seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: Last Rites


by Leave a comment

The Corporals Killings

British Army corporals Derek Wood and David Howes are killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on March 19, 1988, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in what becomes known as the corporals killings. The soldiers, wearing civilian clothes, both armed with Browning Hi-Power pistols and in a silver Volkswagen Passat hatchback, drive into the funeral procession for IRA member Kevin Brady.

The Brady funeral is making its way along the Andersonstown Road toward Milltown Cemetery when the corporals’ car appears from the opposite direction. The car drives straight towards the front of the funeral, which is headed by several black taxis. It drives past a Sinn Féin steward who signals it to turn. Mourners at the funeral say they believed they were under attack from Ulster loyalists, as three days earlier, loyalist Michael Stone had attacked an IRA funeral and killed three people. The car then mounts a pavement, scattering mourners, and turns into a small side road. When this road is blocked, it then reverses at speed, ending up within the funeral procession. Corporal Wood attempts to drive the car out of the procession but his exit route is blocked by a black taxi.

An angry crowd surrounds the car, smashes the windows and attempts to drag the soldiers out. Wood produces a Browning Hi-Power 9mm handgun. He climbs partly out of a window and fires a shot in the air, which briefly scatters the crowd. The crowd then surges back, with some of them attacking the car with a wheel-brace and a stepladder snatched from a photographer. The corporals are eventually pulled from the car and punched and kicked to the ground.

The attack is witnessed by the media and passersby. Journalist Mary Holland recalls seeing one of the men being dragged past a group of journalists. “He didn’t cry out; just looked at us with terrified eyes, as though we were all enemies in a foreign country who wouldn’t have understood what language he was speaking if he called out for help.”

The men are taken to nearby Casement Park sports ground, just opposite. Here they are beaten, stripped to their underpants and socks, and searched by a small group of men. The BBC and The Independent write that the men were “tortured.” A search reveals that the men are British soldiers. Their captors find a military ID on Howes which is marked “Herford,” the site of a British military base in Germany, but it is believed they misread it as “Hereford,” the headquarters of the Special Air Service (SAS).

Redemptorist priest Father Alec Reid, who plays a significant part in the peace process leading to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, intervenes and attempts to save the soldiers, and asks people to call an ambulance. “I got down between the two of them and I had my arm around this one and I was holding this one up by the shoulder….They were so disciplined, they just lay there totally still and I decided to myself they were soldiers. There was a helicopter circling overhead and I don’t know why they didn’t do something, radio to the police or soldiers to come up, because there were these two of their own soldiers.”

One of the captors warns Father Reid not to interfere and orders two men to take him away.

The two soldiers are placed in a taxi and driven fewer than 200 yards to a waste ground near Penny Lane (South Link), just off the main Andersonstown Road. There they are taken out of the vehicle and shot dead. Wood is shot six times and Howes is shot five times. Each also has multiple injuries to other parts of their bodies. The perpetrators quickly leave the scene. Father Reid hears the shots and rushes to the waste ground. He believes one of the soldiers is still breathing and attempts to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Upon realizing that the soldiers are dead, he gives them the last rites. According to photographer David Cairns, although photographers have their films taken by the IRA, he is able to keep his by quickly leaving the area after taking a photograph of Reid kneeling beside the almost naked body of Howes, administering the last rites. Cairns’ photograph is later named one of the best pictures of the past 50 years by Life magazine.

The whole incident is filmed by a British Army helicopter hovering overhead. An unnamed soldier of the Royal Scots says his eight-man patrol is nearby and sees the attack on the corporals’ car but are told not to intervene. Soldiers and police arrive on the scene three minutes after the corporals had been shot. A British Army spokesman says the army did not respond immediately because they needed time to assess the situation and were wary of being ambushed by the IRA. The large funeral procession also prevents them getting to the scene quickly.

