WALLED in by HATE
Arthur Mathews was born in County Meath in 1959. With Graham Linehan, he co-created and wrote Father Ted and Big Train. He has also written for The Fast Show, Harry Enfield and Brass Eye amongst many others. He co-wrote the stage musical I, Keano and the feature film Wide Open Spaces. With Matt Berry he has co-written the television shows Toast of London and Toast of Tinseltown. He also wrote the book Well-Remembered Days, an imagined autobiography of ‘Eoin O’Ceallaigh’, ‘a writer, poet, nationalist, playwright, civil servant, commentator and champion of the traditional values of Ireland’.
‘Surely you are not one of those who believe I take pleasure in building up this wall of hate? That I get grim satisfaction out of hurting people?’
Kevin O’Higgins to a friend, 1922
Ifirst
read Terence de Vere White’s book about Kevin O’Higgins over thirty years ago. That somebody could ‘sign the execution warrant’ of a friend who had been the best man at his wedding just over a year previously seemed such a dramatic and startling idea that it was hard to believe that it hadn’t sprung from the imagination of a novelist or a screenwriter. The fact that O’Higgins had been assassinated at the age of thirty-five, and his father had been murdered as well, seemed to further heighten the extraordinary drama of the story. There was also the tale of O’Higgins’ complicated love life. He seemed equally passionate about his wife, Birdie, and the glamorous figure of Lady Hazel Lavery, although his obsession with Birdie seems to have been replaced by his later infatuation with Hazel.
The lives of O’Higgins’ contemporaries, such as Rory O’Connor and Erskine Childers, which summed up the tragedy of the Irish Civil War of 1922–23, were arguably just as dramatic as that of O’Higgins, as well as being an integral part of his world. It seemed to me that their stories needed retelling as well, so this book is not a straightforward biography of O’Higgins. His life has already been described in the de Vere White book, and his career as a politician and statesman covered in John P. McCarthy’s Kevin O’Higgins: Builder of the Irish State. His private life was not a concern of McCarthy, and the de Vere book, which was first published in 1948, did not probe too deeply into his connection with Hazel Lavery. (In fact, his affair with her was dismissed as a fantasy.) But his relationships with the women in his life (Birdie, Hazel and his two daughters) are fascinating. The search for his assassins, and the differing reactions to his death from the men who killed him were also subjects which lay largely unexplored.
Although O’Higgins is not that well known amongst the general population of modern Ireland, those with a passing interest in the history of the country are likely to be familiar with the man, his legacy and the astonishing drama of his short life. For those of a more republican/ nationalist bent, he can still be the hate figure that he was for so many of his political enemies during his lifetime. A quick search of the internet will soon reveal damning comments. He is described variously as a ‘war criminal’, a ‘fascist’, and ‘one of the most blood-guilty Irishmen’ of his generation. When a memorial was unveiled to him on the spot of his assassination by the then Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, in 2012, the recording of the event on YouTube provoked a comment by a viewer called ‘timpatjoe’: ‘Did the work of the British. A fitting tribute to the West Brits here.’ Another, named ‘Shredder’, remarked, ‘The Free Staters are a blot on history. The sooner the 26-county state is abolished and an All-Ireland Republic restored, the better. An Phoblacht Abu.’ ‘Eoin Barry’ responded with ‘Nothing but Blueshirts there. Terrible people the lot of them.’ Historians, while more restrained in their language, have been equally damning. Tim Pat Coogan said there was ‘a certain awfulness that hung about his name’. The visceral hostility and contempt so prominent on much of modern social media is of a type O’Higgins would have been more than familiar with in his own time.
The ‘hard man’ of the Free State would be an ill-fitting anomaly for O’Higgins in the Ireland of today. He was a conservative and a devout Catholic, with a savage tongue and often sardonic manner that could wound and infuriate his opponents. He was also no feminist. He once described female republicans as ‘hysterical young women who ought to be playing five-fingered exercises or helping their mother with the brasses’. He was willing to carry out the most ruthless and extreme measures to achieve the stability of the newly formed Free State, especially during the darkest days of the Irish Civil War, when he agreed to the execution of his former friend and colleague Rory O’Connor, who had been the best man at his wedding the year before. He was overshadowed in these years by Michael Collins, and it was the Big Fellow’s death that thrust
O’Higgins into a position and prominence he would otherwise not have had. However, while Collins’ achievements and early death guaranteed him fame and admiration, even amongst his enemies, O’Higgins – forced into difficult choices which the ‘lost leader’ never had to make – remains an unloved figure.
