#OTD in 1922 – Michael Collins secretly authorised the formation of a specially paid unit of seventy IRA volunteers, known as the Belfast City Guard, to protect districts from loyalist attack.

In the north of Ireland there were continual breaches of the Truce by ‘unauthorised loyalist paramilitary forces’. The predominantly Protestant, Unionists government supported polices which discriminated against Catholics in which, along with violence against Catholics, led many to suggest the presence of an agenda by an Anglo-ascendancy to drive those of indigenous Irish descent out […]

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#OTD in 1923 – Republican officer Tom Barry, after contacts with some former IRA comrades on the Free State side, proposes that the Anti-Treaty IRA call a truce. Liam Lynch turns down the idea.

Tom Barry was born in Killorglin, Co Kerry, the son of a former RIC officer who had become a shopkeeper. His family moved to Rosscarbery, Co Cork in his youth, and he was educated for a period at Mungret College, Co Limerick from 25 August 1911 to 12 September 1912. The reason for his short […]

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#OTD in 1920 – Tomás Mac Curtain is elected Sinn Féin Mayor of Cork city.

After Sinn Féin’s sweeping victory in the November 1918 general election and the setting up of the First Dáil in 1919 it was clear that the British government and the Republicans were on a collision course. The War of Independence began with the Soloheadbeg ambush on the same day that the First Dáil met. Tomás […]

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#OTD in 1941 – Jennie Wyse Power, Irish patriot and women’s rights activist, dies in Dublin.

Jennie Wyse Power, born Jane O’Toole, in Baltinglass, Co Wicklow in 1858. In the 1880s she joined the Ladies Land League and found herself immersed in their activities during the Land War. She would compile lists of those evicted from their homes and she also organised the Land League in Wicklow and Carlow. In 1883 […]

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#OTD in 1865 – Two weeks after being arrested, James Stephens escapes from Richmond prison, Dublin.

The Richmond General Penitentiary was a prison established in 1820 in Grangegorman, Dublin as an alternative to transportation. It was part of an experiment into a penitentiary system which also involved Millbank Penitentiary, London. Richmond and Millbank penitentiaries were the first prisons in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (as it was at […]

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#OTD in 1842 – Birth of journalist and leading member of the Fenians, John Devoy in Kill, Co Kildare.

‘The most dangerous enemy of this country [Britain] Ireland has produced since Wolfe Tone’. –The London Times John Devoy was born in Kill, Co Kildare in 1842 just prior to An Gorta Mór (1845-1852) which saw approximately one million Irish starve to death and another million emigrate to America and elsewhere. After Irish defeats by […]

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Roger Casement | A Man of Mystery

In the week after Roger Casement’s execution, on 3 August 1916, newsreel footage of the nationalist leader was shown in cinemas across America. At a conservative estimate, some 15 million US citizens saw the moving pictures. A century on, this fragment of film provides a fascinating insight. Casement is glimpsed at his desk writing: The […]

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The Sunburst of Ireland | Fenian Republican Rebel Print

In the centre, Erin is holding an Irish flag with an Irish wolfhound by her side. Along the sides, you can see portraits of great Irish heroes: Daniel O’Connell, ‘The Liberator’; John P. Curran, a Protestant lawyer and politician; Henry Grattan, politician who opposed the Act of Union; Fr Matthew, the Temperance priest; Colonel Thomas […]

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#OTD in 1830 – Birth of Fenian, John O’Leary, in Tipperary.

W.B. Yeats evidently equated the death of ‘Romantic Ireland’ with the rise of an Irish generation that believed that ‘men were born to pray and save [souls]’ alone. That he was inspired to write such a ballad while witnessing the creation of the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers indicates that he saw religion as […]

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#OTD in 1870 – Bartholemew (Batt) O’Connor is born in Brosna, East Kerry.

Although not a direct participant in the 1916 Rising, Batt O’Connor was sentenced to be shot by British authorities but was sent to Wandsworth Jail and later Frongoch internment camp in North Wales. During the War of Independence he ran a number of safe houses and hid funds and documents for the IRA. He was […]

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