seamus dubhghaill

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

Monthly Archives: August 2023


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The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) is Established

The Electricity Supply Board (ESB; Irish: Bord Soláthair an Leictreachais), a state-owned electricity company operating in the Republic of Ireland, is established on August 11, 1927, by the fledgling Irish Free State government under the Electricity (Supply) Act 1927, to manage Ireland’s electricity supply after the successful Shannon hydroelectric scheme at Ardnacrusha and take over all existing projects for the electrification of Ireland. While historically a monopoly, the ESB now operates as a commercial semi-state concern in a “liberalised” and competitive market. It is a statutory corporation whose members are appointed by the government of Ireland.

The Shannon hydroelectric scheme at Ardnacrusha is Ireland’s first large-scale electricity plant and, at the time, it provides 80% of the total energy demands of Ireland. To give an idea of the growth in demand, the output of Ardnacrusha is now approximately two per cent of national peak demand for power.

By 1937, plans are being finalised for the construction of several more hydroelectric plants. The plans called for stations at Poulaphouca, Golden Falls, Leixlip (all in Leinster), Clady, Cliff and Cathaleen’s Fall (between Belleek and Ballyshannon in County Donegal), Carrigadrohid and Inniscarra (in County Cork). All these new plants are completed by 1949, and together harness approximately 75% of Ireland’s inland water power potential. Many of these plants are still in operation, however, as can be expected with continuing growth in demand, their combined capacity falls far short of Ireland’s modern needs.

With Ireland’s towns and cities benefiting from electricity, the new government pushes the idea of Rural Electrification. Between 1946 and 1979, the ESB connects in excess of 420,000 customers in rural Ireland. The Rural Electrification Scheme is described as “the Quiet Revolution” because of the major socio-economic change it brings about. The process is greatly helped in 1955 by the Electricity Supply Amendment Act, 1955.

In 1947, the ESB, needing ever more generation capacity, builds the North Wall station on a 7.5-acre site in Dublin‘s industrial port area on the north side of the River Liffey on the site of an old oil refinery. The original station consists of one 12.5 MW steam turbine that is originally purchased for a power station at Portarlington but instead used at North Wall. Other power stations built around this time include the peat fired stations at Portarlington, County Laois, and Allenwood, County Kildare.

Because of the risks of becoming dependent on imported fuel sources and the potential for harvesting and utilising indigenous peat, the ESB – in partnership with Bord na Móna – establishes those stations and ESB also builds Lanesboro power station in 1958. Located in County Longford, the plant burns peat, cut by Bord na Móna in the bogs of the Irish midlands. In 1965, the Shannonbridge station, located in County Offaly, is commissioned. The two stations have been replaced by new peat-fired stations near the same locations, and peat is also used to power the independent Edenderry Power Station in County Offaly.

As in most countries, energy consumption is low at night and high during the day. Aware of the substantial waste of night-time capacity, the ESB commissions the Turlough Hill pumped-storage hydroelectric station in 1968. This station, located in County Wicklow, pumps water uphill at night with the excess energy created by other stations, and releases it downhill during the day to turn turbines. The plant can generate up to 292 MW of power but output is limited in terms of hours because of the storage capacity of the reservoir.

The 1970s bring about a continued increase in Ireland’s industrialisation and with it, a greater demand for energy. This new demand is to be met by the construction of the country’s two largest power stations – Poolbeg Generating Station in 1971 and Moneypoint Power Station in 1979. The latter, in County Clare, remains Ireland’s only coal-burning plant and can produce 915 MW, just shy of the 1015 MW capacity of Poolbeg. In 2002 and 2003, new independent stations, Huntstown Power (north Dublin) and Dublin Bay Power (Ringsend, Dublin), are constructed.

In 1991, the ESB establishes the ESB Archive to store historical documents relating to the company and its impact on Irish life.

On September 8, 2003, two of the last remaining places in Ireland unconnected to the national grid – Turbot Island and Inishturk island (off the coast of County Galway)- are finally connected to the main supply. Some islands are still powered by small diesel-run power stations.

Sixty wind farms are currently connected to the power system and have the capacity to generate 590 MW of power, depending on wind conditions. These wind farms are mainly owned by independent companies and landowners.

On March 16, 2005, the ESB announces that it is to sell its ShopElectric (ESB Retail) chain of shops, with the exception of the Dublin Fleet Street and Cork Academy Street outlets, to Bank of Scotland (Ireland), converting them into main street banks. Existing staff are offered positions as bank tellers.

On March 27, 2008, the ESB announces a €22bn capital investment programme in renewable energy technology, with the aim to halve its carbon emissions within 12 years and achieve carbon net-zero by 2035.


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Death of John Francis Larchet, Composer & Teacher

John Francis Larchet, Irish composer and teacher, dies in Dublin on August 10, 1967.

Larchet is born on July 13, 1884, at Sandymount, Dublin, the son of John Edward Larchet, manager of a wine business, and his wife Isabella Emily (née Farmar). Educated at the Catholic University School in Leeson Street, Dublin, he subsequently commences study under Michele Esposito at the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM) in Dublin, winning many prizes for composition, theory, harmony, and counterpoint from 1903 to 1912. As a student at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), he obtains his Bachelor of Music in 1915 and Doctor of Music in 1917 and comes to dominate the music profession in Dublin over the next forty years, moulding the composers, teachers, and conductors of the next generation, while developing an Irish school of music based on folk tradition but writing in the modern idiom. A senior professor at the RIAM by 1920, the following year he is appointed professor of music at University College Dublin (UCD), where he remains until 1958, successfully establishing music as a serious discipline within the university. He is director of music examinations for Irish secondary schools (1907–34) and succeeds in raising standards of teaching, particularly with regard to rectifying weakness in the teaching of the theory of music.

Along with Aloys Fleischmann and composer Frederick May, Larchet keeps discourse on music in the public domain during the 1930s and 1940s, frequently addressing the need for a national school of music and a system of music education that would raise standards of musical appreciation and nurture a school of Irish composers.

