Keating is the youngest of six surviving children of Michael Keating, baker, and his wife Johanna, a native of County Kerry. He was educated at a local school and was an active member of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), playing football and hurling. After the 1916 Easter Rising, he leaves school at the age of thirteen to join the Irish Volunteers, which later becomes the IRA, serving in the 4th Cork Brigade. He is arrested by British troops in November 1920 and badly beaten. He spends a month in the Cork jail and is then interned for a year in Ballykinlar internment camp until December 1921. While interned he participates in several hunger strikes and makes several escape attempts. Following his release, he opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and serves in the Fianna Cork 4th Brigade on the Republican side under Seán Moylan during the Irish Civil War.
Keating emigrates to New York City in 1927 and becomes involved in Irish cultural organizations and Democratic party politics. He is a founder of American Friends of Irish Neutrality, which opposes Irish involvement in World War II, ostensibly fearing it will result in British re-occupation of Ireland.
Following World War II, Keating is chairman of the executive council of the 1947 Irish Race Convention and president of the American League for an Undivided Ireland, lobbying in support of the Fogarty Amendment, which unsuccessfully attempts to tie the release of Marshall Plan funds to British withdrawal from Northern Ireland.
Between the 1940s and 1960s, Keating serves as president of the County Corkmen Association, president of the United Irish Counties Association, and president of the Irish Institute. In 1956, he serves as Grand Marshal of the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
Keating serves in various positions under New York City mayors William O’Dwyer, Vincent R. Impellitteri, and Robert F. Wagner, Jr., rising to the position of Deputy Mayor, under Wagner. He is reportedly the first to publicly introduce future President Kennedy as “the next President of the United States” at an Irish Institute event in 1957. He is appointed Regional Director of the United States Postal Service by President Kennedy and serves in that position from 1961 until his retirement in 1966.
In retirement, Keating returns to Kanturk and continues to advocate for the reunification of Ireland. Keating dies at his home in Kanturk on July 2, 1976, and is buried in a local cemetery with military honors. He represents an emigrant political and social milieu which is often treated dismissively by later, more cosmopolitan Irish commentators, but his career reflects not only his own considerable talents but the ways in which this milieu sustains a generation of immigrants, and the contribution of Irish America to Irish development in the post-war decades.
Frazer grows up in the village of Whitecross, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, as one of nine children, with his parents Bertie and Margaret. He is an ex-member of the Territorial Army and a member of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. He attends a local Catholic school and plays Gaelic football up to U14 level. He describes his early years as a “truly cross-community lifestyle.” Growing up, he is a fan of the American actor John Wayne and wrestling. His father, who is a part-time member of the British Army‘s Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and a council worker, is killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on August 30, 1975. The family home had previously been attacked with petrol bombs and gunfire which Frazer claims were IRA men, due to his father’s UDR membership. He states that his family is well respected in the area including by “old-school IRA men” and receives Mass cards from Catholic neighbours expressing their sorrow over his father’s killing. Over the next ten years, four members of Frazer’s family who are members or ex-members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) or British Army are killed by the IRA. An uncle who is also a member of the UDR is wounded in a gun attack.
Soon after his father’s death, the IRA begins targeting Frazer’s older brother who is also a UDR member. Like many South Armagh unionists, the family moves north to the village of Markethill. After leaving school, he works as a plasterer for a period before serving in the British Army for nine years. Following this he works for a local haulage company, then sets up his own haulage company, which he later sells.
During the Drumcree conflict, Frazer is a supporter of the PortadownOrange Order who demand the right to march down the Garvaghy Road against the wishes of local residents. He is president of his local Apprentice Boys club at the time.
For a brief period after selling his haulage firm, Frazer runs “The Spot,” a nightclub in Tandragee, County Armagh, which closes down after two Ulster Protestant civilians who had been in the club, Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine, are stabbed to death in February 2000 by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), after one of them had allegedly made derogatory remarks about dead UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade leader Richard Jameson. Frazer is confronted in an interview on BBC Radio Ulster about the murders by the father of one of the victims, Paul McIlwaine. During the Smithwick Tribunal, set up to investigate allegations of collusion in the 1989 Jonesborough ambush, it is alleged by a member of Garda Síochána that Frazer is a part of a loyalist paramilitary group called the Red Hand Commando. Frazer denies this allegation, saying they put his life in danger.
Frazer applies for a licence to hold a firearm for his personal protection and is turned down, a chief inspector says, in part because he is known to associate with loyalist paramilitaries.
FAIR, founded by Frazer in 1998, claims to represent the victims of IRA violence in South Armagh. It has been criticised by some for not doing the same for victims of loyalist paramilitary organisations or for those killed by security forces.
In February 2006, Frazer is an organiser of the Love Ulster parade in Dublin that has to be cancelled due to rioting. In January 2007, he protests outside the Sinn FéinArd Fheis in Dublin that votes to join policing structures in Northern Ireland. He expresses “outrage at the idea that the ‘law-abiding population’ would negotiate with terrorists to get them to support democracy, law and order.”
In January 2007, Frazer dismisses Police OmbudsmanNuala O’Loan‘s report into security force collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.
In March 2010, Frazer claims to have served a civil writ on deputy First MinisterMartin McGuinness, of Sinn Féin, seeking damages arising from the killing of his father by the Provisional IRA. Both Sinn Féin and the courts deny that any such writ had been served, but in June 2010 Frazer announces that he will seek to progress his claim in the High Court. There has since been no report of any such litigation. He previously pickets McGuinness’s home in Derry in 2007 to demand support for calls for Libya to compensate victims of IRA attacks. Accompanied by two other men, he attempts to post a letter to the house but is confronted by local residents and verbally abused. When McGuinness stands for election in the 2011 Irish presidential election, Frazer announces that he and FAIR will picket the main Sinn Féin election events, however, no such pickets take place.
