Harty is born on August 11, 1867, in Knocknagurteeny, Murroe, County Limerick, the son of Francis Harty and his wife, Johana (née Ryan). He is educated locally and at the Jesuits‘ Crescent College, Limerick. In 1884, he goes to St. Patrick’s College, Thurles, and two years later proceeds to Maynooth College, where he trains for the priesthood. After ordination at Clonliffe College, Dublin, on May 20, 1894, he returns to Maynooth. The following year he is appointed to the chair of philosophy and theology there. However, he defers this for a year while he attends lectures at the Ecclesiastical university in Rome, as one of two professors who has been granted the new privilege of leave of absence on full salary to study abroad.
Back at Maynooth Harty is a prominent member of staff. In 1906, he co-founds the Irish Theological Quarterly, of which he is for many years editor, and is also editor for a time of the Irish Ecclesiastical Record. His contributions to these and other periodicals are numerous and include an essay on the “Sacredness of fetal life” for the Irish Theological Quarterly in 1906. As a founder member of the Maynooth manuscripts publication committee, which runs from 1906 to 1915, he helps oversee the publication of the edition of the Black Book of Limerick (1907) by his colleague James MacCaffrey and of some impressive student publications, including Gadaidhe Géar na Geamh-oidche (1915), a volume of tales from the Fenian cycle from manuscripts in the library. He is appointed senior professor of moral theology but ceases teaching after he is consecrated Archbishop of Cashel on January 18, 1914.
Harty is early involved with the Gaelic Athletic Association – he had been a hurler in his youth – and is a strong supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP). In late 1915 he furnishes John Redmond with a letter of support, and a few months later is denouncing the Easter Rising and congratulating the people of Cashel for abstaining from insurrection. Later that year he is involved in a French propaganda drive to boost the war effort in Ireland. As one of the four bishop delegates to the 1917 Irish Convention, he speaks against a Methodist delegate’s call for mixed education. Criticising the Protestant educational system in Belfast, he claims the Catholic church has a right to teach its own children, and effectively closes down the discussion. By April 1918 he has moved toward tacit acceptance of Sinn Féin and is at the forefront of the anti-conscription campaign. In a speech he calls conscription unjust and hypocritical and calls for “every man with a drop of Irish blood in his veins” to sign the protest against it.
On the establishment of the Free State, Harty preaches support for Cumann na nGaedheal, but by the 1930s is closer to Éamon de Valera, and is a strong advocate of protectionism, which he feels will ensure a self-sufficient Ireland of traditional values. In 1933, he applauds the tax set on imported daily papers, as he believes English papers are corrupting the young. At the golden jubilee of the GAA the following year he makes a speech in Cashel calling for Irish industries, Irish music, and Irish dances. As president of the congress committee, he is a key organiser of the massive Eucharistic Congress of 1932. His other great concerns are the foreign missions and the promotion of Catholic literature – he is president of the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland. His practical work for his diocese includes heading a deputation to the minister for agriculture in October 1932 to press Thurles’s claims for the new sugar beet factory. It opens there in December 1934.
Although tall, athletic, and fond of open air, Harty is for many years in poor health and from about 1933 petitions the Holy See for a coadjutor-archbishop. This finally comes about in 1942 when Bishop Jeremiah Kissane of Waterford comes to Cashel as his dean and coadjutor. Four years later Harty dies at his residence in Thurles on September 11, 1946, and is buried at the Cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles. He is survived by a brother and a sister. The GAA ground in his native Murroe is named after him.
(From: “Harty, John” by Bridget Hourican, Dictionary of Irish Biography, www. dib.ie, October 2009)
When appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1789, FitzGibbon is granted his first peerage as Baron FitzGibbon, of Lower Connello in the County of Limerick, in the Peerage of Ireland that year. This does not entitle him to a seat in the British House of Lords, only in the Irish House of Lords. His later promotions come mostly in the Peerage of Ireland, being advanced to a Viscountcy in 1793 and the Earldom of Clare in 1795. He finally achieves a seat in the British House of Lords in 1799 when created Baron FitzGibbon, of Sidbury in the County of Devon, in the Peerage of Great Britain.
As Lord Chancellor for Ireland, FitzGibbon is a renowned champion of the Protestant Ascendancy and an opponent of Catholic emancipation. He despises the Parliament of Ireland‘s popular independent Constitution of 1782. He is also personally and politically opposed to the Irish politician Henry Grattan who urges a moderate course in the Irish Parliament and is responsible for defeating Grattan’s efforts to reform the Irish land tithe system under which Irish Catholic farmers (and all non-Anglican farmers) are forced to financially support the minority Anglican Church of Ireland. These are not fully repealed until 1869 when the Church of Ireland is finally disestablished, although Irish tithes are commuted after the Tithe War (1831–1836).