Appointed music director at the Abbey Theatre in 1907, he is closely associated with Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats, establishing a tradition of music at the theatre that delights critics. A popular myth at the time is that there are some who leave the theatre during the acts and return to enjoy Larchet’s music during the intervals. Appointed musical adviser to the army in 1923, he introduces a new philharmonic pitch, and serves as president of the Dublin Grand Opera Society for many years.

A fellow of the RIAM, Larchet also conducts the Dublin Amateur Orchestra Society, is choir master of the Jesuit church in Gardiner Street, Dublin, and organises annual orchestral concerts at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). He is also involved in preparing a report for the commission on vocational organisation on behalf of the Musical Association of Ireland. The products of his own creative endeavour are mostly orchestral and choral works including An Ardglass Boat Song, Pádraic the Fiddler, and Diarmuid’s Lament.

Perhaps the main challenge facing Larchet in the 1920–50 period is the divide between “colonial” and “native” which has characterised the history of music in Ireland. A gentle-mannered, kindly man who is acutely aware of the lack of a national policy for music, he is a persuasive advocate of the European aesthetic and his main aim is said to have been “a reconciliation between the cultural chauvinism of Ireland as an emergent nation state and the central value (artistic as well as educational) of music as a vital dynamic in Irish cultural affairs.”

Although it can be argued that Larchet is not possessed of a uniquely original voice, with his authority coming rather from his enormous workload and his essential contribution as a teacher, it is no exaggeration to claim that the majority of Irish composers who emerge in the decades after the 1940s are influenced by his guidance, including Frank Llewellyn Harrison, Frederick May, Joan Trimble and Brian Boydell.

In addition to receiving an honorary Doctor of Music from the National University of Ireland (NUI) in 1953, Larchet is made a Commendatore of the Italian Republic.

Larchet dies in Dublin on August 10, 1967. He is survived by his wife, Madeleine Moore, a well-known musician, and their two daughters and son, also musicians. His daughter, Sheila Larchet Cuthbert, is an Irish harpist and author. She publishes The Irish Harp Book: A Tutor and Companion (Dublin, 1975).

(From: “Larchet, John Francis” by Diarmaid Ferriter, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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The Ballymurphy Massacre

The Ballymurphy massacre is a series of incidents between August 9 and 11, 1971, in which the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment of the British Army kills ten civilians in Ballymurphy, Belfast, Northern Ireland, as part of Operation Demetrius. They are indirectly responsible for the death of an eleventh victim. The shootings are later referred to as Belfast’s Bloody Sunday, a reference to the killing of civilians by the same battalion in Derry a few months later. The 1972 inquests return an open verdict on all of the killings, but a 2021 coroner’s report finds that all those killed had been innocent and that the killings were “without justification.”

Belfast is particularly affected by political and sectarian violence during the early part of the Troubles. The British Army is deployed in Northern Ireland in 1969, as events become beyond the control of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

On the morning of Monday, August 9, 1971, the security forces launch Operation Demetrius, the main focus of which is to arrest and intern suspected members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The Parachute Regiment is selected to carry out the operation. The operation is chaotic and informed by poor intelligence, resulting in a number of innocent people being interned. By focusing solely on republicans, it excludes violence carried out by loyalist paramilitaries. Some nationalist neighbourhoods attempt to disrupt the army with barricades, petrol bombs and gunfire. In the Catholic district of Ballymurphy, ten civilians are shot and killed between the evening of August 9 and the morning of August 11, while another dies of heart failure.

Members of the Parachute Regiment state that they were shot at by republicans as they entered the Ballymurphy area and returned fire. The press officer for the British Army stationed in Belfast, Mike Jackson, later to become head of the British Army, includes a disputed account of the shootings in his autobiography, stating that those killed in the shootings were republican gunmen. This claim is strongly denied by the families of those killed in the shootings, including in interviews conducted during the documentary film The Ballymurphy Precedent. The claim is found to be without basis by a later coroner’s inquest, which establishes that those killed were “entirely innocent.”

The six civilians killed on August 9 are Francis Quinn (19), shot while going to the aid of a wounded man, Father Hugh Mullan (38), a Catholic priest, shot while going to the aid of a wounded man, reputedly while waving a white cloth to indicate his intentions, Joan Connolly (44), shot by three soldiers as she stands opposite the army base, Daniel Teggart (44), shot fourteen times mostly in the back as he lay injured on the ground, Noel Phillips (20) and Joseph Murphy (41), shot as they stand opposite the army base. Murphy is subsequently taken into army custody and after his release, as he is dying in hospital, he claims that he had been beaten and shot again while in custody. When his body is exhumed in October 2015, a second bullet is discovered in his body, which activists say corroborates his claim.

Edward Doherty (28), is shot and killed on August 10 while walking along Whiterock Road.

Another three civilians are shot on 11 August: John Laverty (20) and Joseph Corr (43) are shot at separate points at the top of the Whiterock Road. Laverty is shot twice, once in the back and once in the back of the leg. Corr is shot several times and dies of his injuries on August 27. John McKerr (49), is shot in the head by an unknown sniper while standing outside a Catholic church and dies of his injuries on August 20. While a number of eyewitnesses state that soldiers were seen shooting toward the area, the 2021 inquest cannot establish who had killed him. The coroner notes that a more specific finding is not possible, in large part, due to an “abject failing by the authorities to properly inquire into the death of [McKerr at the time].”

Paddy McCarthy (44), an eleventh civilian, dies on August 11 following an altercation with a group of soldiers. His family allege that an empty gun is put in his mouth and the trigger pulled, he suffers a heart attack and dies shortly after the alleged confrontation.

In February 2015, the conviction of Terry Laverty, younger brother of John Laverty, one of those killed, is quashed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. He had been convicted of riotous behaviour and sentenced to six months on the eyewitness evidence of a private in the Parachute Regiment. The case is referred to court because the sole witness retracts his evidence.

In 2016, Sir Declan Morgan, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, recommends an inquest into the killings as one of a series of “legacy inquests” covering 56 cases related to the Troubles. These inquests are delayed, as funding has not been approved by the Northern Ireland Executive. The Stormont first minister, Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), defers a bid for extra funding for inquests into historic killings in Northern Ireland, a decision condemned by the human rights group Amnesty International. Foster confirms she has used her influence in the devolved power-sharing executive to hold back finance for a backlog of inquests connected to the conflict. The High Court says her decision to refuse to put a funding paper on the Executive basis is “unlawful and procedurally flawed.”