In September 2010, the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) revokes all funding to FAIR due to “major failures in the organisation’s ability to adhere to the conditions associated with its funding allocation” uncovered following a “thorough audit” of the tendering and administration procedures used by FAIR.
In November 2011, the SEUPB announces that it is seeking the return of funding to FAIR and another Markethill victims’ group, Saver/Naver. FAIR is asked to return £350,000 while Saver/Naver is asked to return £200,000. Former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Reg Empey demands that the conclusions about FAIR’s finances be released into the public domain.
In January 2012, Frazer announces a protest march to be held on February 25 through the mainly Catholic south Armagh village of Whitecross, to recall the killing of ten Protestant workmen by the South Armagh Republican Action Force (SARAF) in January 1976 in the Kingsmill massacre. He also names individuals whom he accuses of responsibility for the massacre. He later announces that the march is postponed “at the request of the Kingsmills families.” A 2011 report by the Historical Enquiries Team finds that members of the Provisional IRA carried out the attack despite the organisation being on ceasefire.
A delegation including Frazer, UUP politician Danny Kennedy and relatives of the Kingsmill families travel to Dublin in September 2012 to seek an apology from the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. The apology is sought for what they describe as the Irish government‘s “blatant inaction” over the Kingmills killings. The Taoiseach says he cannot apologise for the actions of the IRA but assures the families there is no hierarchy for victims and their concerns are just as important as any other victims’ families. The families express disappointment although Frazer states he is pleased to have met the Taoiseach.
On November 16, 2012, Frazer announces that he is stepping down as director of FAIR, after he had reviewed a copy of the SEUPB audit report which, he claims, shows no grounds for demanding the reimbursement of funding. He adds, “I will still be working in the victims sector.”
In 2019, the BBC investigative journalism programme Spotlight reports that Frazer distributed assault rifles and rocket launchers from Ulster Resistance to loyalist terror groups who used them in more than 70 murders. A police report on the activities of the former Ulster Defence Association (UDA) boss Johnny Adair states he was receiving weapons from Ulster Resistance in the early 1990s and his contact in Ulster Resistance was Frazer.
In addition to his advocacy for Protestant victims, Frazer contests several elections in County Armagh. He is not elected and, on most occasions, loses his deposit. He runs as an Ulster Independence Movement candidate in the 1996 Forum Elections and the 1998 Assembly elections, and as an independent in the 2003 Assembly elections and a council by-election.
In the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election Frazer is listed as a subscriber for the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) candidate for the Newry and Armagh constituency, Barrie Halliday, who secures 1.8% of the vote. At Newry Crown Court on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, Pastor Barrie Gordon Halliday is sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for eighteen months, when he pleads guilty to seventeen counts of VAT repayment fraud.
In November 2012, Frazer announces his intention to contest the 2013 Mid Ulster by-election necessitated by Martin McGuinness’s decision to resign the parliamentary seat to concentrate on his Assembly role. He is quoted in The Irish News in January 2013 as stating that he will not condemn any paramilitary gunman who shoots McGuinness.
Despite his earlier advocacy of Ulster nationalism, in 2013 Frazer declares himself in favour of re-establishing direct rule in Northern Ireland.
Frazer dies of cancer in Craigavon, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, on June 28, 2019. Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader Jim Allister and DUP Assembly member Jim Wells pay tribute to his memory.
Barry returns to Bandon in early 1919. He describes in his guerilla days in Ireland a Damascus-like conversion to Irish nationalism on hearing of the Easter Rising while with the Mesopotamian expeditionary force, but he is only accepted into the IRA with considerable caution. Initially tested in intelligence and training work, in mid-1920 he takes charge of the new brigade flying column, which is used both to train officers and to stage offensive actions.
Barry adapts his military experience successfully to the demands of guerrilla warfare, becoming the most famed of column leaders during the Irish War of Independence. In his memoirs, he pours scorn on the obsession of many with military titles and orthodox procedure, complaining of a “paper army.” He stresses the need for spontaneity, initiative, and knowledge of local conditions. “The reality,” he writes, “was a group of fellows, mostly in caps and not-too-expensive clothing, wondering how to tackle their job and where they would sleep that night or get their supper.” (The Reality of the Anglo–Irish War (1974)). He well realises that the war’s character does not permit any close control from the IRA’s GHQ in Dublin, hence increasing the importance of local leaders. His tactics put strong emphasis on speed of movement and on the need to attack the enemy at his weakest point. The column’s ambush successes are small in number but among the best-remembered of the war. He admits, however, that his own and his column’s lack of experience with mines frequently weakened their offensives.
The column’s first successful ambush is at Tooreen on October 22, 1920, followed on November 28 by the dramatic ambushing of a patrol of auxiliaries at Kilmichael while travelling from their Macroom base. A column of thirty-six men, divided into three sections, kill sixteen auxiliaries, with one captured and later shot, suffering two fatalities of their own. Controversy has raged since over whether a false surrender by the British force caused the brutality of some of the deaths. Together with the Bloody Sunday killings of a week earlier in Dublin, Kilmichael has a profound effect on the British military and political establishment, with the declaration in December of martial law for much of Munster and the implementation of wide-ranging internment, together with the authorisation of official reprisals.
After a short period in hospital with a heart condition, in early 1921 Barry leads unsuccessful attacks on Kilbrittain, Innishannon, Drimoleague, and Bandon barracks. The seizure of Burgatia House, outside Rosscarbery, in early February, and the successful resistance made there to British troops, wins much publicity but has little military significance. He is a leading figure in the brutal final stage of the war in the first six months of 1921, which sees widespread shooting of suspected spies and destruction of loyalist property. By March 1921, his flying column, with 104 men, is easily the largest in Ireland, and an explosives expert, Capt. McCarthy, has joined them.
