seamus dubhghaill

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Death of Confederate General Patrick Cleburne at the Battle of Franklin

Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, native Irishman called the “Stonewall of the West” and one of the finest generals produced by either side during the American Civil War, is killed at the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864.

Cleburne is born on March 17, 1828 at Bride Park Cottage in Ovens, County Cork, just outside Cork city. He is extremely loyal to his adopted country, saying, “if this [Confederacy] that is so dear to my heart is doomed to fail, I pray heaven may let me fall with it, while my face is toward the enemy and my arm battling for that which I know to be right.” Sadly, he ultimately receives his wish.

Cleburne begins his military career in an unlikely manner. When he fails the entrance exam at Trinity College, Dublin, he cannot face his family. He enlists in the 41st Regiment of Foot in the British Army. In 1849 he purchases his discharge and leaves for the United States, eventually settling in Helena, Arkansas in June 1850 and earning his citizenship in 1855. He loves his new country, taking part in many community projects, and even being one of the few volunteers to care for the sick during a yellow fever outbreak.

In January 1861 Cleburne joins the local militia company, the Yell Rifles.  He leads the company in the seizure of the U.S. Arsenal in Little Rock in January 1861. When Arkansas secedes from the Union, the Yell Rifles become part of the 1st Arkansas Infantry Regiment. By fall of 1861 he has risen to command the 2nd Brigade, Hardee’s Division, in the Army of Central Kentucky. His first major battle is at the Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862. At the Battle of Richmond (Kentucky) in August 1862, he is wounded in the mouth and loses several of his teeth. Still, he earns the thanks of the Confederate States Congress for his actions there. During the October 1862 Battle of Perryville he is wounded again – twice, yet stays in command during the battle. In December 1862 he is promoted to Major General.

At the December 1862 Battle of Stones River, Cleburne and his division earn the praise of General Braxton Bragg for their incredible skill and valor. Cleburne’s actions and character play a large role in his men’s determination during battle.

In 1863 Cleburne faces off against Union General George Henry Thomas at the Battle of Chickamauga. His and General John C. Breckinridge’s assaults force General Thomas to call repeatedly for reinforcements. In November 1863 the Confederate army is forced to retreat after the Chattanooga Campaign. However, Cleburne has defeated every assault against his men eventually charging his attackers. After the battle, he and his men are charged with covering the retreat.

On January 2, 1864, Cleburne makes his most controversial decision ever. He gathers the corps and division commanders in the Army of Tennessee to present his proposal. The Confederacy is unable to fill its ranks due to a lack of manpower. He states that slavery is their “most vulnerable point, a continued embarrassment, and in some respects an insidious weakness.” His proposed solution is for the Confederacy to arm slaves to fight in the army. In time, these soldiers would receive their freedom. The proposal is not well received at all. In fact, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, directs that the proposal be suppressed.

In the spring of 1864 the Army of Tennessee moves towards Atlanta, Georgia. Cleburne and his men fight at Dalton, Tunnel Hill, Resaca, Pickett’s Mill, Ringgold and Kennesaw. The Atlanta Campaign begins in the summer and lasts until September, when General John Bell Hood evacuates Atlanta. Hood had taken command from General Joseph E. Johnston, which Cleburne felt to be a disaster for the Confederacy.

General Hood hopes to stop Union General John Schofield and his men before they can reach Nashville to reinforce General Thomas. Due to poor communications and nightfall, Schofield slips past the Army of Tennessee into Franklin.

The November 30, 1864 Battle of Franklin is a tragic loss for the Confederacy. Hood throws his men into well-fortified Union troops. The results are disastrous. About 6,000 men are killed or wounded including six generals who are killed or mortally wounded. Cleburne is one of these six, killed while attacking Union breastworks. He is last seen advancing on foot toward the Union line with his sword raised, after his horse had been shot out from under him. Accounts later say that he is found just inside the Federal line and his body is carried back to an aid station along the Columbia Turnpike. Confederate war records indicate he died of a shot to the abdomen, or possibly a bullet that went through his heart. When Confederates find his body, he has been picked clean of any valuable items, including his sword, boots and pocket watch.