In January 2018, the coroner’s office announces that the inquest will begin in September 2018. On May 11, 2021, this coroner’s inquest finds that the ten civilians killed were innocent and that the use of lethal force by the British Army was “not justified.” The circumstances of the 11th death are not part of the inquest since Paddy McCarthy died from a heart attack, allegedly after being threatened by a soldier. Following the inquest verdict, Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, apologises for the deaths at Ballymurphy in a phone call to Foster and deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill. The lack of public apology is criticised by some relatives of the victims and Northern Irish politicians.

In May 2021, families of those shot dead by British soldiers in Ballymurphy urge the Irish government to oppose any attempt to prevent the prosecution of British soldiers alleged to have committed crimes during the Troubles.

The killings are the subject of the August 2018 documentary The Ballymurphy Precedent, directed by Callum Macrae and made in association with Channel 4.


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Death of Irish Writer Denis Johnston

Irish writer (William) Denis Johnston dies on August 8, 1984, at Ballybrack, County Dublin. He writes mostly plays, but also works of literary criticism, a book-length biographical essay of Jonathan Swift, a memoir and an eccentric work on cosmology and philosophy. He also works as a war correspondent and as both a radio and television producer for the BBC.

Johnston is born in Dublin on June 18, 1901, the only child of William John Johnston from Magherafelt, a barrister and later an Irish Supreme Court judge, and his wife Kathleen (née King), a teacher and singer from Belfast. They are Presbyterians and liberal home rulers. He sees the family home in Dublin occupied by rebels during the 1916 Easter Rising.

Johnston is educated at St. Andrew’s College, Dublin (1908–15, 1917–19), and Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh (1915–16). In 1918, he attempts to join Sinn Féin, offering to supply the party with weapons taken from his Officers’ Training Corps. In 1922, while reading history and law at Christ’s College, Cambridge (1919–23) he tries to enlist in the civil war Free State army. He goes on to study at the Harvard Law School (1923–24) and enters King’s Inns in Dublin and the Inner Temple in London.

In London, developing his interest in the theatre, Johnston abandons plans for a legal and political career.

Johnston is a protégé of W. B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw, and has a stormy friendship with Seán O’Casey. He is a pioneer of television and war reporting. He works as a lawyer in the 1920s and 1930s before joining the BBC as a writer and producer, first in radio and then in the fledgling television service. His broadcast dramatic work includes both original plays and adaptation of the work of many different writers.

Johnston’s first play, The Old Lady Says “No!”, helps establish the worldwide reputation of Dublin’s Gate Theatre. His second play, The Moon in the Yellow River, has been performed around the globe in numerous productions featuring such storied names as James Mason, Jack Hawkins, Claude Rains, Barry Fitzgerald, James Coco and Errol Flynn. Later plays deal with the life of Jonathan Swift, the 1916 Rebellion, the pursuit of justice, and the fear of death. He writes two opera libretti and a pageant.

“Passionate in his radical skepticism and loathing of what he saw as the pernicious influence of the Roman Catholic Church,” at the end of 1933, Johnston joins the trade unionist John Swift, the Dublin novelist Mary Manning, and fellow northerner, the libertarian socialist Jack White, in forming The Secular Society of Ireland. “Convinced that clerical domination in the community is harmful to advance,” the society seeks “to establish in this country complete freedom of thought, speech and publication, liberty for mind, in the widest toleration compatible with orderly progress and rational conduct.” Among other things it aims to terminate the clerically-dictated ban on divorce, the Censorship of Publications Act and the system of clerical management, and consequent sectarian teaching, in schools.

This is at a time of heightened clerical militancy and as soon the meeting place of the Society (from which it distributed the British journal The Freethinker) is exposed, it has to shift to private houses outside of Dublin. In 1936, Johnston and the other members disband the society and donate the proceeds to the government of the beleaguered Spanish Republic. He has become a recognised man of the left. In 1930 he joins the Irish Friends of Soviet Russia, and though never a party member, until as late as the 1950s he professes faith in a communist future.

During World War II he serves as a BBC war correspondent, reporting from El Alamein, through the Italian campaign, to Buchenwald and Adolf Hitler‘s Berghof. For this he is awarded an OBE, a mention in dispatches, and the Yugoslav Partisans Medal. He then becomes Director of Programmes for the television service.

Johnston later moves to the United States and teaches at Mount Holyoke College, Smith College and other universities. He keeps extensive diaries throughout his life, now deposited in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, and these together with his many articles and essays give a distinctive picture of his times and the people he knew. Another archive of his work is held at the library of Ulster University at Coleraine. He receives honorary degrees from Ulster University and Mount Holyoke College and is a member of Aosdána.

Johnston and actress Shelah Richards are the parents of Jennifer Johnston, a respected novelist and playwright, and a son, Micheal. His second wife is the actress Betty Chancellor, with whom he has two sons, Jeremy and Rory.

Johnston dies on August 8, 1984, at Ballybrack, County Dublin, and is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral close. His epitaph is a quotation from The Old Lady Says “No!” – Emmet’s lines praising Dublin “the strumpet city.”

Johnston’s war memoir, Nine Rivers from Jordan, reaches The New York Times‘ Best Seller list and is cited in the World Book Encyclopedia‘s 1950s article on World War II under “Books to Read,” along with Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, et al. Joseph Ronsley cites an unnamed former CBS Vietnam War correspondent who called the book the “Bible,” carrying it with him constantly, “reading it over and over in the field during his tour of duty.” In a profile in The New Yorker in 1938, Clifford Odets is quoted as saying that the only playwrights he admires are John Howard Lawson, Sean O’Casey, and Denis Johnston.

The Denis Johnston Playwriting Prize is awarded annually by Smith College Department of Theatre for the best play, screenplay or musical written by an undergraduate at Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Amherst College, Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The prize is endowed by his former student at Smith, Carol Sobieski.


