seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Monthly Archives: June 2019


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The Crumlin Road Gaol Escape

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Eight Provisional Irish Republican Army prisoners escape from Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast, one of the most heavily guarded prisons in Europe, on June 10, 1980. Using handguns that had been smuggled into the prison, they take prison officers hostage and shoot their way out of the building and exit through the front gate.

The regime inside Crumlin Road Gaol on that day is just like any other. The prison had been the scene of several protests regarding strip-searching shortly beforehand, but the rules had been somewhat relaxed. On A and C Wings the remand prisoners are outside in the yard for exercise. As usual, several men from each wing are called for visits. Some of these visits are from solicitors and an area of the prison is set aside to allow legal teams and the accused a place to discuss their business in private.

When warders come to return one set of prisoners to their wing, the operation begins. One of the Volunteers produces a gun, forces the warders to release the other prisoners and then locks about ten warders in the cell. They then make their way to B wing’s visiting area and arrest all the warders, visitors and solicitors who are there, before locking about thirty up in a room. One warder named Killen reaches for his baton, is disarmed and hit over the head.

Two warders and a solicitor are ordered to strip and three of the IRA Volunteers, dress in two uniforms and a suit respectively, calmly walk to the main gate which is opened for them. They then pull guns on the real warders in this key security area and make them lie on the ground until their five comrades run across a small courtyard to join them.

Once outside however, the alarm is set off and British Army sentries pour a hail of automatic fire at the prisoners from a watch tower before they are able to reach the front gate. Undeterred, the prisoners dash through the bullets, weaving from side to side to throw off their attackers.

As the men make their escape, clearly visible to republican prisoners in cells on the top landing of A wing, loud cheers go up and makeshift flags are flown from the windows.

Outside the prison, cars have been parked by the IRA’s Belfast Brigade in the car park of the health clinic beside the courthouse, their ignition keys hidden under the floor mats. The prisoners run across the road towards the health centre, dodging bullets as they run. The escapees head towards the loyalist Shankill area where they commandeer cars to help their getaway.

Stunned by the daring escapees, the crown forces erect checkpoints across Belfast and along all border routes.

Seven of the escapees, known as the “M60 gang,” are brothers Tony and Gerry Sloan, Gerard McKee, Joe Doherty, Angelo Fusco, Paul ‘Dingus’ Magee and Tony Campbell. All are from Belfast and charged in connection with either an M60 machine gun attack in 1980 on a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) patrol in Andersonstown, or with the siege on the Antrim Road in May 1980, when a Special Air Service (SAS) captain is killed. The eighth escapee is Pete Ryan from Ardboe, County Tyrone who had been charged with killing an RUC Reservist and an Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier.

All eight men reach safe houses within an hour and, after a lying low for a short while, are spirited over the border to begin new lives “on the run.”

One week later, at the annual pilgrimage to the graveside of Wolfe Tone, the father of republicanism, which is always a source of renewed strength for its participants, the crowd is given an added morale boost when at the closing ceremony, one of the escapees, Paul ‘Dingus’ Magee, makes a dramatic appearance on the platform.

There are many more attempts to break free from Crumlin Road Gaol before it finally closes its doors in April 1995, having been used as a weapon in the attempted suppression of the Irish freedom struggle for 151 years.

(From: An Phoblacht Magazine, http://www.anphoblacht.com, June 15, 2006 edition)


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The Battle of Saintfield

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The Battle of Saintfield, a short but bloody clash in County Down in what is now Northern Ireland, takes place on Saturday, June 9, 1798. The battle is the first major conflict of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in County Down.

A rebel force, over a thousand strong, converge on a large house owned by the McKee family. The McKees are a family of loyalists, who are unpopular in the region because they had provided information to the authorities leading to the arrest of a radical Presbyterian minister and some members of his congregation. The McKees know that they are unpopular and are thus armed to the teeth. As the house is surrounded, shots are fired from the fortified house, hitting some of the attackers. Gunfire holds the insurgents back for a short while, until one of them, a fiddler by the name of Orr, manages to sneak around the back of the house with a ladder and sets the roof alight. The house is destroyed, and all eight members of the family inside are killed. News of this quickly reaches the British forces in the area, and a 300 strong force under Colonel Granville Staplyton, consisting of Newtownards Yeomanry cavalry and 270 York Fencibles, as well as two light cannon, march to the region.