Cleburne’s remains are first laid to rest at Rose Hill Cemetery in Columbia, Tennessee. At the urging of Army Chaplain Bishop Quintard, Judge Mangum, staff officer to Cleburne and his law partner in Helena, his remains are moved to St. John’s Episcopal Church near Mount Pleasant, Tennessee, where they remain for six years. In 1870, he is disinterred and returned to his adopted hometown of Helena, Arkansas, with much fanfare, and buried in the Helena Confederate Cemetery located in the southwest corner of the Maple Hill Cemetery, overlooking the Mississippi River.

Several geographic features are named after Patrick Cleburne, including Cleburne County in Alabama and Arkansas, and the city of Cleburne, Texas. The Patrick R. Cleburne Confederate Cemetery is a memorial cemetery in Jonesboro, Georgia that is named in honor of General Patrick Cleburne.


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Birth of Thomas Russell, Founding Member of the Society of United Irishmen

Thomas Paliser Russell, founding member and leading organiser of the Society of United Irishmen, is born in Dromahane, County Cork, on November 21, 1767.

Born into an Anglican family with a military tradition. Russell is intended for an ecclesiastical career in the Church of Ireland, but in 1783 sails with his brother’s regiment to India and fights at the battle of Cannanore. He is, however, disgusted by what he regards as “the unjust and rapacious conduct pursued by the authorities in the case of two native women,” and returns disaffected to Ireland in 1786. After briefly studying for the church ministry, he spends the next four years as a half-pay officer in Dublin pursuing studies of science, philosophy and politics.

In 1790, Russell meets Theobald Wolfe Tone in the visitors’ gallery of the Irish House of Commons and a lifelong friendship begins. At the end of the year, he is commissioned to Belfast as an ensign in the 64th infantry regiment of foot. Being convivial, good looking, charismatic and charming, he fits quickly into Belfast society. He is deeply religious and holds strong millennialist beliefs. On the other hand, he is also of a restless nature, drinks heavily, and is highly promiscuous.

Russell becomes a founder member of the first Society of United Irishmen in Belfast in 1791, writes for the Northern Star, and acts as secretary for the Dublin United Irishmen. He is the most socially radical of all United Irish leaders, an outspoken opponent of slavery and industrial exploitation.

Russell posts bail for a friend in order to secure his release from a debtor’s prison. When the friend defaults, Russell has to sell his ensigncy in July 1791. After several months, and to avoid further debt, he accepts the offer of Thomas Knox, 1st Viscount Northland, the father of an old army friend, to become seneschal (a kind of stipendiary magistrate) to the Northlands’ manor court at Dungannon. However, he resigns within a year, apparently disgusted by the sectarian animosities there. His financial situation worsens until he becomes librarian at the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge (the later Linen Hall Library) in 1794.

Russell is arrested on September 16, 1796, is charged with treason, and detained without trial in Newgate Prison, Dublin, until March 1799. He is then sent to Fort George in the north of Scotland. The longest serving United Irish prisoner, he is released in June 1802 on condition of exile to Hamburg. However, he soon makes his way to Paris where he meets Robert Emmet who, with William Putnam McCabe are advancing the plans for insurrection pending the French renewal of the war against England. Having little confidence in the French, however, he returns to Ireland in March 1803 to organise the North in conjunction with the veteran of the Battle of Antrim, James Hope. However, he meets with little success as much of the North is subdued following the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

In 1803 Russell joins a general insurrection that is to take place throughout Ireland with blows being struck simultaneously at Dublin, Belfast, and Downpatrick. Unknown to him, Robert Emmet is unable to secure help and promised firearms. In Dublin after a brief street battle on the evening of July 23, 1803, Emmett calls off the rising.

Russell manages to hide for a number of weeks in Dublin but is caught in the authorities’ dragnet on September 9. He is sent under heavy escort to Downpatrick Gaol. There, convicted of high treason, he is hung and beheaded on October 12, 1803. His remains are buried in the graveyard of the parish church, Down Cathedral, in a grave paid for by his friend Mary Ann McCracken.


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Establishment of the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake

The Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake is established in the Irish Free State on November 17, 1920. The lottery is established to finance hospitals.

