whole story up, in order to sell copies of her book and cash in on her infamous relative.
A local newspaper here in this part of Dublin ('The Echo' newspaper) published an article, by a Mr Donal Bergin, in November, 1999, in relation to Mrs Hitler (!) -
Bridget Elizabeth Dowling...married Hitler’s half-brother Alois (pictured) in London in 1910. He was a waiter and she was a cook in a Dublin hotel where she met him at a staff dance. Though an unfortunate accident of marriage, the convent girl became the sister-in-law of the man who would become Nazi Fuehrer of Germany and later bring the world to its knees.
When she was 17, the young cook eloped to London with Alois who was twice jailed for theft. "Nowadays it is a bit embarrassing to be Mrs Hitler, but the people who know me don’t mind," Bridget Hitler, who was born in Kilnamanagh, once said.
The devout Catholic later said : "It seems funny for an obscure little Irish girl like I was to get mixed up in all these international affairs. I was plain Bridget Dowling of Dublin when I met Alois who was a waiter. I was 17 and had just left a convent, and it was very romantic. When I went to the hotel staff dance I met him," she said, long before she claimed to have met the "handsome stranger" at the Dublin Horse Show.
Adolf and Alois shared the same father but had different mothers. Disliked by Adolf, historians state Alois was a hapless good-for-nothing.
Bridget claimed he was a waiter in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, but it is claimed he worked in the old Royal Hibernian Hotel on Dawson Street. "He fairly won my heart with his sugary talk and foreign ways. My father – rest his soul – was a real Irishman. He would not hear or tell of a wedding to a foreigner. Alois and I used to meet every afternoon in the museum and plan to elope," she said in a prewar interview with the Daily Express newspaper in London.
Mrs Hitler revealed : "Four months later when Alois had saved enough money, we went to England on the night boat and came to London. I wrote to my mother and said I would not return until we got permission to marry. She talked my father around and he gave us his consent."
Bridget Elizabeth Dowling married Alois Hitler in Marleybone registry office, London on June 3rd, 1910. She was aged 18 and he was 27.
After the wedding, Bridget recalled, she "..took him straight back to Dublin to meet the family, and then we went to Liverpool". She continued : "He got a job in a restaurant as a waiter and then became an agent for a razor firm. Willie, our only child, was born in March 1911. My husband used to talk about his family. He told me of his younger brother, Adolf, who was a dreamy sort of lad and was studying architecture when we were married."
In the 1930s, her son, William Patrick (pictured), became a car salesman in Nazi Germany after mother and son allegedly tried to blackmail Adolf over his brother's bigamy.
After Alois deserted Bridget and their three-year-old son, he bigamously remarried. He escaped jail because Bridget agreed to separation. William Patrick later said his mother felt "very bitter" about many things. He was "sent" to Liverpool to live with his Irish grandparents after Alois left.
While she was born, and lived, in Tallaght, it is believed Mrs Bridget Hitler-To-Be also lived in Clondalkin where her mother's family lived.
William Dowling, a farm labourer from Kilnamanagh, was her father, and her mother was Bridget Reynolds Jnr from Ballymount and, earlier, Kilnamanagh.
Mrs Hitler's parents were conservative Catholics, she has written, while her brother, Thomas J Dowling served in the RAF from 1923 to 1926.
Bridget’s marriage to Hitler’s brother was unspoken of in the area : "That was hidden. The next generation weren’t told much about it," said a source. 'The Echo' has also found that her family probably lived for a few years in a cottage in Cookstown townland, the ruins of which still stand today. The cottage was leased to a man that this reporter believes to have been her father, by Andrew Cullen Tynan, the father of the famous poet Katharine Tynan.
Interestingly, the only Irish person who is named in Bridget Hitler’s distrusted memoirs is a 'Mr Tyna', who was described as a neighbour.
Bridget claimed in 1941 that hanging would have been too good for her brother-in-law, Adolf, but the French had claimed she was in the payroll of the Nazi's.
According to a 1938 article unearthed by Patrick Maguire, a Dublin historian, a Paris paper claimed the 'cook' received 300 marks a month from the Nazi's ; it claimed nobody wanted a cook who was Hitler's sister-in-law. She had come a long way since being swept off her feet by the handsome foreigner.
