The night of 12/13 May 1920 was one of sensation across the country as the IRA carried out over 100 hundred attacks, mirroring what had been done on the previous Easter Sunday.
Among the reported attacks included 61 on barracks, 30 attack on tax offices with papers and books burned, mail cars held up in several counties and individual assaults. The series of raids on income tax offices, which numbered in total on thirty offices located in seventeen counties was a coordinated effort to deny another aspect of British rule in Ireland and make the country the ungovernable. Carried out between 10.30pm and 1am, in most cases the documents were piled into sacks and carried off. It was also a very active night for the various IRA units in county Dublin. RIC barracks at Ballybrack, Kill-o-the Grange, Blanchardstown, Bessborough and Crumlin. These attacks were well planned, described as ‘swift operations’. At Ballybrack the IRA informed Mrs Hurst, the wife of the sergeant who was absent from home, that she could have ten minutes to take whatever she wanted from the house and barracks and then it would be burned. On the same evening, and perhaps as a result of the various roadblocks which were set up to prevent the military intervening, in Killiney, William J. McCabe, head gardener for the Rt Hon. L Waldon MP for Dublin was shot dead as he left the gate lodge of Strathmore House. The incident was described as a tragic case.
Download Source: Irish Independent, 14 May 1920, page 5