The rebels, however, anticipate the move and are waiting in ambush. Stapylton sees the road ahead twisting into woods, and orders a pair of scouts to check for anything suspicious. The men do not seem to be particularly vigilant, as they return and declared the road ahead to be safe.

The redcoats march into the wooded area, a dense hedge snaking along the road on one side. On the opposite side, the ground steadily rises, with the areas higher up the slope dominated by demesne woods. This provides cover for the Irish. The Irish rebels are mostly armed with pikes and the terrain allows them to quickly swarm the soldiers on the road below. In the fierce hand-to-hand combat that follows the British forces are overwhelmed. One of the fencibles, a veteran of wars in Europe who manages to survive the attack later states that he had never before witnessed such fierce fighting.

Over fifty men are piked to death before Staplyton manages to order the soldiers. He then brings his cannon into play against the mass of rebels before him, inflicting enough casualties with canister and grapeshot to blunt their attack. In the meantime, Staplytons force uses the situation to march to safety.

The Battle of Saintfield is largely regarded as a victory of the United Irish rebels. Long after, in the 1950s, two skeletons, a sword and bayonet of the York fencibles are found in the area.

The rebellion in Down proves to be short lived. Only a few days later the rebel army is slaughtered at the Battle of Ballynahinch.

Many of the dead from both sides of the battle are placed in a mass grave within the grounds of the nearby Presbyterian church. Although there is a plaque signifying the location of these graves, the area seems largely neglected with what appears to be temporary vehicle access over the belligerents final resting place. In May 2010 a memorial park is finished and opened. The area has been cleared and landscaped, with several new plaques and information boards being erected. The graves have been refurbished and the headstones relaid.


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The 2017 Northern Ireland Elections

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The 2017 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland takes place on June 8, 2017. All eighteen seats in Northern Ireland are contested. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) gain two seats for a total of ten, and Sinn Féin wins seven, an improvement of three. Independent Unionist Sylvia Hermon is also re-elected in her constituency of North Down. Meanwhile, the Social Democratic & Labour Party (SDLP) loses three seats, and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) loses two seats, meaning they both lose all their representation in the House of Commons. The two parties so central to the Good Friday Agreement are not represented in Westminster nineteen years after the signing of the historic deal.

As Sinn Féin maintains a policy of abstentionism in regard to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the 2017 election marks the first parliament since 1964 without any Irish nationalist MPs who take their seats in the House of Commons in Westminster.

Nationally, the governing Conservative Party falls eight seats short of a parliamentary majority after the election, reduced to four if the absence of Sinn Féin is taken into account. The DUP thus holds the balance of power and announces on June 10 that it will support the Conservative government on a “confidence and supply” basis.

Five seats change hands in Northern Ireland. The SDLP loses its seats in Foyle and South Down to Sinn Féin and the constituency of Belfast South to the DUP. Meanwhile, the UUP loses South Antrim to the DUP and Fermanagh and South Tyrone to Sinn Féin. The number of unionist and nationalist representatives, eleven and seven respectively, remain unchanged from the 2015 United Kingdom general election, although none of the nationalist members are participating in the current Parliament.


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Death of Anglican Priest & Author Patrick Brontë

File source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Patrickbronte.jpg

Patrick Brontë, Irish Anglican priest and author who spends most of his adult life in England, dies in Haworth, Yorkshire, England on June 7, 1861. He is the father of the writers Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë.

Brontë is the first of ten children born to Hugh Brunty, a farm labourer, and Alice McClory, in Drumballyroney, County Down. At one point in his adult life, he formally changes the spelling of his name from Brunty to Brontë.

