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The Dunmanway Massacre refers to the killings of ten Protestant civilians, and the disappearance and presumed death of another three in and around Dunmanway, County Cork between 26 April and 28 April 1922. It is not clear who ordered the attacks or carried them out but both Pro- and anti-Treaty Sinn Féin representatives immediately condemned the killings. The motivation behind the killings have generated differences of opinion among historians, including the conclusions they have reached. At least one notable historian has claimed that the incident had sectarian motives, but this is contradicted by a number of others as unsupported by the evidence.

Background

West Cork, where these killings took place, was one of the most violent parts of Ireland during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) and was the scene of many of the conflict's major actions, such as the Kilmichael ambush and Crossbarry Ambush. It contained a strong IRA Brigade, (Third Cork Brigade) and also a sizable Protestant population - roughly 16%, some of whom were loyalist in political views . British intelligence noted that loyalists in Bandon were particularly helpful to them . Republicans also suspected the involvement of local loyalists in the killing of two republicans, the Coffey brothers, in Enniskeane in February 1921 .

In addition to attacks on RIC and British military targets, the IRA also killed those who gave information to the British forces. According to Tom Barry, the local IRA commander, the Third Cork Brigade killed fifteen informers in 1919-1921, including nine Catholics and six Protestants In addition, they responded to the British burning of republican homes by burning those of local loyalists. For example in June 1921, in revenge for the burning of two republicans' homes, Tom Barry wrote, 'The IRA extracted a heavy price in return...we burned to the ground in that district all the homes of British loyalists . British intelligence wrote that "many" of their informers in West Cork... "were murdered and almost all the remainder suffered grave material loss" .

The fighting ended with a truce on July 11, 1921. Under the terms of the truce, British units were withdrawn to barracks and their commanders committed to, 'no movements for military purposes' and 'no secret agents noting descriptions of movements'. For its part, the IRA agreed that, 'attacks on Crown forces and civilians to cease', and to 'no interference with British Government or private property' In December 1921, the conflict was formally ended with the Dail's acceptance of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which would set up the Irish Free State. Under the terms of the Treaty, British forces began to evactuate Ireland in early 1922.

The killings took place after the acceptance of the Treaty and before the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in June 1922, which pitted those who supported the Treaty against those who rejected it. Most of the IRA in Cork and in west Cork in particular, sided against the Treaty. During this period, the divided IRA was left in effective control over much of Ireland due to the withdrawal of British troops and the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) to barracks and the absence of any agency of the Provisional Government to fill the power vacuum. On March 26 1922, much of the IRA repudiated the authority of the Dail on the basis that it had acepted the Treaty and disestablished the Irish Republic declared in 1919. April saw the first armed clashes between pro and anti-Treaty IRA units .

In this situation, several IRA units continued attacks on British forces in spite of the truce that had come into force on 11 July 1921. Between December 1921 and February of the next year, there were 80 recorded attacks by IRA elements on the soon to be disbanded RIC, leaving 12 dead. Between January and June, twenty three RIC men, eight British soldiers and eighteen civilians would be killed in Southern Ireland. .

At the time of the Dunmanway killings, in April 1922, the leadership of the IRA Third west Cork Brigade, including Tom Barry, were attending a meeting of the anti-Treaty IRA in Dublin.

The killings at Ballygroman

At 2:30 am on Wednesday April 26, a group of IRA men, led by Michael O'Neill, arrived at the house of Thomas Hornibrook at Ballygroman, near Ballincollig, in the Bandon area, seeking to seize his car.

Thomas Hornibrook was in the house at the time along with his son, Samuel Hornibrook and Herbert Woods (a former Captain in the British Army and MC). All three were Protestants and also have been described as "committed loyalists" and "extremely anti-Republican," and had reportedly been in contact with the Essex Regiment based in Bandon during the conflict, supplying information on the local IRA {{citation}}: Empty citation (help). Thomas Hornibrook was a former magistrate, and his daughter Matilda, was married to Herbert Woods. Matilda herself would later described herself and her husband as "staunch Loyalists." {{citation}}: Empty citation (help)

Michael O'Neill demanded a part of the engine mechanism (the magneto) that had been removed by Thomas Hornibrook to prevent such commandeering. Hornibrook refused to give them the part, and after further efforts, some of the IRA party entered through a window. Herbert Woods then shot O'Neill, wounding him fatally. O'Neill's companion Charlie O'Donoghue took him to a local priest for Last Rites before he died. The next morning O'Donoghue left for Bandon to report the incident to his superiors, returning with four IRA men, meeting with the Hornibrook's and Woods who admitted to shooting O'Neill.

