during the civil war thirteen suspected anti-Treaty men were kidnapped from their homes or workplaces and shot dead.21 There were ten other cases where the evidence showed that prisoners were shot after surrender or while in custody.22 These killings, never publicly disavowed by any government minister until the war was all but won, became part of the process by which victory was achieved.
One of the responses by the anti-Treaty side was a concerted legal challenge to the killing of prisoners. This could not be effected through the Dáil as it had been adjourned and when it finally reconvened it was boycotted by the anti-Treaty deputies. The press was heavily censored and so the focus of the challenge became the inquest system, which began with the inquest into the death of Cathal Brugha who was shot down at the end of the Four Courts siege. He had already surrendered some said, but the coroner declined to allow witnesses to be brought to court.23 A few weeks later, Harry Boland, another anti-Treaty deputy was killed.24 Here again, the coroner refused to allow evidence to be called to show Boland had been killed after capture.
A series of inquests into the deaths of anti-Treaty fighters killed in custody followed. Usually there was no one left to tell the tale to the inquest jury, but in a handful of cases there was evidence of state involvement. The Yellow Lanes affair concerned the kidnap and shooting of two unarmed youths in broad daylight. One of the killers wore a National Army uniform and the case caused profound embarrassment to the government. Another inquest concerned Patrick Mannion who was shot dead near Mount Street Bridge by a National Army patrol, but the evidence at the inquest showed that he was unarmed and in custody when he was shot. The jury returned a verdict of ‘wilful murder by National Army soldiers’.25 Journalists had their notebooks confiscated by plain-clothes men after the hearing and The Irish Times published a short report recording the verdict of ‘wilful murder by men in uniform’ and said little else.
In response to a letter of protest written by Count Plunkett, The Irish Times conceded the report had been ‘summarised by order of the government censor’.26 President Cosgrave told the Dáil the next day that the censor had intervened because the evidence was untrue and there the matter rested. What was done in Dublin was more easily done in isolated districts. Anti-Treaty prisoners in the custody of the National Army became particularly vulnerable. Three prisoners were killed in Kerry, six in Sligo, three in Cork and one each in Limerick, Tipperary and Mayo.27 It is likely that there were many more, but usually there was no one left to recount what took place apart from the national soldiers who had fired the fatal shots.
One prisoner was Tim Kennefick from Coachford.28 He was one of the many anti-Treaty fighters captured in early September as the National Army swarmed around Cork. The inquest jury viewed the body in the usual way and heard evidence that Kennefick was captured, badly beaten, shot in the head and dumped in a ditch. The inquest jury returned a verdict of ‘wilful murder by National Army troops’. This cut no ice with the government. In the Dáil, General Mulcahy stated that ‘the inquest was held under the auspices of Irregulars armed to the teeth, and before a jury that was apparently selected by Irregulars’. He announced that ‘no action has been taken to bring the so-called guilty troops to justice’.29 The local commander, Major General Dalton, issued a proclamation in Cork prohibiting further inquests without written permission.30
Another prisoner killed in custody was Jerry Buckley after an ambush on the road from Macroom to Kerry. A National Army convoy stopped to defuse the landmine in the road and thought they had made it safe, but this was a ‘trip mine’ and the detonation mortally wounded Commandant Tom Keogh and killed six of his men.31 Tom Keogh had been a long-time member of Collins’ Squad during the War of Independence. In the aftermath of the explosion, a group of Dublin officers also from Collins’ old Squad went looking for revenge. There had been extensive fighting around Macroom that day, but only a single man had been captured: 41-year-old Jerry Buckley, a no-rank prisoner.32 Buckley was seized, shot and tossed into the crater made by the explosion.
The local National Army commander wrote to General Emmet Dalton at HQ: ‘The shooting of a prisoner here in the operations has caused considerable contempt among the garrison here … They have paraded before me and gave me to understand that they would not go out on the hills anymore.’ The incident, he told his commander, had resonated for fifteen miles in every direction and brought the National Army into disrepute with local people. Dalton wrote to Commander in Chief Mulcahy about the killing:
This shooting was the work of the Squad. Now I personally approve of the action, but the men I have in my command are of such a temperament that they can look at seven of their companions being blown to atoms by a murderous trick without feeling annoyed, but an enemy is found with a rifle and ammn. They will mutiny if he is shot. On this account I think it would be better if you kept the ‘squad’ out of my area.
It may be taken that General Mulcahy understood all of the nuances; he did not ask questions but replied: ‘You are at perfect liberty to return here any officer you think well of so returning …’33 Afterwards, Dalton returned all the officers responsible to Dublin.34 No questions were asked by General Mulcahy about the identity of the killers or the steps taken to enforce discipline within the National Army.
That same week another letter arrived at National Army headquarters, sent by David Robinson, then a staff officer on the anti-Treaty side.35 Robinson, from Wicklow, was an ex-British Army tank officer who had been much decorated during the Great War where he had lost an eye and almost his legs. Tall and lanky, ‘Dead Eye’ had taken part in the War of Independence and went with the anti-Treaty side after the split. He was still hanging onto an old-fashioned sense of decency and expecting others to do the same. He wrote to his counterpart in the National Army headquarters asking him to raise the question of the killing of prisoners: ‘I cannot believe that Mulcahy would tolerate it for a moment.’36 Robinson also raised a concern about another prisoner, ‘a boy called Murphy’, who had been killed after capture.
The ‘boy called Murphy’ was 17-year-old Bartholemew Murphy from Castleisland. The National Army later maintained that Murphy had been a prisoner on an army lorry and was fatally wounded in an anti-Treaty ambush at Brennan’s Glen. He was in fact a prisoner of the National Army at their makeshift barracks at the Great Southern Hotel in Killarney where he had been in custody for some days and had been used to clear barricades laid in the road. The day of his death there was an ambush at Brennan’s Glen where a Dublin Guard convoy lost three men. Afterwards, there was a commotion at the barracks and Murphy was picked on because he was from that area and was thought to know who might be responsible. He was thrown down the steps by an officer and shot to death with a revolver.37 The allegations were specific, detailed and contemporaneous and having regard to what is now known about the activities of the Dublin Guard there is no reason to doubt that this young man was put to death in custody. David Robinson wrote: ‘The number of bullet wounds alone would make you suspicious.’
None of this came out at the inquest which was held the next day under the County Coroner William O’Sullivan and a jury. The local National Army commander, Brigadier Paddy O’Daly, gave evidence in uniform: a man of compact build and of slightly more than average height, he had a curiously cherubic appearance. He looked across the room at the mother of the dead youth: Julia Murphy, a widow with two children who ran a dressmakers shop on the Main Street in Castleisland.38 O’Daly related that her son had been killed while on a National Army lorry when the lorry had been ambushed and two soldiers were killed and nine others were wounded: ‘under no circumstances do we permit our political prisoners to be ill-treated’. O’Daly looked across the court to the bereaved mother: ‘I sympathise with you … I really do.’39 It may have been difficult for her to express a contrary view or to call witnesses. The Coroner’s Court had been convened at army headquarters at the Great Southern Hotel in Killarney, the very place where her son had been killed. It became a pattern in Kerry. The Dublin Guard killed prisoners and Brigadier O’Daly would go to the inquest to cover up for his men or limit the fall out.40
David Robinson also raised the killing of another prisoner, Jack Galvin, who had been captured by National Army forces in an attack
