In the run up to the Easter Rising, the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) were busy with a number of absentees and deserters from the British Army, plus a few locals and "aliens". Possibly the strangest entry in the DMP record book in April 1916 is that of Mary O'Connor and her "Illegal possession of a teapot", while John O'Neill jumped the gun a bit with his threats to shoot 3 soldiers (Privates Massey, Burns and Beggs) of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles just before the Rising had begun.
Missing from this report but already in hand was the case of Herbert Pickering, a Fireman aboard "HMY Helga" who enlisted fraudulently into the Royal Navy having been a deserter from the Royal Artillery, originally enlisting in February 1914 and entering France on the 19th August 1914. His real name was Robert Aitken Herbert, no 75659. He appears to have re-enlisted in the army as no 194563 after the matter was "resolved" with no prison time and would leave the army in 1919.
His name appears in the Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook amongst the small number of Royal Navy men listed as wounded.
Other members of the Helga crew appear to have spent time in Mountjoy Prison but none appear to have been deserters.