The change which has occurred in this country over the last few decades has been remarkable. The hegemony of the Catholic Church, largely unquestioned since the founding of the state O’Higgins did much to create, is now broken. Conservative, Catholic Ireland, usually antagonistic to anyone who dared to question the Church’s dominant position in Irish society, has now been replaced by a very different hegemony, one that is in some ways as intolerant as the establishment it has replaced. As one commentator has observed, ‘The liberal authoritarianism of contemporary Ireland is in many ways a curious inversion of the old clerical authoritarianism.’ Just as the Catholic Church purged its enemies as it came to prominence after Irish independence, the new Ireland has little appetite for dissenting voices who do not fit into the new orthodoxy. There is a definite wish to forget ‘old Ireland’, so dominant for so long, and almost to imagine that it never even existed. A deeply religious country, which as recently as the 1990s had rejected divorce, now warmly embraced liberal issues such as gay marriage, and, to many people’s astonishment, even abortion became legalised. The turnaround was quite remarkable. Seen from the third decade of the twenty-first century, the Ireland that emerged during the early years of independence seems an increasingly distant and disturbing place, with its Magdalene Laundries, brutal industrial schools and a Catholic clergy which abused children in its care. This world is fading from memory and most people are happy to see it slide into history. O’Higgins, who was called the ‘Builder of the Irish State’ in the subtitle of a 2006 biography by John P. McCarthy, is not someone who fits into the zeitgeist of twenty-first-century Ireland.
The main reason O’Higgins was hated so much – a hatred that eventually culminated in his murder – was his role in the executions carried out during the Civil War. As the war proceeded, a state of lawlessness
reigned across the nation. The plan of his republican opponents was to destroy the infrastructure of the country, blowing up bridges, ripping up railway lines and robbing banks and post offices to fund their campaign – a strategy which had little support amongst the general population. As attitudes hardened and atrocities increased across the country, hatreds grew and any hopes of reconciliation were dashed. O’Higgins’ and the Free State’s belief was that drastic measures were needed to bring some normality to the country after years of upheaval. These measures included the ‘official’ executions of eighty-one men (the number seventy-seven is often commonly put forward, as four of these were for armed robberies), while more than 125 further prisoners died in the custody of the state, either shot where they were apprehended or killed where they were being held. The shock of the executions, O’Higgins believed, helped to end the anarchy sweeping across the country and within a year of its formation, an acceptable level of stability had been achieved by the new State. However, it can equally be argued that the bitterness and horror caused by the executions was so terrible that a long-drawn-out war (with British intervention a likelihood) would have been preferable. We can’t know, of course, what would have happened if such a scenario had unfolded.
Why was he detested so much by his Civil War opponents? Although O’Higgins was not the instigator of the execution policy, he soon became a proponent of it. On occasion he proposed hair-raising schemes, such as carrying out executions in every county in the country. As Minister of Home Affairs (later Minister of Justice) he was also closely involved and associated with the Free State’s ruthless war on its opponents. In the Dáil he regularly justified his government’s policy. Sometimes, as in the case of Erskine Childers, he was fanatical in his dislike, even hatred, of his opponents. Éamon de Valera said that in O’Higgins ‘there is a bit of the scoundrel’. Interestingly, Richard Mulcahy, the head of the army and thus more directly responsible for waging the war against the republicans and who introduced the idea of using executions as a deterrent, seems not to have attracted as much visceral hatred as his detested colleague. In old age, Mulcahy (who lived until 1971) told his son the reason he believed
O’Higgins was so loathed by the republicans: ‘It was not what he did but by his disposition that perhaps made him more vulnerable.’