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Birth of Henry Lawes Luttrell, 2nd Earl of Carhampton

General Henry Lawes Luttrell, 2nd Earl of Carhampton PC, Anglo-Irish politician and soldier, who both in public and private life attracts scandal, is born on August 7, 1743. He is spurned by colleagues in the British House of Commons who believe that in the election of 1769 he played an underhand role in denying his seat to the popular choice, the reformer John Wilkes. In 1788 he is publicly accused in Dublin of raping a twelve-year-old girl. Ten years later, his command in the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 is criticised by fellow officers for its savagery, and not least against women. His last years in Parliament are marked by his opposition to Catholic Emancipation, and to parliamentary reform.

Luttrell is the scion of an Anglo-Irish landed family, descendants of Sir Geoffrey de Luterel, who established Luttrellstown Castle, County Dublin, in the early 13th century. His grandfather, Henry Luttrell, had been a pardoned Jacobite commander murdered on the street in Dublin in 1717 supposedly by his former comrades. His father, Simon Luttrell, is successively titled Baron Irnham, Viscount Carhampton and Earl Carhampton, all in the Peerage of Ireland. His mother, Maria, is the daughter of Sir Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica, and the eventual heir to a slave plantation on the West Indian Island which, on her husband’s death in 1787, passes to her son.

Educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, Luttrell is commissioned into the 48th (Northamptonshire) Regiment of Foot in 1757. Two years later he becomes lieutenant of the 34th (Cumberland) Regiment of Foot.

Father and son, both accounted “notorious womanizers,” have a bitter relationship. His father once challenges him to a duel, but he declines, observing that his father is not a gentleman.

Luttrell, described as “strong in body, if not in mind,” achieves a reputation for bravery as a soldier during the Seven Years’ War, becoming Deputy Adjutant-General of the British Forces in Portugal. In 1768 he becomes a Tory Member of Parliament representing Bossiney.

With the support of the Grafton ministry and of the Court, in 1769 Luttrell stands in Middlesex against John Wilkes, the radical and popular figure who had already been the constituency’s three-time democratic choice. He loses the poll (1,143 votes to 269) but is seated in Parliament, Wilkes having once again been barred as an adjudged felon. As a result of the affair, for some months, Luttrell dares not appear in the street and is “the most unpopular man in the House of Commons.”

The government rewards Luttrell by appointing him Adjutant General for Ireland in 1770. He continues to sit in the Commons, where he describes the Whigs in their opposition to the conduct of the American War, as “the abetters of treason and rebellion combined purposely for the ruin of their country.”

Luttrell becomes active in Irish politics and between 1783 and 1787, he sits in the Irish House of Commons for Old Leighlin. On his father’s death in 1787, he succeeds to the earldom of Carhampton and other titles. He becomes Colonel of the 6th Dragoon Guards and Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance in Ireland.

In 1788, Luttrell is publicly accused in Dublin of the rape of a 12-year-old girl. Having been paid to deliver a message, Mary Neal claims she is bundled into a brothel and there assaulted throughout the night by Luttrell. The keeper of the house, Maria Llewellyn, is charged in a case marked by accusations of witness tampering, the death in prison of Mary’s mother and newborn baby sister and by the insinuation that Mary was already working as a prostitute. The affair becomes a cause célèbre with the public intervention of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, later a founding member of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen. To clear Mary’s name he brings her to Dublin Castle to see the Lord Lieutenant, John Fane, 10th Earl of Westmorland. Westmorland, unmoved, pardons Llewellyn and sets her at liberty. Luttrell is never asked to answer for raping Mary Neal. In 1790 he re-enters the British Parliament as Member for Plympton Erle.

In 1791 and 1792, Luttrell helps vote down bills to abolish the slave trade. Negroes, he proposes, only want “to murder their masters, ravish their women, and drink all their rum.” At the same time, he opposes lifting civil disabilities on Roman Catholics by abolishing the Test Act in Scotland and speaks scathingly of parliamentary reform.

In October 1793, a younger brother, Temple Simon Luttrell, is arrested in Boulogne and, until February 1795, is held in Paris where, on the strength of their sister Anne Luttrell being married to Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland, he is publicly exhibited as the brother of the king of England.

In 1795, Luttrell is entrusted with the breakup and disarming of Defenders, the agrarian semi-insurgency, in Connacht. His proceedings and impressment of some 1,300 “rebels” into the British navy elicits criticism in otherwise loyal circles.

In 1796, with the leaders of the democratic party, the United Irishmen, preparing for a French-assisted insurrection, Luttrell is given overall command of the Crown forces in Ireland. He demonstrates still greater ruthlessness in attempting to “pacify” the country and suppress the eventual rising in the summer of 1798. His command has the unusual distinction of being upbraided by his successor as Commander in Chief, Sir Ralph Abercromby, for an army “in a state of licentiousness, which must render it formidable to everyone but the enemy.”

Luttrell is seen by his critics as having “fanned the flame of disaffection into open rebellion” by “the picketings, the free quarters, half hangings, flogging and pitch-cappings” he directs.

In July 1799, Luttrell sells his Irish property and by his own later account, he takes no part in the Acts of Union. He claims to be “disgusted at the scene that was passing before me”, and to abandon Ireland because, under a “cowardly” government, he sees “the country likely to become Catholic.” When the Dublin Post of May 2, 1811, erroneously reports his death, he demands a retraction which they print under the headline Public Disappointment.

Luttrell purchases an estate at Painshill Park in Surrey and lives for several years in relative obscurity. From 1813 he harries the government of Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, with the claim that George III had promised him a secure seat in the Commons. In June 1817, five weeks short of his eightieth birthday, he finds his own way back to Parliament as Member for Ludgershall and revenges himself, in the four years remaining to him, by voting with the opposition. This, however, does not extend to joining in the attacks on the domestic spy system in 1818 nor to voting for parliamentary reform in 1819. Moreover, in the wake of the Peterloo Massacre, he supports the government, lauding the use of deadly force against “the Radicals and their system.”

Luttrell dies at his home at Bruton Street, London, on April 25, 1821.


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Death of Annie Horniman, Theatre Patron & Manager

Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman CH, English theatre patron and manager, dies on August 6, 1937, while visiting friends in Shere, Surrey, England. She establishes the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and founds the first regional repertory theatre company in Britain at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. She encourages the work of new writers and playwrights, including W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and members of what become known as the Manchester School of dramatists.

