Our information suggests that, on the 18th February, 1849, a 'Constabulary of Ireland' member, a Mr Henry Madden (31), "...accidentally sustained an injury in non-suspicious circumstances while on duty..".
Whatever happened him, he died from that injury the next day.
The poor man is all but forgotten now, and we have no more details about him or the 'accident' that killed him.
==========================
THE GREAT OIL AND GAS ROBBERY.
From 'Magill' Magazine, October 2005.
"I spent an hour with Micheál Ó Seighin (pictured), one of the Rossport Five.
Micheál received us very graciously in the small visiting box. He is a small, quietly-spoken man in his late 60s.
"Tá sibhse ag dhéanamh obair go hiontach. Congratulations. Bhí an scéal Dé Luan go han, han mhaith. Ceim mhór", he said..."
Micheál Ó Seighin.
Michael McDowell.
Pat Rabbitte.
Some time ago I contacted Cloverhill prison to arrange a visit with the five men imprisoned there at that time for breaching the injunction by Shell which denied them the right to protest against the huge gas pipeline being driven through their land in west Mayo.
The prison authorities were very cooperative.
It is normal practice for public representatives to visit prisoners, even in Northern Ireland (sic) where the British administration facilitates such visits.
But the Minister of Justice Michael McDowell (pictured, centre) takes a different view and on the eve of the visit I learned that I was barred from Cloverhill.
I immediately contacted the Department of Justice and spoke to the Secretary General who could offer me no explanation for this arbitrary decision...
(The third [ie last] pic above shows a Mr Patrick Rabbitte, ex-State Labour Party leader and ex-'State Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources' ; Mr Rabbittee retired as State Labour Party leader in 2007, and from political life altogether in 2016, on a combined pension package worth over €2 million to him!)
(MORE LATER.)
"I can best describe the situation here (in Ireland) as something in the nature of an incipient Boer War.
Now what was the history of the Boer War?
At first we tried to capture their strongholds and engage them in pitched battles and afterwards we covered the country with a network of 'flying columns'.
But they remained unconquered until we wired them all up inside concentration camps.
This is really how we won the Boer War, and it is the only way we will settle this business here..."
- a British 'Sir', a Mr John Denton Pinkstone French (pictured), the '1st Earl of Ypres' and the British 'Chief of the Imperial General Staff' (1912–1914) and the 'Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1918–1921), in a letter he wrote, on the 18th February 1920, to a colleague of his, a Mr James Ian Macpherson, who served as the 'British Chief Secretary for Ireland'.
Pot, kettle black with Mr Pinkstone French, the blighter (!) - for all his talk ("..pitched battles...flying columns..unconquered...wired them all up.."), his tenure of the 'British Expeditionary Force' (BEF) during 'World War I' was marked by failure ; his military orders led to high casualties and he was said by his own people to be "..temperamentally unsuited, often struggling with strategy..a fount of all that is slimy in our national life..a terribly pathetic figure, such a little while ago the hero of England and now goes out to nothing..." - he was forced to resign his commission in December 1915 and placed in Ireland where, it seems, it was considered that he would cause less damage.
Mr MacPherson got off lightly - in the British 'House of Commons', on the 3rd April, 1919, he admitted that when answering parliamentary questions..."all I can do is stand up and read a carefully prepared answer, prepared by somebody else, as best I can.."
Two chancers, by all accounts, using Ireland to grift their way to a British pension for life.
On the same date that one of those flim-flam polo-militarys was writing to the other, 'The Irish Times' newspaper (!) was doing some flim-flamming of its own.
In an Editorial on Westminster's so-called 'Better Government of Ireland Bill', the Editor wrote that the document "..had not a single friend in either hemisphere, outside Downing Street...".
'The Irish Times' was experiencing one of its recurring struggles with being disobedient which, again, it would follow with a plea for divine forgiveness to whatever 'Establishment' was in power on the day!
Four years before its "not a single friend" outburst (!), the same 'newspaper' had described the (1916) Rising as a "malignant growth" and a "criminal act", and called for an immediate, harsh military response by the British, calling for a severe "surgeon's knife" approach "to eliminate sedition" and, on the 10th May, 1916, defended the executions of the leaders, saying they knew the consequences.
That media outlet let it be known that it 'viewed the Rising as a threat to order'.
And today, 2026, it maintains its pro-Free State, West Brit attitude (founded in March, 1859, for a Protestant readership and supported 'the British Union' from day one), which it has extended to include the 'Woke' illness (pro-vagrant, queers, lesbians, he/she advocates and the other 'LGBTQIA+' (!) etc afflicted people and groups).
The sooner the better it won't have "a single friend" left itself.
==========================
DINNY LACEY, 1890 - 1923 ; IRA GUERRILLA FIGHTER .
In the small town of Attybrack, near Annacarty, in County Tipperary, a child born in the year 1890 was to know of no other way of life except that of with a gun in both hands.
At about twenty-three years young, Dinny Lacey joined the 'Irish Volunteers' and met, among others, Sean Treacy (six years later [ie 1919] that same man, Sean Treacy, was one of the two IRA leaders [the other being Dan Breen] that shot two RIC members dead in Soloheadbeg in County Tipperary - the IRA wanted the quantity of gelignite which the British 'policemen' were guarding. Sean Treacy was himself shot dead in Dublin's Talbot Street on the 15th October 1920, by a British intelligence officer named Price).
It was through Sean Treacy that Dinny Lacey was sworn in to The Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1914 and it was those two rebels, alongside Dan Breen, that organised a much-feared fighting unit in Tipperary which sought-out the enemy ; Dinny Lacey, in particular, was known to be deeply angry that the 1916 Rising had not taken hold in the rest of the country as much as it had in Dublin.
He wanted confrontation with the British, and had no time for 'letting things lie'- he was in good company!
