County Inspector Alexander 'Baby' Gray, R.I.C.(1858-1916)

County Inspector 'Baby' Gray

Alexander Gray was born in County Tyrone in October 1858. His father, the Reverend Alexander Gray, was a Presbyterian minister who lived in Aghaloo, Lismulladown. In 1880, the young Alexander entered the Royal Irish Constabulary cadet school in the Phoenix Park, Dublin to train as a police officer. Like his fellow candidates for the cadet ship, he had to be aged between twenty-one and twenty-six, be unmarried, be at least five feet five inches tall and of good health: 'free from any physical defect of body, impediment of speech, defect of sight or hearing, disposition to constitutional or hereditary disease, well developed'.He had to receive certificates of good moral character from two clergymen or two magistrates of the county in which he was resident, before going to Dublin Castle to sit a competitive examination in subjects including arithmetic, orthography, English composition, geography, British history, Latin the law of evidence and the elementary principles of law. Then it was off to the training depot in the Phoenix Park. A cadetship was a preliminary step to the rank of sub-inspector to which qualified cadets succeeded as vacancies arose.Gray graduated from the RIC cadet school on 22 March 1882 at the age of twenty-three. The following January, he received his first posting as a 3rd sub-inspector to Dingle in County Kerry. By 1887, he had reached the position of district inspector in the area.

The Battle of Ashbourne

One of the most significant events of the 1916 Easter Rising outside of Dublin took place in Ashbourne on 28th April, when the ‘Battle of Ashbourne’ took place at Rath Cross. This was commemorated with a State Ceremonial Event on Easter Monday 2016, at which Tanaiste, Joan Burton, was guest speaker.
In April 1916, as Pearse and Connolly contemplated surrender in the GPO, Thomas Ashe and his Volunteers were on the cusp of a great victory at Ashbourne. It proved to be the only victory for the Volunteers in 1916.
The victory was claimed by the Fifth Battalion of the Dublin Volunteers. The events at Ashbourne were the cause of great angst among the Volunteers in the Royal County as they played no part in them. Indeed, it was ironic that the man who led the disintegration of the Meath Volunteers, James Quigley, was present at the battle and played a major part in tending to the wounded and the dying on both sides.

As in all cases of war, to the victor goes the spoils and following Ashbourne, the name of Thomas Ashe always springs to mind.
Thomas Ashe was born in Lispole, Co Kerry in 1885 and became principal of Corduff National School, Lusk, Co Dublin, in 1908. He took an active part in the resurgence of all things Irish which was sweeping Ireland. He was a member of Conradh na Gaeilge, The Black Raven Pipe Band, the Volunteers, and was inducted into the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Ashe rose rapidly through the ranks and was Commandant of the Fifth Battalion which in turn was part of the Dublin Brigade. He assumed the role from Dr Richard Hayes. This Battalion consisted mainly of Volunteers from Lusk, St Margaret’s, Skerries and Donabate.
Their mission in 1916 was to secure a safe passage for the Volunteers should they have to retreat from Dublin. They were also to be involved in diversionary tactics to cause confusion in the ranks of the British. Ashe and his Volunteers were different from the other Volunteers in Ireland, every member had to possess a bicycle, allowing them to move silently and speedily, not only by day, but also by night.
Easter Week had a disastrous beginning. Eoin MacNeill had cancelled the manoeuvres planned for Easter Sunday when he heard that Roger Casement had been captured and the Aud had been scuttled. Ashe, being a member of the IRB, ignored MacNeill and took his Fifth Battalion out on manoeuvres to Knocksedan. He received a message from Connolly: “All was off for the moment, but hold in readiness to act at any time”. Ashe disbanded his men and told them to be ready to turn out at any moment.

Easter Monday
On Monday 24th April, a dispatch rider arrived with a message for the Fifth Battalion from PH Pearse: ”Strike today at one o’clock”. Ashe sent men out to destroy the Great Northern Railway Bridge at Rogerstown, while more were sent to capture soldiers returning from Fairyhouse, with no success. That night they camped at Finglas. Ashe lectured his men that they were now soldiers of the Irish Republic.
On Tuesday, the Fifth Battalion had to send 20 men to Connolly, but were joined by Richard Mulcahy who was to play a major part in the events of the week. On Wednesday, they attacked the barracks at Swords and destroyed the telephone exchange in the post office. At Swords they also captured a van from Kennedy’s Bakery, which they brought back to their camp. Moving quickly on their bicycles, they set out to capture Donabate barracks. Donabate was more difficult to capture but after a sharp battle, the RIC surrendered. Surprise was a major part of the Fifth Battalion’s tactics. On Tuesday they moved to capture Garristown and arrived at the ungodly of 2am. only to find that the barracks had been evacuated and all men and weapons had been moved to the larger station at Balbriggan.
They set up camp at Baldwinstown that night where signs of unrest began to appear in the ranks of the Volunteers, with complaints of the Rising being a failure as there was very little activity outside Dublin. Calling the men together, Ashe told any doubters to leave immediately, and only two departed. Contact was made with Fr Kelvehan, son of an Old Fenian, who blessed them and asked God to protect them in the days ahead. As if eager to put the events of Baldwinstown behind them, Ashe moved camp again that day and took over a deserted farmhouse at Borranstown near Ashbourne. That night Ashe, Mulcahy, Dr Hayes and JV Lawless decided that they would travel to Batterstown to destroy the railway line from Athlone to Dublin.