O’Higgins and his government eventually defeated the republicans, but could they have won by using less draconian means? It could be argued that although the Free State had a moral right to pursue the war and crush the rebels, the actions of sections of the army and intelligence departments, and cruel and harsh measures implemented by the authorities, increasingly de-legitimised the new administration. The population generally supported the government, but this was accompanied by an increasing mood of uneasiness and often horror at the methods used. O’Higgins’ biographer Terence de Vere White wrote, ‘When the powers [of execution] were granted they achieved two results – the end of the Civil War and the political destruction of those who granted them.’ Breen Timothy Murphy, who did an in-depth thesis on the execution policy, concurs: ‘Evidence suggests that this policy achieved its primary objective and expedited the end of the conflict. Moreover, it altered irrevocably the landscape of the Civil War, turning what was an already fractious affair into an extremely acrimonious conflict and it imbued an enduring legacy of hostility in post-war Ireland.’
O’Higgins, who was Minister for Home Affairs at the time, was blamed more than anybody else for the onslaught on the Free State’s opponents. He was certainly a willing proponent of crushing the opposition, but he disliked the excesses of the army, was not in any way a militarist and acted as he did because he wanted the war over as quickly as possible. Then, he believed, he could return to the business of state building. This he did, becoming deeply involved in constitutional matters – with a particular interest in reuniting a now divided Ireland – before his enemies, of whom he had many, caught up with him as he made his way to Mass on a summer’s morning in July 1927. Some of those to whom he had been close in 1921 were, by the following year, his bitterest opponents. He came to despise Éamon de Valera, whom he had once fervently admired. Even with his colleagues in the Free State government, such as Mulcahy and W.T. Cosgrave, he had frequent disagreements. While his friends and
family found much to admire and love in him, his enemies loathed him with a rare intensity.
This book tells the stories of O’Higgins, particularly during the turbulent Civil War period, and those of both enemies and friends who played important roles in his life. Many, like O’Higgins, suffered early and violent deaths. The tragedy and drama of O’Higgins’ eventful life is echoed in the stories of his contemporaries, such as Michael Collins, Rory O’Connor and Erskine Childers. Lesser-known figures, such as Darrell Figgis, are no less fascinating, and the fate of Figgis, I think, particularly personifies the terrible turmoil and suffering of the Civil War and its aftermath. I have also included the story of O’Higgins’ daughter, una, who, in contrast to her father – a man she never knew as he died when she was only six months old – attracted great affection and admiration from those who knew her. She was a remarkable woman and, like that of her father, her story deserves to be remembered.
7 AND 8 DECEMBER 1922
In October 1921, Kevin O’Higgins married Brigid Cole (known by her friends and family as ‘Birdie’) at the Carmelite Friary in Whitefriar Street in Dublin. Rather than select one of his brothers, which was customary at the time, O’Higgins had turned to his close friend, Rory O’Connor, to carry out the duties of best man. Afterwards, O’Higgins gave him the gold and silver coins which had been exchanged between bride and groom. Days later, as the couple were enjoying their honeymoon in London, O’Higgins wrote O’Connor a grateful note:
Both of us want to thank you from our hearts for the wonderful efficiency with which you launched our boat. I have received through this morning’s post wholesale congratulations on my choice of best man. Personally I feel as completely happy and satisfied about it as I feel about that other important personage in the ceremony – my bride … I hoped you behaved yourselves after we moved off – but it’s hopin’ against hope. Do you think the crowd enjoyed themselves all right? You’ll be glad to hear we had a perfect crossing. The sea was smooth as glass. We were comfortably quartered in Holyhead and advanced on London next day in good trim … Mind the little body now – good men are scarce, even in Ireland. If you have that cough when we get back we’ll ‘clather’ you … THANKS
O’Higgins had become friends with O’Connor a few years previously when both men were working in the Department of Local Government, part of Dáil Éireann, the ‘underground’ Irish administration not recognised by the ruling British authorities but functioning with the broad support of the Irish public. When O’Connor arrived at the department, O’Higgins wrote to Birdie:
I have had a stroke of luck with regard to business which starts tomorrow, securing Rory as secretary instead of friend Spud. They are to my mind the two extremes. As you can imagine this is a great relief to me; it will mean less strain and worry when we get going. The old boy has tackled it most serenely – one would imagine he was running these affairs all his life.
Kevin valued Rory’s friendship greatly. During one of O’Connor’s frequent spells in jail for activities against the authorities, he had spoken to one of Rory’s brothers, who had just received a letter from the prisoner. O’Higgins wrote with satisfaction to Birdie, ‘I take great pride and pleasure in the fact that in such a letter he’s put it on record that I was his very good friend and comrade.’
