Buried Lives

by Bury, Robin;

  The only law enforcement agency at that time, the Irish Republican Police (IRP), was composed of the IRA. It was their responsibility to investigate the murders. However, it is not impossible that the crimes committed under their noses were done without their connivance. Michael O’Neill’s brother, Danny, was charged with finding out who killed John Bradfield of Killowen. He was in charge of the republican police in the Bandon area and has now been directly implicated in the murders. So it seems unlikely that the IRP was ever going to punish the killers. The IRA is more known for punishing its enemies and so-called spies than those who killed Protestant civilians at a time when the British Army and police had withdrawn.

  Tom Hales, the IRA West Cork brigade commander, as well as Sean Buckley, a leader of the anti-Treaty side, condemned the murders, having moved too late to put a stop to them. A local Protestant, J.L.B. Deane, wrote to The Irish Times in 1994, stating that: ‘Sean Buckley was on the ‘anti-Treaty side … [he] was elected to the Dáil in 1938 and at subsequent elections until his retirement, and many Protestants … voted for him, not because they supported the policy of Fianna Fáil, but as a mark of gratitude and respect for what he had done in 1922’.

  Deane is clear on why Protestants were murdered. He writes: ‘Protestants were murdered because of their religion and without any suggestion of wrongdoing on their part.’56

  Cristoir de Baróid claimed:

  The two-day outrages against Protestants by a maverick IRA group in south-west Cork in April 1922 were stamped out immediately by the local IRA leadership. The Northern IRA raised a storm of protest with the West Cork Brigade over the killings. 57

  De Baróid is a well-known figure from the Bandon area, who was aware of what had happened. But the ‘local IRA leadership’ did nothing to stop the murders and attempted murders at the time, being absent in Dublin. But why did they not thoroughly investigate and punish the perpetrators?

  One theory is that of the grandson of Jasper Wolfe, a Methodist from Skibbereen who became a President of the Law Society of Ireland in 1940, who was targeted by the IRA at the time of the murders. He wrote: ’It seemed that some Volunteers had slipped the leash of Republican discipline and were running wild. What would happen next was anybody’s guess.’58 But if they had ‘slipped the leash’, they had done so in the knowledge that they were a close part of the IRA family, had served in Barry’s flying column and were not going to be disciplined later on by Barry and Hales.

  What is clear is that there was a widespread breakdown of discipline in the west Cork IRA at a time when there was a split over those who opposed the Treaty and those who supported it. The widespread nature of the attacks in four different battalion areas of the IRA from Killowen to Skibbereen indicates a lack of central leadership, but also varying degrees of enthusiasm for the attacks. After all, almost all of those murdered were unarmed and by April 1922, part of a former, defeated and leaderless people.

  The reaction of some the Catholic bishops was strong:

  We have seen too many instances … of barbarous treatment of our Protestant fellow countrymen. Not only has their property been at times unjustly seized and they themselves occasionally driven from their homes and their lives have in some cases been murderously attacked. We condemn unsparingly these manifestations of savagery…our own Catholic people we solemnly warn against that might bring any of them to imbrue their hands in the blood of a fellow man.59

  Later in February 1923, the Bishop of Cork, Dr Cohalan, said that ‘Physical force has always been a curse in Ireland … Protestants have suffered severely during the period of civil war in the South’. He called on ‘Republicans in arms … to seek reconciliation with their fellow countrymen who have accepted the Free State Constitution …’60

  The reaction of Erskine Childers, a Protestant anti-Treaty supporter who had changed his mind, having been one of the signatories to the Treaty in 1921, was strong and clear: he thought the killings were sectarian, and so wrote: ‘Sectarian crime is the foulest crime, and it is regarded as such in the tradition of our people, for it violates not only every Christian principle but the very basis of nationality as well.’61

  There was an exodus of Protestants from the Bandon Valley following these outrages. The Royal Navy commander in Queenstown, now Cobh, feared that there would be a major exodus and planned to mount an evacuation by sea. It is likely that between 100 and 200 people fled, some staying away, others eventually returning. Most fled by train.

