Massacre in West Cork (32 page)

131
Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920–1
, vol. 2, 1922, Jeudwine papers 72/82/1, Imperial War Museum. Hart (1998), p. 305, claimed that loyalists had little information to give and so argued that the Dunmanway killings were sectarian, but he omitted to mention the second part of the quotation. For some reason Peter Hart never explained why he omitted this crucial qualification, which is undoubtedly damaging to his theory, up to the time of his death in 2010, despite being challenged to do so on more than one occasion.

132
Tadhg Kennedy states that Captain Kelly spent the last months of the War of Independence with his son in Dublin Castle and left Ireland at the Truce. His statement gives great detail about Kelly’s origins and career; BMH WS 1413, Tadhg Kennedy, pp. 33–5; as Captain C. J. O’Kelly was still the intelligence officer for the British 6th Division in Cork when he wrote a highly recommended (by Macready) report that was circulated by the War Office called
Sinn Féin. Internal Dissension
to the British delegates negotiating the Treaty on 10 October 1921, this is unlikely to be true: National Archives, Kew, CAB 43/2, ‘Truce violations’, October 1921, p. 49.

133
John Regan says, ‘It is difficult to identify any event other than the April massacre for which the Record’s description applies but it could equally apply to the murder of the Protestant spies in early in 1921’:
http://www.academia.edu/1710059/_The_Bandon_Valley_Massacre_revisited_TCD
(accessed 1 June 2013). It was Peter Hart who initially linked the document to the April killings.

134
BMH WS 810, Tim Herlihy and seven others, pp. 10–11.

135
Barry (1949), p. 112. Percival states that such was the danger that he only approached loyalist houses after dark: Sheehan (2005), p. 134.

136
Valiulus, M. G., 1992,
Portrait of a Revolutionary
: General Richard Mulcahy and the founding of the Irish Free State (Lexington, University Press of Kentucky), p. 68 for the official procedure of how to try a spy.

137
General Order 20 issued on 20 April 1921: ‘All executions of spies to be ratified by brigade commandant.’ An explanation and summary had to be sent to GHQ in all cases, but this order gave the brigade commandant the power of life and death: Cork City and County Archives, Siobhán Langford papers, CCCAU169/21–30.

138
Ernie O’Malley observed that Seán O’Hegarty had a reputation for not being scrupulous about evidence, but dismissed this as talk, adding that all killings of spies had to be cleared by GHQ: Dungan, M., 1997, They Shall Not Grow Old: Irish soldiers and the Great War (Dublin, Four Courts Press), p. 39. Whether this was actually done every time is another question.

139
O’Hegarty, P. S., 1998, The Victory of Sinn Féin: how it won it and how it used it (Dublin, University College Dublin Press), p. 38; the other side in the Civil War would regard acceptance of the Treaty as a moral collapse, given that the Free State had broken the republican oath. Both sides were correct.

140
Ibid., p. 98.

141
Ibid., p. 84.

142
BMH WS 1741, Michael V. O’Donoghue, Part 2, pp. 284–5; O’Donoghue was on the anti-Treaty side during the Civil War.

143
A Bandon RIC man who warned the IRA that the man had ‘given the game away’ is quoted in BMH WS 1771, Florence Begley, p. 4. See also Sheehan (2005), p. 126, where Major Percival confirms this.

144
National Archives, Kew, CAB 43/2, ‘Breaches of the Truce. Week ending Nov. 19th 1921’, pp. 180–90. Other parts of the country also recorded none.

145
General Macready reported that Tom Barry was being difficult in July 1921 around the issue of getting the British to acknowledge the IRA as an army, and went on to comment: ‘Thomas Barry, a student who appears to be about 23 years of age, with an exaggerated opinion of his own importance was not likely to be any assistance in making matters run smoothly’, National Archives, Kew, CAB 24/126.

146
This discipline extended to Cork city, as a document in the Ristéard Langford papers, U156/3/ Period 7, April 1921–11 July 1921 (xviii)L, Cork City and County Archives, shows: ‘Lt. Keo (of Roche and Hales fame) … together with 4 other IOs [British Military intelligence officers] traced to Grosvenor Hotel [Cork] and thence to Palace [Theatre] … Owing to Truce nothing could be done in the matter.’ Keo was a prime target for the Cork No. 1 Brigade and this suggests that the city IRA maintained strong discipline after the Truce.

4
T
HE
B
ACKGROUND TO
B
ALLYGROMAN

1
Bandon, ‘Irish compensation – Loyalist claimants plight’, The Times, London, 3 March, p. 8, col. 5. Lord Bandon gives his address as 25, Victoria Street, SW 1.

