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Tag Archives: Spike Island (County Cork)


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Death of James Ryan, Doctor, Revolutionary & Fianna Fáil Politician

James Ryan, medical doctor, revolutionary and politician who serves in every Fianna Fáil government from 1932 to 1965, dies on his farm at Kindlestown, County Wicklow, on September 25, 1970.

Ryan is born on the family farm at Tomcoole, near Taghmon, County Wexford, on December 6, 1892. The second-youngest of twelve children, he is educated at St. Peter’s College, Wexford, and Ring College, Waterford. In 1911, he wins a county council scholarship to University College Dublin (UCD) where he studies medicine.

In March 1917, Ryan passes his final medical examinations. That June he sets up medical practice in Wexford. In 1921, he moves to Dublin where he opens a doctor’s practice at Harcourt Street, specialising in skin diseases at the Skin and Cancer Hospital on Holles Street. He leaves medicine in 1925, after he purchases Kindlestown, a large farm near Delgany, County Wicklow. He lives there and it remains a working farm until his death.

In July 1919, Ryan marries Máirín Cregan, originally from County Kerry and a close friend of Sinéad de Valera throughout her life. Cregan, like her husband, also fought in the Easter Rising and is subsequently an author of children’s stories in Irish. They have three children together.

One of Ryan’s sisters, Mary Kate, marries Seán T. O’Kelly, one of Ryan’s future cabinet colleagues and a future President of Ireland. Following her death O’Kelly marries her sister, Phyllis Ryan. Another of Ryan’s sisters, Josephine (‘Min’) Ryan, marries Richard Mulcahy, a future leader of Fine Gael. Another sister, Agnes, marries Denis McCullough, a Cumann na nGaedheal TD from 1924 to 1927. He is also the great-grandfather of Ireland and Leinster Rugby player James Ryan.

While studying at university in 1913, Ryan joins the Gaelic League at Clonmel. The company commander recruits the young Catholic nationalist, who becomes a founder-member of the Irish Volunteers and is sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) the following year. In 1916, he goes first to Cork to deliver a message from Seán Mac Diarmada to Tomás Mac Curtain that the Easter Rising is due to happen on Easter Sunday, then to Cork again in a 12-hour journey in a car to deliver Eoin MacNeill‘s cancellation order, which attempts to stop the rising. When he arrives back on Tuesday, he serves as the medical officer in the General Post Office (GPO) and treats many wounds, including James Connolly‘s shattered ankle, a wound which gradually turns gangrenous. He is, along with Connolly, one of the last people to leave the GPO when the evacuation takes place. Following the surrender of the garrison, he is deported to HM Prison Stafford in England and subsequently Frongoch internment camp. He is released in August 1916.

Ryan rejoins the Volunteers immediately after his release from prison, and in June 1917, he is elected Commandant of the Wexford Battalion. His political career begins the following year when he is elected as a Sinn Féin candidate for the constituency of South Wexford in the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland. Like his fellow Sinn Féin MPs, he refuses to attend the Westminster Parliament. Instead he attends the proceedings of the First Dáil on January 21, 1919. As the Irish War of Independence goes on, he becomes Brigade Commandant of South Wexford and is also elected to Wexford County Council, serving as chairman on one occasion. In September 1919, he is arrested by the British and interned on Spike Island and later Bere Island. In February 1921, he is imprisoned at Kilworth Internment Camp, County Cork. He is later moved on Ballykinlar Barracks in County Down and released in August 1921.

In the 1922 Irish general election, Ryan and one of the other two anti-Treaty Wexford TDs lose their seats to pro-Treaty candidates. During the Irish Civil War, he is arrested and held in Mountjoy Prison before being transferred to Curragh Camp, where he embarks on a 36-day hunger strike. While interned he wins back his Dáil seat as an abstentionist at the 1923 Irish general election. He is released from prison in December 1923.

In 1926, Ryan is among the Sinn Féin TDs who follow leader Éamon de Valera out of the party to found Fianna Fáil. They enter the Dáil in 1927 and spend five years on the opposition benches.