However, now, in December 1922, just over a year after the wedding, the two friends found themselves in bitter disagreement over the AngloIrish Treaty, which had been signed the previous January. The feud between former colleagues on the subject of acceptance of the Treaty had quickly spilled over into violence and O’Connor was one of the leaders of the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA), which had taken over the buildings of the Four Courts on the banks of the River Liffey in Dublin in April that year. Meanwhile, his old friend O’Higgins supported the Treaty and became the Minister for Home Affairs in the Provisional Government of the Free State. In June, troops from the newly formed National Army stormed the garrison in an act approved of and supported by O’Higgins. O’Connor and other leading anti-Free State republicans, such as Liam Mellows and Tom Barry, were quickly
captured and became prisoners in Mountjoy Prison.1
Since his arrest, O’Connor had become increasingly frustrated. He felt it absurd that he had been locked up in jail by fellow Irishmen, many of whom had been his colleagues in the fight against the British until the Truce of the previous year. Another prisoner, Peadar O’Donnell, often saw O’Connor playing chess, a game he loved and was always keen to win. O’Donnell noted his friend’s enthusiastic role in organising many tournaments. The pugnacious O’Connor was also always on the lookout for a row, or to cause trouble with the prison officers, as he thought ‘such clashes kept jail life healthy’. He believed that governing should be ‘made impossible by every means’ for the new state. Free State leaders, such as O’Higgins, Michael Collins, W.T. Cosgrave and Arthur Griffith, the president of the new administration, had been slow to act against the men in the Four Courts, allowing them to remain there for months, hoping that they would eventually realise that their actions were quixotic and hopeless, with little support amongst the population outside. O’Connor saw this as a sign that the Free State lacked courage and resolve.
On 10 October a serious attempt to escape from Mountjoy was made. With three revolvers and some explosives, a group of inmates rushed the military policemen on duty, shouting, ‘Hands up!’ When one policeman failed to raise his hands, he was shot. Another was wounded as he tried to escape. The prisoners were fired on by two soldiers from the balcony overhead, but these men were hit by return fire and put out of action. However, the republicans’ plan to rush to the guardroom and seize more weapons was foiled by two more soldiers appearing on the scene. They
1 Members of the Sinn Féin party were unanimously referred to as republicans before the split over the Treaty. After the divide, the two factions were known as (pro-Treaty) Free Staters and (anti-Treaty) republicans. The term ‘Irregulars’ was commonly used in newspapers and amongst the general population to describe the anti-Treaty republicans.
began shooting in the direction of the prisoners, who retreated to the wings and were soon overcome by superior numbers. In the subsequent search of C Wing, Peadar Breslin, former quartermaster of the Dublin Brigade, was found dying in the arms of another prisoner, Dick Barrett, after being shot through the eye. Two revolvers, some ammunition, a Mills hand grenade and two small mines were also found. Rory was ordered by his captors to disarm one of the mines, which was primed to go off. He was later named, along with Barrett, as being amongst the group of ringleaders of the attempted break-out. Along with Breslin, three of his Free State opponents were killed in the altercation. This failed attempt did not dissuade O’Connor and his friends from trying other methods. Anti-Treaty sympathisers were willing to help by agreeing to start a tunnel in a nearby house but were surprised by government troops as they made a hole in the kitchen floor. Two tunnels were then started inside Mountjoy, one almost reaching the prison wall before it was discovered. All hope seemed lost, but then O’Connor informed Mellows and O’Donnell that yet another tunnel started from outside had almost reached the exercise yard. It was 7 December.
On the same day, on the other side of the Liffey, two members of the pro-Treaty Provisional Government, Seán Hales and Pádraig Ó Máille, were shot by anti-Treatyites as they set off for the Dáil buildings from a Dublin hotel. Ó Máille was badly wounded and Hales killed in the attack. Hales’ assassin, an IRA man called Owen Donnelly, later reported on what he had done to his senior officer, Seán Caffrey. According to Caffrey, Donnelly was delighted at the killing and he even ‘gave a little chuckle, as if reminiscing over something which he particularly enjoyed’. Donnelly then told Caffrey, ‘There are no rules in war – the winner dictates the rules.’ When Peadar O’Donnell heard about Hales’ death, he remarked, ‘It was a pity that some person more poisonous than he had not been got.’ Barrett replied curtly, ‘Ah, shag him. Why did he join them?’
