Pt 1: The Morning of Bloody Sunday

Welcome to the History of Ireland. One hundred years ago, on Sunday 21st 1920, Dublin witnessed a series of events that it’s safe to say left a unique mark on the city and became one of the key events of the Irish War of Independence. But for all its infamy, the Bloody Sunday of 1920 can be kind of confusing to untangle. Multiple accounts, conflicting propaganda, exaggerated tales, forgotten people, they all culminate in a situation that makes it quite difficult for historians to piece together the events of the day. But hey, I’m willing to try if you are.

The day is really broken down into three separate incidences occurring in the morning, afternoon and evening of the 21st. So, over the course of the next three days, I’m going to release three episodes. The morning, afternoon and evening of Bloody Sunday. So let’s jump in.

To understand the events of the morning of Bloody Sunday, we need to go back a little bit. You’ll remember in episodes 16 through 20, we focused on the IRA’s attempts to infiltrate the British system and cripple the G Division. As we know, this was a huge success. Michael Collins, his intelligence department and the squad successfully all but destroyed the G Division, while simultaneously infiltrating the upper echelons of the British forces in Ireland.

By the middle of 1920, the British knew they had to rethink their approach to information gathering in Ireland. And so, when General Tudor was appointed Chief of Police, he recruited an old friend of his, Ormond Lepie Winter, as Director of Intelligence. It was Winter’s job to rebuild the British intelligence system in Ireland and take the fight to Collins.

Born in 1875, Winter was a career soldier who’d served in India and Gallipoli. He spoke of Russian, French and Urdu and was said to be well-educated and fearless. Sporting a monocle, he looked every bit the spymaster and even went by the moniker O. One contemporary described him saying, O is a marvel. He looks like a wicked little white snake, is as clever as paint, probably entirely non-moral, first class horseman, a car genius, knows several languages, is a super sleuth and a most amazing original. He can do anything.

Winter was smart, driven and slightly terrifying, which is exactly what the British needed. As historian Michael Foley puts it, in the summer of 1920, Tudor and an utterly fearless and aggressive Winter took the fight to the IRA. Winter quickly became obsessed with capturing Michael Collins and seeing the state of British intelligence decided to bring in a team of English agents.

These agents had become popularly known as the Cairo Gang. Some say this is because they had all worked in Egypt. Others argue that the name came from the fact they frequented the Cairo bar in Dublin. The historian Anne Dolan, no relation I don’t think, describes them like this. There were rumours about a Cairo gang, talk of secret missions in the Great War, stories of dastardly achievements in foreign fields, of Britain’s finest spies coming closer, ever closer, all the time becoming a case of them or us.

Was there ever actually a Cairo gang? Did they refer to themselves as such? Was the cream of the British intelligence service living in Ireland? It’s very hard to tell. And it does seem like the Cairo gang was a bit of a myth. But there definitely were spies and Winter’s intelligence work did have the Dublin Brigade of the IRA on the back foot throughout the autumn of 1920.

Across the country it seemed like the British were maybe gaining back some kind of control. Of course there were the high profile arrests of figures like Terence McSweeney and Kevin Barry. But it was the more low key captures that spooked the IRA. Tom Cullen, Liam Tobin and Frank Thornton, all vital members of the intelligence department, had been arrested and questioned. Thornton was locked up for ten days and though Tobin and Cullen got out pretty quickly, Cullens and his men could feel the net tightening.

On top of this the Dublin Brigade hadn’t really managed to pull off a successful raid all year. And the squad had been reduced to simply stealing weapons. All this led to Lloyd George boasting on November 9th 1920 that he quote had murder by the throat. This was said to rankle Cullens. He and many of the IRA hated being referred to as murderers. It would also go down as a bit of an overstatement.

Cullens and the IRA were not going to take Winter’s attacks lying down. For months Cullens, Tobin, Dick McKee, Padder Clancy and a few others had been making plans for a huge offensive. The plan was to destroy the whole new British spy network by assassinating as many known British operatives as possible in one fell swoop. A list of names was slowly but surely put together.