Following the 1932 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil comes to office and Ryan is appointed Minister for Agriculture, a position he continuously holds for fifteen years. He faces severe criticism over the Anglo-Irish trade war with Britain as serious harm is done to the cattle trade, Ireland’s main export earner. The trade war ends in 1938 with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement between both governments, after a series of talks in London between the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, de Valera, Ryan and Seán Lemass.

In 1947, after spending fifteen years as Minister for Agriculture, Ryan is appointed to the newly created positions of Minister for Health and Minister for Social Welfare. Following Fianna Fáil’s return to power at the 1951 Irish general election, he returns as Minister for Health and Social Welfare. Following the 1954 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil loses power and he moves to the backbenches once again.

Following the 1957 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil are back in office and de Valera’s cabinet has a new look to it. In a clear message that there will be a change to economic policy, Ryan, a close ally of Seán Lemass, is appointed Minister for Finance, replacing the conservative Seán MacEntee. The first sign of a new economic approach comes in 1958, when Ryan brings the First Programme for Economic Development to the cabinet table. This plan, the brainchild of T. K. Whitaker, recognises that Ireland will have to move away from self-sufficiency toward free trade. It also proposes that foreign firms should be given grants and tax breaks to set up in Ireland.

When Lemass succeeds de Valera as Taoiseach in 1959, Ryan is re-appointed as Minister for Finance. Lemass wants to reward him for his loyalty by also naming him Tánaiste. However, the new leader feels obliged to appoint MacEntee, one of the party elders to the position. Ryan continues to implement the First Programme throughout the early 1960s, achieving a record growth rate of 4 percent by 1963. That year an even more ambitious Second Programme is introduced. However, it overreaches and has to be abandoned. In spite of this, the annual growth rate averages five percent, the highest achieved since independence.

Ryan does not stand in the 1965 Irish general election, after which he is nominated by the Taoiseach to Seanad Éireann, where he joins his son, Eoin Ryan Snr. At the 1969 dissolution he retires to his farm at Kindlestown, County Wicklow, where he dies at age 77 on September 25, 1970. He is buried at Redford Cemetery, Greystones, County Wicklow. His grandson, Eoin Ryan Jnr, serves in the Oireachtas from 1989 to 2007 and later in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009.


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The Meelick Ambush

On June 15, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence, members of the East Clare Brigade Irish Republican Army (IRA) are ambushed by British soldiers at Woodcock Hill, Meelick, County Clare, while they are attempting to raid the Limerick to Ennis train. Two members of the East Clare Brigade, Christopher McCarthy and Michael Gleeson, are killed.

The East Clare Brigade plans to raid the Limerick train to take mail which will reveal the identity of a local spy. The eight IRA men, under the command of John McCormack, build a stone barricade across the tracks and put a red flag on top to stop the train. They will then board the train and take what they need. Tom Bentley, an IRA volunteer from Cratloe, is aboard the train so he can signal his comrades if there are British soldiers or Black and Tans on the train.

When the driver, a republican and supporter of the cause of Irish freedom, sees the barricade, he knows an ambush is about to take place but he also knows there are 30 British soldiers of the Royal Scots Regiment onboard and, should an ambush take place, the IRA will be out numbered and certainly outgunned. He smashes through the stone barricade, which is for the best, as McCormack does not see the signal from Bentley, their man on the train.

As the train passes, McCormack takes a pot shot at a soldier on the train, which turns out to be a bad idea. Once the train reaches Cratloe station, the soldiers make all civilians disembark and at gunpoint force the train driver to return to Woodcock Hill. McCormack knows the soldiers will alert the local military barracks and enemy troops will soon swarm the area. He climbs a telegraph pole to cut the wire but the shears break. He sends Lieutenant James O’Halloran to a nearby house to get replacement shears.

Gleeson and McCarthy are in charge of a group of volunteers waiting at the top of a field armed with rifles. When they see that something is delaying the cutting of the telegraph wires, they walk down the field to see what is happening. When they reach the edge of the tracks, the train comes around the bend one hundred yards from them. The Scots train their two machine guns and rifles on the fleeing volunteers. McCarthy is wounded during the opening volley and falls to the ground. As the rest of the ambushing party scatters, Gleeson realizes that McCarthy is not with them.

