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).

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 12 November 2020

Remembering 1920: Arise Lord Mayor O’Callaghan

On 4 November 1920, a large public crowd attended at City Hall’s Council Chamber. They were present to witness the special meeting of the Council of Cork Corporation, which was being held with the purpose of electing a successor to Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney. Councillor Donal Óg O’Callaghan, who acted in his capacity of Deputy Lord Mayor since the arrest of Terence, was unanimously elected to the vacancy.

On the night of Donal’s election, with 34 members of the 56 councilors present due to the ongoing war of Independence, Alderman Professor Stockley was moved to the chair. Fr Dominic occupied a seat alongside the Mayoral chair. On the motion of Cllr Micheál O’Cuill seconded by Alderman Edmond Coughlan, both of whom spoke in Irish, Donal was unanimously elected to the position of Lord Mayor. Some months previously on 10 March 1920 Sinn Féin‘s Donal Óg O’Callaghan emerged as a victor in the first bye-election after the January 1920 local elections for Cork Corporation. Donal was a fluent Irish speaker and was the youngest representative to have ever held the high and important office. He also occupied the Chairmanship of the Cork County Council.

Donal, who was received with applause, then signed his declaration of office and was invested with the Mayoral chain. First speaking in Irish and afterwards in English the new Lord Mayor spoke about his predecessors and the ongoing war with the British Government, and the Republican position of not backing down in their aspirations for Independence; “Our position was that one after another two Republicans who held thechair had been murdered by the British government. That same murder gang, who called themselves a Government, while the remains of Terence MacSwiney still lay over the ground, and while it was still possible for that gang to heap insult on the remains did so, and even then the same gang spread forth its tentacle to seize the next man. However, my position was, and we are are setting it forth this night as clearly and distinctly and glaringly as it could  be possibly set forth, that we absolutely refuse to be tyrannised…our demand in the country has been made, and we are not going to flinch no matter what the result or cost might be”.

Following the Lord Mayor’s speech Alderman Tadgh Barry raised the execution of 18-year-old Kevin Barry from Dublin on 1 November 1920, who became the first Republican to be executed since 1916. Kevin Barry was an IRA section Commander who partook in various raids around Dublin city. On 20 September 1920, he participated in a raid where a street gun battle ensued, and three British soldiers were killed. Hiding under a tree Kevin was discovered and brought to Mountjoy Prison, where he refused to reveal the identity of his comrades. New legislation in 1920 had given military authorities greater powers to quell increasing IRA activity. Barry had privately admitted killing one soldier in an ambush and was tried as a soldier under the legislation. He was hanged for his crime. There was vast public outrage at the execution of a young man.

Alderman Tadgh Barry proposed a resolution: “That we the Corporation of Cork place on record our condemnation of the latest abominable crime, perpetrated by the British Government in Ireland in the murder, by hanging of young Kevin Barry, and offer our respectful sympathy to his patriot mother in her sorrow, and congratulations on her support of his refusal to purchase his life by betraying his comrades to his torturer?”. Tadgh’s motion was forwarded to the next meeting of the Council.

However, the deaths of young IRA volunteers continued. On 10 November 1920, 22-year-old Christy Lucey was killed at Túirín Dubh, Ballingeary, He took an active part in his local IRA company and on one evening he slept in the rough on a hillside. As descended the hillside the following morning, Christy was cornered by a group of Auxiliaries of C Company from Macroom and shot dead as he attempted to escape. The Auxiliary who shot him was himself soon executed by the IRA. When the Black and Tan individual returned to Macroom that evening, he entered the Market Bar and began to celebrate but was fatally shot.

Formerly a resident of Pembroke Street in Cork City, Christy was a former member of B Company of the First Battalion (Cork No. 1 Brigade) in Cork city. He was given an imposing funeral in the city and was buried in the Republican Plot in St Finbarr’s Cemetery. Such an event attracted much public interest including intimidating attention from British military forces in Cork city. As the funeral cortege commenced, an armoured car, in convoy with two lorries full of armed soldiers, arrived near the church. The officer in charge served a notice on Rev. J F Murphy, which denoted that only one hundred people would be allowed to take part in the cortege. As the cortege left the South Chapel and emerged into George’s Quay, an armoured car took up a position in the procession immediately before the carriages of the mourners. The coffin was draped in the republican colours and was carried on the shoulders of 4 Volunteers. On route to the cemetery, the paths along the route were filled with spectators.

A day after Christopher Lucey’s murder on 11 November 1920, Lord Mayor O’Callaghan and Father O’Leary, CC, of the South Chapel, received messages from Arthur Griffith, declaring that the Cork Hunger strike was to be ceased at Cork Gaol. To Griffith the prisoners had “sufficiently proved their devotion and fidelity, and that they should now, as they were prepared to die for Ireland, prepare again to live for her”. A small quantity of nourishment has been taken by the hunger strikers and it was hoped that they would recover.

A new book on Lord Mayor Donal Óg O’Callaghan’s life and times by UCC’s Dr Aodh Quinlivan and entitled Forgotten Lord Mayor, Donal Óg O’Callaghan, 1920-1924, will be published by Cork City Council this month.

Captions:

1074a. Lord Mayor of Cork Cllr Donal Óg O’Callaghan 1920 (picture: Cork City Museum).

1074b. Christopher Lucey as a Cork Fianna member in 1916 (picture: Cork City Library).