Sarah Sands corner, orange meets green – with unhappy results

 When Protestant William of Orange sent his men to fight off the Catholic forces of James the Second, he hoped to get rid of James forever. And he did. The Battle of the Boyne took place on 1 July 1690 on the banks of the River Boyne not far north of Dublin. William was triumphant. James was driven out and the Irish ‘troubles’ became entrenched in Ireland’s history – and the history of the Irish diaspora.  

Just over three hundred years after the Battle of the Boyne, the tensions created by this bloody battle played out on the streets of Brunswick, in particular right in front of the Sarah Sands Hotel, the southern gateway to Brunswick.

On Sunday 19 July 1896 the Police Commissioner prohibited the march. What better way to make sure there was a big turn out? And there was. Thousands found their way to this stretch of Sydney Road by whatever means was available and they succeeded in preventing the Orangemen from marching. There were violent clashes, though, and the newspaper headlines the next day shouted ‘A riotous Sunday afternoon in Brunswick’.

The following year there was huge media attention and the press published photos of masses of people at what they called ‘Red Flag’ corner. It was Sunday 18 July 1897 and almost 300 police, mostly constables on foot, had taken their places, ready to face the largest crowd ever assembled in Brunswick. It is believed that more than 30,000 people converged on the Sarah Sands corner that afternoon, arriving by tram, train and on foot from all over the city. Tensions rose as the Orangemen began their march at about 3pm and it was at this corner that the crowd broke through the barriers.

Image the excitement when a middle aged woman, later identified as 37 year old servant Johanna McMahon, leapt into the parade swirling her umbrella around. She didn’t do much damage, though, because in those days of poor roads and unmade roads, and in the middle of winter, Johanna was pushed by the police into the mud. That slowed her down enough for the police to bundle her into a cab and take her to the lockup. A few others tried to interrupt the procession but this time the marchers got through.

There were no marches, no protests the following year. So for just two years in the 1890s, this little part of Brunswick was the subject of huge media attention for its battles of the orange and the green.

And in case you’re interested, Johanna McMahon was taken before the Carlton Court, remanded to appear in Brunswick Court where she was fined 10 shillings and allowed to go home.

If you stand on the Sarah Sands corner and look around you at the recent developments that blend Brunswick’s past with its future you'll be hard put to believe the ferocity of the religious and national tensions between the English and the Irish that played out here and over many years within unions, benevolent associations, political parties and workplaces. It probably still exists in some families. It was a very real thing and affected generations of Anglo-Celtic families in Australia.

The Orange Demonstration at Brunswick, Weekly Times, 24 July 1897. The first image has the caption 'Looking on from "Red Flag" corner'. The second has the caption 'The crowd near the Sarah Sands'.