FitzGibbon opposes the Irish Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 personally but apparently recommends its acceptance in the House of Lords, being forced out of necessity when that Act had been recommended to the Irish Executive by the British Cabinet led by William Pitt the Younger. Pitt expects Ireland to follow the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 and allow Catholics to vote again and hold public offices. At the same time, FitzGibbon apparently denounces the policy this Act embodies, so it is probably safe to say that FitzGibbon’s own beliefs and principles conflict with his obligations as a member of the Irish executive of the time.
FitzGibbon’s role in the recall, soon after his arrival, of the popular pro-Emancipation Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl of Fitzwilliam, is debatable. Although he is probably politically opposed to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Fitzwilliam is apparently recalled, because of his own independent actions. Fitzwilliam is known to be friendly to the Ponsonby family and is generally a Foxite liberal Whig. His close association with and patronage of Irish Whigs led by Grattan and Ponsonby during his short tenure, along with his alleged support of an immediate effort to secure Catholic emancipation in a manner not authorized by the British cabinet is likely what leads to his recall. Thus, if anyone is to blame in the short-lived “Fitzwilliam episode” it is Henry Grattan and the Ponsonby brothers – presumably William Ponsonby, later Lord Imokilly, and his brother George Ponsonby — not to mention Lord Fitzwilliam himself. Irish Catholics at the time and later naturally see things very differently and blame hardline Protestants such as FitzGibbon.
Irish Catholics and FitzGibbon apparently agree on one point – Irish political and economic union with Great Britain, which eventually takes place in 1801. Pitt wants Union with Ireland concomitantly with Catholic emancipation, commutation of tithes, and the endowment of the Irish Catholic priesthood. Union is opposed by most hardline Irish Protestants, as well as liberals such as Grattan. FitzGibbon is a strong supporter of the Union since 1793 but refuses to have Catholic emancipation with the Union.
In the end, FitzGibbon’s views wins out, leading to the Union of Ireland with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland without any concessions for Ireland’s Catholic majority, or for that matter, Catholics in the rest of the new United Kingdom. He later claims that he has been duped by the way in which the Act is passed and is bitterly opposed to any concessions during the short remainder of his life.
FitzGibbon’s role as Lord Chancellor of Ireland during the period of the 1798 rebellion is questionable. According to some, he supports a hardline policy which uses torture, murder and massacre to crush the rebellion, or that as Lord Chancellor, he has considerable influence on military affairs, and that martial law cannot be imposed without his consent. Others allege that as Lord Chancellor, he has no say in military affairs. His former side is displayed by sparing the lives of the captured United Irish leaders in return for their confession of complicity and provision of information relating to the planning of the rebellion. However, this willingness of the prisoners to partake of the agreement is spurred by the execution of the Sheares brothers on July 14, 1798.
In contrast to the leniency shown to the largely upper-class leadership, the full weight of military repression is inflicted upon the common people throughout the years 1797–98 with untold thousands suffering imprisonment, torture, transportation and death. Fitzgibbon ss inclined to show no mercy to unrepentant rebels and in October 1798 he expressed his disgust upon the capture of Wolfe Tone that he had been granted a trial and his belief that Tone should have been hanged as soon as he set foot on land.
FitzGibbon is quick to recognise that sectarianism is a useful ally to divide the rebels and prevent the United Irishmen from achieving their goal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, writing in June 1798, “In the North nothing will keep the rebels quiet but the conviction that where treason has broken out the rebellion is merely popish.”
FitzGibbon is noted by some as a good, improving landlord to both his Protestant and Catholic tenants. Some claim that the tenants of his Mountshannon estate call him “Black Jack” FitzGibbon. However, there is no evidence to support this claim, although there is little to no evidence on his dealings as a landlord. Irish nationalists and others point out that while he might have been interested in the welfare of his own tenants on his own estate, he treats other Irish Catholics very differently. Without further evidence, his role as a Protestant landowner in mainly Catholic Ireland is of little importance against his known dealings as Lord Chancellor.
FitzGibbon dies at his home, 6 Ely Place near St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on January 28, 1802, and is buried in the churchyard at St. Peter’s Church, Aungier Street, Dublin. A hero to Protestant hardliners, but despised by the majority Catholic population, his funeral cortege is the cause of a riot and there is a widespread story that a number of dead cats are thrown at his coffin as it departs Ely Place.
(Pictured: “Portrait of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare,” painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1789)
Talbot is born likely in 1630, probably in Dublin. He is one of sixteen children, the youngest of eight sons of William Talbot and his wife Alison Netterville. His father is a lawyer and the 1st Baronet Talbot of Carton, County Kildare. His mother is a daughter of John Netterville of Castletown, Kildare. The Talbots are descended from a Norman family that had settled in Leinster in the 12th century. They adhere to the Catholic faith, despite the founding of the Reformed Church of Ireland under Henry VIII. Little is recorded of Talbot’s upbringing. As an adult he grows to be unusually tall and strong by standards of the time.