Horniman is born at Surrey Mount, Forest Hill, London, on October 3, 1860, the elder child of Frederick John Horniman and his first wife Rebekah (née Emslie). Her father is a tea merchant and the founder of the Horniman Museum. Her grandfather is John Horniman who founds the family tea business of Horniman and Company. She and her younger brother Emslie are educated privately at their home. Her father is opposed to the theatre, which he considers sinful, but their German governess takes her and Emslie secretly to a performance of The Merchant of Venice at The Crystal Palace when she is fourteen years old.

Horniman’s father allows her to enter the Slade School of Fine Art in 1882. Here she discovers that her talent in art is limited but she develops other interests, particularly in the theatre and opera. She takes great pleasure in Richard Wagner‘s Der Ring des Nibelungen and in Henrik Ibsen‘s plays. She cycles in London and twice over the Alps, smokes in public and explores alternative religions. The “lonely rich girl” has become “an independent-minded woman.” In 1890 she joins the occult society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where she remains a member until disagreements with its leaders lead to her resignation in 1903. During this time she meets and becomes a friend of W. B. Yeats, acting as his amanuensis for some years. Their friendship endures. Frank O’Connor recalls that on the day Yeats hears of her death, he spends the entire evening speaking of his memories of her.

Horniman’s first venture into the theatre is in 1894 and is made possible by a legacy from her grandfather. She anonymously supports her friend Florence Farr in a season of new plays at the Royal Avenue Theatre, London. This includes a new play by Yeats, The Land of Heart’s Desire, and the première of George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man. In 1903 Yeats persuades her to go to Dublin to back productions by the Irish National Theatre Society. Here she discovers her skill as a theatre administrator. She purchases a property and develops it into the Abbey Theatre, which opens in December 1904. Although she moves back to live in England, she continues to support the theatre financially until 1910. Meanwhile, in Manchester she purchases and renovates the Gaiety Theatre in 1908 and develops it into the first regional repertory theatre in Britain.

At the Gaiety, Horniman appoints Ben Iden Payne as the director and employs actors on 40-week contracts, alternating their work between large and small parts. The plays produced include classics such as Euripides and Shakespeare, and she introduces works by contemporary playwrights such as Ibsen and Shaw. She also encourages local writers who form what becomes known as the Manchester School of dramatists, the leading members of which are Harold Brighouse, Stanley Houghton and Allan Monkhouse. The Gaiety company undertakes tours of the United States and Canada in 1912 and 1913. Horniman becomes a well-known public figure in Manchester, lecturing on subjects which include women’s suffrage and her views about the theatre. In 1910 she is awarded the honorary degree of MA by the University of Manchester. During World War I the Gaiety continues to stage plays but financial difficulties lead to the disbandment of the permanent company in 1917, following which productions in the theatre are by visiting companies. In 1921 she sells the theatre to a cinema company.

As a result of her tea connection, Horniman is known as “Hornibags.” She holds court at the Midland Hotel, wearing exotic clothing and openly smoking cigarettes, which is considered scandalous at the time. She introduces Manchester to what is called at the time “the play of ideas.” The theatre critic James Agate notes that her high-minded theatrical ventures have “an air of gloomy strenuousness” about them.

Horniman moves to London where she keeps a flat in Portman Square. In 1933 she is made a Companion of Honour. She and Algernon Blackwood might be the only past or present members of an occult society to receive a United Kingdom honour.

Horniman dies, unmarried, on August 6, 1937, while visiting friends in Shere, Surrey. Her estate amounts to a little over £50,000. The Annie Horniman Papers are held in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library at the University of Manchester. Her portrait, painted by John Butler Yeats in 1904, hangs in the public area of the Abbey Theatre.


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Birth of Fr. Alec Reid, Facilitator in the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Alexander Reid CSsR, Irish Catholic priest noted for his facilitator role in the Northern Ireland peace process, is born in Dublin on August 5, 1931. BBC journalist Peter Taylor subsequently describes Reid’s role as “absolutely critical” to the success of the peace process.

Reid is raised in Nenagh, County Tipperary, from the age of six following the death of his father. He studies English, history and philosophy at University College Galway.

Reid is professed as a Redemptorist in 1950 and ordained a priest seven years later. For the next four years, he gives Parish Missions in Limerick, Dundalk and Galway (Esker), before moving to Clonard Monastery in Belfast, where he spends almost the next forty years. The Redemptorist Monastery at Clonard stands on the interface between the Catholic nationalist Falls Road and the Protestant loyalist Shankill Road areas of west Belfast.

In the late 1980s, Reid facilitates a series of meetings between Gerry Adams and John Hume, in an effort to establish a “Pan-Nationalist front” to enable a move toward renouncing violence in favour of negotiation. Reid, himself a staunch nationalist who favours a united Ireland and the withdrawal of British forces from Northern Ireland, then acts as their contact person with the Irish Government in Dublin from a 1987 meeting with Charles Haughey up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In this role, which is not public knowledge at the time, he holds meetings with various Taoisigh, and particularly with Martin Mansergh, advisor to various Fianna Fáil leaders. After the eventual success of the peace negotiations, Gerry Adams says, “there would not be a peace process at this time without [Father Reid’s] diligent doggedness and his refusal to give up.”

In 1988 in Belfast, Reid delivers the last rites to two British Army corporals, David Howes and Derek Wood of the Royal Corps of Signals, who are killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) – an event known as the corporals killings – after they drive into the funeral cortège of IRA member Kevin Brady, who had been killed in the Milltown Cemetery attack. A photograph of his involvement in that incident becomes one of the starkest and most enduring images of the Troubles. Unknown until years later, he is carrying a letter from Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams to Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume outlining Adams’ suggestions for a political solution to the Troubles. Adams later tells the BBC in 2019 that Reid also advised U.S Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith during the peace process, stating “He was talking to her on the side and she was talking to her brother Teddy.”