A local jury found Woods responsible for O'and said that O'Neill had been 'brutally murdered in the execution of his duty.' Charlie O'Donoghue and Stephen O'Neill, who were present the night of the killing both attended the inquest. Hornibrooke's house was burned some time after the incident.

Some days later Capt Woods, Thomas Hornibrook and his son Samuel went missing, and in time were presumed killed. The Morning Post newspaper reported that, 'about 100' IRA men returned from Bandon with O'Neill's comrades and surrounded the house. It reported that a shootout then ensued until the Hornibrookes and Woods ran out of ammunition and surrendered. However this report in the Morning Post has been described as 'exaggerated.' Prior to this incident on the 13 April Michael Collins who expressed concern about newspaper reports alleging attacks on Protestants in Ireland, particularly those of the Morning Post to Desmond Fitzgerald, saying that while some of its coverage was "fair newspaper comment" that the "strain of certain parts is very objectionable."

While the deaths of the two Hornibrookes and Woods have never been confirmed, local loyalist Protestants repeated gruesome, though inconsistent, rumours about their killing.

Alice Hodder, a local Protestant of Crosshaven, wrote to her mother shortly afterwards of Herbert Woods that, "His aunt and uncle had been subject to a lot of persecution and feared an attack so young Woods went to stay with them. At 2:30 am armed men...broke in...Woods fired on the leader and shot him... They caught Woods, tried him by mock court martial and sentenced him to be hanged...The brothers of the murdered man then gouged out his eyes while he was alive and then hanged him" concluding , "When will the British Government realise that they are really dealing with savages and not ordinary normal human beings?" The letter was forwarded to Lionel Curtis, Secretary of the Cabinet's Irish Committee, on which he appended the comment "this is rather obsolete.". Matilda Woods later testified before the Grants committee for £5,000 compensation in 1927 that her husband was drawn and quartered before being killed and that the Hornibrookes were taken to a remote location, forced to dig their own graves and then shot dead.

However, Matilda Woods was not in Ireland – notes historian Meda Ryan – when her husband disappeared and as there is no record of their bodies being located, says that statements on the manner of their death must be, "read with caution."

Killings in the Dunmanway, Ballineen and Murragh area

Over the next two days ten Protestant men were shot and killed in the Dunmanway, Ballineen and Murragh area. In Dunmanway on the 27th April, Francis Fitzmaurice – a solicitor and land agent – was shot dead, as were David Gray, a chemist and James Buttimer, a retired draper, in the doorways of their homes on the Main St., Dunmanway; a number of other Protestants in Dunmanway were also attacked. In the Ballinee area also on the 27 April, James Bradfield, a post office official, was shot dead. Revd. Ralph Harbord – the son of the Revd. Richard C. M. Harbord from the Murragh area – was shot and killed.

Next evening two men, Robert Howe and John Chinnery, were shot dead at their farms in Ballaghanure, east of Dunmanway. In the nearby village of Ballineen, a 16 year-old, Alexander McKinley was shot dead. In a house in Caher (to the west of Ballineen) John Buttimer and Jim Greenfield were also shot and killed. Ten miles away, Robert Nagle was killed in his home in MacCurtain Hill in Clonakilty. Other houses in Clonakilty were raided.The following night (28 April), John Bradfield was shot in his home in Killowen, east of Murragh and other Protestant homes were raided.

Dunmanway "find"

According to Meda Ryan, those shot were all listed as "helpful citizens" in Auxiliaries documents found in Dunmanway. She argues that in two cases those of sixteen year olds McKinley and Nagle, the brother and son of those named were killed. In their case she states, exceptionally, the RIC Auxiliary Division intelligence document had listed surnames only, without first names.

When the Auxiliaries ‘K Company’ evacuated the Dunmanway workhouses were they were based, the IRA found confidential documents and a diary they left behind: these included a list of informers names. The information – according to historian Ryan – was so precise "only a very well informed spy system could account for some of the entries in the book." Flor Crowley who analysed the diary concluded that "it was the work of a man who had many useful ‘contacts’ not merely in one part of the area but all over it." The Dunmanway discovery confirmed the existence of an espionage organisation.