Gleeson races down the open field through a hail of British rifle and machine gun fire. He reaches McCarthy and helps him to his feet. In a desperate attempt to escape, Gleeson draws his revolver and staggers uphill supporting McCarthy with one arm and firing back at the British soldiers with his free hand.

They have only covered a short distance when Gleeson is shot and both men collapse to the ground. Gleeson is unable to continue but McCarthy manages to stagger on. Within a few seconds, the advancing British soldiers surround Gleeson and shoot him dead where he lay. McCarthy carries on through the fields but is soon outrun and is captured and killed by Lieutenant A. Gordan and a group of the Royal Scots, who shoot him several times and stab him with their bayonets.

Meanwhile, on the southern side of the railway track, McCormack is lying flat, hidden from the British soldiers. In order to make good his escape, he needs to climb over a thick fence of wire and hedge in full view of the soldiers. The train is only a short distance away and if the British soldiers make a search of the area, he is likely to become the third casualty the day. When he realises McCormack’s difficulty, James O’Halloran attempts to draw the British soldiers’ fire and attention and give McCormack a chance to escape. From behind a stone pier, O’Halloran opens fire on the British soldiers. He comes under heavy rifle fire but stands his ground and succeeds in wounding one of them before his rifle jams and he is forced to retreat. By this time, O’Halloran’s action has allowed McCormack to escape unseen. All the other IRA volunteers also manage to get away safely.

When the fighting ends, the British soldiers go to the scene of the killings and force a number of farm labourers to help them remove the two bodies. McCarthy’s body had been placed on a wicker gate and Michael Doherty and another farm labourer are ordered to carry it. Doherty lifts back the covering that has been placed over McCarthy’s body and sees that his throat has been cut and his chest is riddled with bullet wounds. Immediately, Doherty receives a blow of a rifle butt from one of the Royal Scots, who replaces the covers on McCarthy’s body.

Both bodies are taken to the house of the Collins family where the soldiers guard them until British reinforcements arrive and take them to Limerick. Gleeson and McCarthy are buried in the Republican plot in Meelick churchyard alongside Patrick White, who had been shot by a British sentry at Spike Island Prison, County Cork, earlier in the month.

This event, subsequently known as The Meelick Ambush, is the only occasion in County Clare during the Irish War of Independence when two Republicans are killed in action fighting against the British forces.


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Execution of IRA Volunteer Richard “Dick” Barrett

Richard Barrett, commonly called Dick Barrett, a prominent Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, is executed by a Free State forces firing squad on December 8, 1922. He fights in the Irish War of Independence and on the Anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War, during which he is captured and later executed.

Barrett is born on December 17, 1889, in Knockacullen (Hollyhill), Ballineen, County Cork, the son of Richard Barrett, farmer, and Ellen Barrett (née Henigan). Educated at Knocks and Knockskagh national schools, he enters the De La Salle College, Waterford, where he trains to be a teacher. Obtaining a first-class diploma, he first teaches at Ballinamult, County Waterford but then returns to Cork in early 1914 to take up a position at the St. Patrick’s Industrial School, Upton. Within months he is appointed principal of Gurrane National School. Devoted to the Irish language and honorary secretary of Knockavilla GAA club, he does much to popularise both movements in the southern and western districts of Cork. He appears to have been a member of the Cork Young Ireland Society.

From 1917, inspired by the Easter Rising, Barrett takes a prominent part in the organisation and operation of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). By this time, he is also involved with Sinn Féin, in which role he attends the ardfheis at the Mansion House in October 1917 and the convention of the Irish Volunteers at Croke Park immediately afterwards.