Shortly after, the IRA releases a statement:

“The Belfast Brigade, IRA, claims responsibility for the execution of two SAS members who launched an attack on the funeral cortege of our comrade volunteer Kevin Brady. The SAS unit was initially apprehended by the people lining the route in the belief that armed loyalists were attacking them and they were removed from the immediate vicinity. Our volunteers forcibly removed the two men from the crowd and, after clearly ascertaining their identities from equipment and documentation, we executed them.”

Two men, Alex Murphy and Harry Maguire, are sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, but are released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Several other men receive lesser sentences for their part in the corporals killings.

(Pictured: Catholic priest Father Alec Reid administers the last rights to Corporal David Howes, one of two British soldiers brutally beaten and murdered in Belfast)


by Leave a comment

Birth of Jackie Blanchflower, Northern Irish Footballer

John “Jackie” Blanchflower, Northern Irish footballer, is born on March 7, 1933, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He graduates from Manchester United‘s youth system and plays for the club on 117 occasions, winning two league titles, before his career is cut short due to injuries sustained in the Munich air disaster. He is also capped 12 times at senior level by Northern Ireland.

Blanchflower is the younger brother of Danny Blanchflower, the captain of the Tottenham Hotspur side that dominates English football in the early 1960s.

Blanchflower’s first appearance in a professional game is for Manchester United on November 24, 1951, against Liverpool, away at Anfield. He becomes a regular first team player in the 1953–54 season, when he plays in 27 out of 42 league games and scores 13 goals as an inside-forward.

Blanchflower helps the club win the league title in 1956 and again in 1957. Nicknamed “Twiggy” by his teammates, he is renowned for his versatility. He begins his career as a left-half before the emergence of Duncan Edwards in this position, at which time he switches to the forward positions. The Manchester United manager, Matt Busby, recognises his intelligent positioning sense and aerial power and chooses to play him at centre-half by the 1955–56 season, with John Doherty and Billy Whelan now competing for his former position. He faces fierce competition for the solitary centre-half place due to the presence of Mark Jones. He covers in goal in the 1957 FA Cup Final while Ray Wood receives treatment for an injury suffered in a collision with Peter McParland, who scores both of Aston Villa‘s goals as United loses 2–1. Blanchflower also plays in some of United’s first European Cup fixtures.

Blanchflower scores 27 goals during his time with Manchester United, most of them during his time as a forward.

On February 6, 1958, the Manchester United team that had travelled to Belgrade for the second leg of a European cup tie have their chartered plane stop in Munich to refuel. Weather conditions cause the plane to crash when the pilot attempts to take-off from Munich airport and 23 of the 44 people on board are killed. Blanchflower is severely injured, suffering from a fractured pelvis and arms and legs, and crushed kidneys, and his right arm is nearly severed. He is in hospital for two months and, although not a Catholic, is read the last rites but survives.

Blanchflower tries to return to football, but never makes a full recovery. Doctors advise him not to return to football because of fears he would damage his kidney and, a year later, he retires from football. The Munich air disaster means that he had played his last game of football when still only 24 years old, having earned 12 caps for Northern Ireland, played well over 100 times for Manchester United and won two league championship medals.

Blanchflower marries his wife Jean in 1956 and eventually pursues studies in finance and begins a career as an accountant. He later becomes an after-dinner speaker and is a regular on the after-dinner circuits until his death from cancer on September 2, 1998. He is 65 years old, and just two weeks prior to his death he attended the Munich air disaster testimonial match at Old Trafford.

He is survived by his three children; Krista, Senior (born 1958), Laurie (born 1961) and Andrew (born 1963), as well as his wife, Jean, who dies in 2002 following a long illness.


by Leave a comment

Death of Edward Daly, Catholic Bishop of Derry

The retired Catholic Bishop of Derry, Dr. Edward Daly, whose photograph becomes the iconic image of Bloody Sunday in 1972, dies at the age of 82 on August 8, 2016.

Daly is born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, but raised in Belleek, County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. He attends and boards at St. Columb’s College in Derry on a scholarship, after which he spends six years studying towards ordination to the priesthood at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome. He is ordained a priest of the Diocese of Derry in Belleek on March 16, 1957. His first appointment is as a Curate in Castlederg, County Tyrone. In 1962, he is appointed a Curate in St. Eugene’s Cathedral in Derry, with responsibility for the Bogside area of the city. He leaves briefly in the 1970s to serve as a religious advisor to RTÉ in Dublin in the Republic of Ireland but spends the majority of his career in Derry.