2
Southern Star
, 8 April 1922.

3
This is how Michael O’Neill is described in his mortuary card.

4
Martin Midgley Reeve, who penned the foreword to this book, is his cousin.

5
His military record in the National Archives, Kew, WO 339/86747, states that he was born in 1884, but his birth certificate shows that he was born in 1892 in Skibbereen.

6
Hart (1998), p. 282; this is from a letter written by Hodder to her mother that famously ended up as part of the British cabinet papers.

7
See Findmypast.ie (online), court records. There is no evidence of the sentence.

8
He joined at Fermoy. He was transferred to the 2nd Battalion on 29 August 1917, Supplement to the London Gazette, 3 December 1917, p. 12649.

9
London Gazette, 16 September 1916, issue 29749, p. 9006, simply mentions that he was awarded the medal.

10
This is in the possession of Martin Midgley Reeve.

11
http://www.dnw.co.uk/medals/auctionarchive/searchcataloguearchive/itemdetail.lasso?itemid=21167
(accessed 12 May 2012).

12
Mental breakdown was usually a cover name for shell-shock.

13
Why it was hoped that a man with shell-shock or mental breakdown might do well in returning to a Trench Mortar Battery is another question. Hitchcock, F. C., 1988, ‘Stand to’: a diary of the trenches 1915–1918 (Norwich, Gliddon), p. 276, footnote 1, says he was shot in Ireland.

14
London Gazette, 16 July 1918, p. 8478:
http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/30801/supplements/8478
(accessed 2 May 2013)
.

15
Hitchcock (1988), p. 295.

16
National Archives, Kew, WO 372/22/62091, WO 339/86747.

17
‘Temp. Capt. H. Woods, Gen. List, relinquishes the temp, rank of Col. on ceasing to be spec, empld’, 1 September 1921, Supplement to the London Gazette, 15 November 1921, p. 9115: 
http://www.london gazette.co.uk/issues/32519/supplements/9115/page.pdf
 (accessed 18 July 2013)
.

18
Census of Ireland 1911:
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Cork/Rathclarin/Clooncalabeg/1090312/
(accessed 2 July 2013).

19
BMH WS 556, Mary Walsh.

20
BMH WS 812, Patrick O’Brien, p. 19.

21
BMH WS 1607, Charles O’Donoghue, p. 9.

22
Evening Echo, 10 April 1971; Lordan, D., 2006, ‘The Gallant Volunteers of Kilbrittain’, Bandon Historical Journal 22.

23
BMH WS 560, James (J. J.) O’Mahony, Denis Crowley, John (Jack) Fitzgerald.

24
Ibid., p. 5.

25
Ibid., p. 7. Hunger strike documents from John O’Driscoll of the Irish Volunteers Commemorative Society:
http://irishvolunteers.org/
(accessed 26 August 2013).

26
BMH WS 560, James (J. J.) O’Mahony, Denis Crowley, John (Jack) Fitzgerald, p. 13; ‘Ballykinlar’ refers to the internment camp of that name in County Down.

27
Cork Constitution and Cork Examiner, 5 May 1922.

28
BMH WS 1741, Michael V. O’Donoghue, Part 2, pp. 224–6.

5
T
HE
H
ORNIBROOKS AND THE
W
AR OF
I
NDEPENDENCE

1
National Archives, Kew, CO 762/133/5, ‘Matilda Warburton [sic] Woods, County Cork, No. 2254’.

2
Murphy, G., 2010, The Year of Disappearances: political killings in Cork 1921–1922 (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan), p. 186; Hart (1998), p. 280.

3
This claim is made in his submission to the Irish Grants Commission in 1927. The O’Flynn, Exham and Company documents in the Cork City and County Archive show that a Mr Warren took the Woods family to the High Court in 1884 and the distillery was sold by Marsh and Company auctioneers under duress as Warren needed his investment back in a hurry. This was probably connected with the collapse of the Munster Bank. See Stratten’s (1892) Dublin, Cork and South of Ireland: a literary, commercial, and social review: 
http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/places/strattensdublincorkandsouthofireland
 (accessed 18 July 2013) for a history of the distillery, which shows that the Sugrue family owned it.

4
National Archives, Kew, CO 762/133/4, ‘Edward Woods County Cork, No. 2253’. The Cork Examiner and The Freeman’s Journal reported on 23 October 1922 that the distillery was raided. It ceased trading and was offered for sale to Woodford Bourne & Co. in 1925, University College Cork, Boole Library and Archives, UCC BL/BC/WB B/3(54). Prohibition had been introduced in the United States, and many small Irish distilleries geared towards the US market closed. Allman’s in Bandon suffered the same fate, closing in 1925.