  It has been suggested that a major reason for the departure of the Protestant community throughout the 26 counties, not just in west Cork, was their loyalty and ties to the local Protestant peer, or landlord. When the landlord departed for England, his faithful supporters went with him. But by 1921, landlords had little of their original estates left and their Protestant tenants were generally no longer tied to them by land rents. Thus Lord Bandon, whose house was burnt in 1921, wrote of local Protestant farmers in the Bandon area: ‘The Sinn Féiners are trying to drive all the Protestant farmers out of the country – a great many of them are selling their farms and leaving – they are warned not to sell their farms to other Protestants’.62 What Lord Bandon did or did not do had little or no effect on the attacks on local Protestant farmers around Bandon.

  In what was then Queen’s County, Frank Meehan tells a story about his mother’s persecution for sectarian reasons. Frank comes from an Irish Parliamentary Party background; his grandfather, Patrick A. Meehan, was a Redmondite MP for the Leix division of Queen’s County and, on his death in 1916, was succeeded by his son, Patrick J. Meehan, who lost his seat to Sinn Féin in the 1918 election ‘through intimidation and personation’ (interview, June 2007). Members of Sinn Féin beat up his uncle, John Meehan, who was reported as being autistic, tied him to the bed and broke all the furniture and crockery in the house. They wrote ‘Up the republic, up Sinn Féin’ on the walls and drove the cattle off the farm.

  In Frank’s words:

  When growing up, the three children had a pony between them but the only one interested was Eileen [Frank’s mother]. She disliked riding the pony along the roads so rode it in Emo Court estate, with the permission of the Earl. One day, when riding through Emo Court, she came across some young IRA men robbing Smiths of Mountmellick’s grocery van. Recognising them she said, ‘I know you’. One pulled her off the pony and shot the pony dead. Another said, ‘That’s the daughter of the widow Cobbe of Clonterry’, not knowing Mrs Cobbe had re-married. They presumed she was a Protestant because of the name Cobbe. One of the men said, ‘Go home, you Orange bitch, to your old one and if you even mention this, we will kill you and burn you out of it’. She went home crying and had a deep hatred for Irish republicanism all her life.

  Further north, in Drumgarra, Co. Monaghan, more Protestants – the Fleming family – were involved in an IRA incident at the end of March 1921. They were attacked by no less than forty IRA men, who demanded that they evacuate their house. William Fleming, aged 64, had been a marked man by the IRA since he had shot one of their members a year earlier during an attack on his farm. He surrendered, but that did not save him. He and his son were shot dead in the road and their bodies thrown in a ditch. Their house was set on fire. While the raid was taking place, another son and daughter hid in an outhouse with Fleming’s aged mother and survived. But several weeks later, Mrs Fleming died of shock in the workhouse in Monaghan, leaving two grandchildren behind with no father or mother to raise them. Clearly these were vengeance killings, but perhaps there was also an agrarian motive?

  The murder of an elderly clergyman, John Finlay, took place on 12 June 1921. The 80-year-old retired Dean of Leighlin Cathedral, and one time chaplain to a Lord Lieutenant, was taken from his house in Bawnboy, Co. Cavan, and murdered in the early hours of Sunday morning. The IRA took him out on the lawn, shot him in the head and then battered his head to a pulp. The Church of Ireland Gazette commented that ‘one can only grieve at the awful sight of one’s native land lapsing into a condition
of moral degradation to which modern history affords no parallel’.63 The papers recorded the murders of Protestants, but little effort was made to explain why so many were shot. What had they done to deserve their fates? What offence had Dean Finlay committed?

  The Rt Revd Robert Miller, Bishop of Cashel, Emly, Lismore and Waterford, preached a sermon in Christ Church, Dublin on 8 October, 1922 at a time when the civil war was at its height. He said:

  … during the past few years the whole Church has passed through experiences which caused grave apprehension regarding our future in this land. Many of our people were driven from their homes, many others left through fear of violence, with the result that many of our parishes, especially where numbers were small, were unable to meet their financial responsibilities.