Talbot marries Katherine Baynton in 1669, and they have two daughters, Katherine and Charlotte. Katherine dies in 1679. In 1681, he marries Frances Jennings, sister of Sarah Jennings, the future Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough.
Talbot’s early career is spent as a cavalryman in the Irish Confederate Wars. Following a period on the European continent, he joins the court of James, Duke of York, then in exile following the English Civil War, becoming a close and trusted associate. After the 1660 restoration of James’s older brother, Charles, to the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland, he begins acting as agent or representative for Irish Catholics attempting to recover estates confiscated after the Cromwellian conquest, a role that defines the remainder of his career. James converts to Catholicism in the late 1660s, strengthening his association with Talbot.
When James takes the throne in 1685, Talbot’s influence increases. He oversees a major purge of Protestants from the Irish Army, which had previously barred most Catholics. James creates him Earl of Tyrconnell and later makes him Viceroy, or Lord Deputy of Ireland. He immediately begins building a Catholic establishment by admitting Catholics to many administrative, political and judicial posts.
Talbot’s efforts are interrupted by James’s 1688 deposition by his Protestant son-in-law William of Orange. He continues as a Jacobite supporter of James during the subsequent Williamite War in Ireland, but also considers a peace settlement with William that would preserve Catholic rights. Increasingly incapacitated by illness, he dies of a stroke on August 14, 1691, shortly before the Jacobite defeat. He is thought to have been buried in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick. By depriving the Jacobites of their most experienced negotiator, his death possibly has a substantial impact on the terms of the Treaty of Limerick that ends the war.
Talbot’s widow, Frances, and his daughter, Charlotte, remain in France, where Charlotte marries her kinsman, Richard Talbot, son of William Talbot of Haggardstown. Their son is Richard Francis Talbot. Talbot’s other daughter, Katherine, becomes a nun. An illegitimate son, Mark Talbot, serves as an officer in France before his death in the Battle of Luzzara in 1702. Talbot’s estate in nearby Carton, renamed Talbotstown, is uncompleted at the time of his death. Tyrconnell Tower on the site is originally intended by him as a family mausoleum to replace the existing vault at Old Carton graveyard but is also left unfinished.
Talbot is controversial in his own lifetime. His own Chief Secretary, Thomas Sheridan, later describes him as a “cunning dissembling courtier […] turning with every wind to bring about his ambitious ends and purposes.” Many 19th and early 20th century historians repeat this view. Recent assessments have suggested a more complex individual whose career was defined by personal loyalty to his patron James and above all by an effort to improve the status of the Irish Catholic gentry, particularly the “Old English” community to which he belonged.
(Pictured: Watercolour portrait of Richard Talbot by John Bulfinch (d.1728) after painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller)
In effect a special extension of the Defence of the Realm Acts, the aim of the Act is to increase convictions of nationalist rebels while averting the need to declare martial law. Under Section 3(6) of the Act, military authorities are empowered to jail any Irish person without charge or trial. Secret courts-martial are established, and lawyers (appointed by Crown agents) can be present only if the death penalty is involved. Inquests of military or police actions are banned.
By the middle of 1920, Ireland is in the throes of a full-fledged rebellion that is barely recognized by the British Government in Ireland headquartered in Dublin Castle. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), the military arm of the Dáil Éireann revolutionary government, is engaged in a guerilla campaign to destroy elements of British power, particularly burning down courthouses and attacking members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), Britain’s police force in the countryside.
The British response to the increase in violence and the assassination of police officers is twofold. To suppress the IRA “murderers,” Major GeneralHugh Tudor, commander of the RIC and self-styled “Chief of Police,” begins supplementing that body with the employment of World War I veterans known as the “Black and Tans” because of the colour of their surplus World War I uniforms, and an additional temporary force of Auxiliaries. With little discipline and utter indifference to the plight or moral indignation of the Irish population, these groups raid and burn villages, creameries, and farm buildings to intimidate supporters of the IRA.
The second measure is the enactment of the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act (ROIA). The Act is envisioned as a remedy to the problem perceived by Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood that “throughout the greater part of Ireland criminal justice can no longer be administered by the ordinary constitutional process of trial by judge and jury.”
