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The Copley Street Riot

The Copley Street riot occurs on August 13, 1934, at the Copley Street Repository, Cork, County Cork, after Blueshirts opposed to the collection of annuities from auctioned cattle ram a truck through the gate of an ongoing cattle auction. The Broy Harriers open fire and one man, 22 year old Michael Lynch, is killed and several others injured.

Following the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), Britain relinquishes its control over much of Ireland. However, aspects of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which had marked the end of the war, lead to the Irish Civil War (1922–23). The aftermath leaves Ireland with damaged infrastructure and hinders its early development.

Éamon de Valera, who had voted against the Anglo-Irish treaty and headed the Anti-Treaty movement during the civil war, comes to power following the 1932 Irish general election and is re-elected in 1933. While the treaty stipulates that the Irish Free State should pay £3.1 million in land annuities to Great Britain, and despite advice that an economic war with Britain could have catastrophic consequences for Ireland (as 96% of exports are to Britain), de Valera’s new Irish government refuses to pay these annuities – though they continue to collect and retain them in the Irish exchequer.

This refusal leads to the Anglo-Irish trade war (also known as the “Economic War”), which persists until 1935, when a new treaty, the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement, is negotiated in 1938. During this period, a 20% duty is imposed on animals and agricultural goods, resulting in significant losses for Ireland. Specifically, poultry trade declines by 80%, butter trade by 50% and cattle prices drop by 50%. Some farmers are forced to kill and bury animals because they cannot afford to maintain them.

In 1933, Fine Gael emerges as a political party—a merger of Cumann na nGaedheal and the National Centre Party. Fine Gael garners substantial support from rural farmers who are particularly affected by the Economic War. They strongly object to the collection of land annuities by the Fianna Fáil government. The Blueshirts, a paramilitary organisation founded as the Army Comrades Association in 1932 and led by former Garda Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy, transforms into an agrarian protest organisation, mobilising against seizures, cattle auctions, and those tasked with collecting annuities.

O’Duffy, a key figure in Irish politics, encourages farmers to withhold payment of land annuities to the government. Arising from this stance, Gardaí start to seize animals and farm equipment, auctioning them to recover the outstanding funds. While seized cattle are auctioned, local farmers rarely participate. Instead, Northern Ireland dealers, often associated with the name O’Neill, are the primary buyers. These auctions are protected by the Broy Harriers, an armed auxiliary group linked to the police.

By 1934, tensions escalate, and a series of anti-establishment incidents are attributed to the Blueshirts. These incidents range from minor acts of violence, such as breaking windows, to more serious offenses like assault and shootings.

On August 13, 1934, an auction takes place at Marsh’s Yard on Copley Street in Cork, featuring cattle seized from farms in Bishopstown and Ballincollig. The police establish a cordon by 10:00 a.m., with 300 officers on duty. Lorries arrived at 11:00 a.m.

Around noon, three thousand protestors assemble. Within twenty-five minutes, an attempt is made to breach the yard gate by ramming it with a truck. According to Oireachtas records, there are approximately 20 men in the truck which they run against the gate. The Minister for Justice P. J. Ruttledge, says that the truck “with those people in it charged through those cordons of Guards; that several Guards jumped on to the lorry and tried to divert the driver by catching hold of the steering wheel and trying to twist it.” Some contemporary news sources suggest that the ramming truck knocked down the surrounding police cordon “like ninepins and crush[ed] a police inspector against a gate.” Later sources suggest that the senior officer (a superintendent) was injured in a fall, while attempting to avoid being struck, rather than being hit directly by the truck.

A man named Michael Lynch, wearing the distinctive blue shirt, and approximately 20 others reportedly manage to enter the yard. As soon as they enter the yard they are fired upon by armed “special branch” police detectives who are in the yard. Lynch later succumbs to his injuries at the South Infirmary. Thirty-six others are wounded. Despite the violence, the auction proceeds after a one-hour delay.

Following the shooting, a riot ensues, but when news of Lynch’s death reaches the participants, they cease rioting, kneel, and recited a Rosary.

