CIVIL WAR
Arbour Hill Prison 1924. Jack Keegan from Mohill, Leitrim, Éamon de Valera and Austin Stack pose for a photograph with one of their guards. Although this photograph was clearly staged as a joke, there were Free State soldiers like John Pinkman who would have been glad to find de Valera in their gun-sights for real: ‘We didn’t plan to make de Valera a prisoner; we intended to shoot him if we got the chance to do so … Personally, I had no qualms about shooting Dev whom I believed was so largely responsible not only for the outbreak of the Civil War, but also for its prolongation.’ Reference: John A. Pinkman, In the Legion of the Vanguard (Mercier Press, Cork 1998), p. 168. Mercier Archives
Overleaf: Sinn Féin party headquarters, Dublin, photographed after the end of the Civil War, around August 1923. Mercier Archives
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