The Sweepstake is generally referred to as the Irish Sweepstake or Irish Sweepstakes, frequently abbreviated to Irish Sweep or Irish Sweeps. The Public Charitable Hospitals (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1930 is the act that establishes the lottery. This act expires in 1934, in accordance with its terms, and the Public Hospitals Acts are the legislative basis for the scheme thereafter. The main organisers are Richard Duggan, Captain Spencer Freeman and Joseph McGrath. Duggan is a well known Dublin bookmaker who has organised a number of sweepstakes in the decade prior to setting up the Hospitals’ Sweepstake. Captain Freeman is a Welsh-born engineer and former captain in the British Army. After the Constitution of Ireland is enacted in 1937, the name Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake is adopted.

The sweepstake is established because there is a need for investment in hospitals and medical services and the public finances are unable to meet this expense at the time. As the people of Ireland are unable to raise sufficient funds, because of the low population, a significant amount of the funds are raised in the United Kingdom and United States, often among the emigrant Irish. Potentially winning tickets are drawn from rotating drums, usually by nurses in uniform. Each such ticket is assigned to a horse expected to run in one of several horse races, including the Cambridgeshire Handicap, Epsom Derby and the Grand National. Tickets that draw the favourite horses thus stand a higher likelihood of winning and a series of winning horses have to be chosen on the accumulator system, allowing for enormous prizes.

The original sweepstake draws are held at the Mansion House, Dublin on May 19, 1939 under the supervision of the Chief Commissioner of Police, and are moved to a more permanent fixture at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) in Ballsbridge later in 1940.

The Adelaide Hospital in Dublin is the only hospital at the time to not accept money from the Hospitals Trust, as the governors disapprove of sweepstakes.

From the 1960s onwards, revenues decline. The offices are moved to Lotamore House in County Cork. Although giving the appearance of a public charitable lottery, with nurses featured prominently in the advertising and drawings, the Sweepstake is in fact a private for-profit lottery company, and the owners are paid substantial dividends from the profits. Fortune magazine describes it as “a private company run for profit and its handful of stockholders have used their earnings from the sweepstakes to build a group of industrial enterprises that loom quite large in the modest Irish economy. Waterford Glassworks, Irish Glass Bottle Company and many other new Irish companies are financed by money from this enterprise and up to 5,000 people are given jobs.” At the time of his death in 1966, Joe McGrath has interests in the racing industry, and holds the Renault dealership for Ireland in addition to large financial and property assets. He is notorious throughout Ireland for his ruthless business attitude and his actions during the Irish Civil War.

In 1986, the Irish government creates a new public lottery, the National Lottery, and the company fails to secure the new contract to manage it. The final sweepstake is held in January 1986 and the company is unsuccessful for a licence bid for the National Lottery, which is won by An Post later that year. The company goes into voluntary liquidation in March 1987. The majority of workers do not have a pension scheme but the sweepstake has fed many families during lean times and is regarded as a safe job. The Public Hospitals (Amendment) Act, 1990 is enacted for the orderly winding up of the scheme, which has by then almost £500,000 in unclaimed prizes and accrued interest.

A collection of advertising material relating to the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes is among the Special Collections of National Irish Visual Arts Library.


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Death of Tom Clancy of the Irish Folk Group The Clancy Brothers

Thomas Joseph Clancy, a member of the Irish folk group the Clancy Brothers, dies in Cork, County Cork, on November 7, 1990. He has the most powerful voice of the brothers and has previously been an actor in numerous stage productions, appearing with Orson Welles in King Lear. He also performs often on television and occasionally in the movies.

Clancy is born on October 29, 1924, one of eleven children born to Johanna McGrath and Bob Clancy in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. After being apprenticed as a baker, he follows his older brother Patrick “Paddy” Clancy into the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1943 during World War II, despite both having been members of the Irish Republican Army. In the RAF, he works as a radio operator on bombing runs over Germany.

Discharged from the RAF at the end of the war, Clancy tours with a British repertory company. In 1947 he and his brother Paddy emigrate to Canada. They then move to New York where he meets his first wife and his oldest daughter is born in 1950. They then soon move to Cleveland, Ohio, to live with relatives. He works for a while as a repertory actor at the Cleveland Play House, before returning temporarily to Ireland. While in Ireland, Clancy works for the Shakespeareana Internationale company run by English actor and manager Geoffrey Kendal. After Paddy sends him extra money, he returns to the United States. The brothers plan to move to California, but their car breaks down. They decide to try New York City instead and find work as actors, both on and off Broadway.

