Category: British History

1920 – On hearing of British atrocities in Ireland, soldiers of the Connaught Rangers mutiny in protest; three are shot dead; a fourth, Private James Daly, is court-martialled and executed by firing squad. He is the last member of the British army to be executed for mutiny.

28/06/2016.Reading time 5 minutes.

The Connaught Rangers (The Devil’s Own) was an Irish line infantry regiment of the British Army originally raised in 1793 as the 88th Regiment of Foot (Connaught Rangers), which gained a reputation both for indiscipline and for its prowess as shock troops and streetfighters with the bayonet while serving under the Duke of Wellington during […]

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1850 – Horatio Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener of Khartoum; soldier and statesman, is born at Crotter House, Ballylongford, Co Kerry.

24/06/2016.Reading time 3 minutes.

Kitchener was the son of Lt. Col. Henry Horatio Kitchener who settled in Ballylongford, Co Kerry under a scheme to encourage the purchase of land after the recent Great Hunger. His father was an unpopular tenant-evicting landlord. The young Kitchener was commissioned into the Royal Engineers on 4 January 1871. Kitchener saw active service in […]

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1914 – The Curragh Mutiny.

21/03/2016.Reading time 5 minutes.

The effectiveness of the Ulster unionist movement’s opposition (1912-14) to the granting of self-government to Ireland by Britain’s Liberal government was heightened by the support it received from elsewhere in the United Kingdom. In 1912, the Conservative Party backed it even in its formation of a paramilitary force (the UVF) to defy Westminster legislation. Meanwhile, […]

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