The genesis of the Act may be seen in a Cabinet discussion on May 31, 1920, in which the members focus on the violence in Ireland. Rather than addressing violence as the product of rebellion, Greenwood insists that, “The great task is to crush out murder and arson.” He asserts that the violence is perpetrated by handsomely paid thugs. Commenting on a pending Irish bill, Secretary of State for WarWinston Churchill states, “You should include in the Bill a special tribunal for trying murderers. It is monstrous that we have some 200 murders, and no one hung.” The prime minister agrees that convicted murderers should be hanged but questions whether convictions can be obtained from Catholics. The concern of all is that the civil courts are incapable of strictly administering justice to the revolutionaries because the juries largely consisted of Irish Catholics. The ensuing discussion of possibly imposing court-martial jurisdiction is inconclusive.
After the May 31 meeting, Greenwood investigates the feasibility of imposing martial law in Ireland and raises martial law as the specific subject of a July 23, 1920, conference committee meeting of the Cabinet led by Prime MinisterDavid Lloyd George to which the key members of the Dublin Castle administration are invited. William E. Wylie, the law advisor at Dublin Castle, notes that the RIC is disintegrating through resignations brought on by terrorist attacks, and that with “regard to the Civil Courts, the entire administration of the Imperial Government had ceased.” The civilian participants from Dublin Castle, especially Wylie, maintain that martial law is counter-productive, and will only antagonize the Irish people. As an alternative to martial law, General Tudor argues for the imposition of court-martial jurisdiction. Tudor argues forcefully that court-martial jurisdiction over all crimes will support the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries that he is recruiting. He declaims that “not a single criminal had been brought to justice for murder.” Lloyd George closes the discussion directing the Dublin Castle participants to provide final proposals for enforcement of the laws.
A draft bill to establish military criminal jurisdiction is considered by the Cabinet on July 26. The prime minister’s most telling contribution is his question as to whether a convicted man would be shot or hanged. It appears that he is comforted by the response that the defendant will be tried under the ordinary law which implies death by hanging. The resulting bill is completed by July 30, 1920, and is then quickly pushed through Parliament and receives royal assent on August 9, 1920. The ROIA provides that all crimes punishable under the laws in Ireland can be brought before a court-martial. The court-martial will have the power to impose any punishment authorized by statute or common law including the death penalty. The final step is taken on August 20, 1920, when the final regulations for implementation go into effect.
The combination of growing police and military pressure and recourse to the ROIA lead to increased internments of known or suspected IRA members and a steady increase in convictions to 50-60 per week. This makes it more difficult for IRA soldiers to continue openly working day jobs while carrying on part-time guerrilla activities. As a result, the IRA shifts its approach to guerrilla warfare in the rural counties. Volunteers from IRA units are organized into elite, full-time, mobile flying columns of around 25 men who live off the land and on the run. These flying columns prove to be more suited to ambushes of patrols and convoys and other targets of opportunity, rather than attacks on barracks which had become better defended.
On December 10, 1920, martial law is proclaimed in counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary. In January 1921 martial law is extended to counties Clare and Waterford.
In a crucial judgement, R (Egan) v Macready, the Irish courts rule that the Act does not give power to impose the death penalty. This would no doubt have proved politically contentious had not hostilities ended the same day.
Despite its name, the courts are of the view that ROIA applies in England as well. Following the creation of the Irish Free State, when the Act is repealed by implication, it is still used to deport ex-members of the Irish Self-Determination League to Ireland.
McCourt comes to New York as a young man to live for a time with Frank, ten years his elder. He finds work wherever he can and eventually owns two restaurants in Manhattan. In 1975, he marries Lynn Rockman, with whom he has a daughter, Allison.
For twenty years, from 1993 until he retires in 2013, McCourt works for the Penn South Co-op in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, in charge of apartment restorations in the 2,800-unit residential complex.
Brendan Keany, general manager of Penn South, recalls meeting McCourt in the late 1980s at Allison’s, a restaurant named for his daughter. The restaurant on Eighth Avenue near Penn South closes after a time, but McCourt goes on to run Los Panchos on Columbus Avenue near 71st Street. However, as a man with a family, running bars and restaurants is not ideal, so he finds the job at Penn South, inspecting apartments and directing their restoration.
The author of short stories, newspaper essays, songs, and verse, McCourt, in 2008, publishes a memoir, A Long Stone’s Throw. Surveying the range of jobs he had taken on in a review of that memoir in Manhattan Express’ sister publication The Villager, the late Jerry Tallmer writes, “Working on a great glop-a-da-glop mainframe computer on Wall Street; issuing tickets for British and Irish Railways; a one-day job as bellhop in a Montreal hotel; a bank teller in Montreal; an encyclopedia salesman — for a month; working at the Army and Air Force Exchange Service on 14th Street as a buyer of luggage and musical instruments, knowing nothing about luggage and less about musical instruments; filing clerk; and, oh yes, teacher.”