Again we should reiterate the vital work of the likes of Lily Merrin. She and many others collected any and all information on those suspected to be working for Winter. Then with this information Tobin and his men would decide who to include on their hit list. Anne Dolan puts it like this Snatches of information from maids and porters and waste paper baskets times of comings and goings, places with lights on after curfew all manner of whispers and hearings turned themselves into dossiers and reports.

A list of something like 50 or more names was brought before Cahill Brewa so that, as Minister for Defence, he could sign off on the sting. At least 15 names were removed with Brewa stating if to his mind there was the slightest loophole for uncertainty about an agent or spy then the individual could not be dealt with. More on that later. That leaves us with around 35 names on the final list.

Obviously that was a lot more than the squad could handle on their own and so men were recruited from the wider Dublin IRA. To avoid leaks and maintain the secrecy that was vital to the whole endeavour things were kept pretty vague. It wasn’t until the night before that each group was given the details of what was needed from them. But even then they weren’t really provided with information on who their targets were. They were just told these were no good British spies and that’s all you need to know about it.

Charles Dalton was one of the IRA members involved. His account of the whole situation is fascinating. The night before he quote was wrought up thinking of what we had to do the next morning and I could feel that the other men were the same. You can imagine them all sitting around the fire talking, planning and joking in that nervous way some people do. Some played cards, others went off to re-scope out the area of the job. One man spent all night charging and recharging the car he’d need. Some treated it as no different to any other weekend. Todd Andrews actually suffered a slight concussion from a football match on the Saturday.

To add to the complication of everything, the night before Votins, a popular Republican pub, was raided. Collins escaped but Dick McKee and Paddy Clancy were arrested. Luckily for the IRA McKee managed to destroy the list of names just before he was taken. With them was a member of the Gaelic League, Conor Clune. Despite having no connection to the IRA he was arrested as well. We’ll come back to that too.

The capture of McKee and Clancy was a major blow. McKee had been one of the key strategists behind the sting and had much more of a hand in the actual organisational details than Collins. But the plan was in place and it was decided to go ahead regardless. They’d chosen a Sunday morning because they knew it was more likely their targets would be at home.

So on the morning of Sunday the 21st, teams of eight or nine men began to move through the south side of Dublin and get into position. I’ll share a map online and you’ll see how close all the targets were. As the appointed hour drew nearer, the men began to feel more nervous. Dalton describes the time before the attack as follows. It was the longest five minutes of my life, or whether the shortest. I cannot tell but they were tense and dreadful. He goes on to say, Outwardly we were calm and collected, even jesting with each other. But inwardly I felt the others were as I was, palpitating with anxiety.

What comes next honestly feels like something out of Peaky Blinders. At nine o’clock, as per the plan, across the city the IRA began knocking on doors. Chaos followed. We actually have accounts from a bunch of the men and it’s harrowing to hear how the different hits went down.

Matty MacDonald laughed at Jack Keating when he rocked up to 119 Lower Bagot Street with a huge hammer to break the door down. Matty had a better idea. Here’s how he described what happened next. We knocked at the front door and a maid came along. We have a letter from the castle. Will you deliver this note to Captain Beghelli, a one-legged man? The maid pointed and we went. I was kind of scared. Captain Beghelli, I said. That’s my name, Beghelli replied. I suppose you know what we came for. We came for you. Jimmy Brennan reached behind the bed where Beghelli had hidden his gun. Beghelli was in pajamas. Lamasse and Jimmy and I fired two in the head from three guns. I heard maids screaming.

A small side note. Some say the Lamasse mentioned here is Sean Lamasse who’d go on to be Taoiseach in 1959. Though he never admitted to being there.

Anyway, we have a surprising amount of accounts from that morning. Dalton described his hit very simply. Saying, we went up to the left hand stairs to the third flight. The two lads, his targets, were in bed in pajamas and they got up rather startled. They were against the wall when Paddy fired. The fellows fell and they made a gurgling sound.