The protracted engagement between Barry’s column and encircling British forces at Crossbarry on March 19, 1921, comes at a time when large-scale sweeps are making life increasingly difficult for the IRA. It consists of a daring and courageous breakout. Crossbarry is the largest action of the war, and Barry is to regard it as even more important than Kilmichael. Soon afterwards, Rosscarbery barracks is successfully attacked by a Barry-led party, representing one of the few successful such initiatives in 1921. Isolated triumphs, however, cannot hide the fact that pressure is increasing on the column, and he becomes increasingly critical of inactive regions. He is later to say that all County Kerry does during the war is to shoot one decent police inspector at Listowel Racecourse and a colleague of his. He is strongly critical also of the lack of assistance from GHQ and of the divisionalisation policy. He visits Dublin in May, travels around with Michael Collins, and is present when two American officers demonstrate the Thompson submachine gun. He is more aware than most of his 1st Southern Division colleagues of the scarcity of arms and ammunition at the war’s end.
During the truce, Barry becomes liaison officer for Munster, riling the British by insisting on his military rank, and criticising the IRA liaison men in Dublin for being overly deferential. He joins the overwhelming majority of the Cork IRA in opposing the Anglo–Irish Treaty but plays a characteristically maverick role throughout the treaty split. His independent attitude is heightened by his dislike of Liam Lynch, the republican IRA’s Chief of Staff, and his continuing respect for Michael Collins. He shows impatience at the long-drawn-out peace initiatives. In March 1922, therefore, he advocates armed confrontation with pro-treaty units over the occupation of barracks in Limerick, and on June 18 he submits a resolution, which only narrowly fails, at the army convention, giving British troops seventy-two hours to leave Dublin.
At the beginning of the Irish Civil War, Barry is arrested entering the Four Courts disguised as a woman. He escapes from an internment camp at Gormanston in early September 1922. For the rest of the war his actions mirror its confused nature. In late October 1922, he leads successful raids on the small towns of Ballineen and Enniskean, and later on Inchigeelagh and Ballyvourney. In December his column takes Carrick-on-Suir, demonstrating the weakness of the Free State army, but his talk of advancing on the Curragh and of large-scale actions does not materialise. There is no evidence that he is acting in accordance with any coordinated plan. By February 1923, he realises that the Republican IRA cause is hopeless and he is involved with Fr. Tom Duggan in efforts to get 1st Southern Division to declare a ceasefire. He journeys to Dublin to put pressure on the intransigent Lynch in this connection, telling Lynch, “I did more fighting in one week than you did in your whole life.”
Barry avoids capture in roundups after the war, remaining on the run until 1924. Unlike many republicans, he does not turn to constitutionalism, remaining strongly militaristic. He is always an unreconstructed republican, though by no means a naive one. In 1924 he becomes attached to Cleeves Milk Co., based in Limerick and Clonmel, and from 1927 to retirement in 1965 is general superintendent with the Cork harbour commissioners. He strongly advocates preserving the independence of the IRA army executive during the republican split of 1925–27. He is instrumental in continuing the drilling of IRA members and is a strong supporter of armed opposition to the Blueshirts.
During the 1930s Barry is arrested at various times for possession of arms and seditious utterances. He promotes an attack against a Freemasons’ meeting in Cork in 1936 and gives the orders for the killing on March 4 of that year of Vice-AdmiralHenry Boyle Somerville. He is opposed to the use by Frank Ryan of IRA volunteers to support the republican cause in the Spanish Civil War and to the proposals of Seán Russell for a bombing campaign in England. To maintain the link with traditional republicanism, he is elected IRA chief of staff in 1937. His plan, however, for the seizure of Armagh city, as part of a direct northern offensive, quickly collapses due to a leak of information, and he soon resigns his position. He forcefully attacks the bombing of English cities in 1938, regarding attacks on innocent civilians as immoral and counterproductive. He enlists in the National Army on July 12, 1940, only to be demobilised a month later. In 1946, he stands as an independent candidate in a by-election in the Cork Borough constituency, finishing at the bottom of the poll. He is more comfortable the following year touring the United States on an anti-partition platform.
In 1949 his Guerilla Days in Ireland is published. It proves a best-seller and has frequently been reprinted. It is well written in a forceful and direct style, one memoir needing no assistance from a ghost writer. Age does not mellow him: lawyers and bank managers are threatened by him over matters relating to his own column, and in 1974 he publishes a fierce pamphlet, angry at perceived slights in the Irish War of Independence memoir of Liam Deasy. He does strive to achieve a public reconciliation with Collins’s memory by unveiling the memorial to Collins at Sam’s Cross in 1966. On the outbreak of the Northern Ireland crisis in the late 1960s, he takes a militant line, castigating the argument that the Six Counties can be brought into the Republic by peaceful means, and asking when had peaceful means existed there. At the memorial meeting in Carrowkennedy, County Mayo, in 1971, he claims that there is a perfect right at the opportune time to take the Six Counties by force. He remains opposed to IRA bombing of civilian targets.
Barry dies in Cork on July 2, 1980. He is buried in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork. Early in the truce of 1921 he marries Leslie Price, one of the most active of Cumann na mBan members during and after the rising. They have no children.
While Barry always remains an influential figure in republican circles, he will be remembered best as the pioneer of guerrilla warfare, the hero of Kilmichael and Crossbarry. His military flair, individualism, and ruthlessness are well suited to the 1919–21 conflict. After that, his strained relations with colleagues and his lack of flexibility reduce his importance. While his life after the revolutionary era appears anti-climactic, he retains much of his charisma. In later years, he is ever willing to remind politicians and historians how far Ireland has retreated from republican ideals. He is often prickly and autocratic yet could be generous to old colleagues of either side of the treaty split. He is arguably the most intelligent but also the most intolerant of the revolutionary leaders.
(From: “Barry, Thomas Bernadine (‘Tom’)” by M. A. Hopkinson, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Burke is born in St. Clerens, County Galway on May 6, 1821, the second of three sons of James Hardiman Burke, an officer in the British Army7th Royal Fusiliers, and Anne Louisa Burke (nee O’Hara).
