Easter Rising Stories

ON THIS DAY

4 October

1922. What happened at Upton

Upton station, between Innishannon and Bandon. Photograph by Ralph Rawlinson, 2005. It shows the place, not the killing.

On the evening of 4 October 1922, three anti-Treaty Volunteers were killed at or near Upton, County Cork: Daniel O’Sullivan of Upper Barrack Street, Kinsale; Patrick Pierce, also recorded as Pearse, a section commander from Kinsale, aged about twenty-five; and Michael Hayes of Shannon Street, Bandon, who was eighteen. The National Army account, printed in the Cork Examiner, said that troops between Innishannon and Upton had ordered three armed men to halt, that the men refused, and that they were shot. It added that more than 300 rounds were found on the bodies. That report even misdated the evening as 5 October.

The Cork Fatality Register at University College Cork describes the army account as not worthy of credit. Its conclusion is that the three were shot while unarmed and in National Army custody. Tom Barry later alleged that a National Army chaplain had been involved. That claim was made years afterwards and does not establish who fired. What the register does establish is that the official story, of armed men shot for refusing to halt, does not stand.

The same day in west Cork, and north of the city

Seán Hales. He survived this ambush. He was shot dead in Dublin on 7 December 1922.

The same day, a National Army column under General Seán Hales TD was walking from Dunmanway towards Clonakilty when it was ambushed near Ballingurteen, on the road between Lettergorman and Kildee. Private Patrick Byrne, a twenty-six-year-old Dubliner in the Machine Gun Corps, was badly wounded. He died the next day in Dunmanway Hospital, of shock and haemorrhage. He had served in the British Army and had been demobilised only in January 1922. Hales survived. On 7 December he was shot dead in Dublin, and the next morning the government executed Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, Richard Barrett and Joe McKelvey.

That night, north-east of Cork city, two farmers were taken from their homes: another Patrick Byrne, of Knockboy, and Daniel O’Hanlon, also recorded as Hanlon, of Ballynamaddree, who was about thirty-eight. These are not the soldier who died at Dunmanway. Nothing was heard of them until 7 October, when their bodies were found tied together in a turnip field about two miles away. At the military inquiry a witness identified the armed men as anti-Treaty, and said the background may have been a local dispute over threshing, after the two men refused to work where guerrillas were being harboured. The motive was described as obscure. The three deaths at Upton, the death of the soldier Patrick Byrne, and the murder of the two farmers are not the same kind of killing. That is what makes the date so stark.