In 1956 their brother Liam Clancy joins them, accompanied by his friend Tommy Makem. Liam and Tommy begin singing together, and in 1959 are joined by the older Clancy brothers as The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. The group performs together until Liam leaves in 1976. Makem had left in 1969 to be replaced for a brief time by Bobby Clancy and later Louis Killen.

Clancy continues singing with The Clancy Brothers until 1976, when the group is disbanded. The group reforms in 1977 with a new line-up. Clancy performs with his brothers Paddy and Bobby and their nephew Robbie O’Connell until his death. He also performs with Paddy, Liam, and Tommy Makem during their reunion tour from 1984 to 1985.

Clancy takes the lead vocals on many of the group’s songs, such as “The Rising of the Moon,” “The Moonshiner,” “Haul Away Joe,” “Red Haired Mary,” “The Barnyards of Delgaty,” “Carrickfergus,” “I Once Loved a Lass,” “The Bold Fenian Men,” among others.

Clancy continues to act during his singing career, appearing in the movies The Killer Elite (1975) and Swashbuckler (1976). He also appears on episodes of Little House on the Prairie, Starsky and Hutch, and The Incredible Hulk, among others. He acts in several TV movies as well.

After an absence of fifteen years, Clancy returns to Broadway in May 1974 in Eugene O’Neill‘s A Moon for the Misbegotten. The Irish Times reviews his performance of Phil Hogan: “In ‘Moon’ he deftly measures up to the formidable company in which he finds himself – a wily, sly rogue with a whimsical humour and a genuine concern for his daughter.” The play is a hit and wins three Tony Awards.

Clancy dies from stomach cancer at the age of 66 on November 7, 1990 at Mercy University Hospital in Cork, County Cork. He is survived by his wife Joan and their three daughters, Rayleen, Blawneen and Rosie. Prior to his marriage to Joan, he has children, Eileen and Thomas, with Yvonne Marcus, in Cleveland, Ohio. He also has a daughter, Cait, with his second wife Laine, in the mid-1950s.

Clancy’s last recording is made in 1988 with Robbie O’Connell, Bobby Clancy, and Paddy Clancy at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire. Unfortunately, the recording is marred by unevenly mixed instruments and voices. After his death, Liam returns to the Clancy Brothers to fill in his place.


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Birth of Nicholas Brady, Clergyman & Poet

Nicholas Brady, Anglican clergyman and poet, is born in Bandon, County Cork, on October 28, 1659.

Brady is the second son of Major Nicholas Brady and his wife Martha Gernon, daughter of the English-born judge and author Luke Gernon. His great-grandfather is Hugh Brady, the first Protestant Bishop of Meath. He receives his education at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford. He earns degrees from Trinity College, Dublin (BA 1685, MA 1686, BD & DD 1699).

Brady is a zealous promoter of the Glorious Revolution and suffers for his beliefs in consequence. When the Williamite War in Ireland breaks out in 1690, he, by his influence, thrice prevented the burning of the town of Bandon, after James II gives orders for its destruction following the Capture of Bandon. The same year he is employed by the people of Bandon to lay their grievances before the Parliament of England. He soon afterward settles in London, where he obtains various preferments. At the time of his death, he holds the livings of Clapham and Richmond.

Brady’s best-known work, written with his collaborator Nahum Tate, is New Version of the Psalms of David, a metrical version of the Psalms. It is licensed in 1696 and largely ousts the old Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter. His ode Hail! Bright Cecilia, based on a similar ode by John Dryden, is written in 1692 in honour of the feast day of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of musicians. It is set to music by Henry Purcell in 1697. Like Dryden, he also translates Virgil‘s Aeneid, and writes several smaller poems and dramas, as well as sermons.

Brady marries Letitia Synge and has four sons and four daughters. He dies on May 20, 1726, and is buried in the church at Richmond, London. Notable descendants of Brady include Maziere Brady, Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

(Pictured: “Portrait of Nicholas Brady (1659-1726),” oil on canvas by Hugh Howard (1675-1737), circa 1715, National Gallery of Ireland)


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IRA Volunteer Mick Fitzgerald Dies on Hunger Strike

Michael Fitzgerald also known as Mick Fitzgerald, dies on hunger strike in Cork County Gaol on October 17, 1920. He is among the first members of the Irish Republican Army and plays an important role in organizing it. His death is credited with bringing world-wide attention to the Irish cause for independence.