The death of the TD was another escalation in the increasingly bitter disagreement between former colleagues. The government had deemed the situation so bad that they had recently begun to execute by firing squad captured republicans, after passing an Emergency Powers Bill, also known as the Public Safety Bill. Amongst those who had already been shot was Erskine Childers, the well-known author of The Riddle of the Sands and, until his capture, a die-hard propagandist for the anti-Treaty republican side. Responding with fury, the IRA leader Liam Lynch, still at large in the country, ordered that any member of the Dáil who had voted for the bill should be shot on sight. Seán Hales had become the first victim of this policy. (Ironically, Hales had not actually voted for the Public Safety Bill as he was not present in the Dáil that day.)
However, if anti-Treaty republicans were going to kill members of the Dáil, then the new Free State leaders were not going to stand idly by. O’Higgins, as Minister for Home Affairs, was as determined as any of the rest of the Cabinet to take action, but the proposals now put forward by Minister for Defence Richard Mulcahy at an emergency Cabinet meeting troubled him greatly. The suggestion was to shoot four of the men captured in the Four Courts who had been in Mountjoy since June. O’Higgins was informed that one of the men chosen was to be Rory O’Connor.
The idea that his old friend, work colleague and – despite their disagreement over the Treaty – somebody he greatly liked and admired, should be selected for death shook him to the core. He asked whether a less harsh punishment might suffice. After being told the reasons why such drastic action was necessary, he posed a few more questions, and then listened carefully as Cabinet colleagues, such as Cosgrave, the hardline Minister for Local Government Ernest Blythe, and Mulcahy, had their say. After his questions had been answered he was finally persuaded that the future of the country was at stake; republicans could not be allowed to kill members of the government at will, and there had to be a deterrent. Eoin MacNeill, whom O’Higgins deeply respected, agreed with the measure, and this seemed to play a part in swaying him. He finally concurred that only the harshest of measures would deter further
attacks on members of the Dáil. Blythe recalled, ‘The rest of us waited in silence watching him, and he finally said, “Take them out and shoot them.”’ Despite the fact that O’Higgins had just agreed to the execution of his best man, Blythe thought his colleague’s initial reaction was ‘oversensitive’.
However, O’Higgins was not the only dissenting voice. Joe McGrath, Minister for Industry and Commerce, and, due to his role in the Criminal Investigation Department, responsible for some of the increasingly ruthless methods that the Free State was using against the anti-Treaty republicans, was late to the meeting. When he was told about the proposal, he was utterly opposed, sickened by the idea that he would be part of a decision to summarily execute old comrades. However, after further debate, he too relented, as O’Higgins had done. The deep reservations of O’Higgins and McGrath, and the agonies they must have gone through around the Cabinet table, were not revealed to the public. In such turbulent and uncertain times, the leaders of the new state had to be seen to be unanimous in their decisions. It was also important to share collective responsibility – a bond which had become a point of honour amongst them.
Meanwhile, in Mountjoy, an unconcerned O’Connor had one more game of chess with his cellmate, Seán MacBride, before the two men settled down for the night on their basic bedding of mattresses and blankets laid out on the floor. MacBride later recalled that, at some point, a prison officer entered the cell and lit a match to illuminate O’Connor’s sleeping face. After midnight, MacBride heard the voice of the deputy governor of the prison, Paudeen O’Keeffe. ‘Mister O’Connor,’ he said, ‘please get up and dress.’ O’Keeffe instructed MacBride to do the same. The two men put on their clothes by the dim light of candles as O’Keeffe left the cell to receive further instructions. He returned a short while later and told MacBride he could go back to bed. The deputy governor then left with O’Connor. Out
on the landing MacBride could see that three other prisoners had also been taken from their cells. Alongside Dick Barrett, a grim-looking Liam Mellows was tearing up some papers. The third prisoner, Joe McKelvey, had wrapped some books in a blanket and slung them over his shoulder; MacBride thought he looked like Santa Claus.