The Tipperary area was well-organised from an Irish Republican point-of-view ; the IRA were so strong in the area that they were able to set-up and run two small ammunition factories, one each in the villages of Knockharding and Shrough.
Dinny Lacey was appointed 'Officer Commanding' of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade No. 1 Flying Column, which controlled the South Munster area - it was Sean Treacy's position, but he had been shot dead by the British in Dublin.
Dinny Lacey and his 'Flying Column' IRA Unit were relentless in their pursuit of the British - he knew the countryside extremely well and had learned much from Sean Treacy : he hit and disappeared.
He was also known to be tough with his own men, did not suffer fools, but never asked anything of them which he was not willing to do himself.
When the 'Treaty of Surrender' was signed at Downing Street in London on the 6th December, 1921, Dinny Lacey and his men were living 'on the run' and only a handful of his Unit left, two or three of whom joined the Free State Army, with the same number of men just going home.
The majority of the IRA Flying Column stayed true, and carried on with the fight for the complete removal of the British military and political presence from Ireland and, as with their fight against the British, they didn't wait to be attacked - they took the fight to the Staters.
The 3rd Tipperary Brigade IRA, with Dinny Lacey in command, hit hard ; in the months following the December 1921 sell-out, Lacey's Unit raided the Free State Barracks in Clonmel, County Tipperary, and removed all the equipment (weapons , ammunition etc) that they wanted, with the result that they were now 'kitted-out' even better than before.
Dinny Lacey and his men controlled the North Munster area to such a degree that it was practically a 'no-go' zone for the Staters, and stayed that way for most of 1922.
Also, during that same year, the townlands around Carrick-on-Suir (outside Clonmel, County Tipperary) were controlled by Dinny Lacey's Unit until December(1922) when the Free State Army forced them out.
The Free State Administration in Dublin's Leinster House had had enough ; they sent a force of approximately one-thousand State troops into the area where Dinny Lacey and the 3rd Tipperary Brigade operated from, with orders to hunt them down.
The rebel Unit were tracked to the Glen of Aherlow area (near the village of Lisveranane, in Tipperary) and were eventually corraled in a house in Ballydavid (near Bansha, Tipperary) ; realising that their only way out was through the ranks of their enemy, they exited the house with all guns blazing.
Dinny Lacey and his men got as far as the boundary fence of the property when the man beside Volunteer Lacey was wounded ; stopping to help the injured man, Dinny Lacey was shot dead.
The date was the 18th February, 1923, he was thirty-three years of age, and had spent the final ten years of his life 'on-the-run'- 9 years hunted by the British and 1 year with the Free Staters on his tail.
He was an outstanding guerrilla leader, uncompromising in his demands - a full British military and political withdrawal from the island of Ireland.
"Why are the English there anyway,
as they kill with God on their side?
Blame it on the kids and the IRA,
as the bastards commit genocide..."
- John Lennon, 'The Luck of The Irish'.
RIP Volunteer Denis 'Dinny' Lacey, 31st May 1889 – 18th February 1923.
ON THIS DATE (18TH FEBRUARY) 105 YEARS AGO : IRISH REPUBLICAN VOLUNTEER POW 'TRANSFERRED FOR EXECUTION...'
"I DON'T WANT TO LET DOWN THE WITNESSES WHO GAVE EVIDENCE FOR ME...." -
- the words of Volunteer Patrick Moran (pictured) , Adjutant of D Company Irish Volunteers, 2nd Battalion (Dublin), to his comrades Ernie O'Malley (who had passed himself off to the British as 'Bernard Stewart') and Frank Teeling as they were about to walk to freedom through a gate in Kilmainham Jail in Dublin, which they had forced open, on the 14th of February 1921.
Volunteer Moran believed he would be found innocent at his 'trial' and saw no reason why he should take the opportunity to escape.
He was a 'dangerous man', as far as Westminster was concerned, and had been imprisoned in Dublin Castle on the 7th of January 1921 and charged with the 'murder' of two British Army/paramilitary gang members, Ames and Bennett, after been mistakenly identified as having been involved in the shooting dead of both men - Lieutenant Peter Ashmun Ames and British Army Lieutenant George Bennett (both of whom were in command of 'The Cairo Gang') on the 21st of November 1920 at 38 Upper Mount Street in Dublin.
He stayed behind on the night of the prison break ,refusing to take part in same, having encouraged Simon Donnelly to go in his place, a decision which was was to cost Patrick Moran his life.
On the 15th of February 1921, he was put on 'trial' (during which sixteen people and an RIC man verified he was elsewhere!) but was, as expected, found 'guilty' and, three days later - on the 18th of February 1921, 105 years ago today - was transferred to Mountjoy Jail, Dublin.
On Wednesday, 9th of March 1921, Patrick Moran was sentenced to death and he was executed by hanging five days later, on Monday, the 14th of March.
He had defended the integrity of his country in Jacob's Factory Garrison during Easter week in 1916, where he served under Thomas MacDonagh, and had been imprisoned at Knutsford and Woorwood Scrubs in England, and in Frongoch Internment Camp in Wales.
He is one of 'The Forgotten Ten' in that he, and his nine comrades, were 'forgotten' by the State but have always been remembered by Irish republicans.
Finally, the planning and execution of the escape itself is worthy of a few paragraphs :
On the 11th February 1921, Frank Teeling and Ernie O'Malley were joined in Kilmainham Jail by Simon Donnelly, who was taken into their confidence and told of the up-coming plan of escape.
The peep-holes in the cell doors were three inches in diameter and, if one of the men could get his arm through it, it would be possible to open the door from the outside ; the plan then was to make their way to the yard, as the men had noticed that the door leading from the prison to the yard was usually left closed-over, but not locked, and then cross the yard to a large iron gate on the west side of the jail, cut the bolt on same and escape.