Through planning and participating in raids and gunrunning episodes, Barrett comes into close contact with many GHQ staff during the Irish War of Independence, thereby ensuring his own rapid promotion. He is an active Irish Republican Army (IRA) brigade staff officer and occasionally acts as commandant of the West Cork III Brigade. He also organises fundraising activities for the purchase of weapons and for comrades on the run. In July 1920, following the arrest of the Cork III Brigade commander Tom Hales and quartermaster Pat Harte, he is appointed its quartermaster. He is arrested on March 22, 1921, and imprisoned in Cork jail, later being sent to Spike Island, County Cork.

As one of the senior officers held in Spike Island, Barrett is involved in many of the incidents that occur during his time there. After the truce is declared on July 11, 1921, some prisoners go on hunger strike, but he calls it off after a number of days on instructions from outside as a decision had been made that able-bodied men are more important to the cause. In November, Barrett escapes by rowboat alongside Moss (Maurice) Twomey, Henry O’Mahoney, Tom Crofts, Bill Quirke, Dick Eddy and Paddy Buckley.

Following the Irish War of Independence, Barrett supports the Anti-Treaty IRA‘s refusal to submit to the authority of Dáil Éireann (civil government of the Irish Republic declared in 1919). He is opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty and calls for the total elimination of English influence in Ireland. In April 1922, under the command of Rory O’Connor, he, along with 200 other hardline anti-treaty men, take over the Four Courts building in the centre of Dublin in defiance of the new Irish government. They want to provoke British troops, who are still in the country, into attacking them. They hope this will restart the war with Britain and reunite the IRA against their common enemy. Michael Collins tries desperately to persuade O’Connor and his men to vacate the building. However, on June 28, 1922, after the Four Courts garrison had kidnapped J. J. O’Connell, a general in the new National Army, Collins’s soldiers shell the Four Courts with British artillery to spark off what becomes known as the Battle of Dublin. O’Connor surrenders following two days of fighting, and Barrett, with most of his comrades, is arrested and held in Mountjoy Gaol. This incident marks the official outbreak of the Irish Civil War, as fighting escalates around the country between pro- and anti-treaty factions.

After the death of Michael Collins in an ambush, a period of tit-for-tat revenge killings ensues. The government implements martial law and enacts the necessary legislation to set up military courts. In November, the government begins to execute Anti-Treaty prisoners, including Erskine Childers. In response, Liam Lynch, the Anti-Treaty Chief of Staff, gives an order that any member of the Dáil who had voted for the ‘murder legislation’ is to be shot on sight.

On December 7, 1922, Teachta Dála (TD) Sean Hales is killed by anti-Treaty IRA men as he leaves the Dáil. Another TD, Pádraic Ó Máille, is also shot and badly wounded in the incident. An emergency cabinet meeting is allegedly held the next day to discuss the assassination of Hales. It is proposed that four prominent members of the Anti-Treaty side currently held as prisoners be executed as a reprisal and deterrent. The names put forward were Barrett, O’Connor, Liam Mellows and Joe McKelvey. It is alleged that the four are chosen to represent each of the four provinces – Munster, Connacht, Leinster and Ulster respectively, but none of the four is actually from Connacht. The executions are ordered by Minister for Justice Kevin O’Higgins. At 2:00 AM on the morning of December 8, 1922, Barrett is awoken along with the other three and informed that they are all to be executed at 8:00 that morning.

Ironies stack one upon the other. Barrett is a member of the same IRA brigade as Hales during the Anglo-Irish War, and they were childhood friends. O’Connor had been best man at O’Higgins’ wedding a year earlier. The rest of Sean Hales’ family remains staunchly anti-Treaty, and publicly denounces the executions. In reprisal for O’Higgins’ role in the executions, the Anti-Treaty IRA kills his father and burns his family home in Stradbally, County Laois. O’Higgins himself dies by an assassin’s hand on July 10, 1927.

The executions stun Ireland, but in terms of halting the Anti-Treaty assassination policy, they have the desired effect. The Free State government continues to execute enemy prisoners, and 77 official executions take place by the end of the war.

Barrett is now buried in his home county, Cork, following exhumation and reinternment by a later government. A monument is erected by old comrades of the West Cork Brigade, the First Southern Division, IRA, and of the Four Courts, Dublin, garrison in 1922 which is unveiled on December 13, 1952, by the Tánaiste Seán Lemass.