The funeral of Michael Lynch occurs on August 15, 1934. The funeral procession is planned to depart from Saints Peter and Paul’s Church, Cork at 2:30 PM.

The occasion allows for a significant show of force for Eoin O’Duffy and the Blueshirts, and features Roman salutes and military drills. Farmers in Munster reportedly stop work for an hour, and Blueshirt members ask shopkeepers to close their businesses, as a show of respect for the “martyr.” Lynch is afforded a “full Blueshirt burial,” and the coffin is adorned with the flag of the Blueshirts (the Army Comrades Association).

According to the  Minister for Justice, at the funeral W. T. Cosgrave stands beside O’Duffy as the Blueshirt leader gives an oration saying, “We are going to carry on until our mission is accomplished […] those 20 brave men, whose deed will live for ever, not only in Cork but in every county in Ireland, broke through in the lorry […] all Blueshirts should try to emulate his bravery and nobleness. Every Blueshirt is prepared to go the way of Michael for his principles.”

The court grants the family £300 in 1935. This is appealed to the High Court, followed by the Supreme Court, which dismisses the case. In the Supreme Court, Henry Hanna describes the Broy Harriers as “an excrescence” upon the Garda Síochána.

When the matter is discussed in the Seanad in September 1934, and before a vote is taken to “[condemn] the action of the members of the special branch of the Gárda Síochána […] on Monday, the 13th August 1934,” the senators who support Éamon de Valera’s government walk out.

In August 1940, a memorial is unveiled on the tomb of Lynch in Dunbulloge Cemetery in Carrignavar, County Cork, consisting of a limestone Celtic cross and pedestal. The pedestal is engraved with a quote from the American orator, William Jennings Bryan: “The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the armour of a righteous cause is stronger than all the hosts of error.”

(Pictured: Aftermath of the ramming of Marsh’s Yard, Copley Street, that leads to the death of Michael Lynch and the Copley Street Riot on August 13, 1934)


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The Shooting Death of Eileen Quinn

Eileen Quinn, age 24 and within two months of the birth of her fourth child, is shot by Galway police on November 1, 1920, during the Irish War of Independence (1919-21), while holding her nine-month-old child in her arms and sitting on the lawn in front of her farmhouse at Kiltartan near Gort, bleeding to death later that night. She leaves three children, the eldest of whom is not yet four years old.

Afraid of ambushes, police have begun to “reconnoiter by fire,” shooting blindly into woods and possible ambush sites. Quinn is near one such site when the police open fire, and she is hit by a stray bullet.

At the time of the shooting, her husband Malachy Quinn, who is a farmer, is in Gort. Another messenger going to Ardrahan for Dr. Foley is, it is reported, wounded by a bullet. Uniformed men pass into Gort subsequently firing shots. When the lorry passes the house where the dying woman lay, the terror-stricken occupants flee by the back way.

Rev. Fr. John Considine, C.C., Gort, gives a graphic description of Quinn’s last moments.

“It is too awful, too inhuman, to contemplate.” These are Father Considine’s opening remarks concerning the tragedy. Pressed to explain what occurred, he says, “I have read of Turkish atrocities; I have read of the death of Joan of Arc; I have read of the sufferings of Nurse Cavell, and as I read those things I often felt my blood boil and I often prayed that the good God might change the minds and hearts of those cruel monsters.”

“Little did I then dream that I should witness a tragedy, an atrocity more hideous, more revolting, more frightful, more brutal, more cruel than any of those things, and here in our own little peaceful parish of Gort. My God, it is awful! About three o’clock on Tuesday, Malachy Quinn weeping bitterly, called for me. Father, says he, ‘I have just heard that my wife had been shot. Will you run down immediately?’ I procured a motor car and hurried to the scene. At the gateway there we beheld a large pool of blood. In the yard another pool, and the porch leading to the kitchen was covered with blood. I entered the room. Oh, God! what a sight. There lay the poor woman, the blood oozing out through her clothes.”

