Massacre in West Cork (33 page)

7
Hart (1998), pp. 279–81.

8
Ibid., p. 279; it is not clear who called Leo Murphy ‘bad boy’; a number of the BMH statements tell precisely what happened to Leo Murphy and there is no suggestion whatsoever that his body was dragged behind a car.

9
Kearney, R. D., 2002, ‘A time of revenge, a time of tragedy’, Cork Hollybough, p. 64; R. D. Kearney is a former owner of Ballygroman House.

10
Among the evidence for this is an article about Edward’s death in the local paper in Essex, which states that the family were not living in Ballygroman at the time.

11
Conversation with me, 25 November 2012.

12
1911 census return for O’Halloran family at Scartnamuck, Templemartin, Census of Ireland 1911:
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Templemartin/Scartnamuck/374530/
(accessed 2 June 2012).

13
1911 census return for O’Connell/Lynch family in Scartnamuck, Templemartin, Census of Ireland 1911: 
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Templemartin
 (accessed 2 June 2012).

14
1911 census return for the Horgan family in Templemartin, Census of Ireland 1911:
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Templemartin
(accessed 2 June 2012). Seán Crowley points out that as Lynch’s Forge was not built in 1922, the Hornibrooks could not have been held there. However, during the same interview it was pointed out that there could have been confusion on the location as O’Connell was the father-in-law of Lynch, who opened a forge in Scarriff.

15
Later the same year, on 22 August, a priest at Cloughduv was asked to give absolution to Michael Collins and went back to get his anointing oils. Emmet Dalton, thinking he had refused to give absolution, almost shot him in the back.

16
Census of Ireland 1911:
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Ballygroman/Grange/373989/
 (accessed 13 March 2013)

17
Crowley S., 2005, From Newce to Truce: a story of Newcestown and its hinterland (Newcestown, self-published), pp. 464–5. Thanks to Dr Andy Bielenberg for coming across this reference. Dr Bielenberg, Dr John Borgonovo and I met with Seán Crowley in Newcestown on 17 October 2012. We also visited Quinlan’s boreen in Farranthomas bog, Newcestown, with archaeologist Damien Shiels, who concluded that it would take massive resources to search the bog. The tape of this interview is in my possession.

18
Julia lived next door to Mary Horgan, who was Daniel’s mother. Daniel and Mary Horgan were living in house six in Scarriff in 1911, and Good’s house was house two. House five was owned by the Lynch family. The Horgans later bought back their original farm, doubling their landholding in the process.

19
BMH WS 1524, Michael O’Regan. The BMH statements were supposed to stop at the Truce in July 1921 to avoid people talking about incidents in the Civil War, but more than 400 witnesses ignored this and continued into 1922.

20
See also O’Flynn, D., 2010, ‘They missed the train and lost their lives’, Times Past: Journal of the Muskerry Local History Society 9 (2010–11), pp. 63–4. My thanks to Liam Hayes for lending me his copy.

21
Tadg O’Sullivan identifies two spies: Crowley, who was shot at Crosspound, and Dwyer, who was tried after the Brinny ambush, but the location of the trial is not given: BMH WS 792.

22
The source for this information was John Lucey, and Donal O’Flynn is a second source for the fact that John Lucey was an eyewitness.

23
Interview with Donal O’Flynn, 14 December 2012. The tape of this interview is in my possession.

24
Ibid.

25
Nora Lynch was told it was the dinner service.

26
All of the BMH statements speak of incidents where the witness is reporting facts that were told to them by other members of the company, and it is the combination of different sources that builds their credibility. In the Scarriff case the number of witnesses is too great to be ignored.

27
Unedited copies of the O’Flynn (restricted access) and Crowley interviews have been lodged, along with Herbert Woods’ military papers, Matilda Warmington Woods’ Irish Distress Committee statement and the administration papers for Thomas Hornibrook’s estate, with the Cork City and County Archives as of January 2013.

28
Hart (1998), p. 291.

29
National Archives, Kew, CO 739/14/15/16, ‘Colonial Office, correspondence, 1922, individuals’.

30
The Morning Post was a right-wing paper in Britain that was vehemently opposed to Ireland leaving the UK. Morning Post, 1 June 1922, quoted in Hart (1998), p. 279, footnote 37;
Southern Star
, 3 June 1922, p. 3; House of Commons debate, ‘West Cork Arrests, statements in Commons’, 31 May 1922, vol. 154, cols 2084–6:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1922/may/31/murders S5CV0154P0_19220531_HOC_81
(accessed 30 December 2012).