Born in December 1881 in Ballyoran, Fermoy, County Cork, Fitzgerald is educated at the Christian Brothers School in the town and subsequently finds work as a mill worker in the locality. He joins the Irish Volunteers in 1914 and plays an important role in building the local organisation which is soon to become the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He soon rises to the rank of Battalion Commandant, 1st Battalion, Cork No.2 Brigade.

On Easter Sunday, April 20, 1919, Fitzgerald leads a small group of IRA volunteers who capture Araglin, Cork Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks located on the border with County Tipperary. He is subsequently arrested and sentenced to three months imprisonment at Cork County Gaol. He is released from prison in August 1919 and immediately returns to active IRA duty. He is involved in the holding up of a party of British Army troops at the Wesleyan Church in Fermoy. The troops are disarmed although one of them is killed. Arrested and held on remand, Fitzgerald feels that the only chance he has for release is via a hunger strike.

Fitzgerald, along with Terence MacSwiney and nine other IRA volunteers, are arrested on August 8, 1920. On August 11, MacSwiney begins a hunger strike in Brixton Gaol. Fitzgerald and the other nine volunteers at Cork County Gaol join in. At the age of 24, he is the first to die on October 17, 1920 as a result of his sixty-seven day fast. His death is followed by the deaths of Joe Murphy and Terence MacSwiney. Their deaths are credited with bringing world-wide attention to the Irish cause for independence.

Fitzgerald is buried at Kilcrumper Cemetery, on the outskirts of Fermoy, County Cork. In addition, a road is named after him in Togher, Cork.

During a November 2008 visit to Fermoy, Sinn Féin Vice-President Pat Doherty lays a wreath at Fitzgerald’s grave. Doherty says Fitzgerald’s sacrifice was like that of the hunger strikers in 1981. He says it is a great honour for him to pay homage to a man “to whom we owe so much.” Also buried in the Republican Plot in Fermoy is General Liam Lynch, who was Chief of Staff of the IRA when he was shot dead by Irish Free State troops in the Knockmealdown Mountains on April 12, 1923. His last wish was to be buried with his great friend and comrade, Mick Fitzgerald.


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Irish Businessman Ben Dunne Kidnapped by the IRA

Ben Dunne, an Irish businessman, is kidnapped by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on October 16, 1981. Former director of his family firm, Dunnes Stores, one of the largest chains of department stores in Ireland, he now owns a chain of fitness centres established by his company Barkisland Developments Limited.

Dunne is born in Cork, County Cork on March 3, 1949 to Nora Maloney and Ben Dunne, a business man who founded Dunnes Stores. He is the last of six children.

In 1981, he is kidnapped by the IRA and held for seven days. He is released unharmed after his friend and fellow businessman, Patrick Gallagher, pays his £1 million ransom.

In 1992, Dunne is arrested for cocaine possession and soliciting while on a golf holiday in Florida. His arrest triggers the end of his leadership of Dunnes Stores, as family turmoil leads to control falling to his sister Margaret Heffernan and the company paying IR£100 million for his share of the business.

Dunne is again embroiled in scandal in the mid-1990s when it emerges he had given large amounts of money to a number of Irish politicians, mainly from the Fianna Fáil party including the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey. He also gave money to Michael Lowry of Fine Gael. Justice Brian McCracken, sole member of The McCracken Tribunal which is established by the Irish Government in 1997, finds that Dunne knowingly assisted Lowry in evading his tax obligations. On March 22, 2011, the Moriarty Tribunal concludes of Ben Dunne’s dealings with Michael Lowry that “What was contemplated and attempted on the part of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Lowry was profoundly corrupt to a degree that was nothing short of breathtaking.” The report refers to its finding Lowry sought to influence a rent review of a building part-owned by Dunne.

Dunne now owns a chain of fitness centres called Ben Dunne Gyms located in Dublin and Liverpool, which he personally promotes on radio, using recent Irish advertising legislation which allows direct comparisons to named competitors. He was working on a new health club, to open in Dún Laoghaire in Dublin, but abandons the project due to complaints from local residents.

