Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 3 December 2020

Remembering 1920: Arson, Ammo and Retaliation

In late November 1920, the fallout of events such as Bloody Sunday and the Kilmichael Ambush led to the further use of arson by Crown Forces as a common retaliation tool. Newspapers such as the Cork Examiner are full of accounts of arson against Sinn Féin clubs, Sinn Féin connected shops and random premises.

About 2am on 23 November 1920 the first of the Sinn Féin clubs were targeted. The fire brigade under Captain Hutson, Superintendent, was called to an outbreak at Watercourse Road. Proceeding there with firemen from Sullivan’s Quay, Grattan Street and Shandon Street Stations. They brigade found that the upper of 35 and 36 Watercourse Road was well alight. Much damage was done to the club premises, but the fire was got under control within half an hour. As the days progressed, Sinn Fein Clubs on Hardwick Street (24 November), Grand Parade (25 November), North Main Street (27 November) and were also targeted. In Dublin acting President of Sinn Féin was arrested by members of the auxiliary police force.

Michael Murphy was a Commandant of the 2^nd Battalion of Cork IRA Brigade No.1. In his witness statement (WS1547) within the Bureau of Military History he recalls that on 25 November 1920, following a Volunteer meeting in the Sinn Féin Club within Thomas Ashe Hall on Fr Mathew Quay, five men of the 2nd Battalion were standing at the corner of Princes Street and St Patrick’s Street having a chat, when a Black and Tan in civilian dress came along and threw a grenade into the group. As a result, three lads were killed outright – Paddy Trahey, Vice-Commandant of the 2nd Battalion; N. Donohue, 2nd Battalion, and Volunteer Mehigan. Of the two others, Volunteer Sean Bawn Murphy had his arm shattered and Volunteer Reynolds had his thigh fractured.

In anticipation of an attempt being made by the enemy to burn the Thomas Ashe Hall, Michael and his company decided to prepare a surprise for the Black and Tans in the shape of a ‘trap’ mine inside the door of the Hall. The trap mine was laid for three days and nights before the Tans arrived and blew themselves up. It was necessary, therefore, to put a Volunteer guard on duty near the Hall. During the day to warn those of our men who might go into the Hall.

Michael obtained about three cwt. of gelignite and placed it immediately inside the Hall and against the outer wall. The gelignite was then well tamped with clay. Six electric detonators were fixed to the charge of gelignite and connected with electric wires attached to a switch at the inside of the front door; the switch was so arranged that it came into operation and fired the charge of gelignite when the front door was opened. They also loosened the ‘keeper’ of the lock on the front door, so as to make it easy to be broken, which, they anticipated, the Tans would do.

Shortly after midnight, on 30 November 1920, about twenty Black and Tans came to the Tomas Ashe Hall. Two of them hammered on the front door with the butts of their rifles while the remainder lined the wall just outside where the trap mine was laid. Eventually, the Tans burst in the door and a large explosion took place.

On 29 November 1920 the Transport Worker’s Union hall on Camden Quay was fire bombed. Cork City Hall was bombed and fired again on 30 November with much damage inflicted. Across the city centre, large shops became targets by Crown Forces. Messrs Dwyers on Washington Street (21 November), Forrest’s on St Patrick’s Street (27 November), Cahill and Co., American Shoe Co. and Blackthorn House on St Patrick’s Street (27 November) Egan’s St Patrick’s Street (30 November), O’Gorman’s and Dalton’s on MacCurtain Street (1 December), Confectionary Shop and Irish National Assurance Company on Marlboro Street (2 December).

Early in the month of December 1920, Michael Murphy was instructed by the Brigade Officer-in-Command to go to London to purchase arms. In London, the contact man was Mick O’Brien, a Cork Volunteer who was then representing his firm, Messrs. Dowdall O’Mahony & Co. in London. Mick had written to Seán Hegarty, the Brigade Officer in Command telling him that guns could be bought in London, and Hegarty sent Mick O’Brien a sum of money to purchase the guns. Mick O’Brien, however, would not do any buying requesting Hegarty go over to him. Hegarty sent Michael Murphy to London with £150 or so to meet Mick.

At this particular period, in order to build up a strong arms fund, the brigade ‘levied’ each company in the battalion to the extent of £150. This money was to be collected in each company area. When Michael arrived in London, he met Mick O’Brien by arrangement, and he brought him around to second hand gun shops where he inspected and bought a quantity of revolvers and ammunition. Michael purchased two Lewis guns and a good supply of ammunition. In all, when packed there were two filled barrels.

Before leaving Cork, Michael had got an touch with Sean Óg Murphy who was a clerk at the Cork Steampacket Company, and told him to expect a consignment addressed to Messrs. Swanton & Co., North Main St. Cork. This was a fictitious name; there was no such firm in Cork. On the arrival of the goods by boat in Cork, Sean Óg was to notify Michael and he would arrange to collect them.

When the two barrels of ammo came to Cork (Michael had returned to Cork by this time), they were taken out of the Cork Steampacket Company’s store for delivery to Swanton’s unknown to Sean Óg. When they were returned to the store, undelivered, somebody there opened the barrels, discovered their contents, and notified the police at Union Quay Barracks.

Somehow or other, Sean Óg got news of what was happening and immediately sent word to Michael. He went in haste to a haulage contractor who gave him a horse and car, and armed with a revolver, he proceeded to the Steampacket Company’s store. Producing the revolver, he ordered the barrel to be loaded on to the cart and made a hurried departure with my precious cargo. On his way back, he passed a party of detectives from Union Quay Barracks who were en route to Penrose Quay.