31
The only place that Edward Woods says he had to leave Ireland in 1921 is his Irish Grants Committee statement. All the other evidence suggests he left in 1922.

32
BMH WS 1741, Michael V. O’Donoghue, Part 2, p. 227.

33
‘Officer shot dead’,
The Irish Times
, 27 April 1922, p. 6.

34
All references for correspondence in this section are taken from Military Archives, Cathal Brugha Barracks, Dublin, File A908. A copy was supplied to me by Dr Andy Bielenberg of University College Cork.

35
‘Letter from Dan Breen, Tom Hales, H. Murphy, S. O’Hegarty, Seán Mullan, R. A. Mulcahy, Owen O’Duffy, Gearóid O’Sullivan, Michael Collins to Four Courts garrison to end occupation and allow a plebiscite on the Treaty’,
The Irish Times
, 2 May 1922.

36
‘West Cork arrests statements in the Commons’,
Southern Star
, 3 June 1922, p. 3.

37
House of Commons debate, ‘Irish Office questions’, 26 June 1922, vol. 155, cols 1693–811, l. 1767:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1922/jun/26/irish-office-etc
(accessed 3 July 2013).

38
Thomas Henry Hornibrook Jnr.

39
This letter does not appear to survive as it cannot be traced.

40
National Archives of Ireland, TSCH/S2059, ‘
T
he murder of Thomas Henry Hornibrook J.P
.’

41
National Archives, Kew, CAB 24/140/18, ‘“
The Murders at Cork and Macroom
” memorandum from the Secretary of State for the Colonies: Devonshire’:
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=D7732097
(accessed 18 July 2013).

42
‘Three men taken from home: never heard of again’,
The Irish Times
, 14 April 1923, p. 6, col. 5.

43
A copy of the cutting from the paper was supplied to me by Martin Midgley Reeve.

44
London Gazette, 1 May 1934, p. 2819:
http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/34046/pages/2819/page.pdf
(accessed 20 January 2013).

45
‘Mrs Matilda Warmington Woods of Burlescombe House, Burlescombe-road [sic], Thorpe Bay, Essex, who left £17,437 gave her property to her four daughters in equal shares, directing that the share of each should be held in trust for her for life, or until she joined the Roman Catholic church, or intermarried with a member of that church’, newspaper cutting in the possession of Martin Midgley Reeve. In today’s money, the estate’s value is €516,590.

46
The house and lands had been valued at £1,000 in 1927, and Matilda had received compensation of more than £5,000 for the family’s losses at that time, as well as retaining the house and lands. Andy Bielenberg explains (in correspondence with the author) that by 1949 property prices in Ireland had collapsed under the strain of massive emigration, so this was a bad time to sell. The house was rented to Daniel Corkery in 1931 and the land was fallow until it was bought by Mr Murphy, whose family still own the farm. A copy of the deed is in my possession.

47
Hart (1998), p. 279. If they were seized, they were in Matilda’s possession a week later. Matilda also complained to the Grants Committee that the Irish government appealed a malicious injuries award as she wanted to use it for other property and the Department of Finance demanded it be used to repair Ballygroman House as the rules stated it must. After this the property could be sold.

48
Only Matilda is mentioned as beneficiary in either of the court reports, but she acknowledges her half-brother’s interest in the Grants Committee submission.

49
‘Cork Circuit Court’, Cork Examiner, 29 July 1926, p. 12, cols 6, 7.

50
‘Ballygroman House’, Cork Examiner, 31 July 1926, p. 5, col. 3.

51
National Archives, Kew, CO 762/133/5. Edward also submitted his own claim. This was the closing date for submissions to the second Wood-Renton Commission, which had been established to ‘tidy up’ any outstanding claims by southern Irish loyalists.

52
This amount is €372,600 in today’s money, plus the house and lands at Ballygroman, and Thomas and Samuel Hornibrook’s effects. The quote is from the handwritten report of the hearing.

53
Irish Weekly Times, 12 May 1928. According to the index of wills in the National Archives of Ireland, he left a tiny estate of £49 so there was presumably a legal reason to extinguish his claim to the property.

7
T
HE
D
UNMANWAY
K
ILLINGS

1
On the sack of Verulamium (St Albans) by Queen Boudicca in Churchill, W. and Woods, F., 1975, A History of the English-speaking Peoples. Vol. 1: the Birth of Britain (London, Library of Imperial History), p. 27.

2
The
Morning Post
quoted in
The Freeman’s Journal
, 5 May 1922, p. 6.