Commemorating William Connor and James Lacey, victims of the Barrowhouse Ambush 16 May 1921

The Barrowhouse chapel bell rang out at 4 o’clock on the afternoon of 16th May last. It was around that time 100 years ago that two young men from Shanganaghmore lay dead on the ditch side of the road at Barrowhouse. William Connor and James Lacey were just 26 years of age when they joined James’s brother Joe, Paddy Dooley, Joe Maher, Mick Maher, Jack O’Brien and Joe Ryan in an attack on RIC men travelling on bicycles on the road from Ballylinan. That same chapel bell which had summoned William and James and their family members to Sunday Mass was now reminding a new generation of Barrowhouse folk of the two young local men buried in the same grave next to the local school they had attended as young boys. At 4 o’clock also, Connor family members lay a wreath at the ambush site, while a descendent of the Lacey family performed a similar task at the grave of the two Barrowhouse freedom fighters. These were the arrangements made by the local Barrowhouse committee in the light of Covid restrictions. Plans are in place to construct a redesigned memorial at the ambush site and to publish a detailed account of the Barrowhouse ambush of 16th May 1921. The Nationalist newspaper of 28th May 1921 under the heading ‘The Last Post’ gave an account of what it described as ‘the last act of the sad scene of the grim tragedy that was enacted on Monday week at Barrowhouse’. The writer described Connor and Lacey as young men ‘fired with the spirit of patriotism ….. reared together, school mates together, play mates together ….. the friendship and intimacy of youth blossomed into the knowing comradeship of manhood and then – even in death united and buried in the one grave.’ Requiem Mass for the dead was celebrated at 11 o’clock that Thursday morning, 19th May 1921 by Rev. J. Nolan, curate St. Michael’s Athy, assisted by Rev. M. Ryan CC Kilmead and Rev. M O’Rourke CC Athy, with other priests from Athy, Castledermot, Moone and the Dominican Fr. John O’Sullivan in the choir. When the Mass was finished the two coffins were carried by I.R.A. Volunteers to the nearby grave and lowered into the double grave. The last post was sounded by a trumpeter, followed by three volleys fired over the grave by members of the Carlow Kildare brigade. The Barrowhouse group in charge of the ambush centenary commemoration is to be congratulated for its efforts to remember with dignity and pride the sacrifices of William Conner and James Lacey. Sunday 21st May also saw another commemoration when the National Commemoration Day to mark the Great Famine was held. Again because of Covid restrictions this year’s commemoration, following on the first formal State commemoration held in Skibereen, Co. Cork in 2009, was marked on Sunday by the President of Ireland in a ceremony in the grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin. Here in Athy we have joined for the last number of years the National Famine Day Commemoration by holding a service of remembrance in St. Mary’s Cemetery opposite St. Vincent’s Hospital. This cemetery served the needs of Athy’s Workhouse which was opened in January 1844, just a year or more before the Great Famine started. It was in St. Mary’s Cemetery that the victims of the famine who died either in the Workhouse or in the nearby Fever Hospital were buried in unmarked graves. The Workhouse records maintained at national level allowed me some years ago to calculate that 1,205 Workhouse/Fever Hospital inmates died during the years of the famine. This year because of Covid restrictions the local memorial service for the famine dead could not be held. The deaths of over one million Irish men, women and children during the Great Famine had a lasting depressive impact on the Irish people. As we emerge from decades of memory loss relating to the famine, we should embrace with thoughtfulness and with understanding the hardship suffered by so many Irish families just a few generations ago. In the famine cemetery of St. Mary’s there also lies those forgotten men and women who were the subject of the recent Mother and Babies Home Report. I wrote in a previous Eye on the Past of the work which has commenced to identify all those who died in the Workhouse and the later renamed County Home. I wrote a letter to the Mayor of County Kildare in March of this year asking for Kildare County Council to provide funding for the design and construction of a suitable memorial to honour those who died in Athy’s Workhouse/Fever Hospital and who were buried in unmarked graves. It is quite extraordinary to find that there appears to be no extant record of the names of those who died and are buried in St. Mary’s. As a community we have a duty to honour and respect our dead, whether it is a life which ended in armed conflict or a life expired in the drab surroundings of a Victorian workhouse or in an institution adopted by the Irish state and utilised by Irish society to further the culture of concealment and secrecy which was the hallmark of the first seven decades of the new Irish State.

