Walking towards St Andrews church at dawn on a cold November day, one
can feel a small sense of physical and psychological alignment with young men
who traversed the same Westland Row streets just over one hundred years ago. This
is where Vinny Byrne assembled his small group of volunteers on the morning of Bloody
Sunday. Byrne was 19, an apprentice cabinet maker turned member of the Irish Republican
Army. Regardless of his age, he was a hardened veteran of the ongoing war of
independence. He went to school at St Andrews, just around the corner, and was just
two days away from his 20th birthday when he was placed in charge of
a special brigade of men involved in an operation designed to bring down the
heart of British Intelligence networks in Ireland.
Collectively referred to as ‘The Squad’, Byrne and his comrades had
been undergoing intelligence operations of their own under the direction of
Michael Collins. They had been secretly observing the activities of British officers
and plainclothes agents on the streets of Dublin - evaluating patterns and movements,
identifying players and establishing each address where their enemies resided. On
this particular morning, a plot to eliminate a tangible threat to Irish republican
ambitions was put into play. A list had been circulated amongst an inner group
of the Republican movement and a series of synchronised assassinations were planned
in key locations of South Central Dublin.
Every man paraded at the appointed hour. It was 8am. Collectively,
the brigade was mobilised to make the slow walk to Mount Street - just a short
distance away - to carry out the execution of known British agents, who were
known to be living across from the corner of Merrion Square. The young volunteers
made their way along the dimly lit paths of Denzille Lane, past the National
Maternity Hospital – where Byrne and many members of the Squad were born - and
took up their designated positions on the corners and doorways of Upper Mount Street.
It was here at No 38 that two prime targets had been identified – key
intelligence agents George Bennett of the Royal Army Service Corps and Peter Ashmun
Ames, an American working undercover for MI5. Both were considered leaders of British
intel operations in Dublin. A servant girl opened the door and quietly pointed
in the direction of two occupied rooms up the stairs and along the hallway. According
to Byrne, both agents were found in their respective beds, asked to get up at gunpoint,
march to the back room and face the wall: “I said to myself – May The Lord have
mercy on your souls! I then opened fire... They both fell dead.”
As the November half-light turned into a clear blue sky, the bells
of the local church began to ring, scatterings of birds dispersed from rooftops
and the sound of gunshots echoed through Mount street. As the men burst out of
the house, fire was opened on them from the other side. They retreated down an alley
and onto to Mount Street Lower. Here Byrne crossed paths with Thomas Keogh –
another young volunteer - running at pace, dropping from his hand a revolver
onto the cobblestone path. Keogh, along with accomplice Jim Slattery and six
others from the 2nd battalion E company had been assigned to 22 Lower Mount
Street at 9am
to “eliminate a number of British Intelligence Agents and spies” who were
residing there. The Company were admitted to the house by a maid and proceeded
to separate rooms on separate floors - the numbers of which they had already been
ascertained. While upstairs, Slattery heard the sound of gun fire at the front door.
A housekeeper had spotted a patrol of British Auxiliaries passing outside and
had started to scream for attention. They immediately surrounded the house and
tried to gain admission. One of the volunteers, Billy McClean, fired at them through
the door and got wounded in the hand. McClean however had bought a little time
for the men upstairs to find and assassinate their prime targets and to make
their escape. The company would make their way to the Quays, where a boat was
arranged to take members of the squad across to North Wall. Later Keogh would stand
in the famous Hill 16 as British Forces opened fire into the crowd at an
All-Ireland final in Croke Park. McClean would make his way to a safe house in
Denzille Place to be treated for his injuries.
One of the targets at the operation in Mount Street
Lower was one Henry James Angliss – known in Dublin by his alias - Lieutenant Patrick
McMahon – a plainclothes undercover agent, who was a decorated veteran of the
first world war, serving in Russia before being dispatched to Ireland to become
a specialist in intelligence in the war against the Irish Republican movement. McMahon
was high on Collins’ list after he had divulged, under the influence of drink
to a female lodger, that he had killed an Irish legal clerk named John Lynch in
the Exchange Hotel in September 1920. The girl had passed this information onto
on IRA intelligence agent, making McMahon a prime target for execution.
As Slattery recalls: “We succeeded in shooting
Lieutenant McMahon, but could not gain admission into the room where the other
agent was sleeping. There was a second man in McMahon's bed, but we did not
shoot him as we had no instructions to do so. We discovered afterwards that he
was an undesirable character as far as we were concerned, and that we should
have shot him.” The second man in McMahons bed was allowed to live. In the
aftermath of Bloody Sunday, the man – referred to as “Mr C” in military
documents - went absent without leave, refusing to attend inquests relating to
the events of Bloody Sunday. He was found and arrested in southern England,
forced to come back under escort to testify and subsequently admonished by the British
Military for a history of misconduct.
While Slattery and company were making their approaches to the
target location on Mount Street Lower, Bill Stapleton was waiting under Baggot Street Bridge, after being instructed to report fully armed for an operation that
Sunday Morning. There he would meet Joe Leonard and other members of his Company
at the appointed location to “liquidate members of the British Intelligence
Service” living at No. 92. Nine O’Clock was zero hour. After mobilising the men
into positions around Baggot street and Herbert Street, Stapleton entered
the house and requested to see Captain William F. Newberry: “He was in his
pyjamas, and as he was attempting to escape by the window and was shot a number
of times. One of our party on guard outside fired at him from outside.” Newbury
was shot seven times and his body left hanging from the window. The operation lasted
about fifteen minutes. Upon
their retreat, Stapleton and Leonard intercepted a British dispatch rider, took
his motorcycle and made their way to the Quays. Stapleton would later head to Croke
Park and was present when it was raided by the British: “I was beside a man who
was shot and I was splashed with his blood. We were on the top step of a new
stand which was in course of construction on the North side of Croke Park, and
I escaped by jumping over the wall into the back yard of one of the houses in
Jones's Road. We were very much upset over the Croke Park incident. Some of us
went down to Jervis St. hospital and saw the dead bodies, but as far as I was
concerned no action took place that night.”
At 119 Lower Baggot Street,
Captain Geoffrey Baggally - a member of military courts that sentenced IRA
volunteers to death and also believed to be
one of Kevin Barry's torturers, was high on the list for assassination. The
IRA unit which carried out the operation included a future Taoiseach - Sean
Lemass, as well Patrick McCrea, who was a veteran of IRA activities since 1913.
At 9am the men entered the house, leaving one man
on guard on each side of the building. They already had particulars of the
agent's bedroom. Baggally opened the door to and armed unit and tried to escape
through the window. Before he could reach it, he was shot
on the top of the head, through the left eye and twice in the chest.
According to McCrea: “The job was completed in the space of a few minutes. We got
away without incident.” A car picked up a few men coming off the Mount St. job and
arrived back at an assigned headquarters at North Richmond St – in the shadow
of the canal end at Croke Park. McCrea would arrive home to Dolymount at 11am
that morning after reporting to Richmond Street HQ. His absence was noticeable to his family - he
had missed breakfast and not been to Mass: “Up to this point my
wife did not think I was deeply involved. When I said I had been out fishing
she asked me where was the fish. This remark caused me to stumble and I could
not think of a satisfactory answer. In order not to give myself away, after
breakfast I took the tram into town and went to the short 12 o’clock Mass in
Marlboro’ St. when I left the church I met several of the fellows who had been
out that morning with us and, at this time, there was terrific activity on the
part of the military and Tans all over the city.”
While news of
assassinations and ambushes spread across the streets of Dublin, in Pembroke Street
the lodgers of No. 28 were still coming to terms with the events of that
morning. It was here that seven British regimental
officers in total resided. Inside the house, now an interconnected row of
offices, a deep blue carpet leads to the first floor where Mrs Caroline Woodcock
awoke to the sound of church bells ringing around Dublin, summoning people to
mass. Her husband Col. Wilfred James Woodcock – a commander of four battalions
in the Great War, hurried over his dressing as he was himself to take a Church
parade at the Commander-in-Chiefs lodgings. As she stood at the window, struggling
with the cuffs of her blouse, she spotted a man climbing over the garden wall. It was shortly after 9am. A group of about ten
republican volunteers, of the 3rd battalion, had entered the house
and ascended the staircase in search of their targets. Only two members on ‘the
list’ were killed on the day – Captain Leonard Price and Major Charles Dowling. Col. Woodcock was injured, as were three of his
colleagues, one of which died subsequently in early December. Mrs Woodcock later reflected “Had it not been for those silly
little buttons I should have gone down to breakfast with my husband, and should
have had the agony of seeing him and others killed or wounded before my eyes,
and should probably have been shot myself.”
One
member of the IRA unit which entered the house at Pembroke Street was Charles Dalton,
who was 17 years old and had become a key intelligence officer for the IRA under
Collins. A youthful man, obviously with a sense of patriotic energy and commitment
to the cause, Dalton had done most of the groundwork
to find information on the condemned men at this particular location. He had
courted the maid, got an IRA man employed as a porter and established the rooms
where the targets were sleeping. He was involved in the execution of Price and Dowling, both
of whom were unarmed and in their pyjamas: “They were lined up. They were held
up on the staircase. I saw one hit the floor and fall down the stairs.”
In
1929 Dalton would author a book detailing his activities with the Dublin Brigade
and offering an intense personal account of his experience on the day of Bloody
Sunday. Years later, in the 1950s, Dalton would contribute to the Irish Bureau
of Military history – who conducted interviews with many of the volunteers involved
in the events of Bloody Sunday. Through carefully reading these witness testimonies,
it is possible to establish not only known locations connected to the war of
independence, but also to identify surrounding narratives to many of the main
events of the time – surveillance operations that were put into play, methods used
to gather intelligence, key players involved, specific locations that were
battlegrounds for the intelligence war between the IRA and British Agents – all
of whom were navigating and working the same streets at the time of these events.
Witness statements help to construct a very broad and detailed sense of this
historical moment and how it unfolded. They offer a more authentic and personal
portrayal of the events from various vantage points, perspectives and, as discovered,
sensibilities of these young men. To trace the specifics of Bloody Sunday, through
the narratives of first-hand accounts and memories, is a process of revisiting
and revising the hidden histories of the familiar streets of Dublin City and
surrounds. That morning several successful attempts by the IRA to execute
members of British Intelligence were complimented by several failed attempts
and abandoned operations.
For this ongoing photography and
research project, witness accounts have allowed me to map-out the key locations
and the surrounding settings of each individual assassination, assassination attempt
and failed operation. It is possible to establish the possible entry routes and
escape routes of the volunteers, locations where surveillance happened and
pieces of information passed hands, locations where meetings took place and
back alleys which acted as IRA ‘Dumps’ or safe houses where weapons were kept
and where instructions were passed. Each setting played its part in the history
of the day, where plans were made and where the plot unravelled.
From
Ongoing Photographic and Research Project ‘The Plot’ by Martin Cregg
www.martincreggphotography.com
