seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: Irish Republican Army


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Establishment of the Irish Free State

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The Irish Free State (Irish: Saorstát Éireann), an independent state established under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921, comes into being on December 6, 1922. The treaty ends the three-year Irish War of Independence between the forces of the self-proclaimed Irish Republic, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and British Crown forces.

The Free State is established as a Dominion of the British Commonwealth of Nations. For one day, it encompasses all thirty-two counties of Ireland. Northern Ireland, which is comprised of the six northernmost counties, exercises its right under the Treaty to opt out of the new state on December 7.

The Free State government consists of the Governor-General, the representative of the king, and the Executive Council, which replaces both the revolutionary Dáil Government and the Provisional Government set up under the Treaty. W. T. Cosgrave, who had led both of these governments since August 1922, becomes the first President of the Executive Council. The legislature consists of Dáil Éireann, the lower house, and Seanad Éireann, also known as the Senate. Members of the Dáil are required to take an Oath of Allegiance, swearing fidelity to the king. The oath is a key issue for opponents of the Treaty, who refuse to take the oath and therefore do not take their seats. Pro-Treaty members, who form Cumann na nGaedheal in 1923, hold an effective majority in the Dáil from 1922 to 1927, and thereafter rule as a minority government until 1932.

In the first months of the Free State, the Irish Civil War is waged between the newly established National Army and the anti-Treaty IRA, who refuse to recognise the state. The Civil War ends in victory for the government forces, with the anti-Treaty forces dumping its arms in May 1923. The anti-Treaty political party, Sinn Féin, refuses to take its seats in the Dáil, leaving the relatively small Labour Party as the only opposition party. In 1926, when Sinn Féin president Éamon de Valera fails to have this policy reversed, he resigns from Sinn Féin and founds Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil enters the Dáil following the 1927 general election, and enters government after the Irish general election of 1932, when it becomes the largest party.

De Valera abolishes the Oath of Allegiance and embarks on an economic war with Britain. In 1937 he drafts a new constitution, which is passed by a referendum in July of that year. The Free State comes to an end with the coming into force of the new constitution on December 29, 1937. Under the new constitution the Irish state is named Ireland.

(Pictured: The Executive Council of the Irish Free State, October 1928)


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Birth of Irish Nationalist Joseph Mary Plunkett

joseph-mary-plunkett

Joseph Mary Plunkett, Irish nationalist, poet, journalist, and a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising, is born at 26 Upper Fitzwilliam Street in Dublin on November 21, 1887.

Both his parents come from wealthy backgrounds, and his father, George Noble Plunkett, has been made a papal count. Despite being born into a life of privilege, young Joe Plunkett does not have an easy childhood.

Plunkett contracts tuberculosis at a young age. This is to be a lifelong burden. His mother is unwilling to believe his health is as bad as it is. He spends part of his youth in the warmer climates of the Mediterranean and North Africa. He spends time in Algiers where he studies Arabic literature and language and composes poetry in Arabic. He is educated at the Catholic University School and by the Jesuits at Belvedere College in Dublin and later at Stonyhurst College, in Lancashire, England, where he acquires some military knowledge from the Officers’ Training Corps. Throughout his life, Plunkett takes an active interest in Irish heritage and the Irish language and also studies Esperanto. He is one of the founders of the Irish Esperanto League. He joins the Gaelic League and begins studying with Thomas MacDonagh, with whom he forms a lifelong friendship. The two are both poets with an interest in theatre, and both are early members of the Irish Volunteers, joining their provisional committee. Plunkett’s interest in Irish nationalism spreads throughout his family, notably to his younger brothers George and John, as well as his father, who allows his property in Kimmage, south Dublin, to be used as a training camp for young men who wish to escape conscription in Britain during the First World War. Men there are instead trained to fight for Ireland.

Sometime in 1915 Plunkett joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and soon after is sent to Germany to meet with Roger Casement, who is negotiating with the German government on behalf of Ireland. Casement’s role as emissary is self-appointed, and, as he is not a member of the IRB, the organisation’s leadership wishes to have one of their own contact Germany to negotiate German aid for an uprising the following year. Plunkett is seeking, but not limiting himself to, a shipment of arms. Casement, on the other hand, spends most of his energies recruiting Irish prisoners of war in Germany to form a brigade to fight instead for Ireland. Some nationalists in Ireland see this as a fruitless endeavour, and prefer to seek weapons. Plunkett successfully gets a promise of a German arms shipment to coincide with the rising.