“She turned her eyes towards me and said, ‘Oh, Father John, I have been shot.’ ‘Shot!’ I exclaimed. ‘Yes,’ she replied. By whom, I asked. ‘Police’ she answered.”

Quinn then becomes weaker, Father Considine explains, and on rallying exclaims, “Father John, will you do something for me?” He tries to console her and administers the Last Sacrament.

“When I finished, she whispered to me, bring me Malachy, bring him to me, I hear him crying. I have something to tell him. I did so. What a scene. Then she became weak and fainted off. Gradually she became worse.”

“I sent word immediately to the Head Constable at Gort. He arrived with police and military. All seemed shocked at the tragedy. I asked him to go in and see the woman. He and his men felt the trial too much, as he answered, ‘I cannot.’ No trace of the bullet could be found.”

Continuing, Father Considine says Quinn is sitting on the lawn with her child when the lorry passes from which the fatal shot is fired. The bullet pierces her stomach and the child she is holding falls from her arms. She crawls over the wall into the yard, and then crawls to the porch to tell her servant that she has been shot. “Take in the little children!” she exclaims.

From 3:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. she lingers on in pain. Occasionally she clasps Father Considine’s hand and pulls him toward her, and says, “I’m done, I’m done!” At 10:30 her condition becomes worse, and they kneel by her bedside to recite the Rosary and prayers for the dying. She tries to join but is too weak.

At 10:45 p.m. the little children begin to cry, and with them the crowded house bursts into tears. As Father Considine reads the last prayer of the Ritual she looks around, then closes her eyes and dies.

Irish public opinion is outraged when a military court of inquiry subsequently returns a verdict of “death by misadventure.” Soon afterward, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Headquarters and the Chief of Police issue orders against wild firing from motor vehicles.

(From: The Galway Observer, November 1920)


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The Pearse Street Ambush

The Pearse Street Ambush takes place in Dublin on March 14, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence. Dublin awakes to the news that six Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers, captured in an ambush at Drumcondra two months earlier, have been hanged. The gates of Mountjoy Gaol are opened at 8:25 a.m. and news of the executions is read out to the distraught relatives of the dead. As many as 40,000 people gather outside and many mournfully say the Rosary for the executed men.

The Labour movement calls a half-day general strike in the city in protest at the hangings. The clandestine Republican government declares a day of national mourning. All public transport comes to a halt and republican activists make sure the strike is observed.

By the evening, the streets clear rapidly as the British-imposed curfew comes into effect at 9:00 p.m. each night. The city is patrolled by regular British troops and the much-feared paramilitary police, or Auxiliaries, as people scurry home and await IRA retaliation for the hangings. This is not long in coming.

Pearse Street is just south of the River Liffey, running from Ringsend, an old fishing port, to the city centre. Number 144 Pearse Street houses the company headquarters of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade 3rd Battalion at St. Andrews Catholic Hall. It has been used for this purpose since before the 1916 Easter Rising.

On the evening of March 14, Captain Peadar O’Meara sends the 3rd Battalion out to attack police or military targets. As many as thirty-four IRA men prowl the area, armed with the standard urban guerrilla arms of easily hidden handguns and grenades. One young volunteer, Sean Dolan, throws a grenade at a police station on nearby Merrion Square, which bounces back before it explodes, blowing off his own leg.

At around 8:00 p.m., with the curfew approaching, a company of Auxiliaries, based in Dublin Castle is sent to the area to investigate the explosion. It consists of one Rolls-Royce armoured car and two tenders holding about 16 men. Apparently, the Auxiliaries have some inside information as they made straight for the local IRA headquarters at 144 Pearse Street. One later testifies in court that “I had been notified there were a certain number of gunmen there.”

However, the IRA is waiting. As soon as the Auxiliaries approach the building, they are fired upon from three sides. What the newspapers describe as “hail of fire” tears into the Auxiliaries’ vehicles. Five of the eight Auxiliaries in the first tender are hit in the opening fusillade. Two of them are fatally injured, including the driver, an Irishman named O’Farrell, and an Auxiliary named L. Beard.

