Easter Rising Stories

1920. Fernside

On the night of 11–12 October 1920, two of the most wanted men in Ireland, Dan Breen and Seán Treacy of the Third Tipperary Brigade IRA, were sleeping at Fernside, the Drumcondra home of Professor John Carolan, a lecturer at St Patrick’s Training College. Unbeknownst to them, their movements through Dublin had apparently been followed by British intelligence agents. Shortly after midnight, an armed raiding party surrounded the house and entered the premises. Carolan was confronted downstairs while officers and soldiers searched the rooms above. The quiet of the suburban residence was suddenly shattered by gunfire as the raiders approached the bedroom occupied by Breen and Treacy. In the confused exchange of shots across the upstairs landing, two British intelligence officers, Major George Osbert Stirling Smyth and Captain Alfred Philip White, were fatally wounded, while a corporal was also hit. Smyth was the brother of Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald Smyth, the senior RIC officer shot dead in Cork three months earlier. With soldiers attempting to force their way upstairs, the two Tipperary men faced the immediate prospect of capture or death.

Treacy managed to escape first through a rear window, making his way across the conservatory and into the garden beyond. Breen, meanwhile, continued firing at the advancing soldiers before following his comrade through the window. Badly wounded and bleeding heavily, he struggled across the conservatory roof and eventually escaped barefoot into the surrounding streets. Despite their injuries and the military cordon, both men evaded capture, and Breen was subsequently brought to the Mater Hospital for treatment. Yet the encounter had another tragic consequence. Professor Carolan had been shot in the neck and died later that October. The circumstances of his shooting became bitterly disputed: the British military inquiry attributed his wound to IRA gunfire, whereas Carolan reportedly declared from his hospital bed that a British officer had shot him after the fighting had ended. Fernside had provided Breen and Treacy with a remarkable escape, but their respite was brief. Just two days later, on 14 October 1920, Seán Treacy was killed in another gun battle with British intelligence officers in Dublin’s Talbot Street.

If you would like to know more about the lives of Dan Breen and Seán Treacy, please look at these documentaries I have made, featuring some brilliant historians and relatives. Part 1 looks at their beginnings and the planning of Soloheadbeg and the Knocklong train rescue. Part 2 looks at the attempted ambush on Lord French.

PART 1

PART 2

In twelve months the same struggle had moved from the stairs at Fernside to a conference room in London.