What happened was that two members of the printing staff, Mr. Edward Donnelly, foreman, and Mr. William MacDonnell, assistant foreman, escaped to England, taking with them stereo plates of the "suppressed" issue. From these plates, my own jobbing machines not being big enough to print a full-sized newspaper, I got a local firm to print sufficient copies to cover the Dublin supply, which, as I have explained, had been the only part of the issue which fell into the hands of the police. A quantity of these papers, made up in innocent looking parcels, my son, then a schoolboy, took over with him in the steamer from Liverpool to Dublin, as personal luggage. He was to take them to the address which had been given to him of a member of the staff who was then "on his keeping." I was alarmed the following morning, Christmas Eve, 1881, to read in the newspapers of the arrest of this gentleman, and feared that my son would also fall into the hands of the police. But he had acted with wariness. Leaving the luggage behind him in the steamer, until he found how the land lay, he saw the people of the house, heard of the arrest, and at once made his own arrangements for supplying the Dublin newsagents, in which task he received invaluable help from two gentlemen on the "Nation" staff, Daniel Crilly and Eugene O'Sullivan.
Thus the whole of the issue of the "suppressed" number actually reached its destination. For future issues arrangements were made between my old friend Mr. Patrick Egan, Treasurer of the Land League, who was then in Paris, and myself. Our letters were never addressed direct, but always through third persons, the intermediary in Paris being Mr. James Vincent Taaffe, and, in Liverpool, Miss Kate Swift. Mr. Egan had been sent to Paris to keep the League Funds out of the hands of Dublin Castle, and to maintain intact the machinery of the League, for, it must be remembered, Parnell, Davitt, William O'Brien, and most of our prominent men were at the time in jail.
Although illegal in Ireland, there was nothing in the ordinary law to prevent the printing and circulation of "United Ireland" in Great Britain. Arrangements were, therefore, made with the Metropolitan Printing Works, London, for the future production of the paper. For several weeks the papers were printed by that firm, and sent to my place of business in Byrom Street, Liverpool.
As I had, in ordinary course, to supply the whole of the newsagents in England, Wales and Scotland, the police, by whom my place was, by day and night, closely watched, could not know if in the quantity sent to me from London I was getting a supply for Ireland.
The parcels for Ireland I could not send direct from Byrom Street, as they would be followed by the police and traced. Therefore, for packing and forwarding to Ireland, we used a fish-curing shed, not far from Byrom Street, lent for the purpose by a patriotic Irishman, Patrick De Lacy Garton, at that time a member of the Liverpool City Council.
With so many friends in Liverpool willing to assist, it was not difficult to get the parcels of papers, through one channel or another, into our depot each week.
I engaged the services of Mr. Michael Wolohan, to go to Ireland, and act as forwarding agent. It was his task to get people in various parts of the country to receive parcels of "United Ireland," the papers being packed in such fashion as to correspond with the business of the person to whom each consignment was made.
For instance, the edition for the week ending December 31st was packed in hampers provided by Mr. Garton, who advised me to send the lot as dried fish, and found a reliable consignee for them in Ireland. The "dried fish" arrived safely, and then the most arduous part of Michael Wolohan's work began. For it was difficult to get the actual parcels of "United Ireland" into the hands of the agents and sub-agents unknown to the police, but this he did with consummate address, and on the whole very successfully.
On one occasion Michael wrote me he had a good consignee for "woollen goods." Nothing easier, for here was Edward Purcell, a clothier, one of our own young men, who afterwards became a city alderman, having a good business in Byrom Street, Liverpool. Besides helping actively with the "blockade running" in other ways, he at once gave us the necessary wrappers in which he had got his own goods from his woollen merchants, and assisted in packing our "woollen goods" in the correct fashion. Needless to say, these safely reached the consignee in Ireland.
Although there was no illegality in printing "United Ireland" in London, the printers were perpetually harassed by the police to frighten them into giving up the job. The parcels for the British newsagents could not legally be stopped, but with the watchful eye of the police all over Ireland on the look-out for the proscribed paper, it is not surprising that individual parcels fell into their hands. For that reason we took care to send the various kinds of goods in the names of mercantile firms whose loyalty was unquestionable. I should say that to this day these firms have no idea of the large Irish trade they were doing at this particular time.