The Other Clare, Volume 30, 2006
By Ellen D. Murphy
Michael Hopkinson’s detailed and engrossing history of the Irish Civil War, Green Against Green , states that Clare “played little part in the Civil War,” and describes fighting between pro- and anti-Treaty factions in the County during 1922 and through to the May 1923 ceasefire as “brief.”
While there may not have been recorded in Clare the prolonged and widespread anti-Treaty activities documented by Hopkinson in Kerry, for instance, the author’s description is belied by a review of military records for the early part of 1923, and by the story of two Clooney men - Patrick Hennessy and Cornelius (Con) McMahon - who were among 77 executed during the Civil War for actions against the new Free State government.
Anti-Treaty IRA forces (called in military records “the Irregulars”) targeted the nation’s railways throughout the Civil War so effectively that a January 1923 “Appreciation of the Situation” by the Free State military called rail destruction “the most serious phase of this situation.” “One cannot be in touch with people outside without noticing a weakening of confidence in the Army and its ability to carry out its work,” the report stated. London’s Morning Post of January 16, 1923 went further. “They are reducing the Free State Army to an absurdity. The parallel lines of the Irish Railways are being made to meet by the simple process of tying them in knots at intervals of a few miles.”
In Clare, the military Summary for January 13, 1923 reports rail destruction at Lahinch, Miltown-Malbay, Quilty, Corofin, Doonbeg and other stations, and describes the Ennistymon station as having been “wrecked” in what may have been concerted action by the Irregulars. In addition, that Summary states that at Ard Sollus station, “[a]bout 40 rails on the GS&W Railway were torn up. The Signal Cabin posts were cut down and several wagons were burned.”
The next Summary, for January 14, 1923, reports that Ard Sollus had been targeted for the second time in two days. “Station entered by a large number of men who removed all stationery and cash from the office together with a quantity of goods. One signal pole and two telegraph poles and wires were cut and about 120 feet of railway line torn up.”
The Army acted quickly in response to the Ard Sollus raids. The January 15, 1923 Summary reports a “Search. Clooney-Earrahan (sic), Limerick Command. Troops searched districts and arrested four Irregulars in a dugout. 52 rds amm[unition]. was found near by. One of the prisoners attempted to escape. He was fired at wounded and recaptured.” Another Summary of the same date recounts “Arrests. Clooney and Carrahan. Con and Vincent MacMahon (sic), Carrahan, Patk. P. Hennessy, Clooney and John Darcy, Corraclare (sic), all active Irregulars arrested in a dug-out with 52 rds. of .303 ammunition.”
Finally, there is this report from the Summary of January 20, 1923: “EXECUTIONS. LIMERICK. LIMERICK COMMAND: Cornelius McMahon and Patk. Hennessy were executed for having ammunition without proper authority and also with being implicated in the destruction of the railway at Ard Sollus on the 14th inst.”
This terse entry announced the summary end of two lives. However, through a collection of letters in the Clare Museum and in family papers and stories on three continents, their story survives.
The night before his execution, Patrick Hennessy, a hurler and County Secretary of the Clare GAA (which was itself broken into pro- and anti-Treaty factions) wrote at least three letters – one to his IRA comrades (“Sean and all the boys”), another to his friends and sweetheart (“Darling Jennie, Paddy, Joe and Vincent”), and a third to his younger sister Theresa.
In each, he sets out his circumstances. “Ye hardly knew tonight that Con and myself are to be executed at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning.” (“Sean” letter) “[We] were tried by court martial, found guilty and sentenced do death on the most (blank) evidence. We were tried at midnight on Wednesday night, called from our cells where we were asleep, got no chance for to defend ourselves, our lives were sworn away.” (“Jennie” letter). To Theresa, he writes “… when arrested there was nothing on us but afterwards the military found some stuff in a cock of hay and charged us with it but we are innocent.”
Through a priest who has visited him, Fr. McCreidy, he bequeaths his few possessions. “I am leaving my cigarettes to be divided among the Clare Section. A cigarette will go a long way. It will only be a little token of remembrance of me. Distribute them as far as they will go and say a prayer for me. (“Sean” letter). To Jennie, he sends a book – “the only thing I had for to send.”
Hennessy has, he tells Theresa, “one conciliation to look back too. I have never fired as much as one shot at anybody and that is a great conciliation going before my God. I know it is Gods will and I am reconciled he wants me and Con for himself in heaven and has called us to him.” Similarly, he tells Jennie “Darling do not shed tears for us, if you do, let them be tears of joy, for we are going straight to heaven. I know it is God’s will. He put us into this earth to take us away again. He has folded his arms in the shape of a cold and silent grave for to receive us back from mother earth. So do not worry, it is home to God we are going.” To Sean and comrades, he adds “there is joy in my heart tonight knowing that I will be with God tomorrow.”
“We are dying as martyrs for Ireland,” Hennessy tells Jenny; he assures Sean that he expects to face death “like a soldier and a true Irishman…[t]hey can only kill my body, my spirit will live.” And he forgives his enemies, “even those who swore my life away. I forgive them from the bottom of my heart … “ (“Theresa” letter). He tells Theresa he will pray for those who he says betrayed him.
Hennessy asks Jennie to convey his and Con’s greetings “to Minnie Mack and all our friends … to Meehan and O’Loughlin.” As his last request, he asks Theresa, “one thing … don’t forget father and mother John Mike & Baby make them happy if possible in there affliction.” His letter to his younger sister closes “ … goodbye for ever more, until we meet in Heaven.”
In the letter to Jennie, he adds a postscript: “Oh Jennie little did we think that what we did for sport on Novembers night when myself and Con drew the saucer of clay that it was to be our fate” – chronicling two deaths foretold by a Samhain custom.
In 2001, Rory O’Siochain of Dublin donated the “Sean” letter to the Clare Museum, which featured it on its website. The “Jennie” letter was among papers kept by my great-aunt, Agnes Bourke of Kilrush, and was inherited by my father in the US at her death. For years my family reread and puzzled over the letter, knowing nothing of who Patrick Hennessy was or the circumstances of his death; I learned of the “Sean” letter in the Clare Museum while looking for information about Hennessy on the Internet in 2002, and my family was delighted to donate the “Jennie” letter as well. The “Theresa” letter traveled with her when she emigrated to Australia, where it remains in the collection of her descendents, one of whom, David Meagher, came across the Clare Museum listing in the course of his own Internet search for his Clare connections.
From California, England and New York State have come other pieces of the Hennessy and McMahon story. Patricia Benker’s family papers include a portrait photograph of a young man with a string of medals at his waistcoat (determined to be from the GAA), with the notation on the reverse “Poor Patrick. January 20, 1923” – the date of the execution – handwritten by an aunt. (Her family stories tell of Patrick Hennessy’s being wounded when he was captured, which is alluded to in the January 15, 1923 Military Summary.) After finding the Clare Museum site on the Internet, Ms. Benker plans to donate this photograph to the Museum’s collection, which also now includes a second copy of the “Sean” letter from the family papers of Chryss Gardiner from New York State. And most recently the Museum received an e-mail from England from Patricia Hayward, whose great-uncle witnessed the arrest of Hennessy and McMahon and recounted it in great detail to generations of family members.
“I know,” Patrick Hennessy wrote to Jennie, “no one will miss us but our own.” More than eighty years later, however, his letters keep him and Con McMahon alive.