Liam Lynch was born in Barnagurraha, Co Limerick to Jeremiah and Mary Kelly Lynch. At 17 he was apprenticed to O’Neill’s hardware in Mitchelstown. Shortly after his apprenticeship began he joined the Gaelic League and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. He joined the Irish Volunteers after witnessing the arrests of the Kent family by British […]
‘On the base of the Pillar was a white poster. Gathered around were groups of men and women. Some looked at it with serious faces, others laughed and sniggered. I began to read it with a smile, but my smile ceased as I read, ‘Poblacht na h-Eireann, the Provisional government of the Irish Republic – […]
1802 – Birth of novelist, Lady Rosina Lytton, née Wheeler, in Co Limerick. 1884 – Birth of engineer, inventor, and pioneer of the modern tractor, Harry Ferguson, in Hillsborough, Co Down. 1908 – Six women meet at the home of women’s activists Hanna and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington to establish the Irish Women’s Franchise League. 1920 – […]
On 13 October 1923, Michael Kilroy, O/C of the IRA prisoners in Mountjoy, announced a mass strike by 300 prisoners, and it soon spread to other jails. Within days over 7000 republicans were on hunger strike. The figures given by Sinn Féin at the time were : Mountjoy Jail: 462; Cork Jail: 70; Kilkenny Jail: […]
Ernie O’Malley says that with this oath the Irish Volunteers became the Irish Republican Army (IRA). At a meeting of Dáil Éireann (the Irish Parliament not recognised by Britain), Secretary of Defence, Cathal Brugha called for all TDs to swear allegiance to the new parliament. Every person and every one of those bodies undermentioned must […]
They take the Free State garrison there captive but release them on condition that they do not fight again against Republicans. Seán Moylan and 230 republican troops occupy New Ross. At the start of the Civil War, Enniscorthy was the only large town in Co Wexford that contained a garrison of both Free State soldiers […]
Anti-Treaty commander in the Four Courts, Paddy O’Brien is wounded by shrapnel. Ernie O’Malley assumes command. In the morning there is a truce to remove the wounded. Shortly afterward, a massive explosion destroys the western wing of the Four Courts and the Irish Public Records Office along with it. Forty advancing Free State troops were […]
On 14 April 1922 a column of 200 men led by Rory O’Connor occupied the Four Courts, hoping to provoke an armed confrontation with British forces which were in the process of evacuating from Ireland following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty the previous winter which had split the IRA into two opposing factions. The […]
“I had given allegiance to a certain ideal of freedom as personified by the Irish Republic. It had not been realised except in the mind. I had fought against the British Empire in defence of that Republic, against Irishmen in the RIC, Englishmen in the British Army, and Irishmen in the Free State Army. To […]
Civil war was now a virtual certainty as the delegates adopted a new constitution and elected a new 16-member Executive composed of the following members: Liam Lynch (Cork), Frank Barrett (Clare), Liam Deasy (Cork), Tom Hales (Cork), Tom Maguire (Mayo), Joseph McKelvey (Belfast), Liam Mellows (Galway), Rory O’Connor (Dublin), Peadar O’Donnell (Donegal), Florence O’Donoghue (Cork), […]
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