Burke enters the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in May 1835. In December 1836 he fails his probationary exam and goes to Belgium to further his education. In 1841, he enters the Imperial Austrian Army and spends most of his time posted to northern Italy. Towards the end of 1847 he suffers health problems and ultimately resigns from the Austrian army in June 1848.
After returning to Ireland in 1848, he joins the Irish Constabulary (later the Royal Irish Constabulary). He does his cadet training at Phoenix Park Depot in Dublin between November 1849 and January 1850. At the end of 1850 he transfers to the Mounted Police in Dublin.
Burke emigrates to Australia, arriving in Hobart, Tasmania on February 12, 1853, and promptly sails for Melbourne. On April 1, 1853, he joins the recently established Victoria Police force.
After the South Australian explorer John McDouall Stuart reaches the centre of Australia, the South Australian parliament offers a reward of £2,000 for the promotion of an expedition to cross the continent from south to north, generally following Stuart’s route. In June 1860, Burke is appointed to lead the Victorian Exploring Expedition with William John Wills, his third-in-command, as surveyor and astronomical observer.
The expedition leaves Melbourne on August 20, 1860, with a total of 19 men, 27 camels and 23 horses. They reach Menindee on September 23, 1860, where several people resign.
Cooper Creek, 400 miles further on, is reached on November 11, 1860, by the advance group, the remainder being intended to catch up. After a break, Burke decides to make a dash to the Gulf of Carpentaria, leaving on December 16, 1860. William Brahe is left in charge of the remaining party. The small team of Burke, William Wills, John King and Charley Gray reach the mangroves on the estuary of the Flinders River, near where the town of Normanton now stands, on February 9, 1861. They never see open ocean due to flooding rains and swamps.
Already weakened by starvation and exposure, progress on the return journey is slow and hampered by the tropical monsoon downpours of the wet season. Gray dies four days before they reach the rendezvous at Cooper Creek. The other three rest for a day when they bury him. They eventually reach the rendezvous point on April 21, 1861, nine hours after the rest of the party had given up waiting and left, leaving a note and some food, as they had not been relieved by the party supposed to be returning from Menindee.
Burke’s party attempts to reach Mount Hopeless, the furthest outpost of pastoral settlement in South Australia, which is closer than Menindee, but fail and return to Cooper Creek. While waiting for rescue Wills dies of exhaustion and starvation. Soon after, Burke also dies, at a place now called Burke’s Waterhole on Cooper Creek in South Australia. The exact date of Burke’s death is uncertain but has generally been accepted to be June 28, 1861.
King survives with the help of Aborigines until he is rescued in September by Alfred William Howitt. Howitt buries Burke and Wills before returning to Melbourne. In 1862, Howitt returns to Cooper Creek and disinters Burke and Wills, taking them first to Adelaide and then by steamer to Melbourne where they are laid in state for two weeks. On January 23, 1863, Burke and Wills receive a State Funeral and are buried in Melbourne General Cemetery. Ironically, on that same day John McDouall Stuart and his companions, having successfully completed the south-north crossing, are received back at a large ceremony in Adelaide.
Lucas is commissioned as a second lieutenant into 2nd Battalion, the Royal Berkshire Regiment, on May 7, 1898. He serves with the battalion in South Africa during the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1902, taking part in operations in the Orange Free State from February to July 1900, in Transvaal from July to November 1900, and later in Cape Colony south of the Orange River. He is promoted to lieutenant on August 1, 1900, while in South Africa. After the end of the war in June 1902, he and the rest of the 2nd battalion is sent to Egypt, where they arrive on the SS Dominion in November 1902. He later serves in the Egyptian Army and Sudan Civil Service.
On June 30, 1919, Lucas is appointed a deputy lieutenant of Hertfordshire. He is made Commander of 17th Infantry Brigade in Ireland, and of Fermoy Barracks, on October 30, 1919. On June 26, 1920, during the Irish War of Independence, he is captured by the IRA while he is fishing on the Munster Blackwater near Fermoy along with Colonels Tyrell and Danford. After Danford is wounded during an unsuccessful attempt to escape from a moving car the same day, the volunteers free Tyrell to attend to Danford’s wounds. Both Colonels are subsequently taken to a military hospital at Fermoy.
Lucas is subsequently held in West Limerick and East Clare.
A letter from his wife, announcing the birth of their child, and addressed simply “to the IRA”, is delivered to him and his captors allow a subsequent exchange of letters between the couple. His letters home remain in the possession of his descendants and are shown on an episode of the BBC Television programme Antiques Roadshow.
The IRA moves Lucas to East Limerick from where he escapes four weeks later. It is believed his captors purposely relax the guard to allow him to escape rather than be faced with the possibility of executing him. While being transferred from Pallas Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks to Tipperary military barracks in a routine army patrol they are ambushed, and Lucas receives a slight injury.
Lucas becomes Assistant Adjutant General at Aldershot Command in 1924 and serves with the staff at General Headquarters, British Army of the Rhine from 1927 before he retires to Stevenage in 1932. He dies on April 7, 1956, and is buried in Graveley, Hertfordshire. His wife, Joan Holdsworth, whom he marries in October 1917, dies on September 6, 1979, and is also buried in Graveley, Hertfordshire.
In 2014, Barbara Scully, a granddaughter of George Power, one of the IRA volunteers involved, publishes his recollections to his family of the kidnap in The Irish Times. This brings a friendly reply from Lucas’ granddaughter, Ruth Wheeler, in which she states that Lucas risked a court-martial for stating that during his kidnap and time in captivity he was treated as “a gentleman by gentlemen” and was held by “delightful people.”
Ireland’s Defence Forces have published online Bureau of Military History witness statements by the IRA volunteers involved in the kidnap, as well as those who guarded General Lucas while he was held as a prisoner of war.