A 'Plan B' had been made in case the bolt cutter should fail - IRA Volunteers from 'F' Company, Fourth Battalion, Dublin Brigade, would take up positions outside the prison wall with a rope ladder and, awaiting an agreed signal, throw in the rope attached to the ladder, so that the prisoners could haul the ladder over to their side of the wall.
Oscar Traynor, (pictured) IRA Dublin Brigade O/C, had secured a bolt cutter and that, along with two revolvers, were packaged and smuggled into the prison by a friendly British soldier.
The prisoners were not sure that the bolt cutter would be up to the job but were determined to carry out the escape plan, as Frank Teeling was in line for execution ; on the night of February 13th, 1921, the three men made their way to the outer prison gate but, as the handles of the bolt cutter were incorrectly fitted, they were unable to cut the bolt.
They went to 'Plan B', and gave the signal for their comrades on the other side of the prison wall to throw in the rope attached to the ladder - the rope jammed on top of the wall and snapped when the men outside attempted to pull it back to them.
The three prisoners had no alternative but to return to their cells.
The following day, the British soldier who was in on the plan repaired/adjusted the handles on the bolt cutter and, that night, at 6.30pm, the three prisoners decided to make another escape attempt.
The three Irish republican prisoners again made their way down to the gate and, this time, the bolt cutter worked.
They used butter and grease, which they saved from their meals, to help ease the remaining portion of the corroded bolt out from its latch and two of the men got their revolvers at the ready as the third man pulled on the heavy door which creaked open sluggishly on its rusty hinges and the three men walked out!
Simon Donnelly had tried to persuade Patrick Moran to join them, but Volunteer Moran - who was not involved in shooting Ames or Bennett, and had what he considered the perfect alibi for that night - refused to leave the prison except by the front gate as a free man.
Patrick Moran paid with his life for relying on British justice : not the first innocent man to be put to death by the British, and not the last Irish person to be punished by them in revenge.
RIP Volunteer Patrick Moran.
ON THIS DATE (18TH FEBRUARY) 78 YEARS AGO....
"On my way to Knocksedan a little before mid-day I called at the Post Office in Lusk for stamps.
The postmistress, whom I knew very well, asked me to accompany her to her sitting room.
There she told me that she had just delivered a wire in code from Dublin Castle to the Lusk police sergeant, and she was familiar with the code from frequent messages.
This particular one to the police sergeant was to the effect that he was to make immediate arrangements for the arrest of Ashe and myself!
I mention this incident because I think that similar messages were sent to various Volunteer centres in the country, and because it tends to show that the Rising leaders were right in their view that there was to be a general swoop by Dublin Castle on that day.
The police attack was being directed by a District Inspector Smyth, an ex-Army officer and, at the other end (Southern or Cross Roads) a County Inspector Gray was directing operations.
Gray was severely wounded early in the fighting, leaving Smyth in sole command and, soon after Frank Lawless's arrival, an intermittent duel began between his and Smyth's squad.
Smyth was eventually mortally wounded by a shot from Lawless, leaving the police without a leader, with the result that they lost morale and, very soon after Smyth being knocked out, Lawless and his Volunteer squad came out on the roadway, firing intermittently, and moved at the double towards the motor cars.
On seeing them, some of the police peared from under cover of the cars with their hands up..."
- the above is taken from 'Document W.S.97' , a statement made on the 18th February 1948 by Dr. Richard Francis Hayes (pictured), a medical officer and Commandant of the 5th Battalion, Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, as part of a questionnaire into Volunteer activities in north county Dublin during Easter Week, 1916.
Volunteer Hayes and his men were active in Donabate, Swords, Garristown and Ashbourne and, following the Rising, he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment but was released in June 1917, but was imprisoned again for republican activities between May 1918 and March 1919 and from November 1920 to July 1921.
However, he ruined his credentials by supporting the Treaty of Surrender and entered the Westminster-imposed Leinster House institution in 1922 and soon after joined the Free State 'Cumann na nGaedheal' party.
To his credit, he resigned from Leinster House in 1924 and turned his back completely on political life, perhaps because he realised that that which he fought for as a republican was not obtainable through the politics of the Free State and its 'parliament', Leinster House?
He died on the 16th of June, 1958, in his 80th year, and is buried in Deansgrange Cemetery, in Dublin.
ON THIS DATE (18TH FEBRUARY) 180 YEARS AGO : ATTEMPTED GENOCIDE RAISED IN THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT, REPORTED ON BY THE MEDIA.
On the 17th February, 1846, speaking in the British so-called 'House of Commons', Daniel O'Connell (pictured) raised, among other issues, the potato blight in Ireland, and the effect it was having on 'her majesty's subjects' on that island.
The 'servants of the people' in that political institution were only too aware of the suffering that the Irish were trying to live through, and Mr O'Connell was aware of that, but he was hoping that his comments would be carried in the newspapers and reach a wider audience, which they did on the 18th February (1846) and afterwards.
This is an extract of the speech he delivered -
"...It was certain that there was a fearful prospect of a most calamitous season before the people of Ireland. The extent of that calamity had been disputed, and there had been a time when there was a prospect of some portion of it being possibly averted..the calamity was pressing, was imminent – more pressing, more imminent, and more fearful than that House was aware of. In order to understand it, it was right that the House should be made aware of the state of Ireland before the calamity, had impended.
The last Population Returns of 1841 showed that, out of the whole rural population of Ireland, 46 per cent lived in a single room ; the entire human family and the pigs occupied the same apartment together. The next fact was, that of the civil population – that is, of the inhabitants of towns – 36 per cent lived in a single room, and that two or three families sometimes occupied the same room.
An account of all cattle, sheep, and swine, imported into Great Britain from Ireland, from the 10th day of October, 1845, to the 5th day of January, 1846 ; oxen, bulls, and cows, 32,883 ; calves, 583 ; sheep and lambs, 32,576 ; swine, 104,141..more than half the potato crop is unfit for human food, and the disease is progressing. More than half the labourers are unemployed, and are likely to continue so for the next three months, and during the months of July and August, as the farmers will not have money nor food to give them.