Before he left the cell, O’Connor tried to give the two coins from O’Higgins’ wedding to MacBride, but his cellmate turned down the offer – Rory should keep them, he said. O’Connor relented. Another prisoner, Bill Gannon, was given Rory’s chess set. Dick Barrett was already on his way down the stairs, but MacBride shook hands with O’Connor, McKelvey and Mellows. He wondered where they were being taken to – perhaps to negotiate a truce or peace settlement with the Free State leaders, Cosgrave, Mulcahy and Rory’s old friend O’Higgins? MacBride did not yet know that they had been selected for execution.
At 2 a.m. army chaplain Fr John Pigott was summoned to Mountjoy and instructed to give the condemned prisoners the last rites. There he met O’Connor, who had just been informed that he was to die. Fr Pigott described him as ‘pale but perfectly calm’. The priest suggested that they waste no time – he must prepare for death. ‘That is exactly what I want, Father,’ O’Connor replied. He prayed intently for the next few hours, never displaying any signs of fear or nervousness. He also composed final letters to his siblings and his parents, often mentioning his religious devotion. He wrote to his sister Eily:
I have just finished a General Confession. I am going calmly to death with four dear comrades [there were three, not four]. Is it not the Grace of God that I am given to me to confess and not like some others who have to answer the call without notice.
Dearest: You and all will mourn for me. DO NOT DO SO. Is it not a magnificent death?
I forgive all my enemies. I have never felt any feelings of revenge. Were you aware that the devotion of my life has been to the Blessed Virgin and this day I had just finished a Novena in honour
of The Immaculate Conception, the anniversary of my First Communion. God bless you all and protect you all.
Your loving – if undemonstrative – brother, Rory
He included a will in a letter to his brother Nor. As well as the sizeable amount of £1,200 in shares (indicating his middle-class background), he left £100 to St Anthony’s Bread, a Franciscan charity, and a sum to be determined – ‘whatever I owe Harry Evans’.2 A note to his father refers to the fact that the old man had never approved of his son’s militant activities: ‘Forgive me for my past – you and I have disagreed.’
The other condemned men wrote final letters too. Joe McKelvey told his mother, ‘I can honestly tell you mother the news hasn’t upset me one little bit.’ Dick Barrett wrote to his fellow prisoners to let them know that dying was ‘very easy’.3 Meanwhile, Fr Pigott visited Mellows, who seemed agitated after a quarrel with the senior cleric on duty, Canon McMahon, over whether he should receive the sacraments. Mellows had insisted that anyone ‘dying for Ireland’ did not need sacraments. Worried that he would not receive viaticum, the Eucharistic host given to Catholics about to die, the priest told Mellows that he should pray and then returned to O’Connor.
The time soon arrived for the prisoners to be taken to Mass. As Canon McMahon presided, Fr Pigott faced the condemned men at the altar rails. When it came to the receiving of Holy Communion Mellows was the only one to refuse. Phil Cosgrave, the prison’s governor and brother of W.T. Cosgrave (by that time, the president of the Executive Council of the Free State), stood beside the altar and attempted to prolong the Mass as long as possible so that Mellows might change his
2 It was widely reported at the time that O’Connor had left everything in his will to O’Higgins.
3 None of the condemned men seem to have had wives or girlfriends (or indeed boyfriends). Perhaps this indicates a single-minded devotion to the pursuit of the Republic.
mind.4 Finally, Canon McMahon joined Fr Pigott and offered prayers and litanies for the dying. The prisoners joined in fervently with their responses. When the praying was finally over, the men were led out, with Mellows in front. Fr Pigott was still concerned about the condemned man not having viaticum:
As they walked along the passage, the prisoners were suddenly halted, and officers immediately proceeded to blindfold them. This was done in a matter of seconds, and I was afraid my last chance of helping Mellows was gone. I ran up to him, took the bandage from his eyes and said, ‘Liam Mellows, you are not going out there without viaticum.’ He replied, ‘Ah, it’s too late now, I have held them up all morning.’ I said, ‘No, it’s not too late, they will wait a little longer for you. Come with me and make your peace with God.’ That he was now ready to do so, I had not the slightest doubt. I took him by the arm ten or fifteen yards back the passage to a cell, the door which I saw open, and in a few minutes he was shriven [absolved of sins after giving his confession]. He was a deeply religious man, and his fervent prayers at the end had gained him a very special grace from God.