Brontë has several apprenticeships until he becomes a teacher in 1798. He moves to England in 1802 to study theology at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and receives his BA degree in 1806. He is then appointed curate at Wethersfield, Essex, where he is ordained a deacon of the Church of England in 1806, and into the priesthood in 1807.

In 1809, Brontë becomes assistant curate at Wellington, Shropshire, and in 1810 his first published poem, Winter Evening Thoughts, appears in a local newspaper, followed in 1811 by a collection of moral verses, Cottage Poems. He moves to the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1811 as assistant curate at Hartshead, where he serves until 1815. In the meantime he is appointed a school examiner at a Wesleyan academy, Woodhouse Grove School, near Guiseley. In 1815 he moves again on becoming perpetual curate of Thornton. At Guiseley, Brontë meets Maria Branwell, whom he marries on December 29, 1812.

Brontë is offered the perpetual curacy of St. Michael and All Angels’ Church, Haworth in June 1819, and he takes the family there in April 1820. His sister-in-law Elizabeth Branwell, who had lived with the family at Thornton in 1815, joins the household in 1821 to help to look after the children and to care for Maria Brontë, who is suffering the final stages of uterine cancer. She decides to move permanently to Haworth to act as housekeeper.

After several attempts to seek a new spouse, Brontë comes to terms with widowhood at the age of 47, and spends his time visiting the sick and the poor, giving sermons, communion, and extreme unction, leaving his children alone with their aunt and a maid, Tabitha Aykroyd (Tabby), who tirelessly recounts local legends in her Yorkshire dialect while preparing the meals.

Brontë is responsible for the building of a Sunday school in Haworth, which he opens in 1832. He remains active in local causes into his old age, and between 1849 and 1850 organises action to procure a clean water supply for the village, which is eventually achieved in 1856.

In August 1846, Brontë travels to Manchester, accompanied by Charlotte, to undergo surgery on his eyes. On August 28 he is operated upon, without anaesthetic, to remove cataracts. Surgeons do not yet know how to use stitches to hold the incision in the eye together and as a consequence the patient is required to lie quietly in a darkened room for weeks after the operation. Charlotte uses her time in Manchester to begin writing Jane Eyre, the book which is to make her famous.

Following the death of his last surviving child, Charlotte, nine months after her marriage, he co-operates with Elizabeth Gaskell on the biography of his daughter. He is also responsible for the posthumous publication of Charlotte’s first novel, The Professor, in 1857. Charlotte’s husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, who had been Brontë’s curate, stays in the household until he returns to Ireland after Brontë’s death, at the age of 84, on June 7, 1861. Brontë outlives not only his wife (by 40 years) but all six of his children.


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Birth of Ninette de Valois, Dancer & Choreographer

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Dame Ninette de Valois, Irish-born British ballet dancer, choreographer, and founder of the company that in October 1956 becomes the Royal Ballet, is born Edris Stannus at Baltyboys House in Blessington, County Wicklow on June 6, 1898. She is influential in establishing ballet in England.

In 1908, at the age of ten, de Valois starts attending ballet lessons. At the age of thirteen she begins her professional training at the Lila Field Academy for Children. It is at this time that she changes her name and makes her professional debut as a principal dancer in pantomime at the Lyceum Theatre in the West End.

In 1919, at the age of 21, de Valois is appointed principal dancer of the Beecham Opera Company, which is then the resident opera company at the Royal Opera House. She continues to study ballet with notable teachers, including Edouard Espinosa, Enrico Cecchetti and Nicholas Legat.

In 1923, de Valois joins Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes as a soloist. At age 26, however, she quits performing after learning she is suffering from an undiagnosed case of childhood polio. In 1926 she founds her own school, the Academy of Choreographic Art, in London. She also produces dances for Lennox Robinson at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and for Terence Gray at the Cambridge Festival Theatre.

The success of de Valois’s ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing for the Camargo Society in 1931, followed by her association with Lilian Baylis, director of the Old Vic Theatre, leads to the founding in 1931 of the Vic-Wells Ballet Company and the Sadler’s Wells School. She traces the history of the company, from its founding until it becomes the Royal Ballet in 1956, in Invitation to the Ballet (1937) and Come Dance with Me (1957).