Batterstown Station
On Friday 28th April, Ashe and his Volunteers, who now numbered less than 50 men, set out for Batterstown. As they approached Rath Cross they noticed unusual activity around Ashbourne barracks. Unknown to Ashe, Inspector McCormac from Dunshaughlin had reinforced the station with constables from Navan, Dunshauglin and Dunboyne. Three of these were busy erecting a barricade on the road to Garristown.
At 10.30am, the Volunteers opened fire on the three constables who promptly surrendered. One scampered over a hedge and made off, the other two were prisoners of the Volunteers. Mulcahy, who by now was recognised as the military tactician, decided that Ashbourne barracks must be captured to ensure safe passage to Batterstown. This was to prove difficult as the only access to the building was from the front. The constables refused to surrender. Mulcahy attacked from the front but with no success. As a last resort, he called on Volunteer Blanchfield to prime his homemade canister bomb and throw it at the front door. Blanchfield carried out his orders, but the bomb fell short, after what seemed an eternity it exploded with a terrible bang. The terrified policemen had enough, a white flag appeared and they surrendered to Mulcahy.
As Mulcahy was about to accept the surrender, a shot was heard coming from a sentry at Rath Cross. A large convoy of cars was approaching from the Slane direction. In the confusion, Mulcahy lost his prisoners who quickly retreated back into the barracks and bolted the door.
Ashe, seeing the heavy reinforcements from Slane, decided that they should retreat and ordered young Lawless to get ready the bicycles. The cause of all the confusion was the arrival of Alexander ‘Baby’ Gray and 57 highly trained constables. Gray who was the County Inspector for Meath, had trained a ‘special response’ force to deal with the threat of the Volunteers.
He based them in Slane. On Easter Sunday, the strategically important bridge at Slane had been captured for a brief period by the Dundalk Volunteers. News reached Gray that Ashbourne was under siege. He sprung into action and piled his special response force into 17 cars, commandeered from the gentry and merchants.

Convoy from Slane
At 11am, the convoy set out from Slane for Ashbourne. Gray sat in the first car, District Inspector Smyth, Navan, in the last. Each constable wore a helmet and carried a rifle. Sometime around noon the convoy approached Rath Cross. The sentry posted by Ashe at Rath Cross fired a warning shot which not only startled Mulcahy, who was about to accept the surrender of the constables in the barracks, but also the approaching convoy. The driver in the lead car stopped suddenly, bringing the whole convoy to a shuddering halt. Mulcahy realised that the convoy was trapped. He ordered JV Lawless, who was preparing the bicycles for retreat to Borranstown, to cover the rear of the convoy, there was to be no retreat. Gray was the first casualty, he was shot in both arms and seems to have been unable to take any part in battle. It fell to DI Smyth to lead the beleaguered police. He rushed up and down the line trying to encourage his men. It was futile, police lay writhing in agony on the road and in the ditches. Smyth’s bravery was to no avail. He suffered the same fate as many of his colleagues. A bullet pierced his head. His death left his men leaderless and dispirited. They raised their arms and surrendered.
Eight of their members lay dead or dying on the roadside, as did two civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fifteen constables were badly wounded. The Volunteers lost two members, Thomas Rafferty and John Crenigan.
The RIC in Meath were left leaderless. Gray had received fatal wounds, Smyth lay dead in a ditch, Sergeant Shanagher, Navan, and Sergeant Young of Ashbourne were also dead.
Ashe was magnanimous in victory. He ordered the Volunteers to bring the wounded to their field hospital where they were treated by Dr Hayes, who was also the Adjutant to the Fifth Battalion. Dr Byrne of Slane, who was prisoner of the Volunteers, was pressed into service. James Quigley, Meath County Surveyor and one time French Legionnaire assisted the wounded. No prisoners were taken, the RIC men were left to return home. The wounded were put in the cars of the convoy and brought to Navan Infirmary, and the dead policemen were placed in the washroom of Ashbourne police station where they lay until the following day.
On Saturday morning, the dead were brought by lorry to Navan. On Sunday, the horror of war was apparent to all in Navan, as eight coffins lay in front of the High Altar in St Mary’s Church.
Thomas Ashe was arrested in 1917 and tried by court martial. His death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. He died, after a botched force feeding while on hunger strike, on 25th September 1917.