In April 2005 Dunne pays £3,000,000 for a 21-acre site in Motspur Park, New Malden (South London), former home of BBC Football Club and other BBC sports facilities. His intent is to apply for planning permission to build a leisure and fitness centre, but he does not do so. Instead, in February 2008, his company Barkisland Developments Limited submits a planning application to the Kingston upon Thames London Borough Council for change of use of the sports ground to a cemetery. The application to change the former BBC Sports Ground into a cemetery is withdrawn on October 3, 2008 after it had become clear that planning permission was likely to be refused. Objections are lodged by many local residents, sports clubs, Sport England and the Mayor of London.


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Birth of Cork GAA Hurler Christy Ring

Nicholas Christopher Michael Ring, better known as Christy Ring, an Irish hurler whose league and championship career with the Cork GAA senior team spans twenty-four years from 1939 to 1963, is born in Kilboy, Cloyne, County Cork, on October 12, 1920. His 24-year career record earns him a reputation as the greatest hurler of all time.

Ring establishes many championship records, including career appearances (65), scoring tally (33-208), and number of All-Ireland medals won (8), however, these records are subsequently bested by Brendan Cummins, Eddie Keher, and Henry Shefflin respectively. Ring is widely regarded as one of the greatest hurlers in the history of the game, with many former players, commentators, and fans rating him as the number one player of all time.

Ring first excels at hurling following encouragement from his local national school teachers Michael O’Brien and Jerry Moynihan. He first appears on the Cloyne GAA minor team at the age of twelve before later winning a county minor championship medal with the nearby St. Enda’s team. A Cork Junior Hurling Championship medal with Cloyne follows, however, a dispute with club officials sees Ring join Glen Rovers GAA in Blackpool in 1941. Over the next twenty-six years with the club, Ring wins one Munster Senior Club Hurling Championship medal and fourteen county senior championship medals. As a Gaelic footballer with the Glen’s sister club, St. Nicholas’ GAA, he also wins a county senior championship medal. He retires from club hurling at the age of forty-six following a victory over University College Cork GAA in the 1967 championship quarter-final. Over the course of his senior championship career Ring estimates that he played in 1,200 games.

Ring makes his debut on the inter-county scene at the age of sixteen when he is picked on the Cork minor panel for the All-Ireland final. In spite of victory, he is denied an All-Ireland Minor Hurling Championship medal as he is Cork’s last non-playing substitute. Still eligible for the grade in 1938, Ring collects a set of All-Ireland and Munster Minor Hurling Championship medals as a member of the starting fifteen. An unsuccessful year with the Cork junior hurlers follows before he makes his senior debut during the 1939-40 league. Over the course of the next quarter century, Ring wins eight All-Ireland medals, including a record four consecutive championships from 1941 to 1944, a lone triumph in 1946 and three additional consecutive championships from 1952 to 1954. The only player to lift the Liam MacCarthy Cup three times as captain, he is denied a record-breaking ninth All-Ireland medal in 1956 in what is his last All-Ireland final appearance. Ring also wins nine Munster medals, four National Hurling League medals, and is named Hurler of the Year at the age of thirty-eight. He plays his last game for Cork in June 1963. After indicating his willingness to line out for the team once again in 1964, Ring fails to be selected for the Cork team, a move which effectively brings his inter-county career to an end.

After being chosen as a substitute on the Munster GAA inter-provincial team in 1941, Ring is an automatic choice on the starting fifteen for the following twenty-two years. He scores 42-105 as he wins a record eighteen Railway Cup medals during that period, in an era when his skill and prowess draw crowds of up to 50,000 to Croke Park for the annual final on Saint Patrick’s Day. Ring’s retirement from the game is often cited as a contributory factor in the decline of the once prestigious championship.

In retirement from playing Ring becomes involved in team management and coaching. As a mentor to the St. Finbarr’s College senior team, he guides them to their first two All-Ireland and Harty Cup triumphs in 1963 and 1969. At club level Ring is instrumental as a selector with Glen Rovers when they claim their inaugural All-Ireland title in 1973, having earlier annexed the Munster and county senior championship titles. It is with the Cork senior team that he enjoys his greatest successes as a selector. After an unsuccessful campaign in his first season on the selection panel in 1973, Ring is dropped the following year before being reinstated in 1975. Over the next three years Cork claims three successive All-Ireland titles.

