Frank Gallagher (author) facts for kids

Francis David Gallagher (1893–1962), also known as David Hogan, was an Irish journalist, author and Volunteer. He was born in Cork and went to Presentation Brothers College, Cork. He also studied for a short time at University College Cork.

Journalist and Writer

As a young journalist, Gallagher first worked for the Cork Free Press newspaper in London. Later, he became its last editor. The newspaper was closed down in 1916. This happened after Lord Decies, who was in charge of controlling what the Irish press published, warned newspapers to be careful. The Cork Free Press was shut down because Gallagher said that the British government was not telling the truth about the conditions of Irish republican prisoners in the Frongoch internment camp. Gallagher also wrote for another nationalist newspaper called New Ireland.

Fighting for Independence

After the Easter Rising in 1916, Francis Gallagher joined the IRA. He worked with Erskine Childers to create the Irish Bulletin, which shared news from the Irish Republic. He also fought alongside Éamon de Valera during the Irish War of Independence. Gallagher and Robert Brennan were very important in writing for the Irish Bulletin. He also wrote short stories for de Valera using different pen names.

Gallagher was sent to prison many times because of his involvement with the IRA. He went on several hunger strikes, which meant he refused to eat to protest. His shortest hunger strike lasted three days, and his longest was 41 days. In the 1920s, Gallagher and many other Irish republican prisoners went on hunger strike. They were protesting being held without charges or trials, and also the poor prison conditions. Gallagher led about 100 men on a successful 14-day hunger strike. They demanded to be treated as prisoners of war or to be released, and they were set free. In his diary from a hunger strike in Mountjoy Prison on April 5, 1920, Gallagher wrote about why he was doing it: "There is a queer happiness in me. If it were not so quiet in this cell and in the whole jail, I would sing and call out in sheer gaiety of spirit...The fight is on, the fight that now can have but one ending...triumph and freedom, something done for liberty and the rights of all men."

Later Life and Public Service

In December 1931, Gallagher was taken to court by an Irish Free State military court. He was accused of publishing articles that said the police had treated people who were against the Irish Free State government unfairly. He was found guilty and had to pay a fine.

Before the Fianna Fáil political party was formed, Gallagher wrote for An Phoblacht, a weekly newspaper for the republican movement. Later, he became de Valera's director of publicity and the editor of The Irish Press newspaper in 1931. In 1936, he was made deputy director of Radio Éireann, which is Ireland's national broadcaster. He then worked as the director of the Government Information Bureau from 1939 to 1948, and again from 1951 to 1954. Gallagher wrote many short stories, biographies, and historical pieces.

From 1954 until his death on July 16, 1962, he worked at the National Library of Ireland. At that time, he was writing a book about de Valera. Parts of this book were published after his death as The Anglo-Irish Treaty (1965). Gallagher strongly disagreed with the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and this influenced his writing. However, even though he believed de Valera was right in the conflict that followed, he tried hard to be fair to those who negotiated the Treaty, especially Arthur Griffith. He also published Days of Fear (1928) and, using his pen name 'David Hogan', The Four Glorious Years (1953).