Besides directing the company that she created, de Valois choreographs numerous ballets, including Checkmate (1937) and Don Quixote (1950). By drawing from English tradition for her choreographic material, as in The Rake’s Progress (1935), inspired by William Hogarth’s series of engravings, and The Prospect Before Us (1940), modeled on Thomas Rowlandson’s caricature of the same name, she creates a uniquely national ballet company. Her narrative ballets include prominent roles for male dancers, giving them artistic opportunities often neglected by other choreographers.

In 1963 de Valois retires as director of the Royal Ballet, although she remains head of the school until 1972. She is created a Dame of the British Empire in 1951 and is named Companion of Honour in 1980.

de Valois keeps her private life very distinct from her professional life, making only the briefest of references to her marriage to Dr. Arthur Blackall Connell, a physician and surgeon from Wandsworth, in her autobiographical writings. In April 1964 she is the subject of This Is Your Life, when she is surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the home of the dancer Frederick Ashton in London. She continues to make public appearances until her death in London on March 8, 2001 at the age of 102.

(Pictured: Ninette de Valois, circa early 1920s)


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Birth of Alasdair Mac Cába, Revolutionary & Politician

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Alasdair Mac Cába, teacher, revolutionary, politician, and founder of the Educational Building Society, is born in Keash, County Sligo, on June 5, 1886.

Mac Cába is educated at Keash national school and Summerhill College, Sligo. He wins a scholarship to St. Patrick’s College of Education, Drumcondra, Dublin, qualifying as a primary schoolteacher. He later obtains a diploma in education from University College Dublin (UCD) and is appointed principal of Drumnagranchy national school in County Sligo in 1907.

Mac Cába is elected as a Sinn Féin Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of South Sligo at the 1918 general election. In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs refuse to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assemble at the Mansion House in Dublin as a revolutionary parliament called Dáil Éireann. Mac Cába, however, does not attend as he is in prison at the time.

At the 1921 Irish elections, Mac Cába was re-elected for Sligo–Mayo East. He supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty and votes in favour of it. He is again re-elected for Sligo–Mayo East at the 1922 general election, this time as pro-Treaty Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD). During the Treaty debate he asserts that the counties of Ulster which comprise “Northern Ireland” can never be incorporated into an Irish Republic while the British Empire is what it is.

At the 1923 general election, Mac Cába is elected as a Cumann na nGaedheal TD for Leitrim–Sligo. He resigns from Cumann na nGaedheal in 1924 because of dissatisfaction with government attitude to certain army officers and joins the National Party led by Joseph McGrath.

Mac Cába resigns his Dáil seat in March 1925 along with several other TDs, and at the resulting by-election on March 11, 1925, Cumann na nGaedheal candidate Martin Roddy wins his seat. He does not stand for public office again and returns to his post as a schoolteacher.

In the 1930s Mac Cába is involved with the short-lived but widely followed Irish Christian Front, serving as the organisation’s secretary and announcing its creation to the public on August 22, 1936. He is also member of the Blueshirts during this period and later the Irish Friends of Germany during World War II, a would-be Nazi Collaborator group in the event Germany invades Ireland. He chairs their meetings, denies the group is a fifth column and expresses the belief that a German victory would lead to a United Ireland. He is interned in 1940–1941 because of his pro-German sympathies, which he claims results from the desire to “see the very lifeblood squeezed out of England.”

Mac Cába dies in Dublin on May 31, 1972, leaving his wife, son, and three daughters. There is a bronze bust of him in the headquarters of the Educational Building Society, Westmoreland Street, Dublin.


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Birth of Irish Historian Robert Walter Dudley Edwards

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Robert Walter Dudley Edwards, Irish historian, is born in Dublin on June 4, 1909.