In 2020 Lucas’s granddaughter, Ruth Wheeler, and other members of the Lucas family publish online the letters he wrote and received while in captivity. Limerick Councillor Emmett O’Brien and other local people in March 2019 announce an intent to re-enact the capture, imprisonment, and release of Lucas on the anniversary in 2020.
(Pictured: Cuthbert Henry Tindall Lucas, bromide print by Walter Stoneman, 1919, National Portrait Gallery)
Kitchener is the second son of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Horatio Kitchener and his first wife, Frances Anne (née Chevallier), daughter of clergyman John Chevallier. Col. Kitchener resigns his commission in 1849 and purchases Ballygoghlan House estate near Tarbert, County Kerry, in early 1850 under the provisions of the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849. Ballygoghlan House is in a state of disrepair, however, and the family lives in Gunsborough Villa until the end of 1850. In 1857, Col. Kitchener purchases Crotta House, near Kilflynn, County Kerry, and the Kitcheners divide their time between the two residences. While innovative and successful in his agricultural methods, Col. Kitchener is harsh towards his tenants and, after carrying out many evictions, becomes extremely unpopular in the area. He is a rigid disciplinarian and occasionally punishes his son severely.
Although Kitchener attends Ballylongford village school, his education is largely neglected. When examined by his cousin Francis Elliot Kitchener, fellow of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), he is found to have only the most rudimentary knowledge of grammar and arithmetic. Education by private tutors follows. In 1864, his father sells his Irish estates and moves to Switzerland for the sake of his wife’s health. After further private tuition, he passes into the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1868, and is commissioned into the Royal Engineers in December 1870.
Kitchener begins his career on survey missions and carries out such work in Palestine (1874–78) and Cyprus (1878–82). He then enters the Egyptian Army and takes part in the Sudan campaign of 1883–85, organised to relieve Genral Charles George Gordon. Subsequent appointments include governor of Suakin (1886–88), adjutant-general of the Egyptian Army (1888–92), and Sirdar (Commander-in-Chief) of the Egyptian Army (1892–96). After the Dongola Expedition in 1896, he is promoted to major-general. He commands the Khartoum Expedition of 1898, defeating Mahdist forces at Atbara and Omdurman, and is raised to the peerage.
At the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899, he is appointed chief of staff to Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, and assumes total command, with the rank of lieutenant-general, in 1900. While acting as commander-in-chief in South Africa he reorganises the British forces and, using new tactics, manages finally to defeat the Boers. He is severely criticised in the world press for the conditions in the concentration camps where Boer families are confined, but is made a viscount, promoted to general, and awarded £50,000 by parliament at the end of the war.
Kitchener serves as commander-in-chief in India beginning in 1902, is promoted to Field Marshal in 1909, and is a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence (1910) and consul-general in Egypt (1911–14). At the outbreak of World War I he is made Secretary of State for War and begins to reorganise the British Army, an immense achievement, raising 1,700,000 men in service battalions by May 1915, creating an army of volunteers to reinforce the depleted regular army in Belgium and France. An archconservative, he totally opposes Home Rule for Ireland, and initially blocks plans by John Redmond for the formation of a southern Irish division from members of the National Volunteers. Convinced that an all-Irish brigade or division would be a security risk, he rejects Redmond’s suggestions in a meeting of August 1915 and originally proposes dispersing Irish recruits through the numerous regiments in the army. Impressed by Redmond’s persistence, and impelled by the recruiting crisis of late 1915, he finally reverses his decision and sanctions the establishment of the 16th (Irish) Division.
On June 5, 1916, Kitchener is making his way to Russia on HMS Hampshire to attend negotiations with Tsar Nicholas II when in bad weather the ship strikes a German mine 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of Orkney, Scotland, and sinks. He is among 737 who perish. He is the highest-ranking British officer to die in action in the entire war.
Although he only spends his early years in Kerry, Kitchener occasionally returns to Ireland. While on leave in June 1910 he goes on a tour of County Kerry, visiting places connected to his childhood. There are numerous portraits and memorials to him in England, including a marble effigy by W. Reid Dick in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and a statue by John Tweed in Horse Guards Parade, London. There is a commemorative bible in the Church of Ireland church at Kilflynn, County Kerry, where he regularly attended Sunday service as a boy. There are some Kitchener letters in the John Redmond papers in the National Library of Ireland.
(From: “Kitchener, Horatio Herbert” by David Murphy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Gwynn spends his early childhood in rural County Donegal, which is to shape his later view of Ireland. He attends Brasenose College, Oxford, where, as scholar, in 1884 he is awarded first-class honours in classical moderations and in 1886 literae humaniores. During term holidays he returns to Dublin, where he meets several of the political and literary figures of the day.
After graduating, Gwynn spends ten years from 1886 tutoring as a schoolmaster, for a time in France, which creates a lifelong interest in French culture, as expressed in his Praise of France (1927). By 1896 he has developed an interest in writing, becoming a writer and journalist in London focused on English themes, until he comes into contact with the emerging Irish literary revival, when he serves as secretary of the Irish Literary Society.
This is the beginning of a long and prolific career as a writer covering a wide range of literary genres, from poetry and biographical subjects to general historical works. The eighteenth century is Gwynn’s particular specialism. He writes numerous books on travel and on the topography of his own homeland, as well as on his other interests: wine, eighteenth-century painting and fishing.
Gwynn returns to Ireland in 1904 when he enters politics. In the 1906 Galway Borough by-election he wins a seat for Galway Borough, which he represents as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party until 1918. During this period, he is active in the Gaelic League and is one of the few Irish MPs to have close links to the Irish literary revival. Along with Joseph Maunsel Hone and George Roberts he founds the Dublin publishing house of Maunsel and Company. He is opposed to the demand for the Irish language to be a compulsory subject for matriculation. He supports the campaign which wins the establishment of a Catholic university when he serves on the Irish University Royal Commission in 1908. During the debate on the third Home Rule Bill, and at the request of his party leader John Redmond, he writes The case for Home Rule (1911) and is in charge of much of the party’s official publicity and its replies to criticism from Sinn Féin.