Lynn McCourt recalls first meeting her future husband. “We were friends for a long time before we were married,” she says. “He was working as a bartender at the White Horse Tavern when I came in with a writer friend. He told me that he ‘saw the light behind’ me when I came in. He could twist words and turn something ordinary into something poignant. Just before he went to California around 1970, we spent a whole night walking and talking. He came back from California in 1974 and we got married in 1975.”
Then, recalling the devoted relationship McCourt has with Allison, Lynn continues, “Our daughter has special needs and has learning and speech problems. Alphie sang to her every night as a baby and eventually she sang back to him. They were inseparable. He’d have breakfast with her every morning. He was a great father — he, who hadn’t seen his own father very much. When we went to Ireland in 1980, he went north to find his father, and he did find him. I’m a Jewish girl from the Bronx who wanted to marry an Irishman with a brogue, and I did.”
Joe Hurley, of Joe Hurley’s Allstar Irish Rock Review, says McCourt, in his later years, had gotten into singing with the group, performing tunes from “The Great Irish Songbook,” like “The Auld Triangle.” He recalls, “He just performed with us at the Highline Ballroom in March. He loved being around young people. The place was full of young people and rock and roll, and then Alphie comes out — you could hear a pin drop. He would talk about how he had these incredible older brothers… fantastic storyteller. He never tooted his own horn.”
McCourt dies suddenly on July 2, 2016, at his home on the Upper West Side while taking an afternoon nap, just 27 days before his 76th birthday. His brother Michael dies the previous September, nine months earlier. He is survived by his brother Malachy.
In September 1919, the Commander-in-Chief, Ireland, Sir Frederick Shaw, suggests that the police force in Ireland be expanded via the recruitment of a special force of volunteer British ex-servicemen. During a Cabinet meeting on May 11, 1920, the Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill, suggests the formation of a “Special Emergency Gendarmerie, which would become a branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary.” Churchill’s proposal is referred to a committee chaired by General Sir Nevil Macready, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in Ireland. Macready’s committee rejects Churchill’s proposal, but it is revived two months later, in July, by the Police Adviser to the Dublin Castle administration in Ireland, Major-General Henry Hugh Tudor. In a memo dated July 6, 1920, Tudor justifies the scheme on the grounds that it will take too long to reinforce the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) with ordinary recruits. Tudor’s new “Auxiliary Force” is to be strictly temporary with its members enlisting for a year. Their pay is to be £7 per week (twice what a constable is paid), plus a sergeant’s allowances, and are to be known as “Temporary Cadets.” At that time, one of high unemployment, a London advertisement for ex-officers to manage coffee stalls at two pounds ten shillings a week receives five thousand applicants.
The Auxiliary Division is recruited in Great Britain from among ex-officers who had served in World War I, especially those who had served in the British Army (including the Royal Flying Corps). Most recruits are from Britain, although some are from Ireland, and others come from other parts of the British Empire. Many have been highly decorated in the war and three, James Leach, James Johnson, and George Onions, have been awarded the Victoria Cross (VC). Enlisted men who had been commissioned as officers during the war often find it difficult to adjust to their loss of status and pay in civilian life, and some historians have concluded that the Auxiliary Division recruited large numbers of these “temporary gentlemen.”
Piaras Béaslaí, a former senior member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty, while paying tribute to the bravery of the Auxiliaries, notes that the force is not composed exclusively of ex-officers but contains “criminal elements,” some of whom robbed people on the streets of Dublin and in their homes.
Recruiting began in July 1920, and by November 1921, the division is 1,900 strong. The Auxiliaries are nominally part of the RIC, but actually operate more or less independently in rural areas. Divided into companies, each about one hundred strong, heavily armed and highly mobile, they operate in ten counties, mostly in the south and west, where IRA activity is greatest. They wear either RIC uniforms or their old army uniforms with appropriate police badges, along with distinctive tam o’ shanter caps. They are commanded by Brigadier-General Frank Percy Crozier.
The elite ex-officer division proves to be much more effective than the Black and Tans especially in the key area of gathering intelligence. Auxiliary companies are intended as mobile striking and raiding forces, and they score some notable successes against the IRA. On November 20, the night before Bloody Sunday, they capture Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy, the commandant and vice-commandant of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade, and murder them in Dublin Castle. That same night, they catch Liam Pilkington, commandant of the Sligo IRA, in a separate raid. A month later, in December, they catch Ernie O’Malley completely by surprise in County Kilkenny. He is reading in his room when a Temporary Cadet opens the door and walks in. “He was as unexpected as death,” says O’Malley. In his memoirs, the commandant of the Clare IRA, Michael Brennan, describes how the Auxiliaries nearly capture him three nights in a row.
IRA commanders become concerned about the morale of their units as to many Volunteers the Auxiliaries seem to be “super fighters and all but invincible.” Those victories which are won over the Auxiliaries are among the most celebrated in the Irish War of Independence. On November 28, 1920, for example, a platoon of Auxiliaries is ambushed and wiped out in the Kilmichael Ambush by Tom Barry and the 3rd Cork Brigade. A little more than two months later, on February 2, 1921, another platoon of Auxiliaries is ambushed by Seán Mac Eoin and the North Longford Flying Column in the Clonfin Ambush. On March 19, 1921, the 3rd Cork Brigade of the IRA defeats a large-scale attempt by the British Army and Auxiliary Division to encircle and trap them at Crossbarry. On April 15, 1921, Captain Roy Mackinnon, commanding officer of H Company of the Auxiliary Division, is assassinated by the Kerry IRA.
Successes require reliable intelligence and raids often bring no result — or sometimes worse. In one case, they arrest a Castle official, Law Adviser W. E. Wylie, by mistake. In another, more notorious case, on April 19, 1921, they raid the Shannon Hotel in Castleconnell, County Limerick, on a tip that there are suspicious characters drinking therein. The “suspicious characters” turn out to be three off-duty members of the RIC. Both sides mistake the other for insurgents and open fire. Three people, an RIC man, an Auxiliary Cadet and a civilian, are killed in the shootout that follows.
The Auxiliary Division is disbanded along with the RIC in 1922. Although the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty requires the Irish Free State to assume responsibility for the pensions of RIC members, the Auxiliaries are explicitly excluded from this provision. Following their disbandment, many of its former personnel join the Palestine Police Force in the British-controlled territory.
The anti-insurgency activities of the Auxiliaries Division have become interchangeable with those conducted by the Black and Tans, leading to many atrocities committed by them being attributed to the Black and Tans. Nevertheless, both British units remain equally reviled in Ireland.
Daly is born in Limerick on October 18, 1845. His father works in James Harvey & Son’s Timber Yard. At the age of sixteen, he joins his father working as a lath splitter. At eighteen he is sworn in as a member of the IRB, also known as the Fenians, and becomes fully involved in Republican activities. When he is refused absolution in confession because he admits to being a Fenian, he decides that from then on, his loyalty will no longer be to “faith and Fatherland” but to “God and Fatherland.”
On November 22, 1866, Daly and his brother Edward are arrested at their family home having been betrayed by an informer, for running a munitions factory in the Pennywell district close to their home. He is released on bail in February 1867 toughened and more dedicated by the experience.
On March 5, 1867, the ill-prepared Fenian Rising takes place. Daly takes charge of the Limerick detachment of the IRB. Limerick is one of the few areas where the Fenians are able to make some show of force, however weak. Through lack of numbers, they fail to make a significant impact on the vastly superior forces arrayed against them. Moving out of the city, he moves his men into the country and joins up with other Fenians in an attack on the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks at Kilmallock. The attack is repelled, and Daly disperse his men.
After this Daly flees the country by stowing away first on a boat, the Hollywood, to England, and from London then on board the Cornelius Grenfel to the United States.
Life in America for working class immigrants is particularly tough and Daly’s first job on leaving the ship is digging a cellar. He then obtains work in a white lead factory and works for a while as a mason’s helper before getting a reasonably good job as a brakeman on a tram system. He is to recall these experiences in his Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism.
In 1869, Daly return to Ireland and takes up his old job in the timber yard, and also his Republican activities. He begins to help reorganise the IRB and takes part in a number of agitations to keep the IRB agenda in the public view. He becomes a leading voice in the Amnesty Association to help in the release of those Fenians still in jail.
In November 1869, a major tenants’ right meeting takes place in the city. The IRB objects to the meeting because the issue of the prisoners is not on the agenda. In what comes to be known as “The Battle of the Markets,” the IRB charges the platform and succeeds in dismantling it. Though the organisers of the meeting attempt to hold some form of gathering, Daly and the IRB refuse to relent. It is Daly’s opinion that “it was one of the greatest moral victories ever achieved.” The issue of the political prisoners is to keep him occupied for much of the 1870s. In 1876, he is again arrested for disturbing another home rule gathering, though on being brought before the court he is acquitted.
During the Land War Daly is a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB and becomes organiser for Connacht and Ulster.
In the summer of 1883, Daly moved to Birmingham, England, and settles in the home of James Egan, an old friend from Limerick and a generally inactive IRB man. E.G. Jenkinson, head of Special Branch, is informed that Daly is on his way to Britain from the United States. He has been asked by the Supreme Council to deliver the graveside oration at the funeral of Charles J. Kickham while in the United States. When he arrives, a plain-clothes detective is assigned to follow him at all times. As a result of this, Special Branch are alerted to the importance of John Torley in Glasgow, Robert Johnston in Belfast and Mark Ryan in London of the IRB.