Plunkett is one of the original members of the IRB Military Committee that is responsible for planning the Easter Rising, and it is largely his plan that is followed. Shortly before the rising is to begin, Plunkett is hospitalised following a turn for the worse in his health. He has an operation on his neck glands days before Easter and has to struggle out of bed to take part in what is to follow. Still bandaged, he takes his place in the General Post Office with several other of the rising’s leaders, including Patrick Pearse and Tom Clarke, though his health prevents him from being terribly active. His energetic aide-de-camp is Michael Collins.

Following the surrender Plunkett is held in Kilmainham Gaol, and faces a court-martial. Seven hours before his execution by firing squad at the age of 28, he is married in the prison chapel to his sweetheart Grace Gifford, a Protestant convert to Catholicism, whose sister, Muriel, had years before also converted and married his best friend Thomas MacDonagh, who is also executed for his role in the Easter Rising. Plunkett is executed by firing squad on May 4, 1916, and is the fourth and youngest signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic to be executed.

Plunkett’s brothers, George Oliver Plunkett and Jack Plunkett, join him in the Easter Rising and later become important Irish Republican Army (IRA) men. His father’s cousin, Horace Plunkett, is a Protestant and unionist who seeks to reconcile unionists and nationalists. Horace Plunkett’s home is burned down by the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War.

The main railway station in Waterford City is named after Plunkett as is Joseph Plunkett Tower in Ballymun. Plunkett barracks in the Curragh Camp, County Kildare is also named after him.


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Disappearance of Father Michael Griffin

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Father Michael Griffin, a Catholic priest, disappears on November 14, 1920, after he leaves his residence at St. Joseph’s Church, in Galway. His housekeeper hears him talking to someone at the door and assumes that Fr. Griffin is going to visit a sick parishioner. He never returns.

Griffin is born in Gurteen, East Galway and ordained at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth in 1917. A priest of the Diocese of Clonfert, he serves in the Diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora. In June 1918, the curate is transferred from the parish of Ennistymon, County Clare, to Rahoon, Galway City.

Fr. Griffin is known to the Crown Forces as a republican sympathiser. On the night of September 8, 1920, he is called out to attend Seamus Quirke, a First Lieutenant in the local Irish Republican Army (IRA) after he is shot seven times at the docks. He also takes part in the funeral mass of Michael Walsh of the Old Malt House following his murder on the night of October 19, 1920.

On November 14, Fr. Griffin is lured from the presbytery by British forces. He is taken to Lenaboy Castle where he is questioned. After being interrogated, he is shot through the head and his body is taken away by lorry and buried in an unmarked grave at Cloghscoltia near Barna. His disappearance is reported to the police the following day.

Fr. Griffins’ remains are discovered by a local man, William Duffy, while he is attending cattle on November 20.

Frank Percy Crozier, commander of the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary, travels to Galway on November 22 and finds that Fr. Griffin has been murdered by his men, and that a plot is afoot to murder Dr. Michael Fogarty, Bishop of Killaloe. Crozier writes in Ireland For Ever:

“I found out that the military inquiry into the murder of Father Griffin (held in lieu of an inquest) was fast with a ‘frame up’ and that a verdict of murder against persons, or somebody ‘unknown’ would result. I told the military commander this and the name of the real murderer but was informed that a senior official of Dublin Castle had been to Galway in front of me to give instructions as to ‘procedure’ in this murder investigation. At Killaloe next day I received further evidence that the hidden hand was still at work and was told in confidence that instructions had been received to kill Dr. Fogarty, Roman Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, by drowning him in a sack from the bridge over the River Shannon, so as to run no further risk of detection by having his body found.”

On November 23, Fr. Griffin’s funeral mass takes place at St. Joseph’s Church, Presentation Road. The funeral cortege moves through the streets of Galway, with three bishops, 150 priests, and in excess of 12,000 mourners participating. The priest is buried in the grounds of Loughrea Cathedral.

A group of enthusiasts gather together in Galway in the spring of 1948 to form a football club and they decide unanimously to name the club “Father Griffins” and they grow and flourish to be a major force in Galway football. There is also a road in Galway City called “Father Griffin Road.”


