Society set the stage for Hibs

AS HIBERNIAN FC approaches its 150th anniversary on August 6 2025, the club’s current custodians have arranged a number of special events to celebrate the sesquicentennial. These include an exhibition to be held in St Mary’s Street Halls, the location where the club was founded on that date in 1875 by Canon Edward Joseph Hannan and Michael Whelehan.

The Halls—now known as the Edinburgh Training and Conference Centre—are located, as the name suggests, on St Mary’s Street in an area once known as ‘Little Ireland.’ A part of Edinburgh’s Old Town, its streets still proclaim that historic title through ‘Little Ireland’ signage that sits alongside the official street names. Known from its inception as the Catholic Institute, the Halls were the home of the St Patrick’s Branch of the Catholic Young Men’s Society (CYMS) under whose auspices Hibernian were founded. That birthplace church of St Patrick’s continues to function as a place of worship today , a few hundred yards from St Mary’s Street Halls in the Cowgate, the thoroughfare which formed the epicentre of Little Ireland.

While the 150th celebrations will focus on the roles of co-founders Canon Hannan and CYMS member Michael Whelehan, the society was the foundation on which they built the club. Established on October 8, 1865, by the Venerable Dean O’Brien of Limerick with the then Father Hannan—he became a Canon in 1885—appointed Chaplain, the St Patrick’s CYMS was created to provide social and recreational activities for the youths of a disenfranchised Irish immigrant community—a community who lived in abject poverty and faced discrimination and hostility from their Scottish neighbours. The society’s first home was St Joseph’s Hall in Horse Wynd, which ran from the Cowgate up to Chambers Street. Demolished as part of a slum clearance programme in 1871, it’s not to be confused with Horse Wynd at the foot of the Canongate, the location of the Scottish Parliament building.

Work on the St Mary’s Street Halls that replaced it and which was to play a pivotal role in Hibernian’s formation, commenced on April 2, 1869 when William Chambers, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, laid the foundation stone before an invited audience of civic dignitaries, Archbishop John Strain and local Catholic clergy. Describing the reason for the building's construction as being ‘for the purpose of carrying out the objects of the Catholic Young Men’s Society and the religious and social elevation of the working classes of the Catholic community’ it was to become a community hub for a community that wasn’t welcomed by much of wider Edinburgh society.

History of the CYMS

The CYMS Minute Book covering the period 1865 to 1879 records that members had to be 15 years old to join and were required to pay a weekly subscription—payable even if they were sick. Open from 10 am to 10 pm the St Mary’s Street Halls provided a wide range of social activities that included a games room with bagatelle and billiards, a reading room and a separate smoking room. Other social activities included a choir, brass, string and flute bands, and a dramatic society. Opportunities for educational advancement were provided through evening classes. The impoverished community’s financial security was also assisted through the establishment of a ‘Penny Savings Bank,’ an innovative forerunner to the Credit Unions we see today.

When formed in 1875, Hibernian Football Club, the parish football team, was just another one of myriad social and sporting activities provided for the young men of the parish. None of those present at its founding could have envisaged how it would evolve over generations to become the club we know today.

In a community whose only escape from grinding poverty and persistent prejudice was often the bottle, the CYMS also operated a Temperance Society. It’s interesting to note that boys below the society’s age limit of 15 were admitted as were girls under 15. When it came to social outreach the society under the guiding influence of Fr Hannan can be seen to have been far less bound by the male and female demarcations of the time and far more progressive than might be expected from a 19th century Church organisation. It also suggests that ‘under-age’ drinking was as prevalent in the 19th century as it was when many of us were growing up.

It also points to the fact that the St Patrick’s CYMS members were a very different body of young people than those we might imagine frequenting Church youth groups nowadays. The young men of the St Patrick’s CYMS were a world away from the acoustic guitars and Kumbaya stereotype that is attached to such organisations today. They were very much the inner city youths of their day, as evidenced through the rules set down by the CYMS Governing Council and the transgressions recorded in the Minute Book.

Covering the period 1865 to 1879, it tells us that as well as having to serve a three-month good conduct probation period before being admitted, any member on a conviction before a court or any member found to be a shebeen keeper would be summarily expelled.

An entry from 1873 informs us that: “The Council having heard with regret that several of the youths of the society have frequently behaved in a noisy and disagreeable manner to the annoyance of the older members... the Council have formed themselves into a vigilance committee... with powers to deal summarily with all parties disturbing the order and decorum of the Institute.”