On the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Gwynn strongly supports Redmond’s encouragement of Irish nationalists and the Irish National Volunteers to support the Allied and British war effort by enlisting in Irish regiments of the Irish Divisions, especially as a means to ensure the implementation of the suspended Home Rule Act at the end of an expectedly short war. Now over fifty, he enlists in January 1915 with the 7th Leinster Regiment in the 16th (Irish) Division. In July he is commissioned as a captain in the 6th (Service) Battalion, Connaught Rangers and serves with them on the Western Front at Messines, the Somme and elsewhere.
Gwynn is one of five Irish Nationalist MPs who enlist and serve in the army, the others being John L. Esmonde, Willie Redmond, William Redmond and D. D. Sheehan, as well as former MP Tom Kettle. Together with Kettle and William Redmond, he undertakes a recruitment drive for the Irish divisions, co-operating with Kettle on a collection of ballads called Battle Songs for the Irish Brigade (1915). He is made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in July 1915. In 1916, he is appointed to the Dardanelles Commission.
Recalled to Ireland in late 1917 to participate in the Irish Convention chaired by Sir Horace Plunkett, Gwynn sides with the Redmondite faction of the Irish Party in supporting a compromise with the southern unionists in an attempt to reach consensus on a Home Rule settlement which would avoid partition. On the death of Redmond in March 1918, he takes over as leader of the moderate nationalists in the Convention. He opposes the threat of compulsory military service during the Conscription Crisis of 1918, though as a member of the Irish Recruiting Council he continues to support voluntary recruitment, encountering intense opposition led by Sinn Féin.
Gwynn forms the Irish Centre Party in 1919 and stands unsuccessfully as an Independent Nationalist for Dublin University in the 1918 Irish general election. The party merges with Plunkett’s Irish Dominion League to press for a settlement by consent on the basis of dominion status, but Gwynn subsequently breaks with Plunkett due to his willingness to accept partition as a temporary compromise. The polarities which divide Ireland during the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War increasingly sideline his brand of moderate cultural nationalism. Although he supports the newly emergent nation, he equally condemns some of the excesses, such as the burning of houses belonging to Free State senators.
Gwynn’s personal life also becomes complicated at this stage and around 1920. He has a romantic association with married artist Grace Henry who is perhaps the best-known female artist in Ireland at the time. During this period, he and Grace travel in France and Italy and at various stages in his life she painted portraits of him including a very distinguished looking one of him in his late 60s or early 70s. Their relationship contributes significantly to the separation of Henry from her artist husband Paul Henry in 1930.
During the 1920s, Gwynn also devotes himself to writing, covering political events as Irish correspondent to The Observer and The Times. Later in his career, he writes some substantial works, and together with his son Denis Gwynn (The Life of John Redmond, 1932) does much to shape the retrospective image and self-justification of John Redmond. In the mid-1930s he authors three books with a connecting theme of fishing with the artist Roy Beddington serving as illustrator: The Happy Fisherman (1936), From River to River (1937), and Two in a Valley (1938).
Gwynn is awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the National University of Ireland in 1940, and a Litt.D. by the University of Dublin in 1945. The Irish Academy of Letters awards him the Gregory Medal in April 1950. In his literary writings he stands for a humanism and tolerance, which qualities, due to political upheavals, were relatively rare in the Ireland of his day.
Gwynn dies on June 11, 1950, at his home in Terenure, Dublin, and is buried at Tallaght Cemetery, south County Dublin.
Gwynn marries his cousin Mary Louisa (d. 1941), daughter of Rev. James Gwynn. She later converts to Catholicism. They have three sons and two daughters who are brought up in her religion, of whom Aubrey (1892–1983) becomes a Jesuit priest and professor of medieval history at University College Dublin (UCD). Their second son, Denis Rolleston (1893–1971), is professor of modern Irish history at University College Cork (UCC).
Gwynn’s brother Edward John (1868–1941) becomes provost of Trinity College and another brother Robert Malcolm becomes its senior dean. His sister Lucy Gwynn is the first woman registrar of Trinity. A third brother, Charles, has a successful career in the British Army and retires as a Major General. Younger brothers Lucius and Jack are noted cricketers.
Ernest Bernard (Ernie) O’Malley, Irish republican revolutionary and writer, is born on May 26, 1897, in Ellison Street, Castlebar, County Mayo, the second child among nine sons and two daughters of Luke Malley, solicitor’s clerk, of County Mayo, and Marion Malley (née Kearney) of County Roscommon. Christened Ernest Bernard Malley, his adoption of variations on this name reflects his enthusiasm for a distinctively Irish identity – an enthusiasm that lay at the heart of his republican career and outlook.
In 1906, O’Malley’s family moves to Dublin, where he attends the Christian Brothers‘ School, North Richmond Street. In 1915, he begins to study medicine at University College Dublin (UCD). Having initially intended to follow his older brother into the British Army, he rather joins the Irish Volunteers in the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising, as a member of F Company, 1st Battalion, Dublin Brigade. He becomes a leading figure in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence which the Easter Rising helps to occasion. In 1918, having twice failed his second-year university examination, he leaves home to commit himself to the republican cause. He is initially a Volunteer organiser with the rank of second lieutenant, under the instruction of Richard Mulcahy, operating in Counties Tyrone, Offaly, Roscommon, and Donegal. His work in 1918 involves the reorganisation, or new establishment, of Volunteer groups in the localities.