After he moves to Dublin, Reid is involved in peace efforts in the Basque Country. In January 2003, he is awarded the Sabino Arana 2002 “World Mirror” prize, by the Sabino Arana Foundation in Bilbao, in recognition of his efforts at promoting peace and reconciliation. He and a Methodist minister, the Rev. Harold Good, announce that the IRA has decommissioned their arms at a news conference in September 2005.

Reid is involved in controversy in November 2005 when he makes comments during a meeting in Fitzroy Presbyterian Church concerning the Unionist community in Northern Ireland. When the loyalist activist Willie Frazer makes remarks that Catholics had butchered Protestants during the Troubles, Reid angrily responds, “You don’t want to hear the truth. The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews.” Reid later apologises, saying his remarks had been made in the heat of the moment. In an interview with CNN, he says that “The IRA were, if you like, a violent response to the suppression of human rights.”

Reid dies in a Dublin hospital on November 22, 2013. He is survived by two sisters and an aunt, and is buried in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast.


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Birth of Gerry Cooney, Former Professional Boxer

Gerald Arthur Cooney, American former professional boxer who competes from 1977 to 1990, is born into a blue-collar Irish Catholic family on August 4, 1956, in Manhattan, New York City. He challenges twice for world heavyweight titles in 1982 and 1987. He is widely regarded as one of the hardest punchers in heavyweight history.

Cooney is encouraged to become a professional fighter by his father. His brother, Tommy Cooney, is also a boxer and reaches the finals of the New York Golden Gloves Sub-Novice Heavyweight division. His grandparents lived in Placentia, Newfoundland, in Canada.

Fighting as an amateur, Cooney wins international tournaments in England, Wales, and Scotland, as well as the New York Golden Gloves titles. He wins two New York Golden Gloves Championships, defeating Larry Derrick to win the 1973 160-lb Sub-Novice Championship and Earlous Tripp to win the 1976 Heavyweight Open Championship. In 1975 he reaches the finals of the 175-lb Open division, but is defeated by Johnny Davis. He trains at the Huntington Athletic Club in Long Island, New York, where his trainer is John Capobianco. His amateur record consists of 55 wins and 3 losses.

When Cooney turns professional, he signs with co-managers Mike Jones and Dennis Rappaport. He is trained by Victor Valle. Known for his big left-hook and his imposing size, he has his first paid fight on February 15, 1977, beating Billy Jackson by a knockout in one round. Nine wins follow and he gains attention as a future contender, although his opponents are carefully chosen. He moves up a weight class and fights future world cruiserweight champion S. T. Gordon in Las Vegas, winning by a fourth round disqualification. He has eleven more wins, spanning 1978 and 1979. Among those he defeats are Charlie Polite, former U.S. heavyweight champion Eddie Lopez, and Tom Prater. These are not rated contenders, however.

By 1980, Cooney is being featured on national television. Stepping up, he beats one-time title challengers Jimmy Young and Ron Lyle, both by knockout. The Young fight is stopped because of cuts sustained by Young. By then Cooney is ranked number 1 by the World Boxing Council (WBC) and eager for a match with champion Larry Holmes.

In 1981, Cooney defeats former world heavyweight champion Ken Norton by knockout just 54 seconds into the first round with a blisteringly powerful attack. This ties the record set in 1948 by Lee Savold for the quickest knockout in a main event in Madison Square Garden. Since his management team is unwilling to risk losing a big future pay day with Holmes by having him face another viable fighter, Cooney does not fight for 13 months after defeating Norton.

The following year, Holmes agrees to fight Cooney with the fight held on June 11, 1982. With a purse of ten million dollars for the challenger, it is the richest fight in boxing history to that time. The promotion of the fight takes on racial overtones that are exaggerated by the promoters, something Cooney does not agree with. He believes that skill, not race, should determine if a boxer is good. However, if he wins, he would become the first Caucasian world heavyweight champion since Swede Ingemar Johansson defeated Floyd Patterson 23 years earlier. Don King calls Cooney “The Great White Hope.” The bout draws attention worldwide, and Larry Holmes vs. Gerry Cooney is one of the biggest closed-circuit/pay-per-view productions in history, broadcast to over 150 countries.

Cooney fights bravely after he is knocked down briefly in the second round. He is fined three points for repeated low blows. After 12 rounds, the more skillful and experienced Holmes finally wears him down. In round 13, his trainer, Victor Valle, steps into the ring, forcing the referee to stop the fight. Two of the three judges would have had Cooney ahead after the 12th round if it were not for the point deductions. He and Holmes become friends after the fight, a relationship that endures for them. On December 14, 1982, he fights Harold Rice, the heavyweight champion of Connecticut, in a four-round bout. No winner is declared, so he tells the crowd following the bout, “This is only an exhibition. I’m sorry if I disappointed anybody. I’m trying to work myself back in shape so I can knock out Larry Holmes. Everything is OK. I felt a little rusty, but that is normal. It has been a while. I felt good in front of the people.”

After a long layoff, Cooney fights in September 1984, beating Phillip Brown by a 4th-round knockout in Anchorage, Alaska. He fights once more that year and wins, but personal problems keep him out of the ring.

Although Cooney fights only three official bouts in five years following his loss to Holmes, in 1987 he challenges former world heavyweight and world light heavyweight champion Michael Spinks in a title bout. He appears past his prime and Spinks, boxing carefully with constant sharp counters, knocks him out in the fifth round. His last fight is in 1990. He is knocked out in a match-up of power-punching veterans in two rounds by former world champion George Foreman. He does stagger Foreman in the first round, but he is over-matched, and Foreman knocks him out two minutes into the second round.

The losses to Holmes, Spinks, and Foreman exposes Cooney’s Achilles’ heel: his inability to clinch and tie up his opponent when hurt. In the Foreman fight, he rises from a second-round knockdown and stands in the center of the ring as Foreman delivers the coup de grâce.

Cooney compiles a professional record of 28 wins and 3 losses, with 24 knockouts. Not a single one of his fights ever goes the distance in a 12 or 15-round match. He is ranked number 53 on The Ring‘s list of “100 Greatest Punchers of All Time.”