During his time in Derry, Daly takes part in the civil rights marches. He has first-hand experience of the Battle of the Bogside in 1969, the early years of the Troubles, internment, and the events of Bloody Sunday, in which British soldiers fire on unarmed protesters on January 30, 1972, killing 14 people. He becomes a public figure after he is witnessed using a blood-stained handkerchief as a white flag in an attempt to escort 17-year-old Jackie Duddy, a wounded protester, to safety. Duddy dies of his injuries soon after and Daly administers the last rites. He later describes the events as “a young fella who was posing no threat to anybody being shot dead unjustifiably.”

Daly gives an interview to the BBC in which he insists, contrary to official reports, that the protesters were unarmed. He testifies as such to the Widgery Tribunal, though he also testifies that he had seen a man with a gun on the day, to the anger of some of those involved. The Widgery Report largely exonerates the British Army, perpetuating the controversy. Years later, he says that the events of Bloody Sunday were a significant catalyst to the violence in Northern Ireland, and that the shootings served to greatly increase recruitment to the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Prior to Bloody Sunday, Daly is sympathetic to the “old” IRA, of which his father was a member, but the events of Bloody Sunday leave him of the opinion that “violence is completely unacceptable as a means to a political end,” which leads to tension with the Provisional Irish Republican Army throughout his career.

Daly is appointed Bishop of Derry in 1974, a position he holds until he is forced to retire in October 1993 after suffering a stroke. He continues in the role of chaplain to Derry’s Foyle Hospice until February 2016.

Daly makes headlines in 2011 when he says there needs to be a place in the modern Catholic Church for married priests. He addresses the controversial issue in his book about his life in the Church, A Troubled See. Allowing clergymen to marry would ease the church’s problems, he says.

Daly is awarded the Freedom of the City by Derry City Council in 2015 in a joint ceremony with Bishop James Mehaffey, with whom he had worked closely while the two were in office. He is “hugely pleased to accept [the award], particularly when it is being shared with my friend and brother, Bishop James.” The city’s mayor, Brenda Stevenson, announces that the joint award is in recognition of the two bishops’ efforts towards peace and community cohesion.

Daly dies on August 8, 2016 at Altnagelvin Area Hospital in Derry, having been admitted after a fall several weeks previously. He had also been diagnosed with cancer. He is surrounded by family and local priests.

Daly’s remains are taken to St. Eugene’s Cathedral, where he lay in state with mourners able to file past. His coffin is sealed at midday on August 11, 2016 and buried after Requiem Mass in the grounds of St. Eugene’s Cathedral alongside his predecessor as Bishop of Derry, Neil Farren. The bells of the cathedral toll for one hour on the morning of Daly’s death while many local people arrived to pay tribute. The mayor of Derry, Hilary McClintock, opens a book of condolence in the city’s guildhall for members of the public to sign. The funeral, conducted by the incumbent Bishop of Derry Donal McKeown, is attended by multiple religious and political leaders from across Ireland and retired leaders from throughout his career. A message from Pope Francis is read aloud at the beginning of the service. Hundreds of members of the public also attend the funeral, some lining the route from the cathedral to the gravesite. His coffin is greeted with applause as it is carried out of the cathedral for burial.

(Pictured: Father Edward Daly, waving a blood-stained white handkerchief as he escorts a mortally-wounded protester to safety during the events of Bloody Sunday (1972) in Derry, Northern Ireland, an image which becomes one of the most recognisable moments of the Troubles)


by Leave a comment

Republican Prisoner Denny Barry Dies on Hunger Strike

Irish Republican prisoner Denis “Denny” Barry dies on hunger strike in Newbridge internment camp on November 20, 1923, shortly after the Irish Civil War.