The agricultural labourers of Ireland suffer the greatest privations and hardships ; that they depend upon precarious and casual employment for subsistence ; that they are badly housed, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid for their labour ; that it would be impossible to describe adequately the sufferings and privations which the cottiers and labourers and their families in most parts of the country endure ; that in many districts their only food is the potato, their only beverage water ; that their cabins are seldom a protection against the weather ; that a bed or blanket is a rare luxury ; and that nearly in all, their pig and their manure heap constitute their only property ; that a large proportion of the entire population comes within the designation of agricultural labourers, and endure sufferings greater than the people of any other country in Europe have to sustain..." (from here.)
The finely-suited 'parliamentarians' in that institution were aware of the suffering endured by the Irish, as policies enacted and enforced by Westminster was responsible for the genocide being played-out in Ireland, but they didn't care, as they themselves were not only not affected by those conditions but actually benefited, financially, from same ; Irish land, free of impoverished 'tenants', was more valuable and easier to sell than if the same land was sold with 'troublesome tenants' on it.
That mindset is still prevalent in British 'High Society' to this day, but here's a newsflash for our snob British readers, for 'our own' gombeen snobs in Leinster House and for the 'asylum-seeking/refugee/migrant/vagrant'-pushing EU : we ain't goin' nowhere ; this is our country, not a dumping ground or a political and/or military base for your good selves.
Take your unwanted debris back to your own country, and leave us in peace!
THE MONTH UNSPUN...
The stories that hit the headlines.
From Magill magazine, August 2002.
Elan's accounts for 2002 were published on the 9th July, ending any hope that the drugs company may recover its past glories and causing severe embarrassment for the Irish-American investors who had defended it.
A company that had taken 33 years to build had fallen into despair in just six months.
The problems were essentially twofold - Elan's accounting practices made investing in the company look less risky than it actually was, and the Alzheimer's drug that the company was developing in the hope that it would be "the big one", failed clinical tests.
The "big one", therefore, never materialised, and Elan's complex system of shared investments could no longer bear the strain - one billion euro was knocked off the value of the 'National Pensions Reserve Fund' as a result of the chaos...
(MORE LATER.)
"The general condition of the county is unsatisfactory.
There were 18 outrages as compared with 27 committed during the previous month.
On 18/2/21 the Postmaster at Navan disappeared. He has not since been heard of and it is suspected that he has been the victim of foul play..."
- RIC report for Navan, County Meath, February 1921.
In the early hours of Friday morning, 18th February, 1921, a Protestant man, a Mr Thomas Hodgett (55, pictured), a Postmaster, was abducted from his home near Navan, in County Meath, by three armed men who claimed to be from the IRA.
He was taken away by the men, shot dead and his remains were thrown into the River Blackwater, but were not found until one month later.
The British claimed that his killing "was a Sinn Féin outrage against the minority religion...", but the IRA and local republicans denied all knowledge of the killing.
'The Irish Bulletin' newspaper investigated the shooting and stated that 'it was carried out by a County Inspector of the RIC and a notorious sergeant from Dublin Castle...'
Further words were exchanged between the IRA and the British, but no answers were forthcoming as to the 'who and why' of the shooting dead of Mr Hodgett.
Until 32 years later, that is...
"Three men were responsible for that murder. They were a policeman (sic) from Dublin Castle named Igoe, a civilian named Brady from Dublin, who was shot at the Bull Wall, Dublin a few weeks later, and RIC County Inspector Egan..."
- part of a letter written on the 13th January, 1953, by a Mr Gilbert, who lived beside the Hodgett family.
RIC Chief Constable Eugene Igoe, a Galway man, was in charge of a semi-'official' sub-unit of the RIC known as 'The Identification Company', whose function was to patrol the streets of Dublin searching for IRA men on the run who had come to the city for safety ; they were also known for occasionally shooting dead innocent civilians and leaving bogus IRA notes reading 'Death To Spies And Informers' on the corpses, making the murders appear to be the work of the IRA.
Mr (John Ellard) Brady was a 21-year-old man who was shot and killed by the IRA in Dublin in June 1921.
He was supplying information to the Crown Forces.
Mr Brady was sitting on a sea wall (near the Bull Wall area of Clontarf, Dublin) with two other men, a Mr Thomas Halpin (an ex-British Army soldier) and a man named Denver, when they were targeted by the IRA's 'F Company', 2nd Battalion.
Both Mr Brady and Mr Halpin were killed.
RIC 'County Inspector' (William) Egan had already been named, two years before Mr Gilbert named him, in a 'Bureau of Military History' (BMH 1951) statement as having played a part in the abduction and shooting dead of the Postmaster, Mr Thomas Hodgett.
The investigation in the 1950's indicated that the real cause for the murder of Mr Thomas Hodgett was that he, unfortunately and inadvertently, divulged information through an indiscretion, picked-up on by British operatives in Dublin Castle, which made the local RIC and British Army look incompetent in the eyes of their Headquarters and had signed his own death warrant in doing so.
RIP Mr Thomas Hodgett.
On the same day that poor Mr Hodgett was abducted by armed pro-British forces, their colleagues about 50km (30 miles) down the road, in Dublin, sealed-off Mountjoy Square and went house-to-house searching for rebels and military equipment, but left the area empty-handed.
"Sinn Féin Courts started to function, and one of the trials was the eviction of a British ex-soldier from one of my father's houses at 63 Blarney Street, Cork..."
- Volunteer PJ Murphy, Cork, recalling the details, years later, of an event which he was involved in :
"..after the trial, Walsh gave the names of the court and the local Volunteers to the RIC and was rewarded with money for this information.