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Birth of Writer John McGahern

John McGahern, regarded as one of the most important Irish writers of the latter half of the twentieth century, is born in Knockanroe about half a mile from Ballinamore, County Leitrim, on November 12, 1934. Known for the detailed dissection of Irish life found in works such as The Barracks, The Dark, and Amongst Women, The Observer hails him as “the greatest living Irish novelist” before his death in 2006.

McGahern is the eldest child of seven. Raised alongside his six young siblings on a small farm in Knockanroe, McGahern’s mother runs the farm with some local help whilst maintaining a job as a primary school teacher in the local school. His father, a Garda sergeant, lives in the Garda barracks at Cootehall in County Roscommon, a somewhat sizeable distant away from his family at the time. In 1944, when McGahern is ten years old, his mother dies of cancer, resulting in the unrooting of the McGahern children to their new home with their father in the Garda barracks at Cootehall.

In the years following his mother’s death, McGahern completes his primary schooling in the local primary school, and ultimately wins a scholarship to the Presentation Brothers secondary school in Carrick-on-Shannon. Having travelled daily to complete his second level education, McGahern continues to accumulate academic accolades by winning the county scholarship in his Leaving Certificate enabling him to continue his education to third level.

Following his second level success, McGahern is offered a place at St. Patrick’s College of Education in Drumcondra where he trains to be a teacher. Upon graduation from third level education, McGahern begins his career as a primary schoolteacher at Scoil Eoin Báiste primary school in Clontarf where, for a period, he teaches the eminent academic Declan Kiberd, before returning to third level education in University College Dublin where he graduates in 1957. He is first published by the London literary and arts review magazine, X, which publishes in 1961 an extract from his unpublished first novel, The End or Beginning of Love.

McGahern’s first published novel, The Barracks (1963), chronicles the life of the barrack’s Garda sergeant’s second wife, Elizabeth Reegan, who is in the decline of health due to cancer. The Barracks is adapted for the stage in 1969 by Hugh Leonard.

McGahern marries his first wife, Finnish-born Annikki Laaski, in 1965 and in the same year publishes his second novel, The Dark, which is banned by the Irish Censorship Board for its alleged pornographic content along with its implied sexual abuse by the protagonist’s father. Due to the controversy, which is stirred by the book’s publication, McGahern is dismissed from his teaching post and forced to move to England where he works in a variety of jobs, including on building sites, before returning to Ireland to live and work on a small farm near Fenagh in County Leitrim.

After the publications of The Leavetaking (1974) and The Pornographer (1975), his fifth and perhaps best-known novel, Amongst Women, is published in 1990. The novel details the story of Michael Moran, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) veteran of the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, who now dominates his family in the unforgiving farmlands of County Leitrim, near Mohill.

John McGahern dies from cancer at the age of 71 in the Mater Hospital in Dublin on March 30, 2006. He is buried in St. Patrick’s Church Aughawillan alongside his mother.


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Free State Government Purchases Copyright to “The Soldiers Song”

amhran-na-bhfiann

The Irish Free State government purchases the copyright of Peadar Kearney‘s The Soldiers Song on October 20, 1933, which becomes the Irish national anthem Amhrán na bhFiann. The song has three verses, but only the choral refrain is officially designated the national anthem.

A Soldiers’ Song is composed in 1907, with words by Peadar Kearney and music by Kearney and Patrick Heeney. The text is first published in Irish Freedom by Bulmer Hobson in 1912. It is used as a marching song by the Irish Volunteers and is sung by rebels in the General Post Office (GPO) during the Easter Rising of 1916. Its popularity increases among rebels held in Frongoch internment camp after the Rising, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the Irish War of Independence (1919–21). After the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, a large proportion of the IRA’s men and apparatus become the National Army. The Soldiers’ Song remains popular as an Army tune and is played at many military functions.

The Free State does not initially adopt any official anthem. The delicate political state in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War provokes a desire to avoid controversy. Ex-Unionists continue to regard God Save the King as the national anthem, as it has been for the rest of the British Empire. W. T. Cosgrave, President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State expresses opposition to replacing The Soldiers’ Song, which is provisionally used within the State.

There is concern that the lack of an official anthem is giving Unionists an opportunity to persist with God Save the King. The Soldiers’ Song is widely if unofficially sung by nationalists. On July 12, 1926, the Executive Council of the Irish Free State decides to adopt it as the National Anthem, with Cosgrave the driving force in the decision. However, this decision is not publicised.

In 1928, the Army band establishes the practice of playing only the chorus of the song as the Anthem, because the longer version is discouraging audiences from singing along.