War of Independence deaths in Kildare or of Kildare men elsewhere in Ireland [3]

The truce which came into effect on 11th July 1921 came approximately four months after the execution by the I.R.A. of Mrs. Mary Lindsey and her driver. The intervening four months saw 14 violent deaths in or about Co. Kildare. Nine days after St. Patrick’s Day Edward Leslie, an R.I.C. man died in the Military Hospital on the Curragh of gunshot wounds sustained in an IRA ambush at Scramogue, Roscommon three days earlier. On 29th March members of the Monaghan IRA Brigade were responsible for shooting dead, during the course of a raid for arms, 60-year-old William Fleming and his 24 year old son, both of whom farmed a small holding of 20 acres. It was one of the many indefensible actions by the I.R.A. during the War of Independence. There is no record of violent deaths in Co. Kildare during April 1921, but in the rest of the country 140 persons were killed on both sides of the armed conflict. Included in that number was Arthur Vicars, the first honorary secretary of the Co. Kildare Archaeological Society who was shot by the I.R.A. at his home at Kilmorna House, Listowel on 14th April. Vicars, who had served as the Ulster King of Arms from 1893 to 1907, had resigned that position following the theft from Dublin Castle of the Irish Crown jewels. It is now believed that the thief was Frank Shackleton, brother of the polar explorer, Ernest Shackleton. It was claimed by the Kerry No. 1 I.R.A. Brigade that Vicars was a spy, thereby seeking to justify his killing and the burning of his house. Included amongst the five women who suffered violent deaths in April 1921 was Catherine Carroll, a 36-year-old single woman who lived in a rural part of north Co. Monaghan with her disabled brother and her elderly mother. Eoin O’Duffy who would later serve as Commissioner of the Garda Siochana until sacked by Éamon de Valera, ordered her execution for alleged spying. On 3rd May Jack O’Sullivan who lived in Kill died while a prisoner in Ballykilner internment camp. He was a member of Kill Company Kildare I.R.A. Brigade and had been arrested following the ambush at Kill the previous August. He was buried in St. Corbans, Naas. Two days after O’Sullivan’s death John Hickey, a 44-year-old farmer of Newtown, Kildare, was found dead on the far side of a trench dug on the road near Newtown. He had suffered a fractured skull, how it was not known. On 16th May 1921 the War of Independence found its first two victims in the Athy area. James Lacey and William Connor, both 26 years of age and from Shanganaghmore, Barrowhouse, were shot and killed during an ambush at Barrowhouse. Both were members of the B. Company 5th Battalion Carlow Kildare Brigade which was based in Athy. With six other Volunteers they prepared to ambush R.I.C. men cycling from Ballylinan R.I.C. Barracks to the nearby R.I.C. Barracks in Grangemellon. I have written previously of the Barrowhouse ambush and most recently in Eye on the Past No. 1371 published on 9th April 2019. The five R.I.C. constables lead by Sergeant John McKale apparently saw a man with a gun in his hand running across a field towards a ditch near the road on which they were cycling. The R.I.C. men took cover and when shots rang out, they returned fire. When the ambush party retreated the R.I.C. found the bodies of the two I.R.A. Volunteers. As was a common feature following attacks on the R.I.C. or the Crown Forces there were reprisals in the Barrowhouse area that night resulting in the burning of Patrick Lynch’s home and workshop and the house of Mary Malone. The neighbouring farm of Martin Lyons was also attacked, resulting in the destruction of a threshing machine and a large quantity of straw and hay. The following day Albert Carter from Carbery who joined the R.I.C. just four months earlier was killed when ambushed in Letterkenny. That same day several R.I.C. constables on cycle patrol were attacked in Kinnity, Co. Offaly. One constable was killed outright and a second wounded. The wounded R.I.C. man was Edward Doran of Cardenton, Athy who died on 19th May. Four further violent deaths were recorded in Co. Kildare between 5th and 17th June. Just four days before the truce Bridget Doran, aged 34 years and her stepson, aged 11 years were burned to death after two men, believed to be I.R.A. Volunteers, during a robbery sprinkled paraffin around the store over which the Doran family lived. No one ever admitted involvement in the shameful and horrendous deaths which occurred at Moorefield, Newbridge. The final Co. Kildare related killing occurred on 8th July when Jack Rossiter, a 57-year-old groom who worked at Maddenstown Lodge, was shot and killed during an I.R.A. attack on the Dublin Cork train in which he was travelling. I understand that Connor and Lacy, both of whom were killed at the Barrowhouse ambush, will be commemorated when covid restrictions are lifted. The information for this and the two previous articles on this subject mainly comes from the superb publication ‘The Dead of the Irish Revolution’ by Eunan O’Halpin and Daithí Ó Corráin. A copy of this remarkable book should be in every Irish home.

