ON THIS DAY
30 October
1920. MacSwiney lies in state in City Hall
MacSwiney’s coffin, October 1920. It had been carried into Cork City Hall at about 9.30 p.m. on the 29th.
On Saturday 30 October Terence MacSwiney lay in the great chamber of Cork City Hall. The coffin had a glass lid. It stood on a catafalque. Six IRA Volunteers stood the guard, changed about every two hours in daylight. After curfew they stayed inside the building. Rain fell. People kept coming.
He had been arrested in the same hall on 12 August, when troops raided a republican court and brigade meeting. He died in Brixton at 5.40 a.m. on 25 October. The coffin came back on the 29th. On the 30th the municipal building was a wake house. He was still Lord Mayor. Corporation had already named him. The public filed past a civic officer and an IRA commandant in one box.
The remains stayed there through Sunday morning. Transfer to the North Cathedral came on 31 October. Burial at St Finbarr’s was 31 October. Kevin Barry had two days left in Mountjoy.
1920. Castledaly: an RIC patrol is hit
About midday the same Saturday five RIC men on bicycles were on the Peterswell–Kilchreest road in south Galway, near St Teresa’s Church at Castledaly: Sergeant O’Driscoll and Constables Timothy Horan, Keane, Dunne and Gilmartin. Some 25 to 30 Volunteers under Thomas McInerney of the Gort Battalion were behind the walls. Fire opened. O’Driscoll went down when he saw the guns. Horan was hit, reached the church ground, and received the last rites from Fr Michael Corcoran before he died. Keane was wounded in the chest and arm and got to Roxborough House. Dunne and Gilmartin ran the fields and got away. The column took bicycles and carbines.
Horan was forty. He was born at Kilnabrack, Glenbeigh, Kerry, on 1 January 1880. He was married to Margaret. Galway City Museum records a widow and three children. He had been recommended for promotion. That evening five farmhouses in the Castledaly and Kilchreest district were burned. Houses were raided.
Two days later, 1 November, Eileen Quinn, twenty-four, pregnant, a mother of three, was sitting on a wall at Corker, Kiltartan, near Gort. Auxiliaries passed in lorries. Shots were fired. She was hit and later died. Galway City Museum sets her death in the days after Castledaly. That is sequence, not a courtroom finding of named revenge. The military inquiry called it misadventure. The date-line is: Horan, 30 October; burned houses that night; Quinn, 1 November.
References
Cork Independent (4 Nov. 2020), ‘Remembering 1920: Terence MacSwiney’s funeral’. City Hall 30 October–31 morning; glass lid; six-man guard; two-hour relief; curfew night inside. corkindependent.com/2020/11/04/remembering-1920-terence-macswineys-funeral
Cork Independent (12 Aug. 2020), ‘Remembering 1920: The arrest of Terence MacSwiney’. Raid on City Hall, 12 August. corkindependent.com/2020/08/12/remembering-1920-the-arrest-of-terence-macswiney
Galway City Museum (30 Oct. 2020), ‘Centenary Anniversary of Tragedies in South Galway’. Castledaly; Horan; McInerney; five houses burned; Quinn two days later. galwaycitymuseum.ie/blog/centenary-anniversary-of-tragedies-in-south-galway
McGowan, B. (2022) The War of Independence in Galway, 1920–21. Galway City Museum. Chapter 3, Castledaly. galwaycitymuseum.ie/…/War_Inde_Galway_…_WEB.pdf
Century Ireland, ‘World pays tribute to MacSwiney as funeral brings Cork to a standstill’. Lying in state, then North Cathedral and St Finbarr’s. rte.ie/centuryireland/…/world-pays-tribute-to-macswiney
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