On 29th June 2024 Dublin City Council hosted a ‘Picnic in the Park’ to mark the unveiling of a plaque to commemorate the Patriotic Children’s Treat, which took place in Clonturk Park on 1st July 1900. Present at the unveiling were such distinguished guests as Deputy Lord Mayor Donna Cooney and Mary McAulliffe who has written widely on Irish woman, gender and sexual violence in war.
The unveiling commemorated an event that took place over a hundred years ago when tens of thousands of Dublin children and their parents attended a festival at Clonturk Park in Drumcondra. This event was in many respects a counter-protest to the visit of Queen Victoria to Dublin (3rd to 27th April 1900) and in particular the children’s entertainment event which occurred in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, attended by 30,000.
Nationalists were naturally against the visit. Maud Gonne, who had written a column titled “The Famine Queen” in the United Irishman newspaper claimed that only 5,000 of the 35,000 children in Dublin “had allowed themselves to be used for a Unionist demonstration.” In response, Gonne and other women organised a ‘National treat’ for all children which was set in Clonturk Park. That afternoon many of the guests gathered at Beresford Place before marching to Drumcondra.
The Patriotic Children’s Treat Park culminated with around 30,000 in attendance.
The committee that organised the Children’s gathering remained active thereafter and by 1900 had become Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) which later merged into Cumann na mBan.