The IRA fighters, however, are seriously outgunned. The Rolls Royce armoured car is impervious to small arms fire (except its tyres, which are shot out) and the mounted Vickers heavy machine gun sprays the surrounding houses with bullets. The unwounded Auxiliaries also clamber out of their tenders and return fire at the gun flashes from street corners and rooftops.

Civilian passersby thow themselves to the ground to avoid the bullets but four are hit, by which side it is impossible to tell. The British military court of inquiry into the incident finds that the civilians had been killed by persons unknown, if by the IRA then they were “murdered,” if hit by Auxiliaries the shootings were “accidental.” This, aside from demonstrating the court’s bias, shows that no one is sure who had killed them.

Firing lasts for only five minutes but in that time seven people, including the two Auxiliaries, are killed or fatally wounded and at least six more are wounded. Eighteen-year-old Bernard O’Hanlon, originally from Dundalk, lay sprawled, dead, outside 145 Pearse Street, his British Bull Dog revolver under him which has five chambers, two of which contain expended rounds and three of which contain live rounds, indicating he had gotten off just two shots before being cut down.

Another IRA Volunteer, Leo Fitzgerald, is also killed outright. Two more guerrillas are wounded, one in the hip and one in the back. They, along with Sean Dolan, who had been wounded by his own grenade, are spirited away by sympathetic fire brigade members and members of Cumann na mBan and treated in nearby Mercer’s Hospital.

Three civilians lay dead on the street. One, Thomas Asquith, is a 68-year-old caretaker, another, David Kelly, is a prominent Sinn Féin member and head of the Sinn Féin Bank. His brother, Thomas Kelly, is a veteran Sinn Féin politician and a Member of Parliament since 1918. The third, Stephen Clarke, aged 22, is an ex-soldier and may have been the one who had tipped off the Auxiliaries about the whereabouts of the IRA meeting house. An internal IRA report notes that he was “under observation… as he was a tout [informant] for the enemy.”

Two IRA men are captured as they flee the scene. One, Thomas Traynor, a 40-year-old veteran of the Easter Rising, is carrying an automatic pistol, but claims to have had no part in the ambush itself. He had, he maintains, simply been asked to bring in the weapon to 144 Great Brunswick Street. The other is Joseph Donnelly, a youth of just 17 years of age.

As most of the IRA fighters get away through houses, over walls and into backstreets, the Auxiliaries ransack St. Andrew’s Catholic Hall at number 144 Pearse Street but find little of value. Regular British Army troops quickly arrive from nearby Beggars Bush Barracks and cordon off the area, but no further arrests are made. Desultory sniping carries on in the city for several hours into the night.

March 14, 1921, was bloody day in Dublin. Thirteen people had died violently in the city by the end of the day – six IRA Volunteers executed that morning, two more killed in action at Pearse Street, two Auxiliaries killed in action and three civilians in the crossfire. It is the worst day of political violence in the city since Bloody Sunday on November 21, 1920, when 31 had been killed.

(From: “The Pearse Street Ambush, Dublin, March 14, 1921” by John Dorney, The Irish Story, http://www.theirishstory.com, January 26, 2015 | Pictured: British Army troops keep crowds back from Mountjoy Prison during the executions, March 14 1921.)


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Death of Concertina Player Elizabeth “Lizzie” Crotty

Elizabeth “Lizzie” Crotty (née Markham), concertina player better known as Mrs. Crotty, dies in Kilrush, County Clare, from angina pectoris on December 27, 1960.

Markham is born on January 8, 1886, at Gower, Cooraclare, County Clare, the youngest in the large family of Michael Markham, farmer, and Margaret Markham (née Keane). She attends national school in Cooraclare from 1893 to 1899. Although she does not speak or understand the Irish language, as do her father and likely her mother, the Rosary is recited in Irish at home. She and a sister are the only siblings not to emigrate. Her mother plays the fiddle, while her older sister Margaret (Maggie) plays the concertina and probably influences her to do likewise. She has no single teacher and acquires tunes and her style of playing from neighbours and family friends. She begins to play a two-row German-type concertina at house dances throughout west Clare and becomes very much in demand.