Ring is most famous for his scoring prowess, physical strength, and career longevity. He remains the only player to have competed at inter-county level in four different decades. Often the target of public attention for his hurling exploits, in private Ring is a shy and reserved individual. A teetotaller and non-smoker throughout his life, he is also a devout Roman Catholic.

On Friday, March 2, 1979, Ring has a scheduled appointment with his doctor and former teammate Dr. Jim Young in Cork city centre. As he is walking past the Cork College of Commerce on Morrisson’s Island at 3:30 PM he suffers a massive heart attack and collapses. He is taken by ambulance to the South Infirmary Hospital but is pronounced dead on arrival.

Ring’s sudden death and the scenes which follow at his funeral are unprecedented in Cork since the death of the martyred Lord Mayor of Cork Tomás Mac Curtain in 1920. He is posthumously honoured by being named on the Hurling Team of the Century in 1984 and the Hurling Team of the Millennium in 2000, while he is also named as the Century’s Best Hurler in The Irish Times.


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Death of Sculptor Seamus Murphy

Seamus Murphy, Irish sculptor and stone carver best known for designing the Church of the Annunciation, Blackpool, Cork, dies in Cork, County Cork, on October 2, 1975.

Murphy is born near Mallow, County Cork on July 15, 1907, the son of James Murphy, a railway employee, and Margaret Sheehan of Little Island, County Cork. He attends Saint Patrick’s School on Gardiner’s Hill. In 1921 he enrolls as a part-time student at the Crawford School of Art, Emmet Place, Cork. In 1922 he finds work as an apprentice stone-carver at John Aloysius O’Connell’s Art Marble Works, Watercourse Road, Blackpool. There he specialises in architectural and foliage carving while continuing his studies at Crawford by night.

Murphy studies at the Académie Colarossi and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris in 1932-1933 where he is befriended by the Irish American sculptor Andrew O’Connor. He opens his studio/workshop on Watercourse Road, Blackpool, Cork in 1934.

He is elected associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1944, elected a full member in 1954, and appointed Royal Hibernian Academy Professor of Sculpture in 1964.

Also in 1944, he marries Maighread Higgins, daughter of the Cork sculptor Joseph Higgins, and they go on to have three children – the knitwear designer Bebhinn Marten, the novelist Orla Murphy and the painter and De Dannan member Colm Murphy.

Murphy designs the Church of the Annunciation on Great William O’Brien Street in Blackpool, Cork, for William Dwyer in 1945. The stonework in the church is mostly by Murphy himself. It is officially dedicated on October 7, 1945.

Seamus Murphy dies in Cork on October 2, 1975. He is buried in Rathcooney, County Cork.

Examples of Murphy’s unique carvings of statues, gravestones, monuments and plaques can be seen around Cork and Ireland, including a signed panel of the four evangelists outside the entrance of the church of Our Lady and Saint John in Carrigaline, County Cork.


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Capture of Mallow Barracks

The Cork No. 2 Brigade, Irish Republican Army (IRA), attacks and captures a military barracks in Mallow, County Cork, on September 28, 1920, the only military barracks to be captured during the Irish War of Independence. British forces later burn and sack the town.

Mallow had been a garrison town for several hundred years. Eight miles to the north lay Buttevant where one of the largest military barracks in the country is located. Not far from Buttevant are the great military training camps of Ballyvonaire, while nineteen miles to the northeast is Fermoy with its large permanent military garrisons and huge barracks adjacent to the big training centres of Kilworth and Moorepark. Twenty miles to the southeast is the city of Cork with its many thousands of troops both in the posts within the city and at Ballincollig, about six miles west of it, on the Macroom road. Thirteen miles westward a detachment from a British machine gun corps holds Kanturk. Every town and village has its post of Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) men armed to the teeth.

The idea of capturing the barracks comes from two members of the Mallow IRA Battalion, Dick Willis, a painter, and Jack Bolster, a carpenter, who are employed on the civilian maintenance staff of the barracks which is occupied by the 17th Lancers. Willis and Bolster are able to observe the daily routine of the garrison and form the opinion that the capture of the place would not be difficult. They are instructed by their local battalion officers to make a sketch map of the barracks. After that is prepared, Liam Lynch and Ernie O’Malley go with Willis and Tadhg Byrnes to Mallow to study the layout of the surrounding district. Among the details of the garrison’s routine that Willis and Bolster report to the Column leaders, is the information that each morning the officer in charge, accompanied by two-thirds of the men, take the horses for exercise outside the town. It is obvious to the two Mallow volunteers that this is the ideal time for the attack.