Irish Traditional Music and Athy

Irish traditional music, whether songs in Irish or English, instrumental music or dance music, has been passed on from generation to generation. Here in Athy, the Anglo-Norman town on the river Barrow we are proud to claim as our own William Beauford who made several contributions to the first book on Irish music published in Ireland. Joseph Walker’s ‘Historical Memoirs of Irish Bards’, published in 1786, included four articles by the Athy resident Beauford. Walker, a 24-year-old clerk in the Irish Treasury, was described by Nicholas Carolan in his 1990 O’Riada Memorial lecture as ‘a literary dilettante of English descent’. Beauford, like Walker, was apparently of English descent and a member of the Royal Irish Academy and over the years had contributed several papers on different aspects of Irish culture and archaeology. He was, I believe, a teacher in a classical school in Athy and may have been attached to the school operated by Rev. Nicholas Ashe who was elected Sovereign of Athy in 1797. The 19th century Irish scholar Eugene O’Curry was highly critical of the Athy man’s contributions to Walker’s book, claiming that Beauford ‘was an unscrupulous person ….. who pawned his pretended knowledge of facts on the well intentioned but credulous Walker.’ Apparently Beauford’s views on the evolution of the Irish harp were based on an insufficient knowledge of the Irish language which led to analysis based on an incorrect interpretation of some ancient Irish scripts. One of the many mistakes subsequently revealed in Walker’s pioneering work was the claim the Irish harp was improved by the Jesuit Robert Nugent, who for a time lived in Kilkea Castle when that castle was leased to the Jesuit order. This somewhat tenuous link between an Irish traditional musical instrument and South Kildare regrettably was not correct so we must come closer to our own time for links between South Kildare and Irish traditional music. Uilleann pipers with family roots in counties Wicklow and Wexford were frequent visitors to Athy and amongst their numbers were members of the Cash family. John Cash who died in 1909 was an influential uilleann piper whose fame is captured in the song ‘Cash the Piper’. His son James and other Cash cousins were also noted pipers and many of us will recall a family relation, Bill Cash, who lived with us in Offaly Street in the 1950s. Perhaps Athy’s most noteworthy connection with the Irish piping tradition comes from the visits of the Doran brothers from nearby County Wicklow to the town. Johnny and Felix Doran often played the uilleann pipes on the approach road to Geraldine Park on big match days. Their visits to Athy were never complete without calling on local uilleann piper Neddy Whelan at his forge in Kilmoroney. John Doran’s uilleann pipe playing was regarded as masterful and thanks to the late Kevin Danaher we can today listen to Johnny Doran on the CD, ‘The Bunch of Keys’. Johnny is forever linked with Athy for it was in our own St. Vincent’s Hospital that he passed away on 19th January 1950. While he was a patient in the hospital he was visited by his fellow piper Willie Clancy and it was in St. Vincent’s Hospital that Johnny Doran played the uilleann pipes for the last time. His brother Felix died in England in 1972. The greatest uilleann piper of our generation, the County Kildare born Liam Óg O’Flynn, lived in south Kildare for many years and played a number of concerts in Athy locally during the annual Shackleton Autumn School. Athy native and resident Brian Hughes is today regarded as one of Ireland’s finest uilleann pipers as befits a musician who received his early training in the Pipers Club, Henrietta Street, Dublin. The uilleann pipes belong to the bagpipe family and here in south Kildare there is a long history of pipe bands. St. Brigid’s Pipe Band organised by local publican John Bailey of Stanhope Street was one early pipe band founded before World War I. It was followed years later by the Churchtown Pipe Band and later again by the Kilberry Pipe band. Perhaps the most famous pipe band in this part of the county was the Narraghmore Pipe Band. Today the bagpiping tradition continues with the St. Brigid’s Pipe Band, formed in recent years by Richard Bracken. The tradition of uilleann piping is today very much alive in the Athy area, with excellent pipers such as Toss Quinn and Joe Byrne and not forgetting Seamus Byrne and Ciaran O’Carroll. The weekly session in Clancys now going for 50 years or so, is Athy’s unique contribution to the Irish traditional music scene. That weekly session brings together a great number of musicians whose musical predecessors in the 1940s and later gave us Cully’s Ceili Band from Levitstown and the Ardellis Ceile Band, originally based in Fontstown. The recent re-establishment of a Comhaltas Ceoltoírí branch in Athy is a welcome development in a town historically referred to as a garrison town and one whose allegiances were not always seen as fully aligned with Irish traditional cultural values.