In August 1918, O’Malley is sent to London by Michael Collins to buy arms. During 1919 he works as an IRA staff captain attached to General Headquarters (GHQ) in Dublin, and also trains and organises Volunteers in Counties Clare, Tipperary, and Dublin. He has a notable military record with the IRA during the Irish War of Independence and is a leading figure in attacks on Hollyford barracks in County Tipperary (May 1920), Drangan barracks in County Kilkenny (June 1920), and Rearcross barracks in County Tipperary (July 1920). His IRA days thus involve him with comrades such as Dan Breen, Séumas Robinson, and Seán Treacy. In December 1920, he is captured in County Kilkenny by Crown forces. He escapes from Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol in February 1921, to take command of the IRA’s 2nd Southern Division, holding the rank of commandant-general.
O’Malley’s republican commitment has political roots in his conviction that Ireland should properly be fully independent of Britain, and that violence is a necessary means to achieve this end. But the causes underlying his revolutionism are layered. Family expectations of respectable, professional employment combined with a religious background and an enthusiasm for soldiering provide some of the foundations for his IRA career. As an IRA officer he enjoys professional, military expression for a visceral CatholicIrish nationalism. He also finds excitement, liberation from the frequent dullness of his life at home, defiant rebellion against his non-republican parents, an alternative to his stalled undergraduate career, and, in political and cultural Irish separatism, a decisive resolution of the profound tension between his anglocentrism and his anglophobia.
O’Malley rejects the 1921 Anglo–Irish Treaty as an unacceptable compromise. He spends the 1921 truce period training IRA officers in his divisional area, in preparation for a possible renewal of fighting. He is, in the event, to be a leading anti-treatyite in the 1922–23 Irish Civil War. In the Four Courts in 1922, at the start of the latter conflict, he is captured on the republicans’ capitulation on June 30 but then manages to escape from captivity. Subsequently he is appointed assistant Chief of Staff of the anti-Treaty IRA and also becomes part of a five-man anti-Treaty army council, along with Liam Lynch, Liam Deasy, Frank Aiken and Thomas Derrig.
O’Malley is dramatically captured and badly wounded by Free State forces in Dublin in November 1922. Imprisoned until July 1924, he is during the period of his incarceration elected as a TD for Dublin North in the 1923 Irish general election and is also a forty-one-day participant in the republican hunger strike later that year. Following release from prison, he returns home to live with his parents in Dublin. He decides not to focus his post-revolutionary energy on a political career. During 1926–28 and 1935–37 he unsuccessfully tries to complete his medical degree at UCD, but increasingly his post-1924 efforts are directed toward life as a Bohemian traveler and writer. He spends much of 1924–26 on a recuperative journey through France, Spain, and Italy; and 1928–35 traveling widely in North America. During 1929–32 he spends time in New Mexico and Mexico City. In Taos, New Mexico, he mixes with, and is influenced by, writers and artists as he works on what are to become classic autobiographies of the Irish revolution: On Another Man’s Wound (1936) and The Singing Flame (1978).
O’Malley meets Helen Hooker, daughter of Elon and Blanche Hooker, in Connecticut in 1933. They marry in London in 1935, each rejecting something of their prior lives in the process: he, his Irish republicanism, through marriage to somebody entirely unconnected with that world; she, her wealthy and respectable upbringing, through liaison with a Catholic, Irish, unemployed, bohemian ex-revolutionary. They settle first in Dublin then, from 1938 onward, primarily in County Mayo. Burrishoole Lodge, near Newport, is his main base until 1954, when he moves to Dublin. Three children are born to the O’Malleys: Cahal (1936), Etáin (1940), and Cormac (1942). Sharing enthusiasm for the arts, he and Helen enjoy several years of intimacy. However, by the mid-1940s their relationship has frayed. In 1950, Helen kidnaps (the word is used by both parents and by all three children) the couple’s elder two children and takes them to the United States. From there she divorces O’Malley in 1952. Cormac remains with his father.
O’Malley’s post-American years are devoted to a number of projects. He writes extensively, including work for The Bell and Horizon. He is involved with the film director John Ford in the making of his Irish films, including The Quiet Man (1952). He gives radio broadcasts on Mexican painting for BBC Third Programme (1947), and on his IRA adventures for Radio Éireann (1953). In the latter year he suffers a heart attack, and his remaining years are scarred by ill health. He dies of heart failure on March 25, 1957, in Howth, County Dublin, at the house of his sister Kathleen. Two days later he is given a state funeral with full military honours. He is buried in the Malley family plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
O’Malley exemplifies some important themes in modern Irish political and intellectual history. His powerful memoirs form part of a tradition of writing absorbedly about Ireland, while under idiosyncratic emigrant influences which lend the writing much of its distinctiveness. His aggressive republicanism exemplifies a persistent but ultimately unrealisable tradition of uncompromising IRA politics. His unflinching single-mindedness is the condition for much courageous and striking activity, but also lay behind his infliction and his suffering of much pain. Literary, intellectual, and defiantly dissident, he is the classic bohemian revolutionary. His historical significance lies in his having been both a leading Irish revolutionary and the author of compelling autobiographical accounts of those years. His memoirs are distinguished from their rivals on the shelf by subtlety, self-consciousness, and literary ambition. In particular, his preparedness to identify motives for Irish revolutionary action, beyond the terms of ostensible republican purpose, renders his writing of great value to historians. Similarly, the large body of archival material left in his name (especially, perhaps, the papers held in UCD archives, and those in the private possession of his children) leaves scholars in his debt. The most striking and evocative visual images of O’Malley are, arguably, the set of photographic portraits taken in 1929 by Edward Weston and held at the University of Arizona‘s Center for Creative Photography (CCP). These capture with precision his reflective concentration, his piercing earnestness, and his troubled intensity.
(From: “O’Malley, Ernest Bernard (‘Ernie’)” by Richard English, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Photograph of Ernie O’Malley taken by Helen Hooker, New York City, 1934)
Hughes is born in Bellaghy, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on February 28, 1956, into a republican family, the youngest of four brothers in a family of ten siblings. His father, Joseph, had been a member of the Irish Republican Army in the 1920s and one of his uncles had smuggled arms for the republican movement. This results in the Hughes family being targeted when internment is introduced in 1971, and his brother Oliver is interned for eight months without trial in Operation Demetrius. He leaves school at the age of 16 and starts work as an apprentice painter and decorator.