In 1914, Markham marries Michael (Miko) Crotty from Gowerhass, the townland next to Gower. Miko had been in the United States for a couple of years and uses the money earned there to buy a public house on the Market Square in Kilrush, now known as “Crotty’s Pub.” They live in the Square in Kilrush and Miko bottles his own whiskey. The pub is an important venue for Irish traditional music, especially for those who wish to hear Crotty play. She remains relatively unknown outside of Clare until the early 1950s, and there are a relatively small number of recordings of her playing the concertina. The broadcaster Ciarán Mac Mathúna conducts recording sessions in her house in 1955 and she is to be heard on A Job of Journeywork, his programme on Radio Éireann. She possesses a number of concertinas, but the Lachenal that she purchases in the 1950s is her favourite and the one with which she is most closely identified. In 1954, she is a founder member and the first president of the Clare branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. During her time as president, the All Ireland Fleadh is held in Ennis in 1956.

Crotty often sings the traditional song “An draighneán donn,” which is one of her favourites. Among tunes she enjoys playing are the “Ewe reel,” the “Dublin reel,” and “The maid of Mount Cisco,” along with “The wind that shakes the barley.” Her straight style of playing for dancing and dancers increases her popularity. Seán Ó Riada regards her as one of the finest concertina players he ever heard. Although she does not read or write staff notation, she creates a written code for herself by giving the concertina keys a number and by using a symbol for the press or draw movement on the concertina keys.

Crotty suffers from severe angina which necessitates visits for medical treatment to Dublin, where she becomes friends with fiddle player Kathleen Harrington (née Gardiner). They attend the Pipers’ Club in Thomas Street, play together on Radio Éireann, and travel together to fleadhanna.

Crotty dies on December 27, 1960, of an anginal attack while at her home. She is buried in (old) Shanakyle cemetery. She loses her first three children, and a son drowns in the River Shannon in 1945. Another son, Thomas, becomes a priest. A festival, ‘Éigse Mrs Crotty’, is held in her memory each summer in Kilrush. Her son Paddy gives three perpetual trophies for presentation at the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil.

(From: “Crotty, Elizabeth (‘Lizzie’)” by Ríonach uí Ógáin, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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The Templemore Miracles

In August and September 1920 the town of Templemore in County Tipperary is the sight of alleged Marian apparitions. Thousands of people come to the town daily to see the apparitions. The affair occurs during the Irish War of Independence and results in a short-lived local truce between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Crown forces. When the truce ends, pilgrims stop coming to the town and the sightings end. The affair is sometimes referred to as the Templemore miracles.

In January 1919 the Irish War of Independence begins and lasts until July 1921. On the night of August 16, 1920, British soldiers of the Northamptonshire Regiment attack Templemore in reprisal for the killing of an Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officer by IRA volunteers earlier that day. They fire volleys and burn homes and businesses. No civilians or IRA men are killed but two soldiers die by accident in the fires.

Shortly after the attack, a sixteen-year old farm labourer named James Walsh claims that he was visited by the Virgin Mary in his cottage in the nearby townland of Curraheen. She told him that she was troubled by what was happening in Ireland. At her request he digs a hole in the ground in his bedroom and this soon fills with spring water. Afterwards he claims that all three statues of the Virgin Mary in his home began to bleed. He takes these statues to Templemore, where the bleeding is witnessed. One man who had been crippled for most of his life claims he is dancing in the streets after visiting Walsh’s cottage. He is the first of many who claim to have been cured of their ailments in the presence of Walsh or the statues.