Jenkinson uses agent provocateurs in his attempts to convict Republicans. One such recruit is a publican and local IRB man named Dan O’Neill. Both Jenkinson and a Major Nicholas Gosselin persuade O’Neill to betray Daly. O’Neill then asks Daly to deliver sealed cases to some associates in London, and on April 11, he is arrested as he is about to board the train for London, and explosives are found in the case he is carrying. The police then raid the home of James Egan where explosives are “allegedly found buried” in Egan’s garden in addition to some documents.
In Chatham prison Daly becomes friends with Tom Clarke, who would later marry his niece Kathleen and who was a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising. While in prison he claims that he is being poisoned with belladonna which causes an investigation by a commission of inquiry in 1890. It is admitted by prison officials as an error by a warder. A series of articles in the Daily Chronicle in 1894 analyse prison methods. Daly gives an interview to the Chronicle which appears on September 12, 1896.
Daly is elected three times as Mayor of Limerick City, from 1899 to 1901. He jointly finances with Patrick McCartan the IRB newspaper Irish Freedom in 1910.
Daly dies on June 30, 1916, at his home, 15 Barrington Street, Limerick. He never marries. A tall, energetic, and gregarious man, he is a simple but often effective propagandist for the separatist cause.
In 1928, Madge Daly, a niece of Daly, presents the Daly cup to William P. Clifford, the then-chairman of the Limerick GAA county board. Since then, the Daly cup is presented to the winners of the Limerick Senior Hurling Championship.
(Pictured: Irish Republican and Fenian John Daly in the ceremonial garb of the Mayor of Limerick, circa 1900)
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)
Walter is born in Norfolk, England, in 1165, the son of Hervey Walter and his wife, Matilda de Valoignes, who is one of the daughters of Theobald de Valoignes. Their children were Theobald, Hubert, Bartholomew, Roger, and Hamon. He and his brother Hubert are brought up by their uncle Ranulf de Glanvill, the great justiciar of Henry II of England who had married his mother’s sister Bertha.
On April 25, 1185, Prince John, in his new capacity as Lord of Ireland, lands at Waterford and around this time grants the hereditary office of butler of Ireland to Walter, whereby he and his successors are to attend the Kings of England at their coronation, and on that day present them with the first cup of wine. His father had been the hereditary holder of the office of butler of England. Sometime after, King Henry II of England grants him the prisage of wines, to enable him and his heirs, the better to support the dignity of that office. By this grant, he has two barrels of wine out of every ship, which breaks bulk in any trading port of Ireland, and is loaded with 20 tons of that commodity, and one ton from 9 to 20. He accompanies John on his progress through Munster and Leinster. At this time, he is also granted a large section of the north-eastern part of the Kingdom of Limerick. The grant of five and a half cantreds is bounded by:
“…the borough of Killaloe and the half cantred of Trucheked Maleth in which it lay, and the cantreds of Elykarval, Elyochgardi, Euermond, Aros and Wedene, and Woedeneoccadelon and Wodeneoidernan.”
Walter is active in the war that takes place when Rory O’Connor attempts to regain his throne after retiring to the monastery of Cong (present day County Mayo), as his men are involved in the death of Donal Mor McCarthy during a parley in 1185 near Cork. In 1194, he supports his brother during Hubert’s actions against Prince John, with him receiving the surrender of John’s supporters in Lancaster. He is rewarded with the office of sheriff of Lancaster, which he holds until Christmas of 1198. He is again sheriff after John takes the throne in 1199.
In early 1200, however, John deprives Walter of all his offices and lands because of his irregularities as sheriff. His lands are not restored until January 1202. A manuscript in the National Library of Ireland points to William de Braose, 4th Lord of Bramber, as the agent of his restoration:
“Grant by William de Braosa, (senior) to Theobald Walter (le Botiller) the burgh of Kildelon (Killaloe) … the cantred of Elykaruel (the baronies of Clonlisk and Ballybrit, County Offaly), Eliogarty, Ormond, Ara and Oioney, etc. 1201.”
“Elykaruel” refers to the Gaelic túath of “Ely O’Carroll”, which straddles the southern part of County Offaly and the northern part of Tipperary (at Ikerrin). The other cantreds named are probably the modern baronies of Eliogarty, Ormond Upper, Ormond Lower and Owney and Arra in County Tipperary.
Walter founds the Abbey of Woney, of which nothing now remains, in the townland of Abington, near the modern village of Murroe in County Limerick around 1200. He also founds the Cockersand Abbey in Lancaster, Abbey of Nenagh in County Tipperary, and a monastic house at Arklow in County Wicklow.
