Irish Hunger Strikes Chapter 41
The Mothers
Mrs. Catherine Quinn was a widow for 24 years when she faced the most important decision of her life. It was to affect the hunger strike more than any politician or churchman or movement.
Camlough, So. Armagh
With the help of her eldest son Paddy, who was only 9 when his father died, she managed the family farm near Camlough, South Armagh. She depended on Paddy a great deal, emotionally as well as physically around the 32 acre farm. When the present phase of the struggle started, her eldest son Paddy and his brother Seamus became the focus of crown forces attention and abuse. The house raids became so frequent and intense that she eventually abandoned the farm for a small council house in town.
Paddy Quinn
The family was solid republican. Well into her eigthies Catherine Quinn’s mother would regale the boys with stories of the old IRA. An uncle was badly wounded in a shoot-out with the Black and Tans. A month after the move to Camlough, Paddy was captured, along with his neighbor Raymond McCreesh, in a similar shoot-out with a Brit outpost. He got 14 years for attempted murder and sent to the Kesh where he immediately went on the blanket. Seamus went on the run.
After 14 months on the blanket, Paddy took his first visit. Catherine hardly recognized him. At around that time, Seamus was discovered suffering from a severe kidney disease, the same that killed his father. Word reached the prison and Paddy was asked by the medical staff to be tested, but he refused. He was on the hunger strike short list and didn’t want to jeopardize doing his chances. On June 15, he started his fast.
Life and water
He deteriorated quickly and was soon in the prison hospital. His mother took it very badly, having to be helped by a warder from the visitors room on her second visit. The third visit, she could hardly speak. What she did say was Thatcher would ever give in. Bik sent a comm to Gerry A. about the situation, adding that Paddy was "sound as a bell" in terms of commitment.
He was having particular trouble holding water down. Water is life for a hunger striker. The more they drink to flush out their kidneys of poisonous material that accumulates in the bloodstream, the longer they survive. But the horrible irony was the more the men needed water the more difficult it became to get down and keep down. It began to taste revolting like grease.
All the men went through this struggle to get enough water down and stay down. At this point, Martin and Kieran were still alive, but barely, throwing up water with green bile.
Paddy and the others tried to exercise a bit, but mostly they conserved their strength, another irony. Now that they were allowed to exercise, they couldn’t. Their bones ached and they sat on their pillows.
After 30 days, Paddy was seeing double. Losing control of the eyes meant the body was feeding off brain tissue because of the lack of nutrition. He had difficulty walking and lost a great deal of weight. There was a constant buzz in his ear, like a fly trying to get out of his skull.
Mrs. Quinn
He tried as best he could to disguise his condition from his mother on visits. Some chance. Mrs. Quinn was deeply troubled. She had several meetings with Fr. Faul who instructed her, and other hunger striker family members, that if a man were to lapse into coma, then the next of kin could [and should] intervene to take him off. Once off, he couldn’t go back on, his condition was so bad.
Paddy was now constantly throwing up his water, mixed with green bile, which smelled so badly that he couldn’t stand his own stink. He vomited blood when his body purged itself of whatever water he managed to get down. His mouth was one thick, foul scum.
His body was betraying him around its weakest spot -- his kidneys.
Fighting for life
Paddy was fighting for life in the same bed that Martin Hurson died in, and he was loosing the critical battle to keep the life saving water down. He would drink a glass, then fight to keep it. But up it would inevitably come, causing great discomfort from his gut through his throat to his mouth.
He was beginning to hallucinate at night, questioning his identity, where he was, and why he was there. He reckoned he was Paddy Quinn, but wasn’t sure who that was. He only knew he shouldn’t eat the food, but he didn’t exactly know why not. He hadn’t urinated in days.
At the foot of the bed, the screws set a hearty meal three times daily.
Finally, he was able to keep water down again and urinate, but he was getting worse. He couldn’t walk at all now; his hands shook violently; and his heart raced whenever he was out of bed. Once he passed out using his wheelchair, but there was no way he would give in. No way.
"I’m not going to let him die."
On July 29, as Paddy’s sister Roisin was off to see her brother, her mother commented, "You tell him to come off, because I’m not going to let him die." Of course she said nothing to Paddy. He wouldn’t come.
On the 30th of July, Mrs. Quinn got an urgent call. She left immediately with one of Paddy’s brothers, Laurence, for the Kesh and was greeted by Fr. Murphy. Not a good sign. Paddy had become delirious and asked for food, so they called her for a decision. But now he had recovered and was holding to his fast. They begged him to come off. He didn’t want them to even talk about it for fear it would be used to disturb Kieran and Kevin or their families -- screws were listening intently to the conversation.
The next day, Mrs. Quinn’s regular visit was not allowed. Paddy’s condition was too serious. It was the merciful thing not to let her in. He was having severe fits since mid-morning - loud, agonizing screams could be heard throughout the small hospital reaching the ears of Kevin Lynch and Kieran Doherty, near death themselves, and their mothers who were with their sons.
A Princess and a Rosary
At the same moment, in another dimension in another part of the universe, it might as well have been jupiter, tens of thousands of people were in the streets, a hundred million watched on television as the Princess Diana and the Prince Charles of England exchanged vows in a magnificent cathedral in pompous fairy tale land. People cheered for them; people cried with happiness for themselves.
As Union Jacks waved gayly red, white, and blue in unionist districts throughout the north of Ireland, Mrs. Doherty and Mrs. Lynch drowned out the ghastly cries of Paddy Quinn in his prison hospital cell ripping himself apart from the inside out by saying the rosary loud and quickly with their sons.
"Well, it won’t be me"
The prison doctor told Mrs. Quinn if Paddy was taken off, his chances were 50 - 50. She said, "Take him off." That was that.
Fr. Toner beamed with delight.
Word spread quickly through the prison hospital. Kevin Lynch’s sister Mary told her mother the news and accosted her: "Who’s next to take their son off?" Poor, exhausted, beautiful Mrs. Lynch replied simply: "Well, it won’t be me." Mrs. Doherty said the same. They had given their sons their word.
Mary rushed out, leaving the two mothers alone, their hearts breaking, their love reaching unknowable levels.
Kieran and Kevin would die within a day of each other. Thomas McElwee would soon follow.
The mothers: a Pieta for Ireland
The heroes of this strange saga of courage and selfless sacrifice are the mothers, no question. The men decided they would die not give up the integrity of their principles, starve to death not give up the dream of a united and free Ireland for all of its people.
The mothers’ sacrifices would, however, endure every day and night for the rest of their lives with memories of giving birth and raising wild, lovely boys, thoughts of dead sons whom they could have saved, daughters-in-law they would never know, grandchildren they would never spoil, and the comfort of growing old among family and friends without a huge hollowness in the center.
It is a love that transcends the satisfaction and the inner peace of self sacrifice, bereft of political solace or the martyr’s joy.
The mothers achieved a new, unheard of love of never ending sorrow.
Someday, an artist of a pure and genius soul will create a Pieta for Ireland, so that we can understand.
Next: Thomas McElwee of Bellaghy
(c) 2001 The Irish People. Article may be reprinted with credit.