Edwards, known to his friends as Robin and his students as Dudley, is the son of Walter Dudley Edwards, a journalist who comes to Ireland with his wife, Bridget Teresa MacInerney from Clare, and becomes a civil servant. His mother is a supporter of women’s rights and Edwards recalls that he had a ‘Votes for Women’ flag on his pram. His mother is a suffragette and a member of Cumann na mBan, a women’s organisation designed to support the Irish Volunteers. Members of Cumann na mBan gather intelligence, transport arms, nurse wounded men, provide safe houses, and organise support for Irish Republican Army (IRA) men in prison.

Edwards is first educated at the Catholic University School, then moves to St. Enda’s School, a school set up by 1916 Irish revolutionary leader Patrick Pearse, after the 1916 rising, and then Synge Street CBS, finally returning to the Catholic University School. In his final exams he fails French and Irish but gains first place in Ireland in history.

In University College Dublin, Edwards is auditor of the Literary and Historical Society, gains a first-class degree in history in 1929 followed by a first-class master’s degree in 1931 with the National University of Ireland prize. He carries out postgraduate work at the University of London and earns his PhD in 1933, published in 1935 as Church and State in Tudor Ireland.

Also in 1933, Edwards marries Sheila O’Sullivan, a folklorist and teacher. They have three children, Mary Dudley Edwards a teacher and rights activist, Ruth Dudley Edwards, a historian, crime novelist, journalist and broadcaster, and Owen Dudley Edwards, a historian at the University of Edinburgh.

Along with Theodore William Moody, Edwards founds the Irish Historical Society in 1936, and its journal Irish Historical Studies is first published in 1938.

In 1937 Edwards is awarded a D.Litt by the National University of Ireland and in 1939 is appointed to a statutory lectureship in Modern Irish History at University College Dublin. He succeeds Mary Hayden to the Chair of Modern Irish History in 1944, which he holds until he retires in 1979. His contribution to the discipline of History in Ireland is substantial and includes the setting up of University College Dublin Archives Department, now part of the School of History.

The introduction to Edwards’ book Age of Atrocity records how the leading Irish history journal, Irish Historical Studies, edited by Edwards and Moody, for the first half-century and more of its existence, systematically avoids the theme of violence, killing and atrocity during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Following his wife’s death in April 1985, Robert Dudley Edwards dies on June 5, 1988, in St. Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin after a short illness.

(Pictured: Robert Walter Dudley Edwards (left) and Theodore William Moody (right).)


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Death of IRA Hunger Striker Michael Gaughan

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Michael Gaughan, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) member, dies on hunger strike on June 3, 1974, in HM Prison Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight, England.

Gaughan, the eldest of six children, is born in Ballina, County Mayo, on October 5, 1949. He grows up at Healy Terrace and is educated at St. Muredach’s College, Ballina. After finishing his schooling, he emigrates from Ireland to England in search of work.

While in London, Gaughan becomes a member of the Official Irish Republican Army through Official Sinn Féin‘s English wing Clann na hÉireann and becomes an IRA volunteer in a London-based Active Service Unit. In December 1971, he is sentenced at the Old Bailey to seven years imprisonment for his part in an IRA fundraising mission to rob a bank in Hornsey, north London, which yields just £530, and for the possession of two revolvers.

Gaughan is initially imprisoned at Wormwood Scrubs, where he spends two years before being transferred to the top security HM Prison Albany on the Isle of Wight. While at Albany Prison, he requests political status, which is refused, and he is then placed in solitary confinement. He is later transferred to Parkhurst Prison, where four of the Belfast Ten are on hunger strike for political status.

On March 31, 1974, Gaughan, along with current Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly, Paul Holme, Hugh Feeney and fellow Mayoman Frank Stagg, go on hunger strike to support the fight of Dolours and Marion Price to obtain political status and to be transferred to a jail in Ireland. The prisoners’ demands are as follows:

  • The right to political status
  • The right to wear their own clothes
  • A guarantee that they would not be returned to solitary confinement
  • The right to educational facilities and not engage in penal labour
  • The setting of a reasonable date for a transfer to an Irish prison

British policy at this time is to force-feed hunger strikers. According to the National Hunger Strike Commemoration Committee, “six to eight guards would restrain the prisoner and drag him or her by the hair to the top of the bed, where they would stretch the prisoner’s neck over the metal rail, force a block between his or her teeth and then pass a feeding tube, which extended down the throat, through a hole in the block.”

