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.

John Howard Wrestler and Barrowhouse Ambush

Professional wrestling on television was a Saturday afternoon sport which held audiences enthralled long before professional soccer was able to secure a stranglehold on national T.V.  I can remember afternoons spent watching the wrestlers going through their well rehearsed performances when during the 1970s I lived in Monaghan town.  Little did I know that one of the wrestlers, who week in week out featured on that T.V. coverage, was an Athy man who in the 1970s lived just down the road from me in Carrickmacross.  Johnny Howard, a giant of a man, was one of a family of six born in the Howard family home in Gray’s Lane, Ardreigh.  His father Jimmy was himself one of six Howard brothers from Ardreigh, five of whom, Paddy, Jimmy, Barney, Michael and Jack all emigrated to England.  The only Howard brother to remain in Athy was Willie, who in the 1950s lived in Janeville Lane.  So far as I can remember Willie was a widower and when his brother Jimmy’s family emigrated to Manchester in the late 1950s Willie moved into the Howard family home in Gray’s Lane.

Johnny Howard, known as Sean when living in Athy, was the eldest of the family of Jimmy Howard and his wife Margaret Mulhall whom I believe was from the Bleach.  His brothers and sisters included Jim who now lives in Tankardstown, Mick, now in Monasterevin and Margaret, Raymond and Patricia who still live in Manchester. 

Johnny adopted the name Rasputin – the mad monk, for what the Guardian newspaper in its obituary for Kent Walton described as ‘the grunts, groans and theatrical mayhem of professional wrestling’.  Kent Walton was the voice of professional wrestling on ITV Saturday afternoons from the mid 1950s until wrestling was removed from the network in 1988.

Jimmy Howard, aka Rasputin, was a regular on ITV with other well known professional wrestlers such as Mick McManus, Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy.  He sported a beard and long hair which was concealed at the start of each bout under a brown cloak and cowl reminiscent of a medieval monk.  At the start of his wrestling career Johnny was billed as Sean Doyle and he wrestled as a welter weight.  When the original Rasputin, aka Frank Hoy, retired from the ring Athy born Johnny Howard took the name and was thereafter known as Rasputin – the mad monk.  Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s Johnny competed throughout Europe, Africa and the Far East, topping the bill on many occasions until he retired in the early 1990s. 

Living in Carrickmacross since the early 1960s Johnny married and had three children, a son and two daughters, one of whom sadly passed away 2½ years ago.  Johnny later divorced and re-married, moving to Lochbrickland, Co. Down where he died on Monday, 19^th August of this year.  He was laid to rest following a funeral service in the Baptist Church in Banbridge, Co. Down.

Among the many interesting emails I received in recent weeks was an enquiry from Roger Wiloughby of Oxfordshire who is currently writing a book on awards made to members of the R.I.C.  It would appear that at least two of the constables involved in the Barrowhouse Ambush were subsequently awarded constabulary medals for gallantry.  I have previously written of the Barrowhouse Ambush based on interviews I had with an old resident of the area.  All of the participants in the ambush were dead by then and my written account of what occurred that fateful day was of necessity based at best on secondhand information.  A number of corrections in my narrative are now necessary.  Firstly in referring to those attacked I described them, as did my informant, as Black and Tans.  This was not correct as the party travelling on bicycles from Ballylinan to Maganey were local R.I.C. constables with their sergeant.

Secondly the account of the ambush as told to me described the I.R.A. men lying in wait only to have to change their position and move across fields when school children came out of the nearby school as the R.I.C. men were approaching.  Travelling the road from Barrowhouse to Maganey would not have required the R.I.C. men to pass the local school.  The original ambush position as described to me would not seem correct as it was not on the Barrowhouse to Maganey Road route and claims that the I.R.A. men had to change position and run across a field seems highly unlikely.  They could not have done so without disclosing themselves to the R.I.C.  It seems more likely that the site of the shooting which is marked by a memorial was the original ambush location.  However, it is quite likely, as claimed by my informant, that the ammunition used by the I.R.A. men was damp and ineffective.  This would explain the failure of those lying in wait to have succeeded in their ambush plans.

Monday, 16^th May 1921 was the day on which two young men William Connor and Jim Lacey died at the side of the road at Barrowhouse.  A small memorial marks the site of the Barrowhouse ambush.  As we enter a decade of centennial commemorations of major events in Irish history perhaps it would be appropriate for a new memorial to be erected at the place where two young Barrowhouse men died in 1921.

Barrowhouse Ambush

Early in the afternoon of 16th May, 1921 eight young men from the Barrowhouse area left their homes and walked to a pre-arranged meeting place in the graveyard adjoining Barrowhouse Church. Their mission was death. Their intention was to ambush Black and Tans stationed in Ballylinan who regularly travelled on the road between Maganey and Ballylinan. The local men were all members of B Company Carlow Brigade, Irish Republican Army based in the Barrowhouse area.

On the previous night arms and ammunition had been brought from Castledermot and delivered to Joe Maher of Cullinagh who was leader of the Barrowhouse men. The I.R.A. had an extensive network of informers in all the Police barracks in the area and Ballylinan and Athy were no exception in this regard. A contingent of Black and Tans were expected to pass through Barrowhouse that afternoon on their way from the Ballylinan Police Barracks to Maganey.

Seven of the local men armed for the most part with shotguns laid in wait while one man acted as a lookout. As the Black and Tans approached on bicycles the doors of the nearby school opened and the local children tumbled out into the bright sunlight of that May afternoon. The Black and Tans dismounted from their bicycles and walked past the waiting I.R.A. men surrounded on both sides by the young boys and girls on their way home.

The I.R.A. men realising that their carefully planned ambush was not now possible because of the proximity of the school children immediately changed their positions. Moving across the fields they sought to cut off the Black and Tans further up the road but as they did they lost the element of surprise. Their cover was also lost and contact between the members of the unit could not be maintained in the ever changing circumstances.

The attack when it started was disastrous for the Barrowhouse men. The shotguns were very inaccurate and it is suspected that their ammunition was damp and ineffective. The Black and Tans reacted quickly and replied with deadly accurate fire from their Enfield rifles. Two of the I.R.A. Volunteers, William O'Connor, and Jim Lacey both from Barrowhouse were killed. Their companions were helpless in the face of the superior firepower of the Black and Tans and withdrew from the scene. The survivors of the unsuccessful ambush party were Joe Maher, Cullinagh, Mick Maher, Barrowhouse, Joe Lacey, Barrowhouse, Jack O'Brien, Barrowhouse, Joe Ryan, Kilmoroney and Paddy Dooley, Killabbin, Maganey.

The bodies of O'Connor and Lacy were brought to the R.I.C. Barracks in Ballylinan and were released on the following Tuesday when they were conveyed to St. Mary's Church, Barrowhouse. On Thursday morning at 11.00 o'clock Requiem Office for the dead was chanted and Solemn High Mass celebrated with Rev. J. Nolan C.C., Athy, as celebrant. After the Mass the two coffins were carried on the shoulders of local men to the nearby graveyard. As the two coffins were lowered into the double grave a lone trumpeter sounded the Last Post.

On the night of the ambush, the home of John Lynch, Barrowhouse, one time Captain of the local I.R.A. Coy was burnt by the Black and Tans. Joe Maher of Cullinagh who had led the ambush at Barrowhouse later enlisted in the Irish Free State Army where he became a Military Policeman. He resigned in 1924 when a number of ex British soldiers were given appointments as N.C.O.'s in the new Army. The last survivor of the Barrowhouse ambush was Jack O'Brien, born on the day of the Gordon Bennett Race in Athy and thereafter known locally as "Gordon Bennett". He joined the Garda Siochana and died 2 years ago in Kilkenny where he had lived for many years.

The lonely spot where O'Connor and Lacy died is today marked by a simple memorial at the side of the roadway.