Kieran’s latest book Witness to Murder, The Inquest of Tomás MacCurtain is now available to purchase online (co-authored with John O’Mahony 2020, Irish Examiner/www.examiner.ie).

Captions:

1077a. Steamships at Penrose Quay, c.1910 (source: Cork City Through Time by Kieran McCarthy and Dan Breen).

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 19 November 2020

Remembering 1920: The Murder of Patrick Hanley

This week coincides with the centenary of teenager Patrick Hanley, who was shot by crown forces on 17 November 1920. George Hurley was a comrade of Patrick within Fianna Éireann or the youth division of Cork IRA Brigade No.1. He recalls the lead-up and incident in his witness statement to the Bureau of Military History (WS1630).

In 1919, the Fianna Éireann headquarters was moved to a private house on Cork’s Pope’s Quay, and, in 1920, to a house on North Main Street. This latter place served as headquarters up to the Truce of July 1921. The training programme of the Fianna consisted of drilling, signalling instruction and lectures in first-aid and in the use of the revolver and rifle. A rifle was used for instruction purposes. Frequent parades took place and on occasions the boys marched out into the country where field training was carried on. A distinctive uniform was worn consisting of a blue short pants, a green shirt with a saffron scarf, and a green broad-brimmed hat.

 The use of revolvers was discouraged by the senior organisation of the IRA in the city. A direction was given to the Fianna by headquarters in Cork that the Fianna Éireann was not to carry out any attacks on enemy forces by shooting, unless with the prior permission of the IRA.

The youth division pasted up posters concerning meetings, concerts and public parades. They helped in taking up collections of money for national purposes prisoners’ aid. funds, Sinn Féin election funds and such like. Enemy posters proclamations were torn down.

As time went on and the struggle became more intense in 1920, so also did Fianna Éireann activities increase. They carried out scouting duty and dispatches for the IRA and helped in the removal from suspected places of IRA ammunition and guns. They carried out daylight raids on shops and vans containing provisions and various other goods being dispatched to military barracks in Cork. On several occasions, they held up individual soldiers or Black and Tans and took their equipment.

The murder of Paddy Hanley was by way of a reprisal by the British for the shooting of an RIC sergeant named O’Donoghue by G Company of the IRA earlier on the same night of 17 November 1920 in the course of an IRA raid on Lunham’s bacon factory.

Patrick lived with his widowed mother at No. 2 Broad Street. He was the sole support of her and his sister. At about 11.45 p.m. on the night of 17 November 1920, the residents of No. 2 Broad Street were awakened by the noise of the front door being broken open; a man rushed up the stairs and entered the bedroom of Mr and Mrs Coleman who also resided in the house. The man was wearing a policeman’s uniform, cap and goggles. He came to the bedside with a revolver in one hand and a flash lamp in the other.

When asked by Mrs Coleman what brought him there, he merely exclaimed “Hello”, flashed his lamp on the bed, raised his revolver and fired point-blank into the bed. The bullet wounded Mr Coleman in the arm. The assailant then turned and walked out of the room leaving Mrs Coleman screaming.

Paddy Hanley opened the door of his room when he heard the man rushing up the stairs. The man in police uniform had just come from Mrs Coleman’s room. Whilst standing at the door of his bedroom door, Patrick was fired at. It missed him. The man fired a second time and the bullet struck Patrick above the heart, killing him instantly. He was in his night attire at the time.An ex-British army soldier who lived in Broad Lane was also shot dead.

Leo Buckley, Intelligence Officer with Cork Brigade No.1, was a witness of the shooting (WS1714, Bureau of Military History). At the time, he was sleeping in a top back room of an apartment house in Sheares Street. He recalls that some hours prior to Patrick’s death, an RIC Sergeant had been shot by Tommy Healy and Willie Joe O’Brien of G Company. Tommy and Willie were hiding on Sheares Street. Leo denotes in his witness statement that he felt that Patrick had been shot in mistake for Tommy Healy, while the shooting of O’Brien’s brother-in-law the ex-British army soldier was also a mistake.

In another reprisal raid the same night by the RIC in the Grattan Street, another Fianna boy O’Brien was shot in the mouth. He subsequently recovered from the wound. Volunteer Eugene O’Connell was also killed on the same evening as a reprisal for his part in the murder of the RIC Sergeant. An IRA man suspected of giving information as to who shot the RIC Sergeant was later apprehended and executed by the IRA.

Patrick Hanley’s remains were laid out in his Fianna Éireann uniform in the mortuary of the Mercy Hospital and later removed to the church of SS Peter & Paul. He was buried in St Finbarr’s Cemetery, the tricolour-draped coffin being shouldered all the way to the cemetery by the dead boy’s comrades.

At the Republican Plot there are two memorials to his memory – an individual cross and a marble stone to Fianna Éireann. In addition, on 17 November 1957, a plaque was unveiled by Lord Mayor Jago in memory of Patrick Hanley on Patrick Hanley Buildings on Grattan Street. Eugene O’Callaghan’s headstone can also be viewed in the Republican Plot.

Kieran’s latest book Witness to Murder, The Inquest of Tomás MacCurtain is now available to purchase online (co-authored with John O’Mahony 2020, Irish Examiner/www.examiner.ie).

Captions:

1075a. Portrait of Patrick Hanley 1920 (source: Cork City Library).

1075b. Gravestone of Patrick Hanley in the Republican Plot in St Finbarr’s Cemetery, present day (picture: Kieran McCarthy).

1075c. Remembrance plaque to Patrick Hanley on Grattan Street, Cork, erected in 1957 (picture: Kieran McCarthy).