  It is only fair to say that the Government have done their utmost to protect our people from injustice, but owing to the fact that neither police nor military forces were available, the Government have been unable to prevent brutal tyranny to many of our people, and wholesale destruction of property.64

  He went on to urge members to stay, as ‘they are attached to their native land’, and claimed that ‘while it is true that many people have had no choice as to leaving the country, there are others who have left, and who contemplate leaving, without sufficient reason’. He believed the new Provisional Government was doing its best to restore law and order and had a ‘broad spirit of toleration’ and ‘excellent intentions.’65

  A month later, Dr Miller addressed the annual Synod of his dioceses as follows:

  We have done our duty as peaceful and law-abiding citizens, and we again ask for increased immediate effort to ensure protection and security. We acknowledge that much has been done. We appreciate the courtesy of our rulers, and their evident desire to protect our interests but yet we have still very good cause for complaint. The feeling of insecurity continues, and the causes which have led to it are still daily manifest. Burning of property, refusal to pay just and lawful debts, gross and public interference with the rights of private property … Honest, brave men will face physical violence, the destruction of their property, but such deed as we are now speaking of chill the hearts of strong men and fill them with an overmastering desire to get away from a country where, in their opinion, civilization is losing its hold.66

  Bishop Miller did not mince his words. It is significant, as mentioned earlier, that he had been one of the delegation of three called on at a secret meeting of the Church of Ireland General Synod some six months earlier, in May 1922, to meet Michael Collins and William Cosgrave ‘in order to lay before them the dangers to which Protestants in the 26 counties were daily exposed.’67 It seems that the Synod must have thought Bishop Miller’s diocese was being subjected to much violence and intimidation and needed protection and assurances. The meeting took place on 12 May and Gregg records the outcome as ‘satisfactory,’ but the relevant page in his dairy detailing discussion that took place is – significantly – missing.68

  Some 100 people from Miller’s dioceses of Cashel, Emly and Lismore applied to the IGC for assistance, petitions including cases of intimidation from ex-RIC members or relatives. South Tipperary was particularly violent during the civil war. Michael Hopkinson tells us that ‘British military reports frequently dwelt on the lawlessness of South Tipperary and regarded it as the prime example of the Provisional Government’s failure to assert its authority’.69

  Bishop Miller was installed in 1919. In 1922 he was 56 years old, having served as Dean of Waterford between 1916 and 1919. Prior to that, he had been rector of Donegal. His dioceses took in most parts of the South Riding of Co. Tipperary, including Cashel, Tipperary, Templemore, Thurles, Clonmel and Carrick-on-Suir. Insights into the sufferings of Church of Ireland members in his dioceses in this period can be found in the compensation awards of the Irish Grants Committee in the National Archives in London.

  A sectarian attack took place in Newport, west of Cashel. In 1921, the rector of Newport parish, west of Cashel, was the Revd Leonard Henry. Bishop Miller gave him as an example when addressing the synod:

  It was difficult to speak with calmness of the brutal treatment of this worthy man. They deeply sympathized with Mr Henry in his unmerited suffering, and earnestly trusted that he might have a happy future in a land other than his birth. It was pleasant to be able to acknowledge the readiness of the Government to give immediate payment to cover the financial losses that Mr Henry has sustained.70

  Revd Henry and family were forced to leave Newport parish in 1922 after a period of intense intimidation by the local Brigade of the IRA and then the Irregulars. His application to the IGC gives a vivid account of why he was forced out. The incident was not reported at the time in the local press or The Irish Times.71

  Henry was born in 1864, graduated with a BA from Trinity College in 1899 and was curate of Dunmore East parish near Waterford from 1901 to 1903 and then again from 1906 to 1912. He moved to Grean in Tipperary in 1912 and then as rector to Newport in 1915, aged 51, along with his wife and three children. He was vigorous in his opposition to physical force nationalism and supported the British forces and RIC operating with the Auxiliaries in his parish. The IRA was highly active in the Newport area, where the RIC and Auxiliaries had a strong counter-insurgency presence.