Cooney founds the Fighters’ Initiative for Support and Training, an organization which helps retired boxers find jobs. He is deeply involved in J.A.B., the first union for boxers. He becomes a boxing promoter for title bouts featuring Roberto Durán, Héctor Camacho, and George Foreman. He is a supporter of the “hands are not for hitting” program, which tries to prevent domestic violence. He guides young fighters in the gym. In June 2010, he becomes the co-host of “Friday Night at the Fights” on Sirius XM radio.

Cooney resides in Fanwood, New Jersey, with his wife Jennifer and two of their three children, Jackson and Sarah. His son Chris resides in New York. He has been inducted into the Hall of Fame at Walt Whitman High School (New York), where he graduated.


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Birth of Terry Wogan, Irish-British Radio & Television Broadcaster

Sir Michael Terence Wogan KBE DL, Irish-British radio and television broadcaster who works for the BBC in the United Kingdom (UK) for most of his career, is born at Cleary’s Nursing Home, Elm Park, Limerick, County Limerick, on August 3, 1938. Between 1993 and his semi-retirement in December 2009, his BBC Radio 2 weekday breakfast programme Wake Up to Wogan regularly draws an estimated eight million listeners. He is believed at the time to be the most listened-to radio broadcaster in Europe.

Wogan is the elder of two children. He is the son of the manager of Leverett & Frye, a high-class grocery store in Limerick, and is educated at Crescent College, a Jesuit school, from the age of eight. He experiences a strongly religious upbringing, later commenting that he had been brainwashed into believing by the threat of going to hell. Despite this, he often expresses his fondness for the city of his birth, commenting on one occasion that “Limerick never left me, whatever it is, my identity is Limerick.”

At the age of 15, after his father is promoted to general manager, Wogan moves to Dublin with his family. While living there he attends Crescent College’s sister school, Belvedere College. He participates in amateur dramatics and discovers a love of rock and roll. After leaving Belvedere in 1956, he has a brief career in the banking profession, joining the Royal Bank of Ireland. Still in his twenties, he joins the national broadcaster of Ireland, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), as a newsreader and announcer, after seeing a newspaper advertisement inviting applicants.

Wogan conducts interviews and presents documentary features during his first two years at RTÉ, before moving to the light entertainment department as a disc jockey and host of TV quiz and variety shows such as Jackpot, a top-rated quiz show on RTÉ in the 1960s.

Wogan is a leading media personality in Ireland and Britain from the late 1960s, and is often referred to as a “national treasure.” In addition to his weekday radio show, he is known for his work on television, including the BBC One chat show Wogan, presenting Children in Need, the game show Blankety Blank and Come Dancing. He is the BBC’s commentator for the Eurovision Song Contest from 1971 to 2008 (radio in 1971, 1974–1977; television in 1973, 1978, 1980–2008) and the Contest’s host in 1998. From 2010 to 2015 he presents Weekend Wogan, a two-hour Sunday morning show on BBC Radio 2.

In 2005, Wogan acquires British citizenship in addition to his Irish nationality and is awarded a knighthood in the same year and is therefore entitled to use the title “Sir” in front of his name.

Wogan’s health declines after Christmas 2015. He does not present Children in Need in November 2015, citing back pain as the reason for his absence from the long-running annual show. One of his friends, Father Brian D’Arcy, visits him during January and notices he is seriously ill. He dies of cancer at the age of 77 on January 31, 2016 at his home.

British Prime Minister David Cameron says, “Britain has lost a huge talent.” President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins praises Wogan’s career and his frequent visits to his homeland. Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Tánaiste Joan Burton remember Wogan for his role in helping Anglo-Irish relations during the Troubles. D’Arcy speculates that a public funeral would be logistically difficult, as there would be too many people wanting to pay their respects.

After Wogan’s death and his private funeral a few weeks later, a public memorial service is held on September 27 the same year. This is held at Westminster Abbey and is opened by a recording of Wogan himself, and features a number of his celebrity friends making speeches, such as Chris Evans and Joanna Lumley. The service is broadcast live on BBC Radio 2.

On November 16, 2016, the BBC renames BBC Western House, home of BBC Radio 2, in his memory, to BBC Wogan House.


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The Holywell Ambush

The Holywell Ambush is an ambush on the Ballyhaunis to Claremorris road near Holywell in the early hours of Monday, August 2, 1920, carried out by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence. Approximately 20 local IRA volunteers commanded by Patrick Kenny attack a British Military outpost that is guarding a broken down lorry.

A large lorry transporting petrol which is part of a British military convoy travelling from Claremorris towards Ballyhaunis comes off the road on the Claremorris-Ballyhaunis road near Holywell on Saturday, July 31, 1920. The driver of the lorry loses control and crashes off the road into the bog below. The lorry sinks somewhat and is stuck in the bog. A military guard of between 12-20 British soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who are garrisoned in the old workhouse in Claremorris, is placed on the lorry while the rest of the convoy continues on their journey.

The soldiers set up camp in a little old, abandoned house nearby, throwing a large tarpaulin over the roof of the house for shelter. They place two sentries on the road while the rest of the guard retires to the abandoned house where they light a fire in the ruin’s fireplace. Martin Forkhan, a local IRA volunteer, happens upon the scene of the crashed lorry and immediately notifies the Ballyhaunis Battalion Commandant, Patrick Kenny, of the situation. Kenny issues instructions to mobilise all officers in the Ballyhaunis Battalion area.

On that same night, a train leaving Ballyhaunis towards Westport is held up by armed and masked men not far from the military encampment. A unit of 25 IRA men under the command of Capt. Martin Forde take control of the train after firing a number of warning shots. The IRA then removes steel shutters destined for Westport Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Barracks and bury them in the bog nearby. The steel shutters are part of a program of fortification of RIC Barracks country-wide. Some of these men then mobilise with the other IRA officers gathering at Holywell Wood, where arrangements are made for an attempt to overpower and disarm the soldiers guarding the crashed lorry.