After visiting Gaughan in jail, his brother John describes his condition, “His throat had been badly cut by force feeding and his teeth loosened. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow and his mouth was gaping open. He weighed about six stone.”

During his hunger strike, Gaughan’s weight drops from 160 lbs. to 84 lbs. He is force-fed for the first time on April 22, and this occurs 17 times during course of his hunger strike. The last time he is force-fed is the night before his death. After a hunger strike that lasts 64 days, Michael Gaughan dies on Monday, June 3, 1974, at the age of 24.

The cause of Gaughan’s death is disputed. The British government states that he died of pneumonia. The Gaughan family state that he died after prison doctors injured him fatally when food lodged in a lung punctured by a force-feeding tube. His death causes controversy in English medical circles, as some forms of treatment can be classed as assault if given without the express permission of the patient.

The timing of Gaughan’s death comes just one week after the British Government had capitulated to the demands of Ulster loyalist hunger strikers. After his death, the British government’s policy of force-feeding ends and the remaining hunger strikers are given assurances that they will be repatriated to Irish prisons. However, these promises are reneged on by the British government.

Gaughan’s body is initially removed from London and on June 7-8 over 3,000 mourners line the streets of Kilburn and march behind his coffin, which is flanked by an IRA honour guard, to a Requiem Mass held in the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Following the Requiem Mass, his body is transported to Dublin, where again it is met by mourners and another IRA honour guard who bring it to the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Merchant’s Quay, where thousands file past as it lay in state. The following day, his body is removed to Ballina, County Mayo. A funeral mass takes place on June 9, at St. Muredach’s Cathedral, and the procession then leads to Leigue Cemetery. Gaughan is given a full IRA funeral and is laid to rest in the republican plot, where Frank Stagg would join him after being reburied in November 1976. His funeral is attended by over 50,000 people and is larger than the funeral of former president Éamon de Valera the following year.


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Murder of Shane “the Proud” O’Neill

Shane O’Neill, Irish patriot known by the nickname “Shane the Proud,” is murdered in what is now Cushendum, County Antrim, Northern Ireland on June 2, 1567. He is among the most famous of all the O’Neills.

O’Neill, the eldest legitimate son of Conn O’Neill, 1st Earl of Tyrone, is a chieftain whose support the English consider worth gaining. However, he rejects overtures from Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, and refuses to help the English against the Scottish settlers on the coast of Antrim. He allies himself instead with the MacDonnells, the most powerful of these immigrants. Nevertheless, Queen Elizabeth I of England is disposed to come to terms with O’Neill who, after his father’s death, is de facto chief of the O’Neill clan. She recognizes his claims to the chieftainship, thus throwing over a kinsman, Brian O’Neill. O’Neill, however, refuses to put himself in the power of Sussex without a guarantee for his safety and his claims are so exacting that Elizabeth determines to restore Brian. An attempt to incite the O’Donnells against him, however, is frustrated.

Elizabeth, who is not prepared to undertake the subjugation of the Irish chieftain, urgently desires peace with O’Neill, especially when the devastation of his territory by Sussex brings him no nearer to submission. Sussex is not supported by the queen, who sends Gerald FitzGerald, 11th Earl of Kildare to arrange terms with O’Neill. The latter agrees to present himself before Elizabeth. Accompanied by Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond and Kildare, he reaches London on January 4, 1562. Elizabeth temporizes but, finding that O’Neill is in danger of becoming a tool in the hands of Spanish intriguers, permits him to return to Ireland, recognizing him as “the O’Neill,” and chieftain of Tyrone.