5
Hart (1998), pp. 1–18.

6
Cork City and County Archives, CCAPR4/4/92, Terence MacSwiney papers; when the Irish government attempted to pay the promised pensions for those who resigned for ‘nationalist’ reasons, the British government wouldn’t give them the addresses. This mess of conflicting loyalties again points to the complexity of the break-up between the two countries: Brennan, N., 1995, ‘Compensating the Royal Irish Constabulary 1922–1932’, PhD thesis, University College Dublin. Available at:
http://www.ucd.ie/pages/95/Brennan.html
(accessed 3 July 2013). See also Brennan, N., 1997, ‘A Political Minefield: Southern Loyalists, the Irish Grants Committee and the British Government, 1922–31’, Irish Historical Studies 30, pp. 406–19.

7
Cork City and County Archives, Terence MacSwiney papers, PR4/4/ (FILE 4):
http://www.corkarchives.ie/media/PR4web.pdf
(accessed 18 July 2013).

8
See Stafford, T. A., 2005, ‘The Collapse of the Royal Irish Constabulary: policing insurgency in Ireland, 1914–1921’, MA thesis, University of New Brunswick, Canada, for a good analysis of what brought about the demise of the RIC, even if it downplays Michael Collins’ national leadership role and the IRA policy of systematically and personally targeting the RIC for the first time. Available at: 
http://hdl.handle.net/1882/43501
(accessed 18 December 2012). For another balanced view, see Charters (2009).

9
BMH WS 1639, Laurence Morrough Neville, p. 10.

10
BMH WS 1714, Leo Buckley, p. 5.

11
BMH WS 1630, George Hurley, p. 4.

12
BMH WS 1714, Leo Buckley, p. 7.

13
O’Callaghan, S., 1974, Execution (London, Muller), p. 60–2; Hart (1998).

14
O’Callaghan (1974), p. 63. The YMCA was the Church of Ireland youth organisation suspected by the Cork City IRA of having been recruited by members of the Freemasons spying for the British during the War of Independence.

15
BMH WS 1708, William Barry, pp. 6–7.

16
BMH WS 1657, Jeremiah Keating; BMH WS 1708, Patrick Collins; BMH WS 1547, Michael Murphy. Sarah was Fred Blemens’ daughter.

17
BMH WS 1707, Patrick Collins, p. 8.

18
In Guy’s Directory (another name by which Guy’s Almanac is known) for 1921 his name has been removed from the list of county JPs, but he remains a JP in the Ovens list. The latter is probably an oversight.

19
In BMH WS 1706, pp. 5–6, Seán O’Connell also mentions this raid, recalling that Captain Clarke was shot in the hand.

20
BMH WS 810, Tim Herlihy and seven others, p. 4. He was not the only loyalist to take defensive action – see BMH WS 1518, Seán O’Driscoll, p. 5.

21
Interview with Nora Lynch, Coolroe, Ballincollig, 17 May 2012.

22
Manchester Regiment Archive, Tameside Local Studies and Archives Centre, Central Library, Old Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, UK, Item MR1/11/2, Record of Civil Arrests of 1st Battalion in Ireland, 1920–1921, 1 vol.; email:
[email protected].
Thanks to Larysa Bolton, archivist, for her professionalism, courtesy and helpfulness in sourcing this reference.

23
O’Donovan, D., 2012, ‘Some Ballincollig petty session reports’, Times Past: Journal of Muskerry Local History Society 10, pp. 72–81.

24
Southern Star
, 18 February 1922, p. 7.

25
Southern Star
, 22 April 1922, p. 5, col. 4.

26
Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920–1, vol. 2, 1922, Jeudwine papers 72/82/1, Imperial War Museum.

27
Ryan, M., 2003, Tom Barry: IRA freedom fighter (Cork, Mercier Press), p. 158.

6 26
A
PRIL 1922:
T
HE
S
HOOTING ON THE
S
TAIRS

1
  ‘Brutally Murdered: Inquest of Commandant’,
Southern Star
, 29 April 1922, p. 1, col. 5.

2
  
Cork & County Eagle
, 6 May 1922; Cork Examiner, 27 April 1922.

3
‘Civil War claims: applications in Cork Circuit Court’, Cork Examiner, 10 November 1925. Margaret was living in Macloneigh, Macroom, in 1925, Census of Ireland 1911, 
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Ballygroman/Ballygroman_Upper/374008/
(accessed 24 June 2013).

4
Cork Examiner, 27 April 1922.

5
‘Commandant shot dead’,
Southern Star
, 29 April, p. 2, col. 5.

6
‘Ovens tragedy’, Cork Examiner, 29 April 1922.