The anthem is played by Radio Éireann at close down from its inception in 1926. Cinemas and theatres do so from 1932 until 1972. Peadar Kearney, who has received royalties from publishers of the text and music, issues legal proceedings for royalties from those now performing the anthem. He is joined by Michael Heeney, brother of Patrick Heeney, who had died in 1911. In 1934, the Department of Finance acquires the copyright of the song for the sum of £1,200. Copyright law changes in 1959, such that the government has to reacquire copyright in 1965, for £2,500. As per copyright law, the copyright expires in December 2012, following the 70th anniversary of Kearney’s death. In 2016, three Fianna Fáil senators introduce a private member’s bill intended to restore the state’s copyright in the anthem.


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The Guildford Four Are Released From Prison

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After serving 15 years in prison, the Guildford Four, Gerry Conlon, Patrick Armstrong, Carole Richardson, and Paul Hill, are released on October 19, 1989, in what is considered to be one of the biggest-ever miscarriages of justice in Britain.

On October 5, 1974, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb kills four people in a Guildford pub frequented by British military personnel, while another bomb in Woolwich kills three. British investigators rush to find suspects and soon settle on Gerry Conlon and Paul Hill, two residents of Northern Ireland who are in the area at the time of the terrorist attack.

Under the recently rewritten Prevention of Terrorism Act, British investigators are allowed to hold and interrogate terrorist suspects for five days without any hard evidence. Conlon and Hill, who are nonpolitical petty criminals, are among the first suspects held under the new law. During their prison stay, investigators fabricate against them an IRA conspiracy that implicates a number of their friends and family members. The officers then force the two suspects to sign confessions under physical and mental torture. In October 1975, Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill, Paddy Armstrong, and Carole Richardson are sentenced to life in prison – mandatory for adults convicted of murder. Seven of their relatives and friends, called the Maguire Seven, are sentenced to lesser terms on the basis of questionable forensic evidence.

In 1989, detectives from Avon and Somerset Constabulary, investigating the handling of the case, find three significant pieces of evidence in relation to Surrey Police‘s handling of the Guildford Four and their statements.

Firstly, typed notes from Patrick Armstrong’s police interviews which had been heavily edited. Deletions and additions had been made, and the notes had been rearranged. These notes, and their amendments, are consistent with hand-written and typed notes presented at the trial, which suggest that the hand-written notes are made after the interviews had been conducted. The notes presented had been described in court as contemporaneous records.

Secondly, a series of manuscript notes relating to an interview with Hill, which show that Hill’s fifth statement is taken in breach of Judges’ Rules and may well have been inadmissible as evidence. The information is not made available to the Director of Public Prosecutions or the prosecution. Further, the officers involved had denied under oath that such an interview had happened.

Thirdly, detention records are inconsistent with the times and durations of the claimed interviews reported by the Surrey police.

In the face of growing public protest and after the disclosure of exonerating evidence, including the admittance of guilt in the bombings by an imprisoned IRA member, the group’s conviction is declared “unsafe and unsatisfactory.” The Guildford Four are cleared of all charges and released after 15 years in prison. The following year a British appeals court also overturns the convictions of the Maguire Seven, who were jailed on the basis of forensic evidence that is shown to have no relevant scientific basis.

(Pictured: Gerry Conlon on his release from prison in 1989)


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Death of Novelist Edith Anna Œnone Somerville

edith-somerville

Edith Anna Œnone Somerville, Irish novelist who habitually signs herself as “E. Œ. Somerville,” dies at Castletownshend, County Cork, at the age of 91 on October 8, 1949. She writes in collaboration with her second cousin, Violet Florence Martin, who writes under the pseudonym Martin Ross. Together they publish a series of fourteen stories and novels under the pseudonym Somerville and Ross, the most popular of which are The Real Charlotte and Some Experiences of an Irish R. M., published in 1899.

The eldest of eight children, Somerville is born on the island of Corfu, then part of the United States of the Ionian Islands, a British protectorate where her father is stationed. A year later, her father retires to Drishane, Castletownshend, County Cork, where Somerville grows up. She receives her primary education at home, and then attends Alexandra College in Dublin. In 1884 she studies art in Paris, and then spends a term at the Westminster School of Art in Dean’s Yard, Westminster. At home, riding and painting are her absorbing interests.

