Bulmer Hobson

He played a pivitol role in the lead up to the 1916 Rising, but who was Bulmer Hobson?

John Bulmer Hobson (14 January 1883 – 8 August 1969) was a leading member of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) before the Easter Rising in 1916, and is said to have sworn Padraig Pearse into membership of the IRB in late 1913. However, his role in the lead up to the Rising went much further.

As the Irish Examiner wrote following his death in August 1969, Hobson who faded from popular memory after the rising was an influential figure:

BULMER HOBSON had played a decisive and indispensable part in the revival of the I.RB. and of revolutionary nationalism in Ireland. Yet he disappeared completely from public life after the Rising of 1916. He had been given no warning of i: by the militant minority, although he had held such high positions in the IRB which he had personally done so much to vitalise. He was a Quaker, born at Holy wood. Co. Down and his early years, when he became a nationalist, were spent in and around Belfast. He was one of the earliest young supporters of the Gaelic League soon after its foundation, and before long, through Cumann na Gaedheal he became active in Sinn Fein, which was inspired by the "United Irishman" edited by Arthur Griffith. He was sworn in as a member of the barely resurgent I.R.B., and with Denis McCullough he founded the Dungannon Club, which was joined before long by Sean McDermott. Hobson edited its organ "The Republic. in 1907 and he founded the Ulster Literary Theatre. In Belfast, before being moved to Dublin, he founded a boys' athletic club with classes in Irish, which he soon developed in Dublin on a more ambitious scale in association with Countess Markievicz as the scouts' organisation, Fianna Eireann.

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