Locals believe that divine intervention had prevented any of them being killed or wounded during the attack by the British. Walsh gathers people around the statues to say the Rosary in Irish. According to Ann Wilson, the statues are seen “as asserting the Catholic Irish identity of the population in the face of the non-Catholic British opponent, a superior spiritual power which would win out against the much more substantial, but merely worldly, advantages of the enemy.”

The affair is soon reported in local and national newspapers, which causes more pilgrims to go to Tipperary, both to see the statues in Templemore and Walsh’s cottage in Curraheen. On August 31, 1920 an RIC inspector writes to the Dublin Castle administration, estimating that over 15,000 pilgrims per day are coming down. Many come seeking cures for various illnesses and report that they had received them. One RIC officer resigns from his job to join a religious order. One soldier is reported to convert to Catholicism. The influx results in a large economic windfall for the town.

The official position of the church is one of ‘extreme reserve.’ The parish priest Reverend Kiely refuses to see the statues. However, no effort is made to stop people making pilgrimages. Local IRA commander James Leahy notes a division between older and younger clergy in the local church, with older clergy generally being skeptical of Walsh while younger clergy are more enthusiastic about his claims.

Prior to the apparitions beginning, Wilson had given a Virgin Mary statue to a local RIC constable named Thomas Winsey, according to the Tipperary Star. Winsey placed the statue in the barracks. This too is said to be bleeding. One day a large crowd of pilgrims besiege the barracks and have to be physically restrained when they attempt to enter it. The statue is removed from the barracks. Police and military stop appearing on the street shortly after.

The IRA effectively takes over the area at this point. They keep order, organise traffic and help pilgrims. However, they do not appear in the streets in uniform and there is an informal truce in effect between them and Crown forces.

Local IRA commander James Leahy is concerned at the effect that tips given to IRA volunteers were having on discipline. He and other local commanders interrogate Walsh and stop believing him after this. He contacts IRA Director of Intelligence Michael Collins. Collins has Dan Breen interrogate Walsh. Breen reports that Walsh “was a fake.” Collins sarcastically replies, “One can’t take any notice of what you say, Breen, because you have no religion.”

Having failed to get the church to intervene and denounce Walsh, Leahy and other IRA members decide to restart the war anyway. On September 29, IRA volunteers attack a group of RIC men between Templemore and Curraheen. Two constables are killed. As anticipated, this brings police and army reinforcements to the area. Soldiers loot and desecrate sites outside Templemore associated with the pilgrimage. Rumours begin that the town itself would soon be attacked. Pilgrims flee the area. The statues apparently stop bleeding.

Interest in the statues and Walsh’s cottage largely end at this point, ending Templemore as a sight for pilgrimages. However, Michael Collins does receive a statue at his request. Upon receiving the statue, he smashes it. He discovers that inside is an alarm clock connected to fountain pen inserts containing sheep’s blood. When the clock strikes a certain time, it sends a spurt of blood out of the statue, giving the impression it is bleeding. It is not clear whether this statue performed in Templemore or was one of the ones owned by James Walsh. Collins had received complaints from a local priest that IRA volunteers had engineered statues that would bleed at intervals.

James Walsh is labelled as a possible spy by Dan Breen. At the request of Templemore clergy he is taken to Salesian College in Limerick and placed in the care of Father Aloysius Sutherland. He emigrates to Australia in 1923, settling in Sydney. Towards the end of his life he attempts to enter numerous religious orders but is unsuccessful due to a prior divorce. He dies in Sydney in 1977, having never returned to Ireland.

Historian John Reynolds states at a talk that the affair could have been a prank that got out of hand or was a money-making swindle. He speculates that Walsh may have been used by others, who really instigated it. He discounts the local IRA as having been the instigators.

The affair is not well-known despite gaining worldwide attention at the time. However, in November 2012 the Irish-language television broadcaster TG4 screens a documentary about it. In 2019 the book The Templemore Miracles, written by John Reynolds, is published.

(Pictured: Children pray beside statues that were reported to have started bleeding, Belfast Telegraph, http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk)


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Éamon de Valera Meets David Lloyd George in London

On July 14, 1921, just three days after a truce is implemented ending the Irish War of Independence, Éamon de Valera, President of Dáil Éireann, meets with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in London.