Obviously short of cash, Mrs Hitler made news after she appeared before a London Police court in January 1939 for failing to pay over £9 in rates ; the court accepted her offer to pay within six weeks, as she said she was expecting money from Germany, but did not say from whom. The money never appeared -
"So there was nothing for it but to take the devil by his tail up the hill and go to court," Mrs Hitler said.
A resident since the early 30's of Priory Gardens, Highgate, London, she then said she took in boarders while her son worked in a Berlin brewery. Six months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe, Mrs Hitler and her son went to America where the authorities quizzed them. She went to work for the British War Relief Society opposite Tiffany’s jewellers on Fifth Avenue in New York in 1941 where she "proudly" wore an 'Aid Britain' brooch.
Bridget's memoirs were discovered, unfinished and halfway through a sentence, in the manuscript division of the New York Public Library in the 1970's : they include a claim that Adolf Hitler stayed in Liverpool in 1912 and 1913, but last year, her daughter-in-law said the memoir "was all made up".
Mrs Hitler's mother could not write when Bridget Elizabeth Dowling was born and she also called herself Eliza and marked her 'X' on the birth cert. Why she called herself Eliza is a mystery, but there were many other Bridget Dowling namesakes in the nearby districts when she gave birth. Mrs Hitler was the only Bridget Dowling registered born in 1891 whose father's name was William, and her birth cert date matches her gravestone date.
Thirty years after her death, Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, Arthur Mitchell, is anxious to hear from any surviving relatives. He said he is co-writing a book on Hitler, and believes relatives may have old personal letters from Mrs Hitler which may be of historical value - "I have no mention of embarrassing the Dowling's ; I imagine some relatives might tell you to go to hell with that," Professor Mitchell said.
And he added: "If she did have any relatives it wouldn't be unusual if she wrote letters saying 'I was in Germany and met Adolf Hitler’.
Bridget Elizabeth Dowling - Mrs Hitler - was born on this date , 3rd July, 133 years ago (1891).
She died on the 18th November, 1969, aged 78, in Long Island, New York.
Incidentally, her son, William Patrick, died suddenly in 1987, at 76 years of age, and is buried alongside his mother, but their graves give no clue to their close connection to one Mr Adolf Hitler...
On the 3rd July, 1920, a Unit of nine IRA Volunteers, with the Vice-Commander of the Bandon Battalion IRA, Charlie Hurley (pictured), in charge, stopped, subdued and disarmed a group of four RIC members at Downdaniel Railway Bridge on the Bandon-Innishannon Road, in County Cork, in the course of which one RIC man was wounded.
On the 19th March, 1921, Volunteer Hurley, who was by then the Officer in Command of the Third Cork Brigade IRA was shot dead in a gunfight with British soldiers from the Essex Regiment, in the townland of Ballymurphy (located a few kilometres from Crossbarry).
RIP Commander Charlie Hurley.
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'Forcibly cutting women's hair, a widespread practice in Ireland and in many other wars including the later Spanish and Greek civil wars, was a form of serious violence that singled out and marked women as enemies, sexual transgressors and traitors...'
"...two lady assistants in a draper firm in the town have had their hair cut owing to their keeping company with soldiers.
It appeared that the young ladies received more than one warning. They were held up between Carlow and Baltinglass, and though both strongly resisted, they were overpowered.
It is stated that one of the girls asked her attackers to take her life first.
Previous to this outrage three young ladies in town had been similarly attacked and had their hair shorn. It is understood that several other girls have been warned about keeping the company of soldiers..."
On the 3rd July, 1920, a number of IRA Volunteers entered a house in Clonakilty, in County Cork, apparently looking for four people - the man of the house, two of his sons - who were all members of the British Army - and one of the man's daughters, who was present in the house.
None of the three men were there, so the daughter (19) was held in place by two or three of the Volunteers as others cut her hair from her head as a warning to her family to stop their anti-Irish activity.
Had any of the men being there, it's doubtful that they would have got away so lightly...
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In a letter he wrote to a family member on the 3rd July, 1920, IRA leader Liam Lynch stated that "John Bull should give in soon".
It wasn't to be, unfortunately, and today, over 101 years later, it still hasn't happened.
IRA Chief of Staff Liam Lynch was shot dead in a gunfight with the Free Staters in County Tipperary on the 10th April, 1923.
RIP Volunteer Liam Lynch.
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'THE STORMONT CORONERS AMENDMENT BILL.'
From 'The United Irishman' newspaper, April 1955.
It is surely questionable whether such a Bill is at all moral under present-day circumstances, but at least we have the consolation that it is yet another stage of aiding their own destruction by their own deeds.
It is significant, however, that on the same page of the newspaper which published the article, a Mr Diamond is reported in Stormont Parliament to have stated that RUC barracks were being turned into fortresses, and in one barracks a six-foot wall had been raised to twenty feet!
Somehow we cannot help but feel that this Coroners Bill and the fortification of RUC barracks go hand in hand...
(END of 'The Stormont Coroners Amendment Bill' ; NEXT - 'Sinn Féin Statement', from the same source.)
The IRA regularly raided post offices and postboxes throughout the State in the 1920's, to examine mail for British military intelligence and to discover if civilians were in contact with the Crown Forces etc, and in some cases would apply a 'Censored By The IRA'-stamp (pictured) to certain envelopes before forwarding them on to the addressee, for psychological and propaganda purposes.
One such raid was carried out on the 3rd July, 1921, on the Post Office in the Curragh Camp and bags of mail were liberated from enemy hands!
On that same date, an IRA Battalion Council Meeting for the Athgarvan IRA Column (Kildare) took place and it was decided to form a second 'IRA Active Service Unit' for the Kildare area.
As IRA Captain Michael Smyth was making his way to the first meeting of that ASU, he was jumped-on by a gang of Black and Tans at Twomilehouse, Kildare, as was Volunteer William Jones, the local Lieutenant of Engineering : both men were badly beaten up by the Tans before been 'arrested'.
Both Volunteers were taken to the British barracks in Newbridge and held there until the 13th July, when they were moved to Harepark Camp in the Curragh and, on the 8th October, were put in Mountjoy Jail in Dublin, to be Courtmartialed by the British.
They were still in Mountjoy when, on the 12th January, 1922, the British administration in Dublin Castle issued a statement on behalf of their 'King', George V, granting 'a general amnesty in respect of all offences committed in Ireland from political motives prior to the operation of the Truce on July 11 last...' and, that same afternoon, 370 IRA prisoners – some of whom were serving life or death sentences – were released from Mountjoy, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway jails, including Volunteers Michael Smyth and William Jones.
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On the 3rd July, 1921, two 'off-duty' RIC members were relaxing on the banks of the Murrough River, County Wicklow, chatting to a few girls.
Five men on bicycles were heading in their direction and, when they got close enough, fired about eight shots at the two RIC men ; the girls ran away screaming and one of the RIC men made a run for it and escaped.
The other RIC man was shot dead.
His name is John Fitzgerald (pictured, 'Service Number 76431') , from Millstreet, in County Galway, and he would have been 19 years of age on the 31st of that month.
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John Cameron was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 25th November, 1879 and, at 16 years young, joined the British 'Royal Navy' ('Royal Marines').
Mr Cameron progressed through the ranks and, as a Lieutenant in the '8th Royal Marine Battalion, Royal Marine Artillery', he was placed as the Commanding Officer of the Ballydavid Coastguard Station in County Kerry.
On the 3rd July, 1921, he was shot dead at Muiríoch (Murreagh), about a half a mile from his base, by IRA Volunteers from the Ballydavid Company, Kerry Number 1 Brigade.
He was 41 years of age, and is buried in Ann's Hill Cemetery in Gosport Borough, Hampshire, in England.
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On the 3rd of July, 1921, the body of a man - believed to be a Mr Samuel Lee - was discovered at Killavally, Tyrellpass, in County Westmeath.
Mr Lee had been shot dead (on the 11th June...?) by IRA Volunteers attached to the 1st Offaly Brigade ; a label was pinned to his clothes which read - 'Spies Beware. IRA'.
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On the 3rd July, 1921, a Mr Maurice Cusack, from Ballycotton, in County Cork, and a Mr Michael 'Seamus' Whelan were in the town of Ballycotton, in County Cork, when armed marauders from the 'Queens Own Cameron Highlanders' (pictured) drove furiously into the town and started shooting indiscriminately at various targets.
Mr Cusack, a British Navy pensioner, was shot dead and Mr Whelan was seriously wounded.
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On the 3rd July, 1921, seventeen-years-young Kathleen Kelleher, from Dublin, who worked as an embroiderer, was sitting under a tree in the Phoenix Park in Dublin (pictured) with her boyfriend-for-a-week, a young Black and Tan, John McCansh.
Mr McCansh was later to say that, as he was removing his pistol from his hip pocket, the gun fired and the bullet hit Miss Kelleher in the head. She died later in Doctor Steeven's Hospital in Dublin, from the head wound.
Rumours circulated that Miss Kelleher was ending the short relationship with Mr McCansh and the British felt that they had to be seen to be addressing those rumours, so Mr McCansh was charged with 'manslaughter' in a civil court.
A British Army Major General, Gerald 'Gerry' Farrell Boyd CB, CMG, DSO, DCM GOC etc (pictured), who was in command of the Dublin military district for Westminster, stated his opinion that...
"...in view of the abnormal conditions in this country, and the necessity for carrying a loaded revolver, and also in view of the opinion of the court of inquiry, I suggest that the constable should not be tried.."
But Mr Boyd's boss in the military, General The Right Honourable (!) 'Sir' Nevil Macready BT GCMG KCB etc, perhaps recognising the outrage that the shooting and Mr Boyd's comments were causing, intervened, and directed that Mr McCansh, the shooter, should be charged with murder.
And he was - but that charge was later, again, reduced to one of 'manslaughter' and, when the case went to court, Mr McCansh was quickly acquitted.
Who was it said what about "the abnormal conditions in this country.."?
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On the 3rd July, 1921, after they were attacked by the IRA, the RIC and their colleagues in the 'Ulster Special Constabulary' raided the village of Dunamore in County Tyrone, where they shot one man and burned the parochial hall and several houses.
On the 3rd July, 1921, an RIC patrol in Moneyrea, Ballymoney, County Antrim, claim that they had called on a civilian, Mr Joseph Murray, to stop and, when he didn't, they shot him dead.
A Dublin man, Danny Duffy, who worked as a fitter in the Guinness Brewery, was on his way home after his work shift on the 3rd July, 1921, when he found his path was blocked by British soldiers at a checkpoint on Upper Clanbrassil Street, between Harold's Cross Bridge and the South Circular Road in Dublin.
The British soldiers claimed that, as it was "during curfew hours", they had called on him to stop and, when he didn't, they shot him dead.
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SO, FAREWELL THEN, CELTIC TIGER....
It had to happen, sooner or later.
Most of the pundits and economists were too busy singing the Celtic Tiger's praises to notice, but a few critical observers worried all along about the weaknesses of a boom economy that depended so much on a few companies from one place - the United States.
By Denis O'Hearn.
From 'Magill' Annual 2002.
These trends created a dynamic of class inequality that was unknown in Ireland before the 1990's.
Before 1987, non-agricultural incomes were shared out in relatively stable proportions ; wages accounted for 70 per cent of incomes and profits and professional fees 30 per cent.
But in the 1990's incomes began to shift rapidly towards profits.
By 2000, for the first time in the history of the Irish State, the profit share was virtually equal to the wage share, and personal income inequality rose as well.
While the 'Celtic Tiger' created a lot of jobs, only a few of them are the high-paying engineering jobs that we hear so much about, as foreign companies created a lot of economic growth but very few jobs...
(MORE LATER.)
On the 3rd July, 1922, Leinster House politicians issued the necessary permissions to the leadership of the Free State Army (Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy) to recruit an extra 20,000 members for at least a six-month period, and criminals, fugitives and other renegades from the six disbanded regiments of the British Army found a new entity with which to continue their
On the 13th June, 1922, the 'Royal Irish Regiment, the Connaught Rangers, the Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians), the Royal Munster Fusiliers, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the South Irish Horse Regiment' were disbanded by Westminster and the Staters stepped-in to employ the unemployed (and unemployable) ex-British soldiers against their own countrymen, women and children.
Then, on the 6th July, Leinster House issued a 'Call To Arms' order (ie 'a summons to engage in active hostilities') to its army ie carte blanche to destroy the IRA.