Barry is born into a farming family in Riverstick, ten miles south of Cork city, on July 15, 1883. He enjoys Gaelic culture and sport and is a prominent member of the Ballymartle hurling club. He later joins the famous Blackrock National Hurling Club where he wins four senior county championships in a row during the years of 1910 to 1913.

In 1913, Barry joins the newly formed Irish Volunteers. He is a member of the first Cork brigade and has been politically active in Sinn Féin. In 1915, he moves to Kilkenny to take up employment there, where he continues his volunteer activities. Shortly after the Easter Rising in 1916, he is arrested in Kilkenny in a British Government crackdown, and sent to Frongoch internment camp in North Wales. In 1917 he becomes election agent for W. T. Cosgrave in the Kilkenny by-election, one in which Cosgrave is successfully elected. However, just six years later he finds himself imprisoned by Cosgrave’s own government.

In 1922 Barry is imprisoned in Newbridge camp in Kildare and takes part in the hunger strike of 1923. On November 20, 1923, after 34 days protesting against the harsh regime and undignified conditions, he dies but even in death he is still refused dignity.

Barry’s body is not released to his family and is instead, on the orders of Minister of Defence, Richard Mulcahy, buried in the grounds of Newbridge internment camp. The Barry family takes legal action against this and eventually receives the body, but this is not the last of their troubles.

Upon their arrival in Cork with Barry’s body, the Bishop of Cork, Daniel Cohalan, instructs his priests not to allow Barry’s funeral in any church. Ironically just a few short years before, Bishop Cohalan had been a strong vocal supporter of Terence MacSwiney, Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, who died on hunger strike in Brixton Prison.

Shortly after MacSwiney’s death, Bishop Cohalan’s attitude towards the Irish Republican Army (IRA) changes and he issues a decree condemning the IRA in which he states, “Anyone who shall within the diocese of Cork organise or take part in an ambush or in kidnapping or otherwise, shall be guilty of murder or attempted murder and shall incur by the very fact the censure of excommunication.”

On December 10, 1922, Bishop Cohalan preaches publicly his support for the Anglo-Irish Treaty which establishes the Irish Free State and he urges his flock to do the same. This leads to an even greater wedge between the Catholic Church and many IRA members, yet it is the incident with Barry that seriously taints the Bishop of Cork and the Catholic Church in republican eyes.

Because of Bishop Cohalan’s stern objection to Barry’s body being permitted into a Catholic church, his body has to lay in state in the Cork Sinn Féin headquarters on the Grand Parade in Cork city. He is then taken in a funeral procession to St. Finbarr’s Cemetery where he is buried in the Republican plot next to Terence MacSwiney, whose funeral Bishop Cohalan had presided over three years previously. In place of a priest is David Kent, Sinn Féin Teachta Dála for Cork and brother of Thomas Kent, who was executed for his part in the 1916 Rising. Kent gives an oration, recites the Rosary and sprinkles holy water on the grave.

On November 28, 1923, the day Barry is buried, Bishop Cohalan sends an open letter to The Cork Examiner publicly denying a Christian burial for Barry and urging all men of the cloth to stay away from any such attempts for such a funeral. He goes so far as to write to the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Dr. Patrick Foley, to enquire about Barry getting the last sacraments. Barry did indeed receive the last rites from a Fr. Doyle who was serving as prison chaplain and this does not impress the Bishop of Cork.

Barry’s funeral precession through Cork City draws massive crowds with people from all walks of Cork’s political, social and sporting life attending to pay their respects to this man who had been at the heart of the revolution in Cork during the last decade of his life. The IRA, Cumann na mBan and Na Fíanna Éireann march in military formations with the funeral party.

Two days after Barry’s death another IRA prisoner, Andrew O’Sullivan, from Cork dies and the strike is called off the following day. Women prisoners are then released while men remain in prison until the following year.

A memorial to Barry is unveiled in Riverstick in 1966.


by Leave a comment

Birth of William Carleton, Writer & Novelist

william-carleton

William Carleton, Irish writer and novelist, is born in Clogher, County Tyrone on February 20, 1794. He is best known for his Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, a collection of ethnic sketches of the stereotypical Irishman.