Wr of Independence deaths in Kildare or of Kildare men elsewhere in Ireland [2]

During the period of civil unrest extending from the Easter Rising of 1916 to the end of 1921, 2850 Irish men, women and children were killed as a result of what the historians Eunan O’Halpin and Daithí Ó Corráin describe as political violence. In the previous Eye on the Past I dealt with the County Kildare casualties of conflict, ending the with death of Wolfhill native Joseph Hughes, a sergeant in the R.I.C. who was killed while patrolling near St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Maynooth on 22nd February 1921. That same day there were nine other men killed. The I.R.A. were responsible for killing five R.I.C. officers in counties Kildare, Cork, Donegal, Wexford and Kerry as well as three English soldiers stationed in Strand Barracks, Limerick and an alleged spy in Co. Cork. The sole I.R.A. casualty on 23rd February was Michael Looney from the rebel county who died of septicaemia a week after being shot in the leg by Crown Forces. Between 23rd February and 10th March 1921 a total of 94 men were killed, for the most part I.R.A. Volunteers and members of the R.I.C. or the Crown Forces. A number of innocent bystanders were tragically killed during that brief period, including James Hayden, a 35-year-old farmer from Rathanna, Carlow who was shot by a North Staffordshire regiment soldier while standing with a group of men outside his local church. That same day Henry Guy, a 25-year-old ex-service man who lived in Baldoyle was shot and killed when two lorries of auxiliaries pulled up at Sutton Cross and opened fire on men who were playing pitch and toss. In both incidences it was claimed that the men who were unarmed disobeyed an order to halt. No soldiers were disciplined as a result of the shootings. It is of interest to note that two retired soldiers are currently being prosecuted in the north of Ireland for shooting dead I.R.A. commander Joe McCann in 1972 because the State Prosecutor claims ‘the killing was not justified as Mr. McCann was running away when he was shot.’ On 7th March Michael O’Callaghan who had served as mayor of Limerick in 1920 was shot and killed in his own house. That same night George Clancy, the then Mayor of Limerick was also killed. In their book, ‘The Dead of the Irish Revolution’ the authors O’Halpin and Ó Corráin comment that the killing of O’Callaghan and Clancy was believed to be the work of an auxiliary named George Nathan. This auxiliary would later join the republican side during the Spanish Civil war and would command a Marseillaise battalion. Kit Conway and a group of fifty Irish Volunteers joined Nathan’s battalion when he was recognised as a former black and tan. Nathan was confronted as regards his involvement in the killing of the Limerick mayors but he denied any involvement. Apparently his denial was accepted by the Irish Spanish Civil War Volunteers, even if not by I.R.A. Volunteers active in 1921. Nathan was killed rallying his battalion members in the Brunet salient north of Madrid in July 1937. On 11th March 1921 ten persons were killed. I.R.A. members accounted for six of that number, with two R.I.C. casualties. The remaining deaths were that of Mrs. Mary Lindsay and her chauffeur James Clarke. The killing of Mrs. Lindsey was one of the most controversial events of the War of Independence. Several writers have claimed she was from county Kildare but the late Tim Sheehan who published his book ‘Lady Hostage’ in 1990 confirmed that she was born Mary Georgina Rawson in county Mayo. The Rawson name was a prominent name in south Kildare in the early years of the 19th century and earlier. There may well have been a family connection between Mrs. Lindsay and Thomas Rawson, the controversial Glasealy and later Cardenton resident whose involvement in the 1798 Rebellion has been the subject of previous Eyes on the Past. Mrs. Lindsey was executed along with her chauffeur by the I.R.A. after both had been kidnapped and held hostage for several days. Mrs. Lindsay had learned on 28th January 1921 of an ambush planned by the I.R.A. and had informed the authorities in Ballincollig barracks Cork, as well as the local Catholic curate, with a request that the I.R.A. call off the ambush. The priest told the I.R.A. commander and the ambush party but he was not believed and the Crown Forces succeeded in surrounding the I.R.A. men. Eight I.R.A. men were captured and one of whom died of his wounds. Five of the I.R.A. men captured at the Dripsey ambush site were charged before a military court in Cork on 8th February and were sentenced to death. Two other I.R.A. men were to be tried later. Twenty days after the Dripsey ambush Mrs. Lindsay’s home was burned to the ground and herself and her driver were taken prisoner by the I.R.A. The Cork I.R.A. command offered to trade their lives for the lives of the five I.R.A. men awaiting execution. There was no response to that I.R.A. offer. The five men, John Lions (aged 26), Timothy McCarthy (aged 21), Thomas O’Brien (aged 21), Daniel O’Callaghan (aged 23) and Patrick O’Mahony (aged 24) were executed in the military barracks Cork on 28th February. Also executed with them was Sean Allen (aged 24), convicted of possessing a revolver and a booklet entitled ‘Night Fighting’. Of the two I.R.A. men whose trial had been delayed one was sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to 25 years in jail, while the other I.R.A. man’s injuries were such that his trial never took place. Mrs. Lindsay and her driver were executed by the I.R.A. and buried in an unmarked grave which has not been traced to this day. She was one of 98 women killed during the War of Independence. Their deaths and especially that of the elderly widow Mrs. Lindsay provoked a backlash and aroused a lot of criticism within the ranks of the I.R.A. ………………………..TO BE CONTINUED