There was no provision in the Truce, nor any instruction from any Irish authority after it, that such spies were to be killed. The IRA's Third Cork Brigade had killed 15 informers during the 1919-1921 conflict, of whom nine were Catholics and six Protestants, but the April 1922 killings were not a sanctioned IRA operation. .

Ryan alleges that the Auxiliaries' files showed that some Protestants in Dunmanway had formed a group known as the "Loyalist Action Group" or "Protestant Action Group", affiliated to the Anti-Sinn Féin League and the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland. The IRA suspected this group of passing information to the British forces during the War of Independence. These included a ' Black and Tan military intelligence Diary'.

Historian Paul McMahon has discovered that the British Government authorised £2,000 to re-establish intelligence in southern Ireland, especially in Cork, in early April 1922. On April 26, the same day as the raid on Hornibrooke's house, three British intelligence officers (Lts Hendy, Drove and Henderson) along with a driver, drove to Macroom with the intention of gathering intelligence in west Cork, where they entered an inn. There they were drugged and taken prisoner by IRA men, then taken to Macroom Castle where they were held for four days and then shot and dumped in a 'lonely bog.' The raid on the Hornibrooke's house took place on the night of the 26th, several hours after the abduction of the British officers. The subsequent killings of alleged informers occurred while the officers were being held and interrogated. The British evacuated the remaining two battalions of troops they had kept in Cork city on May 25 .

Aftermath

According to Niall Harrington – a Pro-Treaty IRA officer at the time – over 100 Protestant families fled West Cork in the aftermath of the attacks, in fear of further sectarian attacks. Alice Hodder in the same letter cited above wrote

"For two weeks there wasn't standing room on any of the boats or mail trains leaving Cork for England. All loyalist refugees who were either fleeing in terror or had been ordered out of the country...none of the people who did these things, though they were reported as the rebel IRA faction, were ever brought to book by the Provisional Government."

One Cork correspondent of Irish Times who saw the refugees go through the city noted that, "so hurried was their flight that many had neither a handbag nor an overcoat."

Hodder also alleged that Protestants in the area were being forcibly evicted from their farms by republicans on behalf of the Irish Transport Union, on the basis that they were bringing down wages, although she conceded that the local anti-Treaty IRA re-enstated them when it was informed

Tom Hales, Commandant of O'Neill's Brigade (3rd Cork), ordered all arms be brought under control while issuing a statement promising that "all citizens in this area, irrespective of creed or class, every protection within my power." According to Tim Pat Coogan, Arthur Griffith echoed Hales sentiments though Hales was actively engaged in armed defiance of Griffith's government at this time.

Speeking on 28 April in the Dáil Griffith, President of the pro-Treaty, Irish Provisional Government, stated:

Events, such as the terrible murders at Dunmanway ..., require the exercise of the utmost strength and authority of Dáil Éireann. Dáil Éireann, so far as its powers extend, will uphold, to the fullest extent, the protection of life and property of all classes and sections of the community. It does not know and cannot know, as a National Government, any distinction of class or creed. In its name, I express the horror of the Irish nation at the Dunmanway murders.

Speaking immediately afterwards Seán T. O'Kelly said he wished to associate the "anti-treaty side" in the Dáil with Griffith's sentiments. Speaking in Mullingar on April 30th, the Anti-Treaty leader Éamon de Valera also condemned the killings. A general convention of Irish Protestant churches in Dublin released a statement saying that:

"Apart from this incident, hostility to Protestants by reason of their religion, has been almost, if not wholly unknown, in the 26 counties in which they are a minority."

However, the incident provoked long-held fears on the part of Protestant loyalists in southern Ireland. A deputation of Irish loyalists that met Winston Churchill in May 1922 told him that there was, "nothing to prevent the peasants expropriating every last Protestant loyalist" and that they feared a repeat of the massacres that Protestants had suffered in the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the 1798 Rebellion . Churchill himself remarked that the events were, "little short of a massacre"

Local IRA commanders, Tom Barry, Liam Deasy and Seán Moylan, ordered that armed guards be put on the homes of other known loyalists to prevent further violence. Tom Barry, who had returned immediately from Dublin on hearing of the killings, ensured that some who attempted to take advantage of the situation by stealing livestock owned by Protestants were firmly discouraged.

Conflicting conclusions

It is not clear who ordered the attack or carried it out. Historian Peter Hart has written that the killers were identified by eyewitnesses as local IRA men. It is his opinion that from two to five separate groups must have done the killing, due to the geographic dispersal of the attacks. He says that they were "acting on their own initiative", but that the IRA garrison in Dunmanway failed to stop them.