Carleton receives a basic education at various hedge schools. Most of his learning is gained from a curate, Father Keenan, who teaches at a classical school at Donagh, County Monaghan which he attends from 1814 to 1816. He studies for the priesthood at Maynooth, but leaves after two years. Around the age of 19 he undertakes one of the religious pilgrimages then common in Ireland. His experiences as a pilgrim make him give up the thought of entering the church.

Carleton’s vacillating ideas as to a mode of life are determined by reading the picaresque novel Gil Blas by Alain-René Lesage. He decides to try what fortune has in store for him and he goes to Killanny, County Louth. For six months he serves as tutor to the family of a farmer named Piers Murphy. After some other experiments he sets out for Dublin, arriving with two shillings and sixpence in his pocket.

Carleton first seeks occupation as a bird-stuffer, but a proposal to use potatoes and meal as stuffing fails to recommend him. He then tries to become a soldier, but the colonel of the regiment dissuades him. After staying in a number of cheap lodgings, he eventually finds a place in a house on Francis Street which contains a circulating library. The landlady allows him to read from 12 to 16 hours a day. He obtains some teaching and a clerkship in a Sunday School office, begins to contribute to journals. “The Pilgrimage to Lough Derg,” which is published in the Christian Examiner, attracts great attention.

In 1830 Carleton publishes his first full-length book, Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (2 volumes), which is considered his best achievement. A second series (3 volumes) appears in 1833, and Tales of Ireland in 1834. From that time until a few years prior to his death he writes constantly. “Fardorougha the Miser, or the Convicts of Lisnamona” appears in 1837–1838 in the Dublin University Magazine.

Carleton remained active publishing in Dublin magazines through the 1830s and 1840s writing many ethnic stories often drawn from the south Tyrone locality. He also writes a lot of fiction. During the last months of his life he begins an autobiography which he brings down to the beginning of his literary career. This forms the first part of The Life of William Carleton by David James O’Donoghue, which contains full information about his life, and a list of his scattered writings.

Carleton’s later years are characterised by drunkenness and poverty. In spite of his considerable literary production, he remains poor, but receives a pension in 1848 of £200 a year granted by Lord John Russell in response to a memorial on Carleton’s behalf signed by numbers of distinguished persons in Ireland.

William Carleton dies at his home at Woodville, Sandford Road, in Ranelagh, Dublin on January 30, 1869, and is interred at Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold’s Cross, Dublin. The house, now demolished, is close to the entrance to the Jesuit residence at Milltown Park. Despite his conversion to Protestantism, Carleton remains on friendly terms with one of the priests there, Reverend Robert Carbery, who offers to give him the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. In the final weeks before his death, Carleton politely declines the offer, stating he had not been a Roman Catholic “for half a century and more.”

(Pictured: Portrait of Irish author William Carleton (1794-1869) by John Slattery (fl. 1850s))


by Leave a comment

The Clones Ambush

clones-train-station-11-22-1960On February 11, 1922, Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers stop a group of Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) constables on a train at Clones, County Monaghan, a short distance into Southern territory in an event recorded in history as the “Clones Ambush.” A gunfight begins in which one IRA officer and four USC constables are killed. The remaining USC constables are captured.

On January 22, the Ulster Gaelic Football Final is played in Derry. The previous evening six cars leave Monaghan to bring the Monaghan players to Derry, many of the members of the team being members of the IRA. They are stopped by a B Specials (Ulster Special Constabulary) check point at Dromore station. After a search the Specials discover weapons in the cars and arrest ten of the men. The IRA men are led by Dan Hogan O/C of the Fifth Northern Division. The men are taken to Omagh and interned.

The IRA waits impatiently for a chance at reprisal and on February 11, a group of Irish Republican Army volunteers attempt to ambush a party of Ulster Special Constabulary policemen travelling on a train through Clones. The volunteers enter a carriage of a train and order the Specials to put their hands up. IRA Commandant Matthew Fitzpatrick is shot and killed in the ensuing fight and five members of the Specials, Doherty, McMahon, McCullough, Lewis and McFarland are shot and killed. Several members of the Specials run down the track and cross the border into Fermanagh. The few remaining B Specials on the train decide to surrender and are arrested.

The IRA lifts the body of the Commandant Fitzpatrick and it is attended to by Monsignor E.C. Ward who gives him his Last Rites.

The Clones railway station is on the Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway. The Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway opens the station on June 26, 1858. The station closes on October 1, 1957.

(Photo: Clones Train Station, Co Monaghan, caught in mid-demolition by photographer James O’Dea on November 22, 1960)


by Leave a comment

Birth of Bing Crosby

bing-crosbyHarry Lillis “Bing” Crosby Jr., American singer and actor and descendant of Irish immigrants, is born on May 3, 1903 in Tacoma, Washington. His trademark warm bass-baritone voice makes him one of the best-selling recording artists of all time, selling over one billion analog records and tapes, as well as digital compact discs and downloads around the world.

Crosby’s parents are Harry Lillis Crosby Sr. (1870–1950), a bookkeeper of English descent, and Catherine Helen “Kate” (née Harrigan; 1873–1964), a second generation Irish American. An ancestor, Simon Crosby, emigrates to America in the 17th century, and one of his descendants marries a descendant of Mayflower passenger William Brewster.

The first multimedia star, from 1931 to 1954 Crosby is a leader in record sales, radio ratings, and motion picture grosses. His early career coincides with technical recording innovations such as the microphone. This allows him to develop a laid-back, intimate singing style that influences many of the popular male singers who follow him, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, and Dean Martin. Yank, the Army Weekly magazine says that he is the person who has done the most for American soldiers’ morale during World War II.

The biggest hit song of Crosby’s career is his recording of Irving Berlin‘s “White Christmas,” which he introduces on a Christmas Day radio broadcast in 1941. The song then appears in his 1942 movie Holiday Inn. His record hits the charts on October 3, 1942, and rises to No. 1 on October 31, where it stays for eleven weeks.

In 1948, American polls declare him the “most admired man alive,” ahead of Jackie Robinson and Pope Pius XII. Also in 1948, Music Digest estimates that his recordings fill more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music.

Crosby wins an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Father Chuck O’Malley in the 1944 motion picture Going My Way and is nominated for his reprise of the role in The Bells of St. Mary’s opposite Ingrid Bergman the next year, becoming the first of six actors to be nominated twice for playing the same character. In 1963, he receives the first Grammy Global Achievement Award. He is one of 33 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the categories of motion pictures, radio, and audio recording.

Crosby influences the development of the postwar recording industry. After seeing a demonstration of an early Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorder he places a large order for their equipment and convinces ABC to allow him to tape his shows. He becomes the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape. Through the medium of recording, he constructs his radio programs with the same directorial tools and craftsmanship (editing, retaking, rehearsal, time shifting) used in motion picture production, a practice that becomes an industry standard. In addition to his work with early audio tape recording, he helps to finance the development of videotape, purchases television stations, breeds racehorses, and co-owns the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team.

On October 13, 1977, Crosby flies alone to Spain to play golf and hunt partridge. The following day, at the La Moraleja Golf Course near Madrid, he plays 18 holes of golf. As Crosby and his party head back to the clubhouse, Crosby says, “That was a great game of golf, fellas.” At about 6:30 PM, he collapses about 20 yards from the clubhouse entrance and dies instantly from a massive heart attack. At Reina Victoria Hospital he is administered the last rites of the Catholic Church and is pronounced dead. On October 18, following a private funeral Mass at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Westwood, he is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. A plaque is placed at the golf course in his memory.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Irish Politician Mary MacSwiney

Mary MacSwiney, Irish politician and educationalist, is born in London on March 27, 1872, to an Irish father and English mother. In 1927 she becomes leader of Sinn Féin when Éamon de Valera resigns from the presidency of the party.

MacSwiney returns to Ireland with her family at the age of six and is educated at St. Angela’s School in Cork. At the age of twenty, she obtains a teaching post at a private school in England and studies for a Teaching Diploma at the University of Cambridge, which is normally reserved for men.

Influenced by her younger brother Terence MacSwiney‘s staunch Irish republicanism, MacSwiney joins the Gaelic League and Inghinidhe na hÉireann. She is a founder member of Cumann na mBan when it is formed in 1914 in Cork and becomes a National Vice-President of the organisation. She leads the denunciation of British rule at the Convention of November 1914. In 1916 she is arrested and imprisoned following the Easter Rising and is also dismissed from her teaching position due to her republican activities. Several months later, upon her release from prison, she and her sister Annie re-found Scoil Íte, a sister school to Patrick Pearse‘s St. Enda’s School, and she remains involved with the school for the rest of her life.

MacSwiney supports the Irish War of Independence in 1919–21. After the death of her brother Terence in October 1920 on hunger strike during the height of the war, she is elected for Sinn Féin to the Cork Borough constituency in 1921. She gives evidence in Washington, D.C., before the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland. For nine months she and Terence’s widow, Muriel, tour the United States lecturing and giving interviews.

MacSwiney is active in her friendship with Harry Boland and de Valera, whom she cultivates assiduously. In October 1921, a second delegation is to be sent to London which for the first time includes Michael Collins. MacSwiney, who remains implacably opposed, pleads with de Valera to be allowed to go. She is refused as de Valera thinks her to be “too extreme.” She strongly opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty, debating during December 1921 to January 1922 to resume the war. On December 21 she speaks for three hours, criticising the agreement from all angles.

MacSwiney is arrested at Nell Ryan’s home, a safe house, at 40 Herbert Park, Ballsbridge, on November 4, 1922, when it is raided by Free State soldiers. She is interned at Mountjoy Gaol and immediately goes on hunger strike. Cumann na mBan organizes vigils outside the prison in protest of Mary’s and the others internment. The Women’s Prisoner’s Defence League is formed in August 1922 to protect their rights. During the hunger strike she refuses doctor’s visits and is resigned to her death. Her condition is critical and she is given the Last Rites by a Catholic priest. The Government is not prepared to allow strikers die so she is released.

En route to Liam Lynch‘s funeral, MacSwiney is again arrested when the car in which she is riding is stopped and she is recognised. She is taken with Kate O’Callaghan to Kilmainham Gaol. Fearless of death, she begins another protest. They continued to be interned without charge, but it is explained she is distributing anti-government propaganda. After nineteen days of hunger strike she is due to be released on April 30, 1923. The Governor allows O’Callaghan to go but stays a decision on MacSwiney. Most of the women on hunger strike are sent to the North Dublin Union.

MacSwiney retains her seat at the 1923 general election and, along with other Sinn Féin members, refuses to enter the Dáil Éireann.

In March 1926 the party holds its Ard Fheis. MacSwiney and Father Michael O’Flanagan lead the section from which Éamon de Valera and Fianna Fáil break away. De Valera has come to believe that abstentionism is not a workable tactic and now sees the need to become the elected government of the Dáil. The conference instructs a joint committee of representatives from the two sections to arrange a basis for co-operation. That day, it issues a statement declaring “the division within our ranks is a division of Republicans.” The next day, de Valera’s motion to accept the Free State Constitution, contingent upon the abolition of the Oath of Allegiance, narrowly fails by a vote of 223 to 218. However, de Valera takes the great majority of Sinn Féin support with him when he founds Fianna Fáil.

MacSwiney continues to maintain a republican position until her death. By then she is vice-president of Sinn Féin and Cumann na mBan but loses her seat at the June 1927 general election. When lack of funds prevent Sinn Féin contesting the second election called that year, MacSwiney declares “no true Irish citizen can vote for any of the other parties.”

Mary MacSwiney dies at her home in Cork on March 8, 1942. Her stance, both before and after the Treaty, may be summed up by her statement, “A rebel is one who opposes lawfully constituted authority and that I have never done.”


by Leave a comment

Assassination of Irish American John Fitzgerald Kennedy

kennedy-assassinationJohn Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, is assassinated at 12:30 PM CST (18:30 UTC) on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Kennedy is the first Roman Catholic president of the United States and descendant of immigrants from Ireland.