His sister got the draft and went to cash it in the local shop, where it was reported to the local Volunteers, and Walsh was arrested by the IRA, sentenced to be deported, left the country and went to Wales.
After a few months he returned.
We made two attempts to arrest him, and on each occasion he got away from us ; on the first occasion by diving into a shop full of women and children, and the second time by throwing himself off a high wall.
On each occasion he went to the military barracks and brought the military to our homes.
While with the British in Cork Military Barracks, Walsh fell into bad health and they transferred him to the Cork workhouse (the Workshop Infirmary, Douglas Road). One night in February 1921 he was brought out on a stretcher to the backgate of the workhouse and shot dead by the IRA..."
A letter which was written and signed by a British Army Captain, a Mr Campbell Joseph O'Connor Kelly ('Sixth Division Intelligence Officer') came to light about one week after Mr Walsh had been executed (18th February 1921), in which Mr Kelly stated that the informer had been rescued in the past by his troops when they raided the Cork Mental Asylum where he was being detained by the IRA.
After they had rescued him, the British sent him to England to lie low, but he soon ended up in Ireland again.
It was an armed six-man Volunteer ASU (under the command of Volunteer Thomas Crofts, 2nd Battalion, Cork No. 1 Brigade), wearing disguises, that removed that informer from his hospital bed, carried him down the stairs from his ward, out the workhouse gate, onto the road, and shot him dead.
The Officer Commanding of the Cork IRA 2nd Battalion, Volunteer Michael Murphy, described Mr Walsh the informer as "a definite spy and a low type".
A card was pinned to the body -
'Caught at last. Spies and informers beware. IRA.'
On the same day that one informer was paying his dues, another one was earning his keep in that same county.
British Army soldiers 'came across' an arms dump owned by the Kilbrittain Company of the Cork No. 3 Brigade of the IRA and took the munitions into their custody.
The haul would have consisted of between 15 and 20 shotguns (many of which were collected voluntarily during the 1918 conscription scare), about 20 'Service Rifles' (probably Lee-Enfield brand), a small number of revolvers and other handguns, 'home-made' bombs and mines, gelignite, guncotton and hundreds of rounds of bullets for the guns on site.
The equipment would have been wrapped in canvas, oiled, and hidden in bunkers with corrugated steel roofs, typically located in field corners near safe houses to allow for quick access by IRA Flying Columns.
As those British looters were looting Irish freedom equipment, 'The Times Of London' newspaper carried a news article about the 'Oxford Union' having voted 219 to 129 in favour of condemning the British government's actions in Ireland.
Appreciated, lads and lassies, thanks - but any chance ye could have organised a whip-around for a few bob to replace some missing items...?
On the 18th February, 1921, newspapers in Ireland covered the 'arrest' on the previous day, by pro-British forces, of a member of the pro-British 'police force', the 'Dublin Metropolitan Police' (DMP).
A Mr Eamon 'Ned' Broy (pictured, a republican-gamekeeper-turned-Free State poacher) was a DMP officer, working as a spy for the rebels, who morphed into a Free Stater who worked to a British agenda for anti-republican Leinster House conformists ( confusing, isn't it!) and was 'arrested' by his own people on the 17th for "collaborating with the enemy".
Documents that he had typed for a Sinn Féin contact (a M/s Eileen McGrane [MacCarvill]) were found and his involvement with the rebels was discovered.
Mr Broy was charged with 'high treason' and imprisoned in Arbour Hill Prison, in Dublin, and was only released in August that year (1921).
He worked as a secretary/bodyguard for/to the Irish Treaty (of Surrender) negotiators and, after partition was forcibly accepted and implemented he joined the new Free State Air Corps with the rank of Commandant (later promoted to Colonel).
All of his personas died in January, 1972, at 85 years of age, in Rathgar, Dublin.
On the same date that those newspapers were writing about Mr Broy, about 50 miles (75 km) across the country and down a bit, in the RIC Barracks in the town of Monasterevin, in County Kildare, a 34-year-old RIC member, a Mr Thomas Bradshaw ('Service Number 63555', with 14 years 'service' in that grouping), from Newport, in County Tipperary - a troubled man - was ordered to prepare himself for 'patrol duties' in the morning.
He must have slept uneasily that night because the following morning (19th February 1921) he went into the stables attached to the RIC Barracks, removed his Webley MkVI revolver (serial number 391534) from its holster, placed the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot was heard by three of his RIC colleagues, a Mr James May ('Service Number 72428'), a Mr Abraham Harvey ('Service Number 74540') and a Mr Patrick Ryan ('Service Number 57520'), who rushed to the stables and found Mr Bradshaw on the ground, with blood pouring from the back of his head, but still breathing, laboriously.
He died minutes later.
==========================
DEATH IN THE MEDITERRANEAN...
Desmond Boomer, a Belfast engineer working in the Libyan oil-fields, disappeared seven years ago.
Officially, the plane on which he was a passenger crashed as a result of mechanical failure and pilot error.
But is that the real story?
Or were the Irishman and his fellow passengers unwitting victims of the shady war between Islamic fundamentalism and Mossad, Israel's intelligence network?
A special 'Magill' investigation by Don Mullan, author of 'Eyewitness Bloody Sunday'.
From 'Magill' magazine, January 2003.
Journalists Neil Livingstone and David Halevy claim the mission to assassinate Shqaqi was codenamed 'Operation Caesarea' and, according to the two journalists, by September 1995 some 40 well-equipped Mossad agents were in Malta posing as "rich tourists together with their wives".
They monitored Shqaqi as he passed through Malta on his way to Libya.
On the day Shqaqi boarded the ferry, the Mossad base in Malta was promptly notified and, again according to the two journalists, a speedboat then carried the operation's commander and hit men to Malta from Sicily.