A relieved Canon McMahon then went to the chapel to fetch the host. At this moment, despite the solemnity and ghastliness of the occasion, a comic interlude occurred. Canon McMahon failed to return and, after several minutes, Fr Pigott, no doubt aware that the agony of the prisoners should not be a long-drawn-out affair, decided to go and look for him. As he approached the chapel, he heard his colleague’s voice: ‘I’m locked into the sacristy! I can’t open the door!’ Apparently, Deputy Governor O’Keeffe, ‘going around with his big bunch of keys’, had locked the sacristy,
4 After the executions, Cosgrave, ‘an unassuming, compassionate, and selfless man’, became increasingly morose and began drinking heavily. He died suddenly the following year.
not realising McMahon was rummaging around inside. (It was said later that O’Keeffe had been drinking to calm his nerves.)
With McMahon released, Mellows finally received his viaticum. The doomed men were then marched into the prison yard. Mellows gave Fr Pigott a small crucifix to pass on to his mother. Then the four prisoners were lined up in front of the firing squad. Fr Pigott gave them absolution and prepared to watch them die:
I saw Liam shuffle the gravel from under his feet so that he could stand up more firmly. I moved a few yards to the right, and as I did so, I heard him say his last words [addressed to the firing squad]. ‘Slan Libh [Farewell] Lads!’ In another instant the sign was given; the volley rang out; the men fell, and Canon McMahon anointed them where they lay on the ground.
Some members of the firing squad, appalled and uneasy at the terrible task they had been given, had deliberately missed their targets. Two officers stood by with revolvers to finish off anyone who was still alive. Father Pigott remembered, ‘McKelvey, who was conscious, needed attention and I heard him call out “give me another”.’ He was shot again, but it still wasn’t enough. He called out for yet another and this time the bullet had the required effect. The fatal shot was fired by Colonel Hugo MacNeill, nephew of Free State minister Eoin MacNeill, the former head of the Irish Volunteers (forerunners of the IRA) who had done his best to call off the 1916 Rising, an event which had sparked off the recent resurgence in Irish nationalism. MacNeill was now a colleague of O’Higgins in the Free State government.
Fr Pigott remembered that after the execution of the four men there was a ‘great silence’. Another republican prisoner in Mountjoy, Joseph Campbell, heard the volley and, because the sound was so loud, he thought it must be an explosion. From that moment, the fear of being shot caused Campbell constant anxiety. Eleven days later he noted that it was ‘a lovely mild misty morning; bells ringing for mass … However, a feeling of sick horror all the same grips me because of these executions.’
Part of the Irish delegation sent to London which signed the Treaty in 1921. Erskine Childers (second left) replaced O’Higgins as secretary to the delegation. George Gavan Duffy (third from left) and Robert Barton (second from right) signed the Treaty but soon began to regret their decision. Arthur Griffith (far right) died in August 1922, weighed down by the burden of the Civil War. (Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland)
Two young Free State soldiers recover in hospital after being wounded in the early days of the Civil War in Dublin, June 1922. (Reproduced by kind permission of UCD Archives, Desmond Fitzgerald archives)
Rory O’Connor: ‘too forbidding to approach … always in deep thought, brooding and worried’. O’Higgins regarded Rory as ‘a very good friend and comrade’. (Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland)
W.T. Cosgrave making a speech; a bar obscures O’Higgins’ face. (Reproduced by kind permission of UCD Archives, Cosgrave papers, P285/362)
O’Higgins’ daughter Maev made this drawing of an armoured car. Her mother, Birdie, said, ‘she ought to be a little soldier-girl, because she was practically born to the sound of guns’. (Reproduced by kind permission of UCD Archives, O’Higgins papers, P197/250)
Cosgrave, Richard Mulcahy and Ernest Blythe at a banquet in the early years of the Free State. Such occasions were despised by their republican enemies. (Reproduced by kind permission of UCD Archives, Cosgrave papers, UCD P285/363)
Darrell Figgis enters the National University at Earlsfort Terrace for the debate on the Treaty. He was disliked by many Free Staters and targeted by republicans. One of the most tragic victims of the Civil War, he committed suicide in 1925.
(Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland)
Birdie revisits Knockbeg College, where she first met Kevin. ‘This is the ideal woman, God’s masterpiece. I want her – she is mate of my soul.’
(Courtesy of Knockbeg College Archive)