Sean O'Casey

Sean O'Casey, the youngest child of a family of seven, was born in Dublin in 1884 in one of the fine old eighteenth century Georgian mansions that had become by then "gaunt houses… sad remnants of the past ages… slum tenements crowded with povertystricken inhabitants… " His mother, Sue, a courageous and noble working-class woman, who had buried two other Johnnys, children who had fought and lost the battle against disease arising out of poverty, nursed him, petted him and pushed him out of the dark shadows into the light of the living.

O'Casey, in his autobiography, refers to his health in his early childhood thus: "Delicately and physically undecided, he crept along." He states that his mother "nursed him viciously" through his childhood illnesses. A form of ulcerated eyeballs made him almost blind. Again, it was his mother who came to his aid. Thus, plagued by poverty and general poor health, he passed his childhood on the streets of Dublin. His education was meager. A Protestant clergyman finally dragged the half-blind boy off the streets into the schoolroom. O'Casey bitterly remarks about school life - being lugged along at the backside of this soft-hatted stiffcollared egg-headed oul' henchman of heaven, to be added to his swarm of urchins cowering and groping about in the rag-and-bone education provided by the church and state for the children of those who hadn't the wherewithal to do anything better.

His school life was cut short violently, when, after the schoolmaster had given him a sound beating, he retaliated by bringing "an ebony ruler down on the pink, baldy, hoary oul' head of hoary oul' Slogan." Out in the world, lacking a formal education, he joined the ranks of the unskilled workers. Errand-boy, newspaper-sorter, dockworker, hod-carrier, stone-breaker on the roads and janitor were to be but some of the numerous jobs he was to hold until his "knock-on-the-door" of literature would be heard, and he could put away the tools of the worker and take up the tools of the writer.

All was not labor for young O'Casey, for he needed the rose as well as the loaf, and soon he began to be interested in affairs around him. From three directions the call came to him - the church, socialism, the Gaelic League. Each voice spoke to him in its own way, summoning him to its particular fold; each call, in certain respects, tempted him out of the darkness and into the light of hope. After a brief period as an active member of the church, he joined the Gaelic League, mastered Irish, and was soon so enthusiastic about the cause that his fellow-workingmen began to call him "Irish Jack." But after a fairly long period of activity, his interest in the Gaelic League began to flag (although his interest in the Gaelic language continued) when his day-to-day life and struggles among the working people directed his interest to his own class. He joined the Irish Transport and General Workers Union when he became convinced that there was a need for "a new song and a new hope…"