Forgotten Ambush

An Irish view, February 2016

On Easter Monday, April 24, morning, Commandant Thomas Ashe received orders from James Connolly to send 40 of his 5th Fingal Battalion to the GPO to help fortify it. Also contained in those orders were instructions for Ashe to raid nearby barracks, thereby, hopefully, locking down Crown forces and relieving pressure on fighting in the city. Ashe sent 20 men to the GPO, and kept the remainder for the barracks attacks. It would prove to be a wise decision by the school teacher from Lusk.

He retained 60 men and seized the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks and the Post Office in Swords. His force would have further success over the next few days, seizing barracks and Post Offices in the nearby villages of Donabate and Garristown.
The rebels then turned their sights on Ashbourne and planned to attack the RIC barracks there on April 28. That day, Ashe was joined by Richard Mulcahy, who had only recently been appointed to the rank of first lieutenant. He was in the area following his own orders and happened to meet the Fingal Commandant by chance. Ashe immediately made Mulcahy his second-in-command.

Before launching their assault, the rebels cut telephone wires, and even sawed down telephone poles, to block off communications with the surrounding police district. Ash also decided to send his older volunteers home, thus reducing his ranks to about 45 men.
The attack at Ashbourne would prove to be tougher than the rebels had expected. Usually, the barracks was manned by a sergeant and four constables, but it had been reinforced due to the fighting in the capital.

Instead of five RIC for the rebels to contend with, there were now 10 policemen, led by a District Inspector McCormack, all well-armed and well-prepared.
The rebels had an early boost when they managed to disarm two RIC men who were setting up a barricade outside the barracks. Ashe then called on the remaining officers to surrender. Instead, the RIC showed the rebels the business end of their guns, and soon heavy fire was being exchanged.

The rebels were making little headway until a homemade hand grenade was lobbed at the station. This soon settled things and the RIC inside waved a flag of surrender.
However, just as the constables were about to emerge, the rebels were alerted to the imminent arrival of a large RIC convoy, under County Inspector Alexander Gray, on its way to subdue the rising. With the prospect of rescue from the convoy, the besieged policemen returned to their posts and resumed the fight.

Seventeen cars carrying around 60 RIC officers from Slane were, at that moment, speeding towards the rebels. Ashe and his men had to rush towards the road to stop the convoy reaching the crossroad at Rath Cross, where the RIC could then spread out.
It was at this point that second-in-command Mulcahy came into his own. The narrow Dublin-to-Slane road, with its tall, close hedges - about seven-feet-high - on either side, provided perfect terrain for the rebels. Mulcahy split the men into four sections and positioned them on both sides of the road as the convoy approached just past noon. Just before Rath Cross, the road rose at Hammondstown. It was as the convoy crested this hill, 15 yards from the crossroads, that the rebels launched a devastating attack, with the RIC taking heavy fire from all quarters. First to be hit was County Inspector Gray in the lead car.

This newspaper reported some of the ensuing events: "County Inspector Gray received a wound to the head, and Sgt Shanaher, of Navan, who was with him in the car, was shot through the heart.
"The Sergeant fell into a channel of water near the cross, and presented a gruesome spectacle when the battle ended. He was thrown into the channel in a sitting position and was found dead, still wearing his helmet."

The rest of the convoy then jumped from their vehicles, seeking cover behind the wheels or beneath the cars themselves. Others leapt into a ditch and started firing on their well-concealed attackers from there.
The fighting was fierce. A civilian car that blundered into the ambush was also fired on, resulting in the deaths of two of the occupants. For five hours, a hail of lead flew in all directions. The rebels were closing in.

The convoy's new commander, District Inspector Harry Smyth, managed to kill one volunteer with his pistol only to be shot dead himself a moment later, his brains spattered across the ditch into which he fell.

With the loss of their leader, the police signalled their surrender. At the end of the carnage, eight policemen lay dead in ditches and along the road, and up to 18 were wounded. The rebels suffered two deaths - John Crennigan and Thomas Rafferty - and five wounded.
The besieged officers in Ashbourne barracks soon gave up the fight when they were informed that the rescue party had been defeated. Ashe and Mulcahy had the injured, including the RIC, ferried to the Meath Infirmary in Navan.

Singing in chorus and cheering for the Irish Republic, Ashe's men marched off and camped at Kilsallaghan, near Dublin, where they remained until they received orders to surrender on the Saturday - a day after the Rising had been quelled in the capital.