A poem about the execution is written by County Galway clergyman Pádraig de Brún.


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Birth of Con Collins, Sinn Féin Politician

Cornelius Collins (Irish: Conchobhar Ó Coileáin), Irish Sinn Féin politician known as Con Collins, is born in Arranagh, Monagea, Newcastle West, County Limerick, on November 13, 1881.

Collins has joined the Gaelic League by 1910 when working in London for the civil service, as had Michael Collins the previous year. He is a member of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). He and Austin Stack are on their way to meet Sir Roger Casement at Banna Strand in County Kerry in 1916 during a failed attempt to land arms for Irish Republicans from the German vessel Aud, when they are arrested by the British authorities on Easter Saturday. They spend Easter Week in Tralee Barracks and in solitary confinement on Spike Island, County Cork. They are then held with Terence MacSwiney, Arthur Griffith and others in Richmond Barracks before being sentenced to penal servitude for life. He is deported to Frongoch internment camp in Wales where he spends the rest of the year and much of 1917.

Collins is elected as a Sinn Féin MP for West Limerick at the 1918 Irish general election. In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs who had been elected in the Westminster elections of 1918 refuse to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assemble at the Mansion House in Dublin as a revolutionary parliament called Dáil Éireann. At the 1921 Irish elections he is elected for the constituency of Kerry–Limerick West. He opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and votes against it.

Collins refuses an offer of the Ministry for Posts and Telegraphs provided he switch to the pro-Treaty side. Having been sworn to non-violence – together with Richard Mulcahy – by the Augustinians, he does not join the anti-Treaty forces. He is again re-elected for Kerry–Limerick West at the 1922 Irish general election, this time as anti-Treaty Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD). He does not contest the 1923 Irish general election and retires from politics.

Collins dies in Dublin on November 23, 1937, at the age of 56, and is buried in Mount St. Lawrence cemetery, Limerick.

He and Piaras Béaslaí share a distinction in that they contest and are elected in three Irish general elections unopposed by any other candidates.

(Pictured: Wedding photo of Sinn Féin politician Con Collins, September 12, 1923)


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Birth of Richard Barrett, Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Richard Barrett, commonly called Dick Barrett, a prominent Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, is born on December 17, 1889, in Knockacullen (Hollyhill), Ballineen, County Cork. He fights in the Irish War of Independence and on the Anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War, during which he is captured and later executed on December 8, 1922.

Barrett is the son of Richard Barrett, farmer, and Ellen Barrett (née Henigan). Educated at Knocks and Knockskagh national schools, he enters the De La Salle College, Waterford, where he trains to be a teacher. Obtaining a first-class diploma, he first teaches at Ballinamult, County Waterford but then returns to Cork in early 1914 to take up a position at the St. Patrick’s Industrial School, Upton. Within months he is appointed principal of Gurrane National School. Devoted to the Irish language and honorary secretary of Knockavilla GAA club, he does much to popularise both movements in the southern and western districts of Cork. He appears to have been a member of the Cork Young Ireland Society.

From 1917, inspired by the Easter Rising, Barrett takes a prominent part in the organisation and operation of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). By this time, he is also involved with Sinn Féin, in which role he attends the ardfheis at the Mansion House in October 1917 and the convention of the Irish Volunteers at Croke Park immediately afterwards.

Through planning and participating in raids and gunrunning episodes, Barrett comes into close contact with many GHQ staff during the Irish War of Independence, thereby ensuring his own rapid promotion. He is an active Irish Republican Army (IRA) brigade staff officer and occasionally acts as commandant of the West Cork III Brigade. He also organises fundraising activities for the purchase of weapons and for comrades on the run. In July 1920, following the arrest of the Cork III Brigade commander Tom Hales and quartermaster Pat Harte, he is appointed its quartermaster. He is arrested on March 22, 1921, and imprisoned in Cork jail, later being sent to Spike Island, County Cork.