Hughes is returning from an evening out in Ardboe, County Tyrone, when he is stopped at an Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) checkpoint. When the soldiers realise he comes from a republican family, he is badly beaten. His father encourages him to see a doctor and report the incident to the police, but he refuses, saying he “would get his own back on the people who did it, and their friends.”
Hughes initially joins the Official Irish Republican Army but leaves after the organisation declares a ceasefire in May 1972. He then joins up with Dominic McGlinchey, his cousin Thomas McElwee and Ian Milne, before the three decide to join the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1973. He, Milne and McGlinchey take part in scores of IRA operations, including daylight attacks on Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) stations, bombings, and attacks on off-duty members of the RUC and UDR. Another IRA member describes the activities of Hughes:
“He led a life perpetually on the move, often moving on foot up to 20 miles for one night then sleeping during the day, either in fields and ditches or safe houses; a soldierly sight in his black beret and combat uniform and openly carrying a rifle, a handgun and several grenades as well as food rations.”
On April 18, 1977, Hughes, McGlinchey and Milne are travelling in a car near the town of Moneymore when an RUC patrol car carrying four officers signals them to stop. The IRA members attempt to escape by performing a U-turn but lose control of the car which ends up in a ditch. They abandon the car and open fire on the RUC patrol car, killing two officers and wounding another, before running off through the fields. A second RUC patrol comes under fire while attempting to prevent the men from fleeing, and despite a search operation by the RUC and British Army the IRA members escape. Following the Moneymore shootings, the RUC name Hughes as the most wanted man in Northern Ireland, and issue wanted posters with pictures of Hughes, Milne and McGlinchey. Milne is arrested in Lurgan, County Armagh, in August 1977, and McGlinchey later in the year in the Republic of Ireland.
Hughes is arrested on March 17, 1978, at Lisnamuck, near Maghera in County Londonderry, after an exchange of gunfire with the British Army the night before. British soldiers manning a covert observation post spot Hughes and another IRA volunteer approaching them wearing combat clothing with “Ireland” sewn on their jackets. Thinking they might be from the Ulster Defence Regiment, one of the soldiers stands up and calls to them. The IRA volunteers open fire on the British troops, who return fire. A soldier of the Special Air Service (SAS), Lance Corporal David Jones, is killed and another soldier wounded. Hughes is also wounded and is arrested nearby the next morning.
In February 1980, Hughes is sentenced to a total of 83 years in prison. He is tried for, and found guilty of, the murder of one British Army soldier (for which he receives a life sentence) and wounding of another (for which he receives 14 years) in the incident which leads to his arrest, as well as a series of gun and bomb attacks over a six-year period. Security sources describe him as “an absolute fanatic” and “a ruthless killer.” Fellow republicans describe him as “fearless and active.”
Hughes is involved in the mass hunger strike in 1980 and is the second prisoner to join the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike in the H-Blocks at the Long Kesh Detention Centre. His hunger strike begins on March 15, 1981, two weeks after Bobby Sands began his hunger strike. He is also the second striker to die, at 5:43 p.m. BST on May 12, after 59 days without food, refusing requests from the IRA leadership outside the prison to end the strike after the death of Sands. The journey of his body from the prison to the well-attended funeral near Bellaghy is marked by rioting as the hearse passes through loyalist areas. His death leads to an upsurge in rioting in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland.
Hughes’s cousin Thomas McElwee is the ninth hunger striker to die. Oliver Hughes, one of his brothers, is elected twice to Magherafelt District Council.
Shortly before her twelfth birthday, Hone suffers from polio (infant paralysis), suffering a fall while helping to decorate the Taney parish church for Easter. Her resulting ill health leads to her seeking treatment in Harley Street, Marylebone, Central London. She is educated by a governess, continuing her education in Switzerland, and goes on tours to Spain and Italy before moving to London in 1913. Her three sisters all marry British Army officers, and all are widowed in World War I.
Hone is extremely devout. She spends time in an Anglican Convent in 1925 at Truro in Cornwall and converts to Catholicism in 1937. This possibly influences her decision to begin working in stained glass. Initially, she works as a member of the An Túr Gloine stained glass co-operative before setting up a studio of her own in Rathfarnham.
Hone’s most important works are probably the East Window, depicting the Crucifixion, for the Chapel at Eton College, Windsor (1949–1952) and My Four Green Fields, now located in Government Buildings, Dublin. This latter work, commissioned for the Irish Government’s Pavilion, wins first prize for stained glass in the 1939 New York World’s Fair. It graces CIÉ‘s Head Office in O’Connell Street from 1960 to about 1983. The East Window of Eton College is commissioned following the destruction of the building after a bomb is dropped in 1940 on the school during World War II. She is commissioned to design the East Window in 1949, and the new window is inserted in 1952. This work is featured on an Irish postage stamp in 1969. From December 2005 to June 2006, an exhibition of her work is on display at the National Gallery of Ireland. Saint Mary’s church in Clonsilla also features her stained glass windows.
Despite ill health, Hone continues to produce a huge number of small stained glass panels as well as oils, watercolours, and gouache landscapes. In 1953, she is represented at the Contemporary Irish Art exhibition at Aberystwyth, Wales, and at the Tate gallery in London, receiving as well an honorary LLD from Trinity College Dublin (TCD). In 1954, she is elected an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA).
Unmarried, Hone dies on March 13, 1955, while entering her parish church at Rathfarnham. She is survived by two of her sisters. Over 20,000 people visit a memorial exhibition of her work at University College Dublin (UCD), Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin, in 1958.
(Pictured: Portrait of Evie Hone by Hilda van Stockum)
seamus dubhghaill 