Francis Stevenson, Private Secretary to Lloyd George recalls, “I have never seen David so excited as he was before de Valera arrived at 4:30. He kept walking in and out of my room… As I told him afterwards, he was bringing up all his guns! He had a big map of the British Empire hung up on the wall in the Cabinet room, with its great blotches of red all over it. This was to impress de Valera with the greatness of the British Empire and to get him to recognise it, and the King.” De Valera apparently is not impressed.

When de Valera, Richard Barton and Art O’Brien arrive at Downing Street, “cheers were raised, Sinn Féin flags were displayed, and the crowd sang Irish airs.” As the meeting goes on, a “large crowd of Irish sympathisers knelt in the rain at Whitehall, at the end of Downing Street, recited the Rosary, and sang several hymns. Before the prayers started, they sang “Ireland a Nation.” According to a reporter covering the event, the singing of Irish songs and the praying never ceases.

Six days later, Britain makes its first formal proposal. The main negotiations take place in December culminating with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on December 6, 1921.

(From: Stair na hÉireann | History of Ireland, http://www.stairnaheireann.net, July 14, 2016 | Photo credit: National Library of Ireland collection, dated Thursday, July 14, 1921 (at approximately 5:30 PM), outside Downing Street as de Valera meets Lloyd George, at the first of four meetings held between the two in July 1921.)


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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.


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The Battle of Brunswick Street

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The Battle of Brunswick Street occurs in Dublin on March 14, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence.

British authorities hang six Irish Republican Army (IRA) Volunteers in Mountjoy Gaol for crimes of high treason and murder on the morning of March 14, 1921. The Volunteers, including Francis Xavier Flood, Thomas Bryan, Patrick Doyle, Bernard Ryan and Dermot O’Sullivan, had been captured in an ambush at Drumcondra two months earlier.

The gates of Mountjoy Gaol are opened at 8:25 AM and news of the executions is read out to the distraught relatives of the dead. As many as 40,000 people gather outside the prison and many mournfully say the Rosary for the executed men.

By evening, the streets clear rapidly as the British-imposed curfew comes into effect at 9:00 PM each night. During this period, the city is a fearful place, patrolled by regular British troops and the much-feared paramilitary police, the Auxiliary Division, as people scurry home and await IRA retaliation for the hangings, which is not long in coming.

That very evening, IRA captain Peadar O’Meara sends as many as thirty-four IRA men out to attack police or military targets. They are armed with the standard urban guerrilla arms of easily hidden handguns and grenades. One young Volunteer, Sean Dolan, throws a grenade at a police station on nearby Merrion Square, which bounces back before it explodes, blowing off his own leg.

At around 8:00 PM, with the curfew fast approaching, a company of Auxiliaries based in Dublin Castle is sent to the area to investigate the explosion. It consists of one Rolls Royce armoured car and two trucks holding about sixteen men. Apparently, the Auxiliaries have some inside information as they head straight for the local IRA headquarters at 144 Great Brunswick Street, now Pearse Street. One later testifies in court that “I had been notified there were a certain number of gunmen there.”

The IRA is expecting the Auxiliaries. As soon as the Auxiliaries approach the building, fire is opened on them from three sides. What is described in newspapers as a “hail of fire” tears into the Auxiliaries’ vehicles. Five of the eight Auxiliaries in the first truck are hit in the opening fusillade, two of them fatally injured. The IRA fighters, however, are seriously outgunned. The Rolls Royce armoured car is impervious to small arms fire (except its tires, which are shot out) but mounts a Vickers heavy machine gun which sprays the surrounding houses with bullets. The uninjured Auxiliaries also clamber out of their trucks and return fire at the gun flashes from street corners and rooftops.

Civilian passersby fling themselves to the ground to avoid the bullets but four are hit, by which side it is impossible to tell. The British military court of inquiry into the incident finds that the civilians had been killed by persons unknown, if by the IRA then they were “murdered,” if hit by Auxiliaries the shootings were “accidental.”