As one of the senior officers held in Spike Island, Barrett is involved in many of the incidents that occur during his time there. After the truce is declared on July 11, 1921, some prisoners go on hunger strike, but he calls it off after a number of days on instructions from outside as a decision had been made that able-bodied men are more important to the cause. In November, Barrett escapes by rowboat alongside Moss (Maurice) Twomey, Henry O’Mahoney, Tom Crofts, Bill Quirke, Dick Eddy and Paddy Buckley.

Following the Irish War of Independence, Barrett supports the Anti-Treaty IRA‘s refusal to submit to the authority of Dáil Éireann (civil government of the Irish Republic declared in 1919). He is opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty and calls for the total elimination of English influence in Ireland. In April 1922, under the command of Rory O’Connor, he, along with 200 other hardline anti-treaty men, take over the Four Courts building in the centre of Dublin in defiance of the new Irish government. They want to provoke British troops, who are still in the country, into attacking them. They hope this will restart the war with Britain and reunite the IRA against their common enemy. Michael Collins tries desperately to persuade O’Connor and his men to vacate the building. However, on June 28, 1922, after the Four Courts garrison had kidnapped J. J. O’Connell, a general in the new National Army, Collins’s soldiers shell the Four Courts with British artillery to spark off what becomes known as the Battle of Dublin. O’Connor surrenders following two days of fighting, and Barrett, with most of his comrades, is arrested and held in Mountjoy Gaol. This incident marks the official outbreak of the Irish Civil War, as fighting escalates around the country between pro- and anti-treaty factions.

After the death of Michael Collins in an ambush, a period of tit-for-tat revenge killings ensues. The government implements martial law and enacts the necessary legislation to set up military courts. In November, the government begins to execute Anti-Treaty prisoners, including Erskine Childers. In response, Liam Lynch, the Anti-Treaty Chief of Staff, gives an order that any member of the Dáil who had voted for the ‘murder legislation’ is to be shot on sight.

On December 7, 1922, Teachta Dála (TD) Sean Hales is killed by anti-Treaty IRA men as he leaves the Dáil. Another TD, Pádraic Ó Máille, is also shot and badly wounded in the incident. An emergency cabinet meeting is allegedly held the next day to discuss the assassination of Hales. It is proposed that four prominent members of the Anti-Treaty side currently held as prisoners be executed as a reprisal and deterrent. The names put forward were Barrett, O’Connor, Liam Mellows and Joe McKelvey. It is alleged that the four are chosen to represent each of the four provinces – Munster, Connacht, Leinster and Ulster respectively, but none of the four is actually from Connacht. The executions are ordered by Minister for Justice Kevin O’Higgins. At 2:00 AM on the morning of December 8, 1922, Barrett is awoken along with the other three and informed that they are all to be executed at 8:00 that morning.

Ironies stack one upon the other. Barrett is a member of the same IRA brigade as Hales during the Anglo-Irish War, and they were childhood friends. O’Connor had been best man at O’Higgins’ wedding a year earlier. The rest of Sean Hales’ family remains staunchly anti-Treaty, and publicly denounces the executions. In reprisal for O’Higgins’ role in the executions, the Anti-Treaty IRA kills his father and burns his family home in Stradbally, County Laois. O’Higgins himself dies by an assassin’s hand on July 10, 1927.

The executions stun Ireland, but in terms of halting the Anti-Treaty assassination policy, they have the desired effect. The Free State government continues to execute enemy prisoners, and 77 official executions take place by the end of the war.

Barrett is now buried in his home county, Cork, following exhumation and reinternment by a later government. A monument is erected by old comrades of the West Cork Brigade, the First Southern Division, IRA, and of the Four Courts, Dublin, garrison in 1922 which is unveiled on December 13, 1952, by the Tánaiste Seán Lemass.

A poem about the execution is written by County Galway clergyman Pádraig de Brún.


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Execution of Major Geoffrey Lee Compton-Smith

geoffrey-lee-compton-smith

Major Geoffrey Lee Compton-Smith (DSO) of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers is captured and executed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on April 30, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence.