However Hart's sources have been challenged and found to contradict his own assertions. Niall Meehan in Troubles in Irish History: A 10th anniversary critique of The IRA and its Enemies notes that Hart reports Clarina Buttimer as saying that she ‘seems to have recognised’ one of the attackers of her husband, yet in her inquest statement she states that she did ‘not’ recognise anyone. Hart cites newspaper reports of the killing on a number of dates, at least three of which carried her inquest statement. Hart also cites a 1927 Grants Committee which included the statement from Buttimer which again reported her as saying that she did ‘not’ recognise anyone.

Suggested motivation

At the time the Press, including Belfast Newsletter, (1 May 1922) Irish Times (29 April 1922) and New York Times, speculated that the killings at Dunmanway were in reprisal for the ongoing killings of Catholics in Belfast

However Peter Hart has written that the killing of O'Neill, in his opinion, "undoubtedly sparked" the subsequent killings of Protestants. Tim Pat Coogan also suggests that 'it started when an anti-Treaty IRA commandant, O'Neill was shot dead and over the next week the latent sectarianism of centuries of ballads and landlordism claimed ten Protestant lives' .

According to Meda Ryan, because the men were all Protestants, and the majority of the IRA were Catholic, an insinuation has been made that the motive was sectarian. Peter Hart, while accepting that those killed "had been marked out as enemies," goes on to conclude that the motive was sectarian rather than "disloyality to the Republican cause by informing on their fight for freedom activities."

That those killed were informers is disputed by Peter Hart, who claims that the Protestant community had been "notably reticent" about giving information to Crown forces during the War of Independence and says of the Loyalist Action Group that, "there is absolutely no evidence that such a conspiracy existed". He concludes that "these men were shot because they were Protestants. No Catholic Free Staters, landlords or spies were shot or even shot at". Moreover, he suggests, any useful information given by the dead men to the British forces would have been given before the Truce signed in July 1921, seven months earlier..

However Fr. Brian Murphy OSB, in a review of Hart's book in The Month, a Review of Christian Though and World Affairs, notes that Hart "by maintaining that Protestants did not have sufficent knowledge to act as informers, Hart hightens the suspicion that they were killed for religious motives." In Peter Hart: the Issue of Sources, Murphy notes that Hart cites A Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920-1921 (Jeudwine Papers, 72/8212, Imperial War Museum). He says that Hart wrote

"the truth was that, as British intelligence officers recognised in the south, the Protestants and those who that supported the Government rarely gave much information because, except by chance, they had not got it to give."

However Hart does not give the next two sentences which, according to Murphy, read

"an exception to this was in the Bandon area where there were many Protestant farmers who gave information. Although the Intelligence Officer of the area was exceptionally experienced and although the troops were most active it proved almost impossible to protect those brave men, many of whom were murdered while almost all the remainder suffered grave material loss."

Murphy concludes that "this British source confirms that the IRA killings in the Bandon area were motivated by political and not sectarian considerations. Possibly, military considerations, rather than political, would have been a more fitting way to describe the reason for the IRA response to those who informed." While Hart has described A Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920-1921 as the "the most trustworthy" that we have, no where according to Murphy does he give an explanation why the two sentences had been omitted in The IRA and Its Enemies.

According to Niall Meehan, Peter Hart ignores aspects of British Army documents which suggest an active loyalism working with the British army in the area were the killings took place. Meehan suggests that if the killings were carried out for political, military purposes or revenge, it undermines Hart's suggestion of sectarianism.

Meda Ryan, in her biography of Tom Barry, reports that he told her that those killed had done, "untold damage to the IRA." She says that they were all connected with the "Murragh Loyalist Action Group", known locally as the "Protestant Action Group". Ryan states that this group was involved in espionage and that local republicans suspected them of involvement in the killing of the two Coffey brothers, republican activists killed in Enniskeane in February 1921.

Niall Meehan further suggests Peter Hart ignored "significant publicly available" Protestant statements which "emphatically denied" there was an anti-Protestant campaign of violence. They stated that the events in West Cork were "exceptional" and these statements were carried in The Irish Times which was a unionist paper at the time. Meehan also cites a Church of Ireland cleric who writing in The Irish Times in 1994 reported Protestant support for a member Fianna Fail in 1930 because he was a member of the IRA leadership who protected potential loyalist victims in 1922 and took "decisive action to end the killings."

