The murder of District Inspector Philip J. O’Sullivan, RIC, son of F O’Sullivan, a solicitor in Kinsale, Cork was widely condemned in Dublin as crowds gathered in nearby shopping premises on the evening of 17 December. Just after 6pm as O’Sullivan left his ‘sweetheart’, a Miss Moore to whom he was engaged, at Nelson’s Pillar he was shot dead in Henry Street. Just after O’Sullivan had exchanged greeti...
 Few of our blog posts so far have treated how the War of Independence impacted Ireland’s islands the communities which lived on them. In December 1920 the Aran islands off the coast of Galway were deeply impacted by a military search which resulted in the deaths of two islanders. Early on the morning of 19 December the military, having left Galway and proceeded to search the village of Kilronan and the houses. Dressed i...
On 11 December 1920 an auxiliary cadet was killed in an ambush in county Cork in which eleven others were wounded. The ambush, which obviously took the military by surprise, took place within half a mile of the military barracks, and bombs were thrown into the motor lorry in which the cadets were. The Cadet killed is F. S. X. Chapman of Westcliff-on-Sea, England. It is believed that the attacking party escaped wit...
What was Christmas 1920 in Ireland like as the War of Independence raged all around? The radical newspaper, Eire Og: Young Ireland provided an insight into the type of goods and products which were advertised for sale in the weeks leading up to Christmas as the Republican movement called on people to support the war effort. On Pearse Street, George Lyons had a ‘Sinn Fein Series of Xmas Cards’ for sale which we...
 The recent publication of the book, The Dead of the Irish Revolution catalogues the deaths of over 2,300 people in Ireland between the years, 1917-1921. Among them were several civilians who were killed during the month of December 1920. Some of these deaths were included in the newspaper Eire Og: Young Ireland and other radical journals who were keen to highlight at every opportunity cases of British injustice....
The military response to the ambush at Kilmichael and the other attacks on crown forces in November 1920 came with vengeance in Cork City on the night of 11-12 December. Â Rampaging through the city hundreds of premises were destroyed or badly damaged. On that same night, the old City Hall on Albert Quay and the old Carnegie Library on Anglesey Street were also destroyed by fire. In the days that followed the Eire Og: Youn...
On Monday 13 December 1920 ‘crown forces’ wrecked and sacked in full daylight the town of Ballinalee, county Longford following an attack on the police barracks by the IRA. The destruction of the house of Mr Heraty, partially destroyed on 10 December during the IRA attack was finally flattened. The farmhouses, stables and crops of J Hannigan and P Bracken were destroyed, while P Earley and Miss Hannigan’s sh...
The town of Thurles, county Tipperary began December 1920 reeling from the news of the murderous attack made on two young men who had been playing cards in the a house at a place called Mullaunbrack. Â In total, four young men, all known in local GAA circles assembled in the house of Patrick Ryan, a farmer. The card players heard a military lorry approaching and when a man dressed in civilian clothes called to the door a s...
What did Ireland’s newspapers say about the revolution which was occurring in every town and village around the country in December 1920. The Irish Newspaper Archive and the Radical Newspaper Archive has the answers. Following the month of death and carnage which had proceeded it many believed that December would be a quiet month. However, the opposite transpired. Although there had only been a few ‘outragesâ€...
The murder of Captain Joseph T. Thompson (aged 32) of the 1st Battalion, Manchester Regiment in Ballincollig, county Cork on 20 November how ruthless the IRA had become as they were determined to put an end to the military’s reign of terror over the civilian population. Thompson left Ballincollig on the afternoon of 20 November ‘in a motor bicycle to visit some friends’ but was soon afterwards ambushed by th...