The gunfire lasts only five minutes but in that time seven people, including the two Auxiliaries, are killed or fatally wounded and at least six more wounded. Three civilians lay dead on the street – Thomas Asquith is a 68-year-old caretaker, David Kelly is a prominent Sinn Féin member and head of the Sinn Féin bank, and Stephen Clarke, aged 22, is an ex-soldier and may have been the individual who tipped off the Auxiliaries about the whereabouts of the IRA meeting house. An internal IRA report notes that he is “under observation, as he was a tout for the enemy.” The wounded are spirited away by sympathetic fire brigade members and members of Cumann na mBan and treated at nearby Mercer’s Hospital.

Two IRA men are captured as they flee the scene. Thomas Traynor, a 40-year-old veteran of the Easter Rising, is carrying an automatic pistol, but claims to have had no part in the ambush itself. He had, he maintains, simply been asked to bring in the weapon to 144 Great Brunswick Street. The other is Joseph Donnelly a youth of just 17 years of age.

As most of the IRA fighters get away through houses, over walls and into backstreets, the Auxiliaries ransack St. Andrew’s Catholic Hall at 144 Great Brunswick Street but find little of value. Regular British Army troops quickly arrive from nearby Beggars Bush Barracks and cordon off the area, but no further arrests are made. Desultory sniping carries on in the city for several hours into the night.

(From: “The Pearse Street Ambush, Dublin, March 14, 1921” by John Dorney, The Irish Story (theirishstory.com), January 26, 2015)


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Apparition at Church of Saint John the Baptist at Knock

knock-shrineOn the evening of Thursday, August 21, 1879, at about 8 o’clock, fifteen people, whose ages range from five to seventy-five and include men, women, teenagers, and children, witness what they state is an apparition of Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and Saint John the Evangelist at the south gable end of the local small parish church, the Church of Saint John the Baptist. Behind them and a little to the left of Saint John is a plain altar. On the altar is a cross and a lamb, a traditional image of Jesus as reflected in the religious phrase The Lamb of God, with adoring angels.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is described as being beautiful, standing a few feet above the ground. She wears a white cloak, hanging in full folds and fastened at the neck. Her crown appears of a golden brightness, of a deeper hue, than the striking whiteness of the robe she wears. The upper parts of the crown appear to be a series of sparkles, or glittering crosses. She is described as “deep in prayer,” with her eyes raised to heaven, her hands raised to the shoulders or a little higher, the palms inclined slightly to the shoulders.

Saint Joseph, also wearing white robes, stands on the Virgin’s right hand. His head is bent forward from the shoulders towards the Blessed Virgin. Saint John the Evangelist stands to the left of the Blessed Virgin. He is dressed in a long robe and wears a mitre. He is partly turned away from the other figures. He appears to be preaching and he holds open a large book in his left hand. To the left of St. John is an altar with a lamb on it. There is a cross standing on the altar behind the lamb.

Those who witness the apparition stand in the pouring rain for up to two hours reciting the Rosary, a series of traditional Catholic prayers. When the apparition begins there is good light, but although it then becomes very dark, witnesses can still see the figures very clearly – they appear to be the colour of a bright whitish light. The apparition does not flicker or move in any way. The witnesses report that the ground around the figures remains completely dry during the apparition although the wind is blowing from the south. Afterwards, however the ground at the gable becomes wet and the gable dark.

A number of cures and favours are associated with visitors to Our Lady of Knock’s Shrine and those who claim to have been cured here still leave crutches and sticks at the spot where the apparition is believed to have occurred.

Each Irish diocese makes an annual pilgrimage to the Marian Shrine and the nine-day Knock novena attracts ten thousand pilgrims every August.

While the original church still stands, a new Apparition chapel with statues of Our Lady, St. Joseph, the lamb, and St, John the Evangelist, has been built next to it. Knock Basilica is a separate building showing a tapestry of the apparition.