Compton-Smith was born in 1889 in South Kensington, London. After finishing school, he decides not to follow the family tradition of studying law. He actually wants to become an artist, but his father insists that he join the army. He studies at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst and during World War I his regiment is sent to France. In 1917 he is wounded at the Battle of Arras, but he continues to fight on. He is awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). In 1919 he is sent to serve in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence.

In 1919 Compton-Smith is commander of the British Army base at Ballyvonane, near Buttevant, but he is also an intelligence officer. As an officer he also sometimes presides over courts martial. In January 1921, for instance, three IRA volunteers are tried by him for involvement in the ambush at Shinanagh, near Charleville, and he sentences them each to six months.

February 1921 is a bad time for the IRA in County Cork. They suffer major losses at the ambushes at Clonmult and Mourne Abbey, and several volunteers are taken prisoner, four of whom are sentenced to death. The IRA believes that these death sentences might be commuted if a British officer is held as a hostage. This leads to the capture of Compton-Smith. On April 16, 1921, he travels to Blarney, supposedly on a sketching trip but actually to meet a nurse in Victoria Barracks with whom he is having an affair. The IRA has spies in Victoria Barracks who likely tip off the IRA that Compton-Smith is coming to Blarney. A squad led by Frank Busteed easily capture him after he gets off the train.

Busteed then meets with Jackie O’Leary, the IRA battalion commander. It is decided that Donoughmore is the perfect place to keep a hostage, because parts of the parish are remote and the IRA is strong there.

On April 18, under the cover of darkness, Compton-Smith is transferred by car to Knockane House, an abandoned big house in Donoughmore. The following night he is moved again, this time by pony and trap, to Barrahaurin, a remote townland in the Boggeragh Mountains. He is kept there for the last eleven days of his life, on the small farm of Jack and Mary Moynihan. He is held prisoner in a shed, always under guard. Every evening he is brought into the house, where he eats and stays at the fireside. He and his guards have conversations about history and politics.

The four IRA prisoners are executed on April 28, 1921. On April 30, O’Leary informs Compton-Smith that he is going to be executed. He then writes a final letter to his wife. He tells her that he will die with her name on his lips and her face before his eyes and that he will “die like an Englishman and a soldier.” He also writes a letter to his regiment and one to Lt. General Strickland.

After finishing his letters, Compton-Smith is led up into Barrahaurin bog behind the Moynihan house, to a place where his grave had already been dug and is given a final cigarette. In his witness statement Maurice Brew writes, “When removed to the place of execution he placed his cigarette case in his breast pocket of his tunic … He then lighted a cigarette and said that when he dropped the cigarette it could be taken as a signal by the execution squad to open fire.”

It is not until late May, following the discovery of the cache of letters in a Dublin raid, that the Compton-Smith family is informed of his death. His father, William, then starts a campaign to find his son’s body. He wrote letters to MPs and to the British Army, seeking information and help. He also writes to Erskine Childers but gets no reply. He offers a reward of £500 for information, but only The Irish Times agrees to print his advertisement.

In November 1921 a cousin of Compton-Smith’s wife, Gladys, meets Michael Collins in London and asks him for help in finding the body. Correspondence between Collins and the Compton-Smith family suggests that Collins is trying to help in 1922, but he fails to get any results before he is assassinated at Béal na Bláth later that same year.

On March 3, 1926, Compton-Smith’s grave is discovered by the Gardaí. The newspapers report that the remains, because of the conditions of the bog, “were not so badly decomposed as to render identification impossible.” The body is brought to Collins Barracks in Cork. On March 5 the Gardaí send a telegram to the Compton-Smiths, informing them that the body has been located.

The reburial of Compton-Smith is carried out with great dignity on March 19, 1926. The Irish Army escorts the coffin from Collins Barracks to Penrose Quay, where British forces from Spike Island take the coffin on board a boat. While the boat travels down the River Lee, the Irish Army’s guard of honour presents arms and sounds the “Last Post.” The British then bring the coffin to Carlisle Fort, near Whitegate, where it was buried in the in the British Military Cemetery with full military honours.