In January 1886, she meets her second cousin, Violet Martin, and their literary partnership begins the following year. Their first book, An Irish Cousin, appears in 1889, under the names Geilles Herring (from the maiden name of her ancestor, the wife of Sir Walter de Somerville of Linton and Carnwath) and Martin Ross, though the pen names are dropped after the first edition. In 1898, Edith Somerville goes to paint at the Etaples art colony, accompanied by Violet. There they profit from their stay by conceiving together the stories later gathered in Some Experiences of an Irish R. M., completed the following year. By the time Violet dies in 1915, they have published fourteen books together. Her cousin’s death stuns Edith, who continues to write as “Somerville and Ross,” claiming that they keep in contact through spiritualist séances.

Somerville is a devoted sportswoman who in 1903 has become master of the Carbery West Foxhounds. She is also active in the suffragist movement, corresponding with Dame Ethel Smyth. She is in London still recovering from the shock of Violet’s death when the 1916 Easter Rising breaks out. On May 9 she writes a letter to The Times, blaming the British government for the state of affairs in Ireland. After that she tends towards Nationalism and, as an adept musician at parties, she specializes in Irish tunes and Nationalist songs.

She has exhibitions of her pictures in Dublin and in London between 1920 and 1938 and is active as an illustrator of children’s picture books and sporting picture books.

In 1936, her brother Henry Boyle Townsend Somerville, a retired Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy, is killed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) at the family home of Castletownshend. She finishes his book Will Mariner after his death.


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Birth of Playwright & Poet Lennox Robinson

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Esmé Stuart Lennox Robinson, playwright, poet, theatre producer, and director who is involved with the Abbey Theatre, is born in Westgrove, Douglas, County Cork, on October 4, 1886.

Robinson is raised in a Protestant and Unionist family in which he is the youngest of seven children. His father, Andrew Robinson, is a middle-class stockbroker who in 1892 decides to become a clergyman in the Church of Ireland in the small Ballymoney parish, near Ballineen in West Cork. A sickly child, Robinson is educated by private tutor and at Bandon Grammar School. In August 1907, his interest in the theatre begins after he goes to see an Abbey production of plays by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory at the Cork Opera House. He publishes his first poem that same year. His first play, The Cross Roads, is performed in the Abbey in 1909 and he becomes manager of the theatre towards the end of that year. He resigns in 1914 as a result of a disastrous tour of the United States but returns in 1919. He is appointed to the board of the theatre in 1923 and continues to serve in that capacity until his death. His Abbey career and production involvement can be found in the Abbey archives.

As a playwright, Robinson shows himself as a nationalist with plays like Patriots (1912) and Dreamers (1915). On the other hand, he belongs to a part of Irish society which is not seen as fully Irish. This division between the majority native Irish (Roman Catholics) on one side and the Anglo-Irish (Protestants) on the other can be seen in a play such as The Big House (1926), which depicts the burning of a Protestant manor home by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Robinson’s most popular play is The Whiteheaded Boy (1916).

Other plays include Crabbed Youth and Age (1924), The Far Off Hills (1928), Drama at Inish (1933), and Church Street (1935). Drama at Inish, which is presented in London and on Broadway as Is Life Worth Living?, is revived as part of the 2011 season at the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, with Mary Haney in the role of Lizzie Twohig. Robinson’s fiction includes Eight Short Stories (1919). In 1931 he publishes a biography of Bryan Cooper, who had recently died. In 1951, he publishes Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, the first full-length history of the company.

He publishes an edited edition of Lady Gregory’s diaries in 1947. In 1958 he co-edits with Donagh MacDonagh The Oxford Book of Irish Verse. He is also a director and producer, in 1930 producing a play by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy called The Reapers. In 1931 he is co-director of A Disciple along with W.B. Yeats and Walter Starkie.

Melancholic and alcoholic in later years, Lennox Robinson dies in Monkstown, County Dublin, on October 15, 1958. He is buried St. Patrick’s Cathedral.


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The Founding of Saor Éire

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Saor Éire, a left-wing political organisation, is established on September 26, 1931 by communist-leaning members of the Irish Republican Army, with the backing of the IRA leadership. Notable among its founders is Peadar O’Donnell, former editor of An Phoblacht and a leading left-wing figure in the IRA. Saor Éire describes itself as “an organization of workers and working farmers.”

It is believed that the support of the then IRA chief of staff Moss (Maurice) Twomey is instrumental in the organisation’s establishment. However, Tim Pat Coogan claims that Twomey is doubtful about the organisation, worrying about involvement in electoral politics and possible communist influence.