Examples of that ‘disagreeable manner’ include members sanctioned for ‘much scurrilous language.’ Another entry records a complaint received from a shop owner in St Mary’s Street that members using the society’s billiard room above were spitting their tobacco out of the window onto his produce below. On October 26, 1875, it’s recorded that two separate cases of assault occurred in the Halls during the previous week. While, shortly before Hibernian’s founding, an entry of June 22, 1875, describes a member Mr J Duffy being brought before the CYMS Council on account of his conduct. Whether that’s a family relation is unknown but family ancestors James and John Duffy were young men of the parish at the time!

A further entry dated April 3, 1877, covers a discussion around the practice of giving a ‘gratuity’ to the local Police whenever an ‘entertainment’ event was held in the Halls and whether that should continue. The discussion goes on to tell us that the Police intimated they would no longer require to be paid that gratuity. Whether this is an example of 19th century Police corruption or the CYMS looking for additional protection from hostile elements is unclear. However, the motion to no longer pay is moved by the Chaplain Fr Hannan and seconded by John Duffy. If he’s the same J Duffy as mentioned above, it seems he’s back in the CYMS good books!

It can be seen that the disadvantaged youths of ‘Little Ireland’ were little different from the youths of today, both in terms of the temptations they faced and the youthful exuberance that sometimes crossed the line into what would now be described as anti-social behaviour. As the CYMS minute book vividly portrays, young people’s behaviour and human nature has never really changed.

When Canon Hannan spoke on the 25th anniversary of the St Patrick’s CYMS in 1890 he reflected that its objective had been ‘to take people off the streets and from the corners and give them a home and a screen from the terrible temptations that surrounded them.’ While he didn’t specifically refer to Hibernian, the football club was possibly the main vehicle that had provided an escape and given purpose to the youth of the parish—both those who played and those who supported the team.

Preservation and pride

The fact that the book exists is very much down to the single-mindedness of a latter-day clergyman, the legendary Canon Edward Hyland, who served as an assistant priest from 1940 to 1954 and returned to serve as parish priest from 1967 to 1988. When it came time for him to retire, fearing that it might fall into the wrong hands, he took it with him to his retirement home. It was found under his bed when he passed away in May 1997.

Concerned that a succession of Hibs owners had downplayed the club’s origins or, at worst, swept them under the carpet, Canon Hyland was also fiercely protective of the first two cups that Hibernian had won and which had remained in the parish. Kept in St Patrick’s Presbytery these were the Edinburgh Cup—which Hibernian became permanent custodians of in 1881, after having won it in three successive seasons—and the Reserve Cup.

Telling me on one occasion that they’d never leave St Pat’s—as the church is affectionately known—they did finally leave it a decade after his passing when the Redemptorist clergy who were then in situ gifted them to Hibernian. On November 15, 2008, they were handed over on the Easter Road pitch in a presentation that featured Hibs legend Pat Stanton, whose great, great uncle was Michael Whelehan. While it’s impossible to know what Canon Hyland would have made of it, I’d like to think he would have appreciated the historical symmetry. This symmetry was reciprocated when Hibernian loaned the cups back to St Patrick’s on October 9, 2024, to celebrate the church’s 250th anniversary as a place of worship.

That negativity from previous owners towards Hibernian’s early history is thankfully a thing of the past. The reawakening of pride in those origins coincided with the late Sir Tom Farmer assuming ownership of the club. A Leither, Sir Tom’s familial ancestors Philip and John Farmer played a similar role to him in resuscitating the club 100 years earlier. The publication of the seminal trilogy The Making of Hibernian by the late Alan Lugton in the 1990s was also hugely instrumental in reintroducing—and also introducing—a new generation of fans to their club’s early history and the social history that surrounded it. That reconnection to Hibernian’s origins was cemented with the introduction of the current club crest, which welcomed Hibs into the new millennium. A crest that not only displayed Hibs Edinburgh and Leith connections, but which also saw the reappearance of the Harp on a Hibernian badge.

With the club’s current owners—the Gordon family and minority partners Black Knight group—continuing that recognition and pride in the club’s Irish immigrant origins, the August 6 exhibition in St Mary’s Street Halls will play a central role in Hibernian’s 150th anniversary celebrations—celebrations that will encompass the full 150 years of Hibs’ existence but which will pay rightful homage to Canon Hannan, Michael Whelehan and the St Patrick’s CYMS without whom we wouldn’t have the Edinburgh and Scottish football institution we have today.