There are at this time three powerful contemporary members of the O’Neill family in Ireland — O’Neill, Turlough Lynagh O’Neill, and Matthew Ó Néill, 1st Baron Dungannon. Turlough had schemed to supplant O’Neill during his absence in London. The feud does not long survive O’Neill’s return to Ireland, where he reestablishes his authority and renews his turbulent tribal warfare. Elizabeth at last authorizes Sussex to take the field against O’Neill, but two expeditions fail. O’Neill then lays the entire blame for his lawless conduct on the lord deputy’s repeated alleged attempts on his life. Elizabeth consents to negotiate, and practically all of O’Neill’s demands are conceded.

O’Neill then turns his hand against the MacDonnells, claiming that he is serving the Queen of England in harrying the Scots. He fights an indecisive battle with Sorley Boy MacDonnell near Coleraine in 1564, and in 1565 he routs the MacDonnells and takes Sorley Boy prisoner near Ballycastle. This victory strengthens O’Neill’s position, but the English make preparations for his subjugation.

Failing in an attempt to arrange terms, and also in obtaining the help which he solicited from France, O’Neill is utterly routed by the O’Donnells at the Battle of Farsetmore near Letterkenny and, seeking safety in flight, throws himself on the mercy of his enemies, the MacDonnells. Attended by a small body of gallowglass, and taking his prisoner Sorley Boy with him, he presents himself among the MacDonnells near Cushendun, on the Antrim coast, hoping to propose an alliance. Here, on June 2, 1567, he is killed by the MacDonnells and his headless body is buried at Crosskern Church at Ballyterrim above Cushendun. His body is possibly later moved to Glenarm Abbey. Unbeknownst to O’Neill, The Scots had already come to an agreement with Henry Sidney and William Piers, Seneschal of Clandeboye, commander of the English garrison at Carrickfergus. The English Government tries to pass this off as a “drunken brawl” turned savage. Piers travels to Cushendun to take O’Neill’s head and send it to Dublin Castle.


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Death of Novelist Arthur Henry Ward

arthur-henry-wardArthur Henry “Sarsfield” Ward, prolific English novelist better known as Sax Rohmer, dies on June 1, 1959. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu.

Born in Birmingham to a working class family on February 15, 1883, Ward initially pursues a career as a civil servant before concentrating on writing full-time. He works as a poet, songwriter and comedy sketch writer for music hall performers before creating the Sax Rohmer persona and pursuing a career writing fiction.

Like his contemporaries Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, Ward claims membership to one of the factions of the qabbalistic Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He also claims ties to the Rosicrucians, but the validity of his claims has been questioned. His doctor and family friend Dr R. Watson Councell may have been his only legitimate connection to such organisations.

Ward’s first published work comes in 1903, when the short story “The Mysterious Mummy” is sold to Pearson’s Weekly. His main literary influences are Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and M. P. Shiel.

Ward gradually transitions from writing for music hall performers to concentrating on short stories and serials for magazine publication. In 1909 he marries Rose Elizabeth Knox. He publishes his first book Pause! anonymously in 1910.

After penning Little Tich in 1911 as ghostwriter for the famous music hall entertainer of the same name, Ward issues the first Fu Manchu novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, serialised from October 1912 to June 1913. It is an immediate success. The Fu Manchu stories, together with his more conventional detective series characters — Paul Harley, Gaston Max, Red Kerry, Morris Klaw and the Crime Magnet — make him one of the most successful and well-paid authors of the 1920s and 1930s. In the 28 years from 1931 to 1959, he adds no fewer than 10 new books to the Fu Manchu series.

Other works by Ward include The Orchard of Tears (1918), The Quest of the Sacred Slipper (1919), Tales of Chinatown (1922) and Brood of the Witch-Queen as well as numerous short stories.

Ward’s work is banned in Nazi Germany, causing him to complain that he could not understand such censorship, stating “my stories are not inimical to Nazi ideals.”

After World War II, Ward and his wife move to New York, only returning to London shortly before his death. He dies on June 1, 1959 at the age of 76, due to an outbreak of Influenza A virus subtype H2N2.