Down the road at 92 Lower Bagot Street, William Stapleton was after Captain Newbury. He barged his way up into the first floor of the flat and from there, quote, after some hammering of the door it was opened a little bit. They tried to close the door again but we jammed our feet in it. We fired some shots through the door and burst our way in. He was in his pajamas and he was attempting to escape by the window when he was shot a number of times. The man’s wife was standing in the corner of the room and was in a terrified and hysterical condition. The operation lasted fifteen minutes.

What Stapleton doesn’t mention in his report is that Newbury’s wife was heavily pregnant and could do nothing but cover the body of her husband with a blanket once the attackers left. She later lost the baby.

Meanwhile, Vinnie Byrne and a man he refers to as Doyle were targeting Lieutenant Peter Owens and Lieutenant George Bennett at 38 Upper Mount Street. Doyle and myself dashed into the room, at the same time ordering him to put up his hands. I remember looking into a drawer and seeing a chinfane tie there, and if I’m not mistaken photographs of the 1916 leaders. I ordered the British officer to get out of bed. He asked me what was going to happen and I replied, Ah, nothing. I then ordered him to march in front of me to where the other officer was. He was standing up in the bed facing the wall. I ordered mine to do likewise. When the two of them stood together, I thought to myself, The Lord have mercy on your souls. I then opened fire with my Peter. They both fell dead.

The last account I’ll give you from that morning is not from one of the shooters, but rather the wife of Thomas Smith, the owner of 117 Moorhampton Road. Her ten year old son had opened the door and she described what happened next. I saw some men coming up the stairs with revolvers in their hands. They told me to put my hands up and my husband came out of the landing and asked for a little time to put on some clothes, which he was granted. I asked if I could go into my baby in the next room, and they pushed me roughly into it. I then heard eight shots. I came out and saw John Caldoe lying on his back wounded. I passed him and saw my husband lying very badly and Mr. Maclean dead. Her husband later died from his wounds. And we know he was just a landlord and had nothing to do with the British Secret Service.

It was brutal. And the IRA did more than simply assassinate those on the list. Todd Andrews described the behaviour of his fellow IRA men saying, There was only women and children in the rest of the house. But that did not prevent the pair from behaving like black and tans. The man he was with, Joe Dolan, again no relation I don’t think, quote, beat the half naked woman who was in Captain Noble’s bed and stole her rings. Remember that the next time someone mentions the good IRA.

It was simply a horrible morning of violence. Anne Dolan describes it saying, quote, This was face to face killing, where the battlefield was a bedroom, where combat took the form of assassination, where the army was nothing more than a band of very young men without uniforms nor the training to use the weapons in their hands. And it should be said, it left many of the men scarred for life. There’s a moment in Dalton’s memoir that’s just sad and poignant and quite poetic. I started to run, he says. I could no longer control my overpowering need to run, to fly, to leave far behind me those threatening streets.

The chaos across the south side of the city probably lasted no more than an hour. In one instance, the auxiliaries had been passing by, heard the commotion and a firefight ensued, resulting in two dead auxiliaries. But generally, the IRA did what they were good at and slipped away quietly. Not all of it went to plan, and not everyone chosen was up to the task. Some found the houses they targeted empty and ended up throwing their guns in the canal out of frustration. Others had to have their gun taken from them because their hands were simply shaking too badly.

In the end, 19 suspected intelligence officers were shot across 8 locations and 14 men died. It was the largest single operation undertaken by the Irish forces in Dublin during the war. If nothing else had happened that day, it still would have gone down in the history books. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of Bloody Sunday.

Tomorrow we’ll look at one of the British’s most shocking acts of reprisal. And then on Tuesday we’ll examine the evening of Bloody Sunday and see how Sunday the 21st 1920 totally changed the course of the War of Independence. And if I’ve made a mistake, please do let me know.

The History of Ireland was written and produced by me, Kevin Dole. Additional research and fact-checking by Robert Babington, music by Liam Doyle, and additional help from assistant producer Aoife Murphy. This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Sovereignty was never ceded.