Situated at the end of a short, narrow street and on the western verge of the Town Park, Mallow barracks stand on an unusually low-lying location and is relatively small in size. Surrounded by a high stone wall, the barracks can be approached from the town park as well as from the main street. The various details are carefully studied by Lynch and O’Malley. While Willis and Bolster are allotted tasks within the walls of the barracks, Byrnes and Jack Cunningham are chosen to attack with the main body of the column which includes Commandant Denny Murphy of Kanturk.

On the morning of September 27, at their Burnfort headquarters, the men are ordered to prepare for action. Under cover of darkness they move into the town and enter the Town Hall by way of the park at the rear. The eighteen men of the column are strengthened by members of the Mallow battalion, a number of men posted in the upper storey of the Town Hall, from which they can command the approaches to the nearby RIC barracks. Initially it is planned that Willis and Bolster will enter the military barracks that morning in the normal manner, accompanied by an officer of the column who will pose as a contractor’s overseer. The officer is Paddy McCarthy of Newmarket, who would die a few months later in a gun battle with the Black and Tans at Millstreet.

McCarthy, Willis and Bolster enter the barracks without mishap. Members of the garrison follow their normal routine, with the main body of troops under the officer in charge leaving the barracks with the horses. In the barracks remain about fifteen men under the command of a senior N.C.O., Sergeant Gibbs.

Once the military has passed, the attackers, numbering about twenty men and led by Liam Lynch, advance toward the bottom of Barrack Street. All are armed with revolvers which are considered the most convenient and suitable weapons for the operation. Lynch has issued strict instructions that there is to be no shooting by the attackers, unless as a last resort. Inside the walls are McCarthy, Willis and Bolster, their revolvers concealed. Then Ernie O’Malley presents himself at the wicket gate with a bogus letter in his hand. Behind him and out of sight of the sentry are the other members of the main attacking party, led by Lynch, O’Brien and George Power. When the gate is opened sufficiently, O’Malley wedges his foot between it and the frame and the soldier is overpowered and the attackers rush in. McCarthy, Bolster and Willis immediately go to the guardroom where they hold up the guard. Realising what is happening, Sergeant Gibbs, rushes toward the guardroom in which rifles are kept. Although called upon to halt, he continues even though a warning shot is fired over his head. As he reaches the guardroom door, the IRA officer and one of the volunteers in the guardroom fire simultaneously. Mortally wounded, the sergeant falls at the guardroom door.

By this time the majority of the attacking party is inside the gate. Military personnel in different parts of the barracks are rounded up and arms are collected. Three waiting motor cars pull up to the gate and all the rifles, other arms and equipment found in the barracks are loaded into them. The prisoners are locked into one of the stables, with the exception of a man left to care for Sergeant Gibbs. The whole operation goes according to plan, except for the shooting of the sergeant. Twenty minutes after the sentry had been overpowered the pre-arranged signal of a whistle blast is sounded and the attackers withdraw safely to their headquarters at Burnfort, along the mountain road out of Mallow.

Expecting reprisals, the column moves to Lombardstown that night, and positions are taken up around the local co-operative creamery as it is the custom of the British to wreak their vengeance on isolated country creameries after incidents such as what had just occurred. The Mallow raid, however, has greater repercussions than the destruction of a creamery and co-operative stores. The following night, large detachments of troops from Buttevant and Fermoy enter Mallow. They rampage through the town, burning and looting at will. High over the town, the night sky is red with the flames of numerous burning buildings.

Townspeople run through the blazing streets, in search of refuge. A number of women and children are accorded asylum in the nearby convent schools. Another group of terrified women, some with children in arms, take refuge in the cemetery at the rear of St. Mary’s Church, where they kneel or lay above the graves. It is a night of terror such as which had never before been endured by the people of Mallow.

The extent of the wanton destruction outrages fair-minded people all over the world. Details of the havoc that had been wrought and pictures of the scenes of destruction are published worldwide.

(Pictured: Townspeople gather in front of one of the many buildings in Mallow which were reduced to ruins during British Army reprisals)