Shqaqi booked into 'The Diplomat Hotel' in Sliema and went out for some early afternoon shopping. Two Mossad agents on a dark blue Yamaha XT motorcycle approached him and called his name...
(MORE LATER.)
ON THIS DATE (18TH FEBRUARY) 130 YEARS AGO : JOHN REDMOND'S UNHEEDED PLEA IN WESTMINSTER FOR IRISH POLITICAL PRISONERS IS PUBLICISED.
On the 17th February 1896, John Redmond (pictured) secured speaking time in the Westminster Parliament to discuss the plight of Irish political prisoners held in prison by the British political administration.
Such was the dire conditions endured by our prisoners, two 'Irish Unionist' (Free Stater) members of that political administration - Mr Horace Plunkett and Mr W.E.H. Lecky - actually supported Mr Redmond in his attempt to secure some sort of justice for those POW's.
During his plea to 'The House', it was announced on the 18th that he had said..
"...many hon. Members seemed to think that because it was contended that these were political prisoners who ought to be released, the Irish Members were thereby claiming that political offences ought not to be punished.
Nothing could be more absurd.
What they said was that there was a distinction drawn by all the nations in the world between the treatment of political offences and offences which sprang from the ordinary criminal instincts of mankind, and in dealing with every other nation in the world except with Ireland, England had been the first to draw this distinction...
...all persons to-day would admit that John Mitchell (pictured) was a political offender, but Englishmen of his day did not admit it, and they passed a special Act of Parliament dealing with the subject of treason in order that he might be treated, not as a political offender, but as an ordinary criminal.
All men of all parties admitted that the Fenians were political offenders, but anyone who listened to the speech of the hon. Member for South Mayo (Mr. Davitt) the other night, who knew his history, and heard what he suffered in prison, would recognise that though he was a political offender he was not treated as such.
In this case the Government still maintained the fiction that these men were not political prisoners ; but when all these men had been released, and when another generation of Englishmen looked back on these transactions, they would, perhaps, be just as willing to admit that they were political prisoners as men of the present day were willing to admit that the hon. Member for South Mayo (Mr. Davitt) and John Mitchell were political prisoners of their day...
Michael Davitt.
...was it not a disgraceful thing for England and for the Imperial Parliament that every generation with relentless regularity had in face a question of amnesty? England's Government of Ireland involved this — that she was almost the only country in Europe which was never, by any chance, without some political prisoners in her gaols.
An amnesty movement had become part of recognised political life in Ireland ; he remembered that the first political meeting he ever attended was an amnesty meeting.
The first debate he ever heard in the House was when, some 20 years ago, he came to listen to his father making a speech in favour of the amnesty of the political prisoners of his day.
Irishmen had recently been blamed for telling the English people that in any foreign complications they had not the sympathy of the Nationalists of Ireland.
Irishmen would have been liars and hypocrites if they had said anything else..." (From here.)
Mr Redmond and company were 'put in their place', albeit eloquently, by the political Dandies they were sitting with, which wasn't the first time that such proceedings ended in that manner.
Indeed, Thatcher did much the same, although less eloquently.
The only solution is to ensure that there are no more Irish political prisoners been held for political ransom by Westminster and the best way to ensure that is by Westminster withdrawing, politically and militarily, from Ireland.
Until that happens, we will always, regrettably, have Irish men and women incarcerated for political actions against the Crown.
ON THIS DATE (18TH FEBRUARY) 82 YEARS AGO : LAST FULL DAY ON EARTH FOR A REBEL POACHER-TURNED-FREE STATE MILITARY GENERAL.
'JJ O'Connell (pictured) joined the Irish Volunteers in 1914, becoming Chief of Inspection in 1915, and travelled the country organising volunteer corps, as well as contributing to the Irish Volunteer's journal and delivering lectures on military tactics to both the Volunteers and Na Fianna Éireann.
He also delivered a series of lectures about the famous Irish battles to the Gaelic League in Dublin (but) was not a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood as he believed that soldiers should not be a part of secret societies...
At the time the 1916 Easter Rising, O'Connell was operating in Dublin under instruction from Joseph Plunkett.
He was dispatched to Cork by Eoin MacNeill to try to prevent the Rising. Following the Rising, he was arrested and held in Frongoch internment camp from April to July 1916.
In 1918 he was again arrested and interned, spending time in Wandsworth Prison with Arthur Griffith for the alleged involvement in the fabricated German Plot.
During the Irish War of Independence, he was a member of the Irish Republican Army headquarters staff, as Assistant Director of Training and, after the killing of Dick McKee, as Director of Training. He coordinated, and was the principal lecturer, for a training course for military officers.
The course was run clandestinely in the premises of the Topographical Society on Gardiner Street in Dublin. A sympathetic doorkeeper allowed O'Connell's group in at night when the society was not present. Topics delivered by O'Connell included tactics, ordinance and engineering. In the IRA split after the Anglo-Irish Treaty was ratified, O'Connell took the pro-Treaty side...' (from here.)
On the 26th June, 1922, Leo Henderson and a group of 'Irregulars/Dissidents' left the then republican-occupied Four Courts, which had been taken over on the 14th of April by anti-treaty forces '..and arrived at Ferguson's Garage on Dublin's Baggot Street, accusing them of doing business with Belfast ; this was, they said, in violation of the boycott the IRA had placed on the city due to violence against nationalists there.
Leo Henderson, their leader, seized a number of cars at gunpoint, and was on the point of driving back to the anti-Treaty stronghold of the Four Courts when he was arrested by pro-Treaty/Free State troops.
Henderson's comrades in the Four Courts in response arrested a pro-Treaty General, JJ O’Connell and, within 24 hours, Free State artillery was battering at the walls of the Four Courts in central Dublin. The first shots of the Irish Civil War were caused by a row over selling cars to Belfast...' (from here.)