Notes

1. Tim Pat Coogan, Pg. 359
2. Meda Ryan Pg.212
3. Tim Pat Coogan, Pg.359
4. Meda Ryan Pg. 211-212
5. Peter Hart, Pg.289
6. Irish Political Review Vol 20 No. 7 July 2005 (ISSN 0790-7672 pages 10-11
7. Meda Ryan, p.213
8. Meda Ryan, p164
9. Tom Barry, Guerrilla days in Ireland p. 214,
10. Irish Political Review Vol 20 No. 7 July 2005 (ISSN 0790-7672 pages 10-11
11. Tom Barry, p223-224
12. Including the anti-Treaty occupation of the Four Courts in Dublin, the killing of a pro-Treaty IRA officer in Athlone (Michael Hopkinson, Green Against Green, p75, and a gun attack on government buildings in Dublin
13. Niall C Harrington, Pg. 8
14. Paul MacMahon, Pg.71
15. Meda Ryan Pg. 211-213
16. Tim Pat Coogan, Pg.359 say this occured on the 25th of April.
17. Meda Ryan Pg. 212
18. Meda Ryan Pg. 212
19. Tim Pat Coogan, Pg.360
20. Tim Pat Coogan, p359
21. Meda Ryan, Pg.447
22. Meda Ryan Pg. 210-213, 447
23. Petr Hart, Pg.272-76
24. Meda Ryan, Pg.213
25. Meda Ryan, Pg.209-210
26. Meda Ryan Pg.164
27. Meda Ryan, Pg. 213
28. Paul McMahon, Pg.66
29. Niall C Harrington Pg.8
30. Coogan, p359
31. Irish Times, 1 May 1922, cited in Hart, p277
32. Coogan, p359
33. Tim Pat Coogan, Pg. 359
34. Meda Ryan Pg. 215
35. Coogan, p359
36. Debate of 28 April, see pp.332-333.
37. Meda Ryan Pg. 215
38. Dorothy Macardle, Pg. 705
39. Meda Ryan Pg.215
40. Paul MacMahon, Pg.75
41. Paul McMahon, p86
42. Meda Ryan Pg. 215
43. Meda Ryan Pg. 217
44. Peter Hart, Pg.280-284
45. Brian P Murphy osb & Niall Meehan, Pg. 24
46. Hart p277
47. New York Times May 1922
48. Peter Hart, Pg.279
49. Tim Part Coogan, p359
50. Meda Ryan, Pg.212
51. Peter Hart, Pg.279-288
52. Brian Murphy OSB, The Month, a Review of Christian Though and World Affairs, September-October 1998
53. Irish Political Review Vol 20 No. 7 July 2005 (ISSN 0790-7672 pages 10-11
54. Brian P Murphy OSB & Niall Meehan, Pg.25
55. Meda Ryan Pg.213
56. Brian P Murphy OSB & Niall Meehan, Pg. 24

References

• Tom Barry, Guerrilla Days in Ireland, Mercer Press, Cork, 1997.
• Niall C Harrington, Kerry Landing, August 1922: An Episode of the Civil War, Anvil Books, 1992:8. ISBN 0947962700
• Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins, Arrow Books (1991), ISBN 9780099685807
• Meda Ryan, Tom Barry, IRA Freedom Fighter, Mercier, 2005 (paper back edition), ISBN 1 85635 480 6
• Dorothy Macardle, The Irish Republic, 1999
• Peter Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923, Oxford University Press (1999), ISBN 0198208065
• Paul McMahon, British Spies and Irish Rebels - British Intelligence and Ireland 1916-1945, (Boydell 2008), ISBN

978-1-84383-376-5

• John Borgonovo, Spies, Informers and the 'Anti-Sinn Féin Society, The Intelligence War in Cork City, 1920-1921' Irish Academic Press (2007), ISBN 0 7165 2833 9
• Brian P Murphy osb and Niall Meehan, Troubles in Irish History: A 10th anniversary critique of The IRA and its Enemies, Aubane Historical Society (2008), ISBN 978 1 903497 46 3
• Brian Murphy osb, The Month, a Review of Christian Though and World Affairs, September-October 1998
• Brian Murphy osb, Irish Political Review Vol 20 No. 7 July 2005 (ISSN 0790-7672 pages 10-11

• Irish War of Independence
• War crimes in Ireland
• 1922 in Ireland
• History of County Cork
• Disappeared people