But the spirit and the moral right of Irish Republicanism still lives on to this day.
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On the 3rd July, 1922, Mr Florence O'Donoghue (pictured), the ex-Head of Intelligence for the Cork Number 1 Brigade of the IRA and Adjutant and Intelligence Officer of the 1st Southern Division IRA, wrote to Liam Lynch, stating...
"...my sympathies are entirely with you but, out of civil war, will come not the republic or unity or freedom or peace, but a prolonged struggle in which the best elements in the country will be annihilated or overborne..."
As it turned out, Mr O'Donoghue was right - the best of Irish republicanism was imprisoned, murdered, executed and killed by the Staters during that period in our history.
Mr O'Donoghue was by then assisting Seán O'Hegarty in setting-up the groundwork for the formation of the 'Neutral IRA Association'.
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On the 3rd July, 1922, a 63-year-old Lady, a M/s Sarah Richardson, was on Mark Street, in Dublin (between Pearse Street and Townsend Street) when she was hit by a bullet 'which had gone astray'. She died on the spot.
Some sources list the date as June 30th ; there is no more information on this shooting.
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BEIR BUA...
Republicanism in history and today.
Published by the James Connolly/Tommy O'Neill Cumann, Republican Sinn Féin, The Liberties, Dublin.
August 1998.
('1169' comment - 'Beir Bua' translates as 'Grasp Victory' in the English language.)
REPUBLICANS AND THE STATE :
A truce was called in 1921 and a period of negotiations began ; these culminated on December 6th, 1921, when 'the Treaty' was signed by the Irish delegation in London.
The 'Treaty' set out that an 'Irish Free State' would exist over 26 Counties.
That 'Treaty' was an acceptance of the British-imposed partition of Ireland into separate States in the '1920 Government Of Ireland Act' and a betrayal of the All-Ireland Republic endorsed by the Irish people in two general elections, in 1918 and 1921.
In 'Dílseacht : The Story Of General Tom Maguire And The Second (All-Ireland) Dáil', Ruairi Ó Brádaigh says -
"Griffith was elected President of Dáil Éireann (the Government of the Irish Republic) on January 10, 1922.
Two days later, in his capacity as Chairman of the Delegation to London, which signed the Treaty, he summoned a meeting of 'the Parliament of Southern Ireland' for January 14.
This was a partitionist body for 26 Counties only, created by the 'British Government of Ireland Act of 1920' and rejected by the people in May 1921 when they elected their Deputies to the All-Ireland Dáil..."
(MORE LATER.)
On the 3rd July, 1923, IRA Captain Noel Lemass (pictured) had lunch with a friend of his in the Wicklow Hotel, in Dublin and, afterwards, on his way home, as he was walking past MacNeill's Hardware shop at the corner of Exchequer Street and Drury Street, a car pulled-in abruptly beside him.
He was set upon by a group of plain-clothed Free State Army intelligence officers and thrown into the back of their car, which then sped away.
His badly decomposed and mutilated body was found on the 12th/13th October that year in the Featherbed mountain range, Oldboleys, in County Wicklow, about 20 yards from the Glencree Road, in an area locally known as 'The Shoots'.
'The Leitrim Observer' newspaper (20th October 1923) described how...
'...Civic Guards found his body, clothed in a dark tweed suit, light shirt, silk socks, spats and a knitted tie.
The pockets contained Rosary beads, a watch-glass, a rimless glass, a tobacco pouch and an empty cigarette case.
The trousers' pockets were turned inside out, as if they had been rifled. There was what appeared to be an entrance bullet wound on the left temple, and the top of the skull was broken, suggesting an exit wound.
There were obvious signs of torture. Noel was shot at least three times in the head and his left arm was fractured. His right foot was never found...'
Captain Lemass had been subjected to extreme torture ; the jury at his inquest (despite intimidation by State forces) concluded that he had been "brutally and wilfully murdered" and that "the armed forces of the State have been implicated" - he had been badly beaten, his arm and jaw were broken, and some of his fingers had been removed.
'Take it down from the Mast, Irish traitors,
the flag we republicans claim,
It can never belong to Free Staters,
You've brought on it nothing but shame...'
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Thanks for the visit, and for reading!
Sharon and the team.