The statistics speak for themselves - four barracks raided, eight RIC killed, 18 wounded, some 80 policemen captured in total; all of this with the loss of two men and five wounded on the rebel side.
If a lesson in guerrilla warfare was ever needed, all any future rebels had to do was to compare the results from the fighting in Dublin to that of the men led by Ashe and Mulcahy in Ashbourne.

Ashe would have his death sentence commuted for his part in the Rising, but he would die a year later in Mountjoy Prison - while being force fed when he was on hunger strike.

Mulcahy would go on to have a stellar career as Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers, Commander in Chief of the Free State Army and Minister for Defence in the Civil War, as well as holding other ministries in the years that followed.
The Battle of Ashbourne was important because it showed that Crown forces could be comprehensively defeated if the right tactics were chosen. Never again would volunteers make prisoners of themselves by occupying buildings that could then be surrounded by British military.
Instead, the use of ambushes and guerrilla tactics would be critical to the success that would follow in the War of Independence.
The brave men at Ashbourne paved the way for that kind of warfare - the only kind that could possibly defeat the might of the British Empire. It's just a pity their courage and fighting prowess is not as widely acknowledged today as it should.

 An Irishman’s Diary about the life and death of Alexander ‘Baby’ Gray

The Irish Times (March 30 2016)

At Fairyhouse on Monday, I was reminded of the unfortunate fate of Alexander “Baby” Gray, a man whose life might be entirely forgotten in Ireland now but for two forays he made into the national psyche, with starkly contrasting results.
Folklore
It was apt that he should be remembered at a racecourse (in an exhibition on the 1916 Battle of Ashbourne), because he first entered Irish folklore on horseback, although that event too might be lost to memory had it not been for a teenage witness who grew up to write a famous memoir.
Her name was Peig Sayers.  And in the late-1880s, as a servant in Dingle, she saw Gray in all his glory.
Born in Tyrone, the son of a Presbyterian minister, he had moved to Kerry a few years before as a young RIC officer, rising quickly to become district inspector.

Riot
The Land War was raging and, on the occasion in question, he was responding to a riot, begun in a pub but said to have been motivated by a recent eviction. In any case, he made a big impression on Peig as,
On “a black horse [with] a white star on its forehead”, he rode into town: “As soon as he got to the bridge, he blew a horn, but when he did a huge roar erupted from the crowd. I looked towards the bridge and saw this young brave man, dressed in uniform, [with] fierce anger in his eyes, which did not augur well for the crowd above on the street.
“He had a long lance in his hand and you would think from the sight of him and the music of the little bells and the noise of the horse’s hooves that it was the devil himself.
“As he passed me […] it was clear that he had only own purpose in mind.
“He blew the horn again and this time there was a massive scattering […] Within five minutes there was not a single person to be seen on the street, except three men who had been collared by the police.  [He] rode up and down the street a couple of times, and it would have been a brave man who would not have been afraid of him.”

Nickname
Gray (the “Baby” nickname derived from his boyish looks) did not have it all his own way in Dingle, however.
As Prof Terry Dooley wrote in a feature for the history journal Ríocht na Midhe some years ago, his zeal for upholding law there during the land agitation provoked accusations that he was the head of a “little Orange clique” in the town.
He vehemently denied any “orange proclivities”, and counter-complained of a different clique – one of “bankrupt publicans and needy shopkeepers” – who he claimed were using the cover of the Land League for their own ends.
But he survived Dingle, and it him. And the Land War had faded into history by the time, some 25 years later, he was appointed county inspector of Meath. It was 1912 then, and a different issue was dominating the political agenda – home rule – although even that seemed to be causing little excitement in his new surrounds.

Barracks
Or so he thought until Easter 1916, on the Friday after which he received word from Ashbourne that the local RIC barracks was under attack.
He quickly assembled a force of around 60 officers in Slane – from where, in a large fleet of cars, they drove south to relieve the siege.
Thus it was with horsepower of a different kind that Gray, now 58, made his second, and this time fatal, charge into the national consciousness.
As Dooley writes, it suited the survivors of both sides afterwards to claim that what happened just north of Ashbourne was an ambush. In fact, the ambushers were at least as surprised by the arrival of the convoy as the men in the cars were by the attack.
But aided by some luck and cool leadership (mainly from Richard Mulcahy, second-in-command of the Fingal volunteers), they turned the situation into the most decisive victory of Easter Week, even as the GPO was abandoned.
Exhibition
There is no space here to do justice to the Fairyhouse exhibition’s fine reconstruction of events, which was courtesy of the Ashbourne Historical Society. Suffice to say that among the RIC men killed was Gray.
It seems double portentous that the overall commander of the rebels was from Dingle, and that his name – Thomas Ashe – so oddly chimed with the scene of the denouement.