Not altogether the full story, although the 'bones' of what actually happened are there ; Harry Ferguson's garage (pictured) was a well-known Belfast automobile company, with a branch on Baggot Street, in Dublin.
It was known to be unsympathetic to the 'Irregulars' and had blatantly ignored an overall directive from the IRA that for-profit business dealings with Belfast should cease until business bosses in that city took steps to ensure the safety of their nationalist workforce.
Leo Henderson and his men commandeered about 15 cars which had been sent, for sale, to Dublin from Belfast - the IRA's intention, as well as to be seen enforcing the 'Belfast Trade Boycott', was to use the vehicles, as part of the war effort, against the continuing British political and military presence in the Six Occupied Counties and in their campaign to overthrow the then-fledging Free State political administration.
Leo Henderson was captured by the Staters, with ex-IRA man Frank Thornton in command of them and, when the IRA leadership heard that Henderson had been 'arrested', they discussed abducting Collins himself or Richard Mulcahy in retaliation, but decided instead to seize Free State General Jeremiah Joseph (JJ) 'Ginger' O'Connell, who was Richard Mulcahy's Deputy Chief-of-Staff.
At 11.15pm on the night of Tuesday, 27th June, 1922, 'Ginger' was arrested in Dublin by the IRA after an evening out with his girlfriend - the couple had gone to the theatre and, after the girlfriend was dropped home, 'Ginger' went to McGilligan's Pub in Leeson Street for a few pints and, as he left the pub, the IRA seized him and held him in the republican-occupied Four Courts.
Ernie O'Malley actually telephoned Free State General Eoin O'Duffy, who was in Portobello Barracks, and told him that 'Ginger' will be returned to the Staters in exchange for Leo Henderson.
The republicans knew that 'Ginger' was valued by Collins and his renegades - he was one of the few that eagerly conveyed the 'cancel-the-Rising'-order from Eoin MacNeill in 1916 and both Collins and Mulcahy regarded him as a safe pair of hands.
Collins's political and military bosses in London were notified about 'JJ Ginger' being held in republican custody and made it clear to Collins that if he and his Free State colleagues didn't take steps to remove the republicans from the Four Courts, they would - the Staters had already decided to attack their former comrades in the Four Courts and had already accepted the offer from Westminster of equipment with which to carry-out the task.
British artillery, aircraft, armoured cars, machine guns, small arms and ammunition were by then in the possession of Collins and his team, who then used the 'JJ kidnap'-incident as a further 'reason' to press ahead with the assault.
At 3.40am, on Wednesday, 28th June 1922, the republican forces inside the Four Courts were given an ultimatum by Collins and his men, acting in support of Westminster - 'surrender before 4am and leave the building'.
The republicans ignored the threat and held their ground and, less than half-an-hour later - at about 4.30am - the Staters opened fire on the republicans with British-supplied 18-pounder guns and practically destroyed the building (pictured), an act which was recently described as "..a major national calamity..an assault on the collective memory of the nation..such actions are considered as war crimes..a cultural atrocity.."
The IRA held out for two days before leaving the building, but fought-on elsewhere in Dublin until early July, 1922, with Oscar Traynor (who later joined the Fianna Fáil party) in command.
'JJ Ginger' was rescued by his Stater colleagues on Friday, 30th June 1922 when they finally managed to enter the then shell of a building where the Four Courts once stood and, within months, was demoted from a Lieutenant-General to a Major-General and then to a Colonel, a position he was to remain at.
He got married in 1922 and, between 1924 and 1944 (he died, aged 56, in the Richmond Hospital in Dublin from a heart attack on the 19th February of that year), he was shifted around like a pawn on a chess board : chief lecturer in the FS Army school of instruction, director of Number 2 (intelligence) bureau, OC equitation school, quartermaster-general and director of the military archives.
We wonder did he consider himself to be the man who helped give 'credence' to the Civil War...?
"We no longer recognise the authority of the present head of the army, and renew our allegiance to the existing Irish Republic..."
- part of a Proclamation issued on the 18th February 1922 to Michael Collins, Richard Mulcahy and other pro-Treaty leadership figures from the Officer Commanding of the Mid-Limerick Brigade IRA, Volunteer Liam Forde.
The split between Irish republicans and the Stater renegades was widening.
That Brigade was the first military unit of the IRA to formally break with the pro-Treaty Free State administration : it was a direct act of defiance against the Pro-Treaty leadership following the signing of the Treaty of Surrender in December 1921, which Irish republicans viewed (and still view) as a betrayal of the Republic.
Those repudiated by the republican forces included Michael Collins, Richard Mulcahy (the FS 'Minister of Defence') and Eoin O'Duffy (the 'Chief of Staff' of the Stater Army).
The IRA, rightly, no longer felt bound by the decisions of a political administration which now swore allegiance to the English Crown.
On the cusp of civil war...
In an unrelated/coincidental development in London, as Volunteer Forde and his fighters were making the lie of the land clear to the Staters, a British Army Field Marshall, a Mr Henry Wilson, stepped down as 'Chief of the Imperial General Staff' and, back in Ireland, at that same time, Ballylongford and Ballybunion RIC barracks in County Kerry were handed over to the IRA.
The then British Prime Minister, a Mr David Lloyd George, had his hands full on that 18th February - wondering whether his proxy Free State militia in Ireland could take on and defeat the Irish republican forces, who he could get to replace Mr Wilson (!), and what use would the IRA make of the two surrendered barracks?
As Mr George was juggling his 'what ifs' in London on the 18th, the uncertainties for an RIC member in Belfast had been removed.
The RIC 'Sergeant', a Mr Eugene Ahern (51), a Cork man, was due to be buried the next day in Emlaghfad Graveyard, which is located about one mile from the town of Ballymote, in County Sligo.
On the 15th of February, 1922, Mr Ahern and his patrol returned to Springfield Road Barracks in Belfast and were packing-up for the night ; the RIC member beside him was dismantling his machine-gun (he had removed the ammunition drum but never cleared the barrel) when the gun went off.