The assembled IRA, approximately 40 strong, march to the site of the military encampment where they take up positions. The volunteers are unsure of the size of the British force guarding the lorry, as all they can see is one sentry. An IRA officer approaches the sentry and asks for a light for a cigarette. The sentry sends him into the camp. As he lights his cigarette from the camp fire he looks around and counts 18 rifles present. It is then presumed that there are roughly 18 soldiers at the encampment. Cmdt. Kenny mades a plan and orders an attack, but as the IRA volunteers are crawling through the fields toward their assigned positions to surround the encampment, a line of motorcars appears on the Claremorris road. The headlights from the motorcars would have exposed the positions taken up by the IRA, so due to their poor positions, the delay in organising a plan and the coming dawn, it is decided that the attack is to be postponed until the following night.

The next day, Sunday, August 1, 1920, a section of men under the command of Capt. Patrick McNieve is positioned near the site of the encampment to keep it under observation while the officers mobilise the entire battalion. On this day, there are sports taking place in Aghamore and many of the battalions volunteers gather in that area so are easily located. Back at Holywell, scouts are posted on the surrounding roads to notify of any advancing British reinforcements and a trench has been dug across the road to delay any traffic from getting by. During the day, members of Cumann na mBán assist in transferring ammunition from arms dumps to the ambush site. That night, with all available men in the battalion area mobilised, the IRA assembles once more and organises a plan of attack. Orders are issued, they manoeuvre into their assigned positions and wait. D Coy (Brackloon) proceeds to their positions between Ballyhaunis and Holywell where they are on outpost duty guarding the road about half a mile from the ambush site. The IRA officers decide that while the soldiers in the camp sleep, some volunteers will attempt to sneak into the camp and take their weapons. Cmdt. Patrick Kenny leads a small ambush party of about 20 men and creeps into the camp at approximately 3:00 a.m. They are armed with shotguns and revolvers. A further 188 IRA men, many of them unarmed, from the Battalion are on scouting, road trenching, sentry and outpost duties in the surrounding district.

The ambush party successfully infiltrates the camp without alerting the sentries and Cmdt. Kenny manages to gather up five or six rifles that are stacked together. But as he is leaving the camp, the alarm is raised and the British soldiers begin to awaken. The IRA shouts a demand for the British military guard to surrender but when no surrender comes, the IRA opens fire. Three British soldiers are badly wounded in the opening salvo. One takes a full shotgun blast to his back, another has a portion of his arm blown off and the third is badly wounded in the leg. With three of their men knocked out, the British soldiers organise their defence and return fire on the IRA. The IRA ambush party retreats to positions behind a fence where they maintain constant fire on the camp. A fierce gun battle ensues. In the darkness, as Cmdt. Kenny retreats with the rifles in his arms, he is caught in the crossfire and severely wounded in the left arm and face by a shotgun blast from one of his own men. He falls from his wounds and drops the rifles he had been carrying. Capt. Martin Forde and several other officers run to Kenny’s aid. Forde and his comrades are able to carry Kenny to safety. The battle continues on for about an hour and before dawn, just as the military guard seems about to surrender, two lorries of British reinforcements come from Claremorris to their assistance. The British reinforcements open fire from their lorries on the outposts as they encounter those who return fire with their shotguns. With the IRA running low on ammunition and now out-gunned, Cmdt. Kenny issues an order for the IRA to retreat under fire. There are varied accounts of the length of time the ambush lasts. Some accounts state the attack on the camp lasts 15 minutes, with other accounts indicating that from beginning to end, the ambush lasts for between one and two hours. Dawn is breaking just as the engagement ends.

The IRA operation is deemed unsuccessful as they did not achieved their primary objective of disarming the British soldiers and their commanding officer is badly wounded in the attack. The inability to capture the British soldiers’ weapons will hamper the battalion and the wider East Mayo Brigade’s ability to conduct large ambushes in an area that is already in very short supply of rifles and ammunition. There are varying accounts of casualties from both sides. The IRA inflicts a minimum of three casualties on the British side and the ambush gives many volunteers their first experience of battle. Some of the volunteers who take part in the ambush claim that five and upwards of ten on the British side are wounded. The British claim that they killed one IRA man and wounded several others. They also admit that three of their soldiers are wounded. The following day, British police and military carry out an exhaustive search in the intervening districts. It is reported in the Western People, that in the search that follows, the police and military from Claremorris and Ballyhaunis find blood stains over the ground covered by the IRA and two shotguns, a loaded revolver and two overcoats. In reality the IRA suffers only one casualty, that of their Cmdt. Patrick Kenny. In the military drive that follows, the number of private houses raided totals one hundred and fifty, however nothing incriminating is found.

After Cmdt. Kenny is safely extracted from the engagement; he is carried by Volunteers Jack and William Caulfield along with others to a house nearby and then on to Pat Healy’s house. The British military’s account reports that the soldiers witness a body being carried into a house nearby. From there he is taken to be treated first by Dr. A Smyth, Ballyhaunis, who is the battalion’s Medical Officer. He is moved to Mayo County infirmary and treated by Dr. McBride, however, it is deemed unsafe for him to stay there so after 24 hours he has to leave and is treated by Dr. Hopkins Castlebar in Union hospital for ten days. Members of Cumann na mBan employed in the Union hospital had established an IRA ward in a disused portion of the hospital where numerous wounded volunteers are treated throughout the war. When Kenny has recovered sufficiently, he is taken to Surgeon M Ó Máille in Galway, where he receives treatment for five weeks. He then goes on to recuperate in the home of Pádraic Ó Máille TD near Maum in Connemara for four months. Ó Máille’s home is used as a safe house by the West Connemara, West Mayo and South Mayo IRA Brigades. Kenny returns to the Ballyhaunis area in April 1921.

(Pictured: Ballyhaunis IRA September 1921: Back L-R:Capt. Pat McNieve (Logboy Coy), Capt Austin Tarpey (Holywell Coy), Bn Cmdt. Patrick Kenny, Vol Joe Taylor (Aghamore Coy), Vol John Forde (Bekan Coy), Capt. Luke Taylor (Aghamore Coy), Vol Sonny Biesty (Holywell Coy), Bn Vice Cmdt. Dom Byrne, Front L-R: Vol Jack Kilduff (Bekan Coy), Bn Adjt. Austin Kenny, Capt. Michael Devaney (Brackloon Coy), Capt. Jim Kilkenny (Crossard Coy), Lt Michael Nolan (Knock Coy). Nearly all of the men photographed played some part in the Holywell Ambush)