During its short existence Saor Éire uses the republican publication An Phoblacht, under the editorship of Frank Ryan, to report on its progress and to promote its radical, left-wing republican views.

On the weekend of September 26-27, 1931, Saor Éire holds its first conference in Dublin at Iona Hall. One hundred and fifty delegates from both the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland attend the conference against a background of police raids on the houses and offices connected with Saor Éire and An Phoblacht. Seán Hayes is chairman, while David Fitzgerald acts as secretary.

The conference elects an executive of Hayes, Fitzgerald, Sean McGuinness, May Laverty, Helena Molony, Sheila Dowling, Sheila Humphreys, D. McGinley, Mick Fitzpatrick, Seán MacBride, Michael Price, Peadar O’Donnell, Mick Hallissey, M. O’Donnell, Patrick McCormack, Tom Kenny, L. Brady, Nicholas Boran, John Mulgrew and Tom Maguire. George Gilmore and Frank Ryan are also involved.

The constitution elaborates upon the aims by describing a two-phase programme. The first phase is described as being one of organisation and propagandising in order to organise a solid front for mass resistance to the oppressors. This is to build upon the day-to-day resistance and activity towards “rents, annuities, evictions, seizures, bank sales, lock-outs, strikes and wage-cuts.” This challenge, it is believed, would lead to power passing from the hands of the imperialists to the masses. The second phase is one of consolidation of power through the organisation of the economy and a workers’ and working farmers’ republic.

Ideologically Saor Éire adheres to the Irish socialist republicanism developed by James Connolly and Peadar O’Donnell. As a consequence of the heavy influence of O’Donnell, Saor Éire strongly advocates the revival of Gaelic culture and the involvement of the poorer rural working communities in any rise against the Irish capitalist institutions and British imperialism.

The organisation is attacked by the centre-right press and the Catholic Church as a dangerous communist group, and is quickly banned by the Free State government. The strength of reaction against it prevents it from becoming an effective political organisation. O’Donnell and his supporters attempt a similar initiative two years later with the establishment of the Republican Congress in 1933.


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Assassination of Sinn Féin County Councilor John Lynch

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Sinn Féin County Councilor John Lynch of Kilmallock, County Limerick, is assassinated by British agents at the Exchange Hotel in Dublin on September 23, 1920.

Captain Geoffrey Thomas Baggallay, a “one-legged” courts-martial officer, phones Dublin Castle at 1:15 AM telling of John Lynch’s presence at the Exchange Hotel. A group of 12 soldiers, believed to be members of the Cairo Gang, enter the hotel wearing military caps and long black Burberry coats. They hold the hotel porter, William Barrett, at gunpoint. After consulting the register, they proceed to Lynch’s room on the third floor, where Lynch has been staying since September 12.

They shoot Lynch and then leave, claiming that Lynch had fired a shot at them when they attempted to arrest him. The military reports a death at the hotel at 2:15 AM. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) arrives after the military reports the death to them. The coroner’s verdict is that Lynch is shot by a soldier in self-defence. No evidence is given by any soldiers at the inquiry. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) believe that the actual murder is carried out by Henry James Angliss and Charles Ratsch Peel working undercover. The group of khaki-clad men who shoot Lynch number about twelve, and the IRA certainly believes that Angliss and Peel are among them based on inside information received from “Lt G” at Dublin Castle. Lt G is believed to be Lily Mernin who works as a typist at army headquarters.

Michael Collins believes that many of the British officers that are later killed on “Bloody Sunday” shot John Lynch in the Exchange Hotel. Lynch is the local Sinn Féin organiser of a loan and is in Dublin to hand over £23,000 in subscriptions to Collins. Altogether £370,163 is raised in the loan effort in Ireland by September 1920 when it closes down.

It is impossible to know who the twelve men of the raiding party are, however, apparently Lt. Angliss, under the influence of drink, divulges his participation in the shooting to a girl who passes this information on to an Irish Intelligence Service informant. Peel escapes death on “Bloody Sunday” by barricading himself in his room. George Osbert Smyth is understood to have been part of the raiding party, from information given to his family on a visit home. Osbert Smyth is shot dead in October 1920 while trying to arrest IRA suspects Dan Breen and Sean Treacy at a house in Drumcondra.

(Pictured: The Cairo Gang)