The bullet in the barrel caught Mr Ahern in his side, nearly blowing him off his feet ; he was rushed by his colleagues to the near-by 'Royal Victoria Hospital' but died within minutes of being admitted.
He was buried on the 19th.
In Sligo, as stated - not in his native Cork.
The day before Mr Ahern was buried, news broke of the death of a member of the Black and Tans in Limerick, a Scottish man, Mr Lauchlan McEdward (20, 'Service Number 81157').
Mr McEdward, described by some British sources as "a Scottish Temporary Cadet with the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC)" and by others as "a Black and Tan during the Irish revolutionary period..." was said by those sources to have met his death "during an incident involving the accidental discharge of a gun that was being unloaded" and/or "fatally shot while out walking when attacked by several gunmen...".
The (deliberate, in our opinion) obfuscation would be done for a number of reasons - to mask the shame on him and his family for being associated with that gang of lowlife armed paramilitary thugs, to prevent an attack on those attending his funeral service by those opposed to the Black and Tans and/or in an attempt to confuse the enemy on the reliability and accuracy of their intelligence networks.
And in yet another 'accidental death', on the same date that Mr McEdward's killing was announced, an 'Ulster (sic) Special Constabulary' patrol was 'on checkpoint duty' at a location known locally as 'Spawell', between Enniskillen and Kinawley, in County Fermanagh, when a lorry failed to stop for them.
So they opened fire on it.
The lorry stopped abruptly at an impromptu angle and some of the USC checkpoint party approached it, cautiously, guns at the ready.
They opened the drivers door and discovered that the driver, now dead, was one of their own - 'Special Constable' James McInnes (25).
Ooops...
==========================
ON THIS DATE (18TH FEBRUARY) 103 YEARS AGO : IRA VOLUNTEER'S LAST NIGHT WITH HIS MOTHER.
On the 19th February, in 1923, IRA officer Thomas O'Sullivan, of Ballineanig, Kerry, was shot dead by a Free State Army officer near Dingle, in that same county.
The Stater who shot him was an ex-IRA man who had been expelled from the Republican Movement for misconduct and, as such, must have felt right at home with his new comrades.
This account of the death of Volunteer Thomas O'Sullivan is taken from Dorothy Macardle's book 'The Tragedies Of Kerry' -
' "I had twelve children, but I had none like him," Mrs. O'Sullivan says.
Tom was twenty-two years old when he was killed ; he was a teacher of Irish and a fisherman, and he was a Volunteer since the Black-and-Tan time ; he was Commandant of his Battalion when he died.
They (the Staters) came raiding for him in December, with their lorries, but his mother got him away. He was going fishing and had his hand on the kettle, going to make himself a cup of tea, when she ran in with the warning and he made out through the back door. She lifted a bucket and went up the road towards them thinking to hold them awhile in talk.
"Who's that man running?", the officer shouted to her, and she called back "I don't know at all.."
"You know well, you devil!" he answered, "'Tis your son, Tom," and he went down on his knee and fired. The bullet slit Tom's jersey, but Tom was not hurt. But the danger to him seemed more than she could bear.
"Wisha, give me your gun," she said to Tom that night, "and I'll carry it into town for you."
"No, mother," he answered, "that's what I'll never do. I didn't take my oath to break it," he said. "I know what's before me, and I'm satisfied to face that."
He used to come home sometimes, never to sleep, but maybe to change his clothes. He came in on the eighteenth of February (1923). His mother thought he looked troubled. "Have you any letter from Dan?" he asked her at once. Dan, his brother, was in jail. She gave him the letter and he read it under the lamp.
"Dan's all right," he said with relief in his voice, and gave her the letter again. Then he said, "Come down with me now."
She went with him down the bohereen.
It was getting dark and she could not well see his face. Suddenly he put his arms round her. "Goodbye, mother," he said.
"Why do you talk like that, Tom," she said, half-crying, "and you always so brave?"
"Ah, mother," he answered, "I'll be under locks from you soon." He took her hand then and they walked together a little further on.
He was going to sleep in a house across the fields, where he'd be safe, he said.
He started to go but came back to her again : "You're not ashamed of me, mother?" he asked her. It was in Irish, the speech of her heart, that she answered him.
In the dark of the night a man came to her door. It was Bob McCarthy, Tom's friend : she knew him well.
"'Tis pity to be disturbing you," he said, "but the Staters are in the fields below. Where's Tom?"
She told him and he ran out.
She was on her knees praying when she heard a shot fired. She started up and drew the bolt and ran out. She stood, crying out her prayers and blessings, against the gable of the house when she heard another shot and another again.
The man who was with Tom hiding in a hollow knows what happened then, but he is a prisoner, sentenced to fifteen years.
Only the little that he told to a fellow-prisoner, since released, is known -
"They were hiding and spoke to one another, not thinking the enemy were near, but they heard a voice call out suddenly : "That's O'Sullivan! I know his talk." They knew the man who spoke. He had been expelled from the Volunteers for misconduct and was a Free State Officer now. His kind were the most vindictive, always. Tom O'Sullivan must have known that this was death. The man saw him and fired, and Tom fell.
He was badly wounded and put his hands up as he lay on the ground.
"I surrender to you," he said. "Get a priest for me before you do any more." The man fired again and Tom moaned, "O Jesus and Mary come against me" and died.
Bob McCarthy evaded the enemy that night. He had another month to live. It was he who came to Mrs. O'Sullivan to tell her that her son was dead...'
That Free State officer, and other sleveen's of his type, still reside in, and operate from, Leinster House.
Parasites.
RIP Volunteer Thomas O'Sullivan.
Thanks for the visit, and for reading - appreciated!
Sharon and the team.
(We'll be back on Wednesday, 4th March 2026.)