  Revd Henry applied to the IGC on 2 November 1926. His case is interesting in that it spans the period 1921 to 1922, pre- and post-civil war. In a lengthy, handwritten claim from Bournemouth, where he then lived with his family, he made it vividly clear why he was intimidated and eventually forced to leave. Pre-Treaty, he and his wife ‘assisted the British soldiers and the RIC stationed in my parish in every way possible’. They supplied the RIC with food when they were being boycotted.

  Henry ‘frequently denounced disloyalty and murderous deeds from the pulpit’72 even though he was warned ‘by several of his parishioners’73 not to do so as he was asking for trouble. Trouble came when the ‘Church in Newport was twice attacked … many of the windows being smashed’.74

  Henry claimed that ‘ten murders took place in my parish and immediate district’,75 though he does not identify the people murdered or when. He reported activities of the local IRA on several occasions, once passing on information to the RIC about the whereabouts of an IRA safe house in his parish, resulting in ‘imprisonment and heavy fines’.76 The IRA got to know Henry had informed and he believed that ‘it was largely as a result of this incident I suffered’.77

  Significantly, he was not personally attacked while the RIC was present in Newport but soon after it was disbanded in early 1922, perhaps partly because he supported the Treaty. He was forced to leave Ireland following an attack on the rectory in June 1922. It is not clear what threat he posed to the local brigade of the anti-Treaty IRA at that time, but they demonstrated their dislike for him and his church by burning the Church of Ireland rectory a few days after his departure. Henry claimed £2,970 and was awarded £1,218 by the Irish Free State in 1924 ‘for loss of my possessions’,78 which included his furniture. He claimed for the difference of £1,752, believing he had been hard done by, plus £2,372 for the loss of a free house and loss of earnings (strangely he had not taken up a posting in the Church of England by the time he applied, saying he was too unwell to work). He maintained that he was almost destitute.

  The IGC picked up the fact that Henry’s wife had an income of £525 per annum ‘and it is difficult to understand why they are therefore subjected to live in such discomfort’.79 He was awarded £500 on 3 December 1926, while the rectory was restored with money from the Shaw-Renton Commission and later sold by the Church of Ireland. Henry lived on in Bournemouth for the rest of his life. It appears that he died in 1936 aged 71 or 72 as he is mentioned in Crockford’s Clerical Directory in 1936 but not 1937.80

  There was a dispute of a different nature in the scenic Glen of Aherlow, where Robert Sanders had a major commercial enterprise. Sanders owned 4,000 acres, which he had acquired from the Massy Dawson
family in 1916. The Sanders were originally from Charleville, Co. Cork, and in the nineteenth century had married into the Massy Dawson family, large landowners in Co. Tipperary. Robert had been active in the Landlord’s Defence League, which opposed the Land League, and was a JP for both Cork and Tipperary for many years, as well a magistrate from 1918. He claimed that the latter position had put his name on ‘the black list by the Rebel Party’.81 Clearly something had aroused the enmity of the IRA: in 1920 Sanders was ambushed while with his wife in a car, but they escaped unharmed.

  Sanders ran ‘a dairy farm, dry cattle, thousands of sheep on the Galtees, a nursery, and sawmills, among many things’.82 On 28 August 1920, as members of the Transport and General Workers Union, the sawmill employees and herd farm hands went on strike. Sanders refused to recognise the Union, saying that he would negotiate with the strikers himself. The police were called in and, after some demonstrations, the strike was settled.

  The Glen of Aherlow was occupied by the Irregulars until October 1922. They moved into Ballinacourtie House, the residence of Sanders, and, as the Free State army approached the area in late 1922, they burnt the house, destroyed the sawmills, burnt the unoccupied Church of Ireland Clonbeg rectory and destroyed the school house. Sanders put in a claim for £77,000 to the IGC for everything he could think of, including the burning of Ballinacourtie House, the schoolhouse, outhouses, gardener’s and steward’s houses, furniture, sawmills and the rectory. In 1924 he received a decree from the Tipperary court for £28,700. The County Court Judge Sealy said in summing up: