Bloody Sunday (21st November 1920) Dublin

British Officers murdered on Bloody Sunday

Background

Bloody Sunday was one of the most significant events to take place during the Irish War of Independence, which followed the declaration of an Irish Republic and its parliament, Dáil Éireann. The army of the new republic, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), waged a guerrilla war against the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), its auxiliary organisations, and the British Army, who were tasked with suppressing the Irish rebellion. Some members of the Gaelic Athletic Association which owned Croke Park were nationalists, but others were not.

In response to IRA actions, the British Government formed paramilitary forces to augment the RIC, the "Black and Tans" (a nickname possibly arising from their mixture of uniforms), and the Auxiliary Division (generally known as the Auxiliaries or Auxies). The behaviour of both groups immediately became controversial (one major critic was King George V) for their brutality and violence, not just towards IRA suspects and prisoners but their racist/sectarian attitude towards Irish people in general. In Dublin, the war largely took the form of assassinations and reprisals on either side.

The events on the morning of 21 November were an effort by the IRA in Dublin, under Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy, to destroy the British intelligence network in the city.

Collins' Plan

Since 1919, Irish Finance Minister, head of the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood and IRA Chief of Intelligence Michael Collins had operated a clandestine "Squad" of IRA members in Dublin (a.k.a. "The Twelve Apostles"), who were tasked with assassinating RIC and British Intelligence officers. By late 1920, British Intelligence in Dublin had established an extensive network of spies and informers around the city. This included eighteen high-ranking British Intelligence officers known as the 'Cairo Gang'; a nickname which came from their patronage of the Cairo Cafe on Grafton Street and from their service in British military intelligence in Egypt and Palestine during the First World War. Mulcahy, the IRA Chief of Staff, described it as, "a very dangerous and cleverly placed spy organisation".

In November 1920, Collins ordered the assassination of British agents around the city, judging that if they did not do this, the IRA's organisation in the capital would be in grave danger. The IRA also believed that a co-ordinated policy of assassination of leading republicans was being implemented by British forces. Dick McKee was put in charge of planning the operation. The addresses of the British agents were discovered from a variety of sources, including sympathetic housemaids, careless talk from some of the British, and an IRA informant in the RIC (Sergeant Mannix) based in Donnybrook barracks. On 20 November, the assassination teams, which included the Squad and members of the IRA's Dublin Brigade, were briefed on their targets, who included 20 agents at eight different locations in Dublin. Collins's plan had been to kill over 50 British intelligence officers and informers, but the list was reduced to 35 on the insistence of Cathal Brugha, the Irish Minister for Defence, on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence against some of those named.

Bloody Sunday

Murder of the 'Cairo Gang'

Central Dublin

21 November 1920

Deaths;  9 Army officers,1 RIC Sergeant, 2 Auxillery Cadets, 2 civilians

1 uncertain (probably a British agent) 

Non-fatal injuries; 1 Intelligence officer, 1 army officer, 1 civilian, 1 IRA volunteer

Perpetrator; Irish Republican Army

Assassinations

The operation was planned by several senior IRA members, including Michael Collins, Dick McKee, Liam Tobin, Peadar Clancy, Tom Cullen, Frank Thornton and Oscar Traynor. The killings were planned to coincide with a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Tipperary, because the large crowds around Dublin would allow easier movement for the Volunteers and make it more difficult for the British to detect Collins' Squad members as they carried out the assassinations.

Clancy and McKee were picked up by Crown forces on the evening of Saturday, 20 November. They were tortured and later shot dead "while trying to escape".
Tortured and killed with them was Conor Clune (the nephew of Archbishop Clune of Perth, who had been senior chaplain to the Catholic members of the Australian Imperial Force in World War I). Clune was manager of the seed and plant nursery owned by Edward MacLysaght near Quin, and Clune and MacLysaght travelled to Dublin on the morning of Saturday, 20 November 1920, bringing with him the books of the Raheen Co-op for its annual audit. Clune was arrested in a raid on Vaughan's Hotel in Dublin, where he was a registered guest.

28 Pembroke Street Upper

The operation began at 9:00 am, when members of the Squad entered 28 Pembroke Street. The first British agents to die were Major Charles Milne Cholmeley Dowling and Captain Leonard Price. Andy Cooney of the Dublin Brigade removed documents from their rooms.

Three more members of the Gang were shot in the same house: Captain Brian Christopher Headlam Keenlyside, Colonel Wilfrid Woodcock, and Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Montgomery. Woodcock was not connected with intelligence and had walked into a confrontation on the first floor of the Pembroke Street house as he was preparing to leave to command a regimental parade at army headquarters. He was in his military uniform, and, when he shouted to warn the other five British officers living in the house, he was shot in the shoulder and back, but survived. As Keenlyside was about to be shot, a struggle ensued between his wife and Mick O'Hanlon. The leader of the unit, Mick Flanagan, arrived, pushed Mrs Keenlyside out of the way and shot her husband.

117 Morehampton Road

At 117 Morehampton Road, Donnybrook, 2.3 km from the scene of the first shootings, another member of the Cairo Gang, Lieutenant Donald Lewis MacLean, along with suspected informer TH Smith and MacLean's brother-in-law, John Caldow, were taken into the hallway and about to be shot, when MacLean asked that they not be shot in front of his wife. The three were taken to an unused bedroom and shot. Caldow survived his wounds and fled to his home in Scotland.

92 Lower Baggot Street

Just 800 metres away, at 92 Lower Baggot Street, another member, Captain William Frederick Newberry, and his wife heard their front door come crashing down and blockaded themselves into their bedroom. Newberry rushed for his window to try to escape but was shot while climbing out by Bill Stapleton and Joe Leonard after they finally broke the door down.

38 Upper Mount Street

Two key members of the Gang, Lieutenant Peter Ashmun Ames and Captain George Bennett, were made to stand facing the wall on a bed in a downstairs rear bedroom and shot by Vinnie Byrne and others in his squad. A maid had let the attackers into 38 Upper Mount Street and indicated, at gunpoint, the rooms occupied by the two targeted men. Despite many accounts to the contrary, Byrne was not involved in the killings in Morehampton Road that morning.

28 Earlsfort Terrace

Sergeant John J Fitzgerald of the Royal Irish Constabulary, also known as "Captain Fitzgerald" or "Captain Fitzpatrick", whose father was from County Tipperary, was killed a kilometer away at 28 Earlsfort Terrace. He had survived a previous assassination attempt when a bullet grazed his head. This time he was shot twice in the head. The documents found in his house detailed the movements of senior IRA members.

22 Lower Mount Street

An IRA unit led by Tom Keogh entered 22 Lower Mount Street to kill Lieutenant Henry Angliss, alias Patrick Mahon, and Lieutenant Charles Ratsch Peel. The two intelligence specialists in the Gang, Angliss and Peel, had been recalled from Russia to organise British intelligence operations in the South Dublin area. Angliss had survived a previous assassination attempt when he had been shot at in a billiard hall. He was targeted for killing Sinn Féin fundraiser John Lynch, mistaken for General Liam Lynch, Divisional Commandant of the 1st Southern Division, IRA. McMahon was shot as he reached for his gun.

Peel, hearing the shots, managed to block his bedroom door and survived even though more than a dozen bullets were fired into his room. When members of Fianna Éireann on lookout reported that the Auxiliary Division were approaching the house, the unit of eleven men split up into two groups, the first leaving by the front door, the second through the laneway at the back of the house.

119 Baggot Street

At 119 Baggot Street, a three-man unit killed Captain Geoffrey Thomas Baggallay, a barrister who had been employed as a prosecutor under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920 regulations, and who had been a member of military courts that sentenced IRA volunteers to death.

Gresham Hotel

Captain Patrick McCormack and Lieutenant Leonard Wilde were in the classy Gresham Hotel in O'Connell Street. The IRA unit gained access to their rooms by pretending to be British soldiers with important dispatches. When the men opened their doors they were shot and killed. A Times listing for McCormack and Wilde does not list any rank for the latter. McCormack's killing was a mistake. He was a member of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps and was in Ireland to buy horses for the British Army. He was shot in bed and Collins himself later acknowledged the error. Unlike the other British officers, McCormack, a Catholic from Castlebar, was buried in Ireland, at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

Fitzwilliam Square

Captain John Scott Crawford, in charge of motor repair of the British Army Service Corps, narrowly escaped death after the IRA entered a guesthouse in Fitzwilliam Square where he was staying, looking for a Major Callaghan. On not finding their target, they debated whether or not to shoot Crawford. They decided not to shoot him as he was not on their list; instead they gave him 24 hours to leave Ireland, which he promptly did.

Eastwood Hotel

In the Eastwood Hotel at 91 Lower Leeson Street the IRA failed to find their target, Captain Thomas Jennings. Other targets who escaped were Captain Jocelyn Hardy and Major William Lorraine King, a colleague of Hardy who was missing when Joe Dolan burst into King's room. According to the prim Todd Andrews, Dolan took revenge by giving King's half-naked mistress "a right scourging with a sword scabbard", and setting fire to the room afterwards.

Captain Jocelyn Hardy (1894-1958)
"A ruthless killer"

Major Frank Murray Maxwell Hallowell Carew, an intelligence officer who with Captain Price had almost cornered 3rd Tipperary Brigade commander Seán Treacy a month before, was on the list. (Treacy had been killed by G men as he tried to shoot his way out of a trap on 14 October, a week before the day of the Cairo Gang assassinations.)

When the IRA came calling for Murray, he had moved to an apartment across the street. He heard the gunfire at his former lodging and fired his revolver at an IRA sentry outside. The sentry was hit and took cover inside the house. The Volunteers moved on.

Several IRA men carried sledgehammers with them the morning of 21 November, as they expected to encounter bolted doors. They did not find any, but T Ryle Dwyer claims that they used them to smash the skulls and faces of some of the officers they had shot.

Two members of the Auxiliary Cadet Division, Temporary Cadets Frank Garniss, aged 34, and Cecil Augustus Morris, aged 24, were among a patrol of Auxiliaries who responded to the scene of one of the attacks, armed with .45 caliber Webley revolvers and a carbine. Garniss and Morris were shot and killed as they sought to cordon off the rear of one of the scenes of assassination.

A Times listing of killed and wounded reports that in addition to Caldow, Captain Brian Keenlyside, Colonel Hugh Montgomery, Major (Wilfrid) Woodcock, and Lieutenant Randolph Murray were wounded, but not killed. Montgomery died 10 December 1920 of the wounds he received on Bloody Sunday.

Fatalities

Nineteen men were shot. Fourteen were killed on 21 November; Montgomery died later, making fifteen in all. Four were wounded. Ames, Angliss, Baggallay, Bennet, Dowling, Fitzgerald, McCormack, MacLean, Montgomery, Newberry, Price, Wilde, Smith, Morris, Garniss were killed. Keenlyside, Woodcock, Murray and Caldow were wounded. Peel and others escaped. The dead included members of the "Cairo Gang", British Army Courts-Martial officers, the two Auxiliaries and a civilian informant.

Aftermath

Of the IRA men involved, only Frank Teeling was captured during the operation. He was court-martialled and sentenced to hang, but escaped from Kilmainham Gaol before the sentence could be carried out. Patrick Moran and Thomas Whelan were arrested later and, despite their protestations of innocence and witnesses attesting to alibis, were hanged for murder in connection with the killings on 14 March 1921

The remaining Cairo Gang members, along with many other spies, fled to either Dublin Castle or England, fearing they were next on the IRA's hit list. Another member committed suicide in Dublin Castle. The deaths and flights dealt a severe blow to British intelligence-gathering in Ireland.

Collins justified the killings in this way:
My one intention was the destruction of the undesirables who continued to make miserable the lives of ordinary decent citizens. I have proof enough to assure myself of the atrocities which this gang of spies and informers have committed. If I had a second motive it was no more than a feeling such as I would have for a dangerous reptile. By their destruction the very air is made sweeter. For myself, my conscience is clear. There is no crime in detecting in wartime the spy and the informer. They have destroyed without trial. I have paid them back in their own coin.

The Victims

Captain Patrick J. McCormack  (1877-1920)

Captain P. McCormack

Captain William Frederick Newberry (1875-1920)

Captain W.F. Newberry

Captain Leonard Price M.C. (1885-1920)

Captain Leonard Price M.C.

Captain Geoffrey Thomas Baggallay (1891-1920)

Captain G.T. Baggallay

Lieutenant Donald Lewis MacLean (1889-1920)

Lieutenant D.L. MacLean

Lieutenant Peter Ashmun Ames (1888-1920)

Lieutenant A. Ames

Major Charles Milne Cholmeley Dowling (1891-1920)

Major C.M.G. Dowling

Lieutenant Henry James Angliss, D.C.M. (1891-1920)
(AKA Patrick Mahon)

Lieutenant H. Angliss, D.C.M.

Lieutenant George Bennett (1892-1920)

Lieutenant G. Bennett

Cadet (2nd Lieut.) Frank Garniss (1886-1920)

Cadet Frank Garniss

Cadet (2nd Lieut.) Cecil Augustus Morris (1896-1920)

Cadet C.A. Morris

Sgt. John J Fitzgerald, R.I.C. (1898-1920)

Brevet Lieut-Colonel Hugh Ferguson Montgomery (1880-1920)

Mr Thomas Herbert Smith (1873-1920) Civilian

Lieutenant Leonard Wilde (1891-1920)

The Croke Park Massacre

Deaths; 14 civilians
Non-fatal injuries; 60–70 civilians

Perpetrators; Royal Irish Constabulary & Auxiliary Division

The Dublin Gaelic football team was scheduled to play the Tipperary team later the same day in Croke Park, the Gaelic Athletic Association's major football ground. Despite the general unease in Dublin as news broke of the killings, a war-weary populace continued with life. About 5,000 spectators went to Croke Park for the Tipperary match, which began thirty minutes late, at 3:15 p.m.

Meanwhile, outside the Park, unseen by the crowd, British security forces were approaching and preparing to raid the match. A convoy of troops drove in from the northwest, along Clonliffe Road, while a convoy of police and Auxiliaries approached the Park from the south or Canal end. Their orders were to surround the ground, guard the exits, and search every man in the Park. The authorities later stated that their intention was to announce by megaphone that all males leaving the stadium would be searched and that anyone leaving by other means would be shot. However, for some reason, shots were fired as soon as the police convoy reached the stadium, at 3:25 p.m.

Some of the police later claimed that they were fired on first by IRA sentries, but this has never been proved. Correspondents for the Manchester Guardian and Britain's Daily News interviewed eyewitnesses, and concluded that the "IRA sentries" were actually ticket-sellers:

It is the custom at this football ground for tickets to be sold outside the gates by recognised ticket-sellers, who would probably present the appearance of pickets, and would naturally run inside at the approach of a dozen military lorries. No man exposes himself needlessly in Ireland when a military lorry passes by.

The police in the convoy's leading cars appear to have jumped out, chased these men down the passage to the Canal End gate, forced their way through the turnstiles, and started firing rapidly with rifles and revolvers. Ireland's Freeman's Journal reported that,

The spectators were startled by a volley of shots fired from inside the turnstile entrances. Armed and uniformed men were seen entering the field, and immediately after the firing broke out scenes of the wildest confusion took place. The spectators made a rush for the far side of Croke Park and shots were fired over their heads and into the crowd.

The police kept shooting for about ninety seconds: their commander, Major Mills, later admitted that his men were "excited and out of hand". Some police fired into the fleeing crowd from the pitch, while others, outside the Park, opened fire from the Canal Bridge at spectators who climbed over the Canal End Wall trying to escape. At the other end of the Park, the soldiers on Clonliffe Road were startled first by the sound of the fusillade, then by the sight of panicked people fleeing the grounds. As the spectators streamed out, an armoured car on St James Avenue fired its machine guns over the heads of the crowd, trying to halt them.

By the time Major Mills got his men back under control, the police had fired 114 rounds of rifle ammunition, and an unknown amount of revolver ammunition as well, not counting 50 rounds fired from the machine guns in the armoured car outside the Park. Seven people had been shot to death, and five more had been fatally wounded; another two people had been trampled to death in the stampede. The dead included Jeannie Boyle, who had gone to the match with her fiancé and was due to be married five days later, and two boys aged 10 and 11. Two football players, Michael Hogan and Jim Egan, had been shot; Hogan was killed, but Egan survived, along with dozens of other wounded and injured. The police raiding party suffered no casualties.

Once the firing had been stopped, the security forces searched the remaining men in the crowd before letting them go. The military raiding party recovered one revolver: a local householder testified that a fleeing spectator had thrown it away in his garden. Once the grounds were cleared, the Park was searched for arms, but, according to Major Mills, none were found.

The actions of the police were officially unauthorised and were greeted with public horror by the Dublin Castle-based British authorities. In an effort to cover up the nature of the behaviour by British forces, a press release was issued which claimed:

A number of men came to Dublin on Saturday under the guise of asking to attend a football match between Tipperary and Dublin. But their real intention was to take part in the series of murderous outrages which took place in Dublin that morning. Learning on Saturday that a number of these gunmen were present in Croke Park, the Crown forces went to raid the field. It was the original intention that an officer would go to the centre of the field and speaking from a megaphone, invite the assassins to come forward. But on their approach, armed pickets gave warning. Shots were fired to warn the wanted men, who caused a stampede and escaped in the confusion.

The Times, which during the war was a pro-Unionist publication, ridiculed Dublin Castle's version of events, as did a British Labour Party delegation visiting Ireland at the time. The British Brigadier Frank Percy Crozier, technically in command that day, later resigned over what he believed was the official condoning of the unjustified actions of the Auxiliaries in Croke Park. One of his officers told him that, "Black and Tans fired into the crowd without any provocation whatsoever".

Two military courts of inquiry into the massacre were held, and one found that "the fire of the RIC was carried out without orders and exceeded the demands of the situation". Major-General Boyd, the officer commanding Dublin District, added that in his opinion, "the firing on the crowd was carried out without orders, was indiscriminate, and unjustifiable, with the exception of any shooting which took place inside the enclosure." The findings of these courts of inquiry were suppressed by the British Government, and only came to light in 2000.

Evening

Later that day, two high-ranking IRA officers, Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy, who had helped plan the killings of the British agents, together with another man, Conor Clune (a nephew of Patrick Clune, Archbishop of Perth, Australia), who were being held in Dublin Castle, were tortured then shot. Their captors said that, because there was no room in the cells, they were placed in a guardroom containing arms, and were killed while making a getaway.

Aftermath

The behaviour of the Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence helped turn the Irish public against the Crown. Some British politicians[who?] and the King made no secret of their horror at the behaviour of Crown forces. The killings of men, women and children, both spectators and football players, made international headlines, damaging British credibility. However, in the short term, the IRA killings of British officers on the morning of the 21st received more attention in Britain. The bodies of nine of the British officers assassinated in Dublin were brought in procession through the streets of London for funerals at Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral. When Joseph Devlin, an Irish Parliamentary Party MP, tried to bring up the Croke Park killings at Westminster, he was shouted down and physically assaulted by his fellow MPs; the sitting had to be suspended.

A combination of the loss of the Cairo Gang, which devastated British Intelligence in Ireland, and the public relations disaster that was Bloody Sunday severely damaged the cause of British rule in Ireland and increased support for the republican government under Éamon de Valera. The events of Bloody Sunday have survived in public memory. The Gaelic Athletic Association named one of the stands in Croke Park the 'Hogan Stand' in memory of Michael Hogan, the football player killed in the incident.

James "Skankers" Ryan, who had informed on Clancy and McKee, was shot and killed by the IRA in February 1921.

IRA assassinations continued in Dublin for the remainder of the war, in addition to more large scale urban guerrilla actions by the Dublin Brigade. By the spring of 1921, the British had rebuilt their Intelligence organisation in Dublin, and the IRA were planning another assassination attempt on British agents in the summer of that year. However, these plans were called off because of the Truce that ended the war on 11 July 1921.

Misconceptions

• The Croke Park Massacre on the afternoon of Bloody Sunday is usually blamed on the Auxiliaries. While the police raiding party was composed in part of Temporary Cadets from Depot Company and commanded by an Auxiliary officer, Major Mills, eyewitness reports make it clear that the RIC did most of the shooting at Croke Park.
• The film Michael Collins shows an armoured car driving onto the pitch. This did not happen: the armoured car in question was outside the ground and seems to have fired into the air, rather than at the crowd. The director, Neil Jordan, later stated that he changed the scene because showing policemen do the shooting would have made it "too terrifying" for the film's tone.
• It is often thought that two players were killed when accounts say two were shot at. Hogan and Egan were both fired on, but Egan was uninjured. He was subsequently killed during the Civil War.
• It is sometimes claimed that British officers tossed a coin over whether they would go on a killing spree in Croke Park or loot Sackville Street (Dublin's main street, now called O'Connell Street) instead: see, for example, Ernie O'Malley, "Bloody Sunday", Dublin's Fighting Story 1916–1921 (Tralee: The Kerryman, 1949); but there is no evidence to support this claim.