At 12:30 PM CST, as Kennedy’s uncovered 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible limousine enters Dealey Plaza, Nellie Connally, the First Lady of Texas, turns around to President Kennedy, who is sitting behind her, and comments, “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you,” to which President Kennedy acknowledges by saying “No, you certainly can’t.” These are the last words ever spoken by John F. Kennedy.

From Houston Street, the presidential limousine makes the planned left turn onto Elm Street, allowing it access to the Stemmons Freeway exit. As it turns onto Elm, the motorcade passes the Texas School Book Depository. Shots are fired at Kennedy as the motorcade continues down Elm Street. About 80% of the witnesses recall hearing three shots.

A minority of the witnesses recognize the first gunshot they hear as weapon fire, but there is hardly any reaction to the first shot from a majority of the people in the crowd or those riding in the motorcade. Many later say they heard what they first thought to be a firecracker, or the backfire of a vehicle, just after the President started waving.

Within one second of each other, Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, all turn abruptly from looking to their left to looking to their right. Connally, like the President a World War II military veteran, testifies that he immediately recognizes the sound of a high-powered rifle. He also testifies that when his head is facing about 20 degrees left of center, he is hit in his upper right back by a bullet he does not hear fired. After Connally is hit he shouts, “Oh, no, no, no. My God. They’re going to kill us all!”

Mrs. Connally testifies that just after hearing a loud, frightening noise that comes from somewhere behind her and to her right, she turns toward President Kennedy and sees him with his arms and elbows raised high, with his hands in front of his face and throat. She then hears another gunshot and then Governor Connally yelling. Mrs. Connally then turns away from Kennedy toward her husband, at which point another gunshot sounds and she and the limousine’s rear interior are covered with fragments of skull, blood, and brain.

According to the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, as President Kennedy waves to the crowds on his right with his right arm upraised on the side of the limo, a shot enters his upper back, penetrates his neck, slightly damages a spinal vertebra and the top of his right lung, and exits his throat nearly centerline just beneath his larynx, nicking the left side of his suit tie knot. He raises his elbows and clenches his fists in front of his face and neck, then leans forward and left. Mrs. Kennedy, facing him, then puts her arms around him in concern.

A second shot strikes the President as the presidential limousine is passing in front of the John Neely Bryan north pergola concrete structure. Both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations concludes that the second shot to hit the president enters the rear of his head and, passing in fragments through his head, created a large, roughly oval hole on the rear, right side. The president’s blood and fragments of his scalp, brain, and skull land on the interior of the car, the inner and outer surfaces of the front glass windshield and raised sun visors, the front engine hood, the rear trunk lid, the followup Secret Service car and its driver’s left arm, and motorcycle officers riding on both sides of the President behind him.

After the President has been shot in the head, Mrs. Kennedy begins to climb out onto the back of the limousine, though she later has no recollection of doing so. United States Secret Service Special Agent Clint Hill, who is riding on the left front running board of the follow-up car, believes she is reaching for something, perhaps a piece of the President’s skull. He jumps onto the back of the limousine while at the same time Mrs. Kennedy returns to her seat. He clings to the car as it exits Dealey Plaza and accelerates, speeding to Parkland Memorial Hospital.

After Mrs. Kennedy crawls back into her limousine seat, both Governor Connally and Mrs. Connally hear her say more than once, “They have killed my husband,” and “I have his brains in my hand.”

The staff at Parkland Hospital’s Trauma Room 1 who treat President Kennedy observe that his condition is “moribund,” meaning that he has no chance of survival upon arriving at the hospital. George Burkley, the President’s personal physician, states that a gunshot wound to the skull is the cause of death. Burkley signs President Kennedy’s death certificate.

At 1:00 PM, CST (19:00 UTC), after all heart activity has ceased and after Father Oscar Huber has administered last rites, the President is pronounced dead.