Walter marries Maud le Vavasour (1176–1226), heiress of Robert le Vavasour, a baron of Yorkshire. John Lodge in the Peerage of Ireland in 1789 gives the year as 1189, but on no apparent authority, as no other author follows him on this. Their children are Theobald le Botiller, 2nd Chief Butler of Ireland, and Maud (1192–1244), who marries three times yet only has two surviving children, Ralph and Marie.
Walter dies on February 4, 1206, at Arklow Castle, County Wicklow, and is buried at Wotheney Abbey.
In late January, Richard O’Connell, commander of the Mid Limerick Brigadeflying column, along with Captains Sean Lynch and Morgan Portley, begin planning an ambush of an RIC convoy from the Pallas RIC headquarters. Observing their activities for several months, local Volunteer John Purcell, of Caherconlish, finds that the first Thursday of each month they send a convoy to Fedamore with the payroll for RIC constables there, about eleven miles away. They also seem to use the same route each time. Such predictability is often a fatal flaw in a guerrilla war. The ambush is set for February 3.
The ambush is carried out by the flying columns of the East Limerick and Mid Limerick Brigades of the IRA, some forty riflemen, under the command of Donnocha O’Hannigan, commander of East Limerick Brigade flying column, and Richard O’Connell, commander of the Mid Limerick Brigade flying column.
The ambush location is well selected. The lorries are to come from the west. There is a severe right-hand turn at Dromkeen House, where the road turns east for several hundred yards in a straight line, to an intersection that splits to the north and south. O’Hannigan puts D. Guerin, Sean Stapleton, and Maurice Meade, all of East Limerick Brigade, at the corner to be the lookouts for the convoy. There are low stonewalls along both sides of most of the road. About halfway down its length there is a cemetery and an old, ruined church on the south side.
O’Hannigan spreads his men along both sides of the road, behind the walls and in several homes along the road and sets up barricades on the forks on the eastern end of the ambush, set back so the driver will not see them until they get to the intersection. He takes up a command position in an old, ruined cottage at the intersection. In addition to O’Hannigan, John MacCarthy, David Clancy and a few other East Limerick Volunteers are in the ruined cottage.
At approximately 2:30 p.m. the lookouts near Dromkeen House let them know the lorries are approaching. The plan is to let the lead lorry reach the barricade before they open fire, expecting them to be widely spaced. They are closer together than expected, however, and the men lining the road and near Dromkeen House open fire first at the second lorry when it is near the ruins of the old church to prevent it being getting beyond them. Michael Hennessy, of the Kilfinane Company of the East Limerick Brigade, in a spot near one of the walls, later says he killed the driver of the second lorry, Constable Sidney Millin, on his first shot. Millin may have had his foot on the brake at that moment, as the lorry almost immediately stops in the middle of the road.
The sound of the firing causes the lead lorry to speed up. Turning to the left and seeing one barricade, the driver tries to turn to the right, but is going too fast. He runs into the wall and then slams into a donkey cart with a bog of flour in it, sending a cloud of flour into the air and coming to a halt.
The cloud of flour, along with the fact that they are the only RIC members in civilian clothes, apparently saves the lives of two RIC men, Constable Cox and District Inspector Sanson, who was in charge of the convoy, who are thrown clear of the cab. By the time the cloud of flour clears, two men in civilian clothes are seen running through the field. Given that Crown Forces have been known to have civilian hostages in their lorries, O’Hannigan had his men hold their fire for fear of killing a hostage, and the two escape. Many of the Volunteers later speak of Sanson with scorn for abandoning his men.
All the Volunteer participants say the firing only lasts about ten minutes, with the RIC and Black and Tans able to mount very little resistance before all eleven left in the two lorries are either dead or wounded. Of the three remaining in the first lorry, one is apparently killed very quickly by rifle fire and several grenades. The other two manage to get out and take cover but are quickly hit.
Two constables managed to get underneath the second lorry. They put up a short resistance before both are hit and killed by Volunteers Johnny Vaughan and Seán Carroll, who move into positions along the road. The only Volunteer casualty is Liam Hayes, who is later a general in the Free State Army. He has part of his left thumb and part of a finger shot off, probably by friendly fire. As the firing ends, the Volunteers come out from cover to collect the arms from the dead and wounded.
It has been claimed that three of the RIC dead were executed after they had surrendered. Particular suspicion for this alleged killing of prisoners has fallen on Maurice Meade, a former British soldier who was captured by the Germans in World War I and had joined Roger Casement‘s Irish Brigade. In reprisal, British forces burn ten homes and farms in the area.
In February 2009, up to 2,000 people turn out for the unveiling of a memorial to the ambush.
(From: “The Dromkeen Ambush: Down Into the Mire in County Limerick” by Joee Gannon, The Wild Geese, http://www.thewildgeese.irish, November 2017 | Pictured: The East Limerick Flying Column)
seamus dubhghaill 