Monthly Archives: November 2020

Bloody Sunday 1920

The above headline was one of the many gracing the newspaper columns on November 20th 1920. It drummed up a fever for the All-Ireland Final that was due to take place the following day. The headlines of the 22nd of November, however, did not report on the football match or announce the winning team instead they described a horrific massacre. One of the darkest day in the Irish War of Independence, which went down in history as Bloody Sunday, was the news of that day.

On Sunday morning, 21 November 1920, Michael Collins gave the command to his team of assassins, the Squad to kill 12 alleged British intelligence agents at their lodgings on Dublin’s South Side. The plan was to scupper the intelligence operations of Dublin Castle. Retaliation was inevitable.

Tension permeated the air of the capital as news of the morning’s massacre did the rounds. Everyone knew that there would be reprisal, in the eye for eye tooth for tooth war which was growing more vicious by the day. Could anyone have guessed that it would happen so soon? Within hours armored trucks pulled up outside Croke Park, while the game was going on. Nobody in the field, as it was not a staduim at the time were caught completely unawares, when the police began firing directly into the crowd. The gunfire that lasted only ninety seconds claimed the lives of fourteen. Among the dead were people from Dublin and the country alike, men women and children. In all, 30 people died that day.

Bloody Sunday 1920 was one of the darkest days in the Anglo Irish War but it was not the last, as the conflict would endure for another eight months.

Sources

Dublin Evening Telegraph 20 November 1920

https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/mapping-bloody-sunday-21-november-1920

Bloody Sunday 1920: new evidence
History Ireland, Published in 20th-century / Contemporary History, Features, Issue 2 (Summer 2003), Revolutionary Period 1912-23, Volume 11

https://www.rte.ie/history/bloody-sunday/2020/0713/1153003-ninety-seconds-of-horror-croke-park-on-bloody-sunday/

The Graphic 27 November 1920

Anita McMahon gets Sentenced in Galway

One hundred years ago, Emily’s friend Anita McMahon gets sentenced in Galway District Court, after being charged before a court-martial, the previous month. Anita stood silently before the jurisdiction, and was not represented by a lawyer, as she refused to recognise the court in which she was brought before, a British Court. Her address was given as Keel, Achill.

Keel, Achill where Anita McMahon was arrested in 1920

Anita was arrested on September 30th at her home, where a copy of the West Mayo Brigade Orders, the local Branch of IRA, dated 10th September. Among the documents were a pamphlet entitled “The Faith and Morals of Sinn Fein” and various other papers that were considered seditious. A week or so later the house, which was by then under surveillance by the local RIC (Royal Irish Constabulary), was searched again. More ‘seditious’ papers were found, this time a typewritten sheet, containing subversive phrases, enough to have Miss McMahon, hauled off to the local RIC station, possibly at Dugort or Achill Sound and then on to Galway.

Sources

Irish Times 15 November 1920

Irish Times 13 November 1952

Kevin Barry

The day after the burial of Terence MacSwiney another Nationalist lost his life to the cause for Irish freedom. On November 1st 1920, young Kevin Barry walked bravely and without falter to the scaffold, to die for his country. His last reported words;

“It is nothing, to give one’s life for Ireland. I’m not the first and maybe I won’t be the last. What’s my life compared with the cause?”

https://www.glasnevintrust.ie/visit-glasnevin/interactive-map/kevin-barry/

Kevin Barry was an 18 year old medical student who joined the IRA as a boy of 15. He was sentenced to death by court- martial for the murder of a British soldier during a Sinn Fein attack. On the morning of 15th August 1920 Kevin Barry joined a party of IRA Volunteers who had been ordered to ambush a British army vehicle and capture their weapons. As the group surrounded the truck, a shot was fired and, in the hail of gunfire that followed, three soldiers were killed. Barry was the only Volunteer captured. Read more

Women praying outside Mountjoy on the morning of the execution

On the morning of his execution thousands gathered outside Mountjoy Prison, praying and hoping for a reprieve, that never came. Instead the prison bell tolled, sending out the message that his young life had ended. When the official announcement of execution was posted outside the prison wall it was torn down by the crowd. Armored cars were sent in and the crowd dispersed. Emily, who was living in Dublin at that time, would certainly have been in that crowd hanging on for a last moment pardon.

Following his death, he was buried unceremoniously within the prison walls, somewhere between the male and female wings, where it lay for eighty more years. The only people present at his death an original burial were two Catholic clergymen and the prison guards. His family and friends deprived of accompanying him on his final journey.

Leeds Mercury 02 November 1920

Kevin Barry finally got the was denied, although it took 80 years. With the permission of the Irish government his body and that of ten others who were executed in the course for Irish Independence to be exhumed and reburied. On October 4th 2001 “The Forgotten Ten” were afforded full state honors with a private service at Mountjoy Jail, followed by a requiem mass at St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin. As the cortège passed through Dublin, thousands lined the streets to Glasnevin Cemetery, where they were re-interred along with Michael Collins and those in the Republican Plot.

Kevin Barry’s short life was immortalised in Ballads, poetry, songs, and prose.

Sources

https://www.glasnevintrust.ie/visit-glasnevin/interactive-map/kevin-barry/

Leeds Mercury 02 November 1920

Dublin Evening Telegraph 01 November 1920

Sheffield Independent 03 November 1920