Easter Rising Stories

1847 — Assassination of Major Denis Mahon, Strokestown, Co. Roscommon

Major Denis Mahon, a landlord burdened by famine debt, was shot dead near Strokestown after “assisting” the emigration of over 400 of his destitute tenants to Canada aboard notoriously lethal emigrant ships, and evicting others. His death became a national controversy; three men were later hanged for it.
It was the most infamous violent response to mass eviction during the Famine, exposing the lethal link between clearance, assisted emigration and coffin ships.

1917 — The Balfour Declaration

The Balfour Declaration, promising British support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, was issued by Arthur Balfour — as Foreign Secretary. Balfour had earlier made his name in Ireland as Chief Secretary (1887–91), where his coercion policies after the Mitchelstown shootings earned him the nickname “Bloody Balfour”. It is a reminder that the men who shaped Irish policy in the 1880s went on to shape the twentieth-century Middle East; Balfour’s Irish career remains central to his historical reputation.

1920 — Auburn ambush, Glasson, Co. Westmeath

The Athlone Brigade IRA attacked an RIC lorry travelling from Carrick-on-Shannon to Athlone at Auburn. Constable Sydney Larkin was killed and two colleagues wounded; IRA volunteer James Finn was found dead in a nearby house, apparently killed by a stray RIC bullet during the exchange.
This incident is historically significant as it shows the widening geography of IRA attacks on police.

1921 — Irish delegation sends revised assurances to Lloyd George

After a fraught day of drafting and two meetings with Birkenhead and Lloyd George, Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins sent a letter from the full Irish negotiating delegation accepting recognition of the Crown within a proposed association of free states — conditional on Ireland’s “essential unity”. Childers, Barton and Gavan Duffy considered resigning in protest. The Crown formula in this letter became the fault line on which the Treaty and the Civil War would later break.

1922 — Capture of Charlie Daly’s column, Dunlewy, Co. Donegal

An anti-Treaty IRA column under Charlie Daly — posted to Donegal to open a northern front — was surrounded at Munacool (Meenabul) near Dunlewy after failing to post sentries, and surrendered without a shot. Eight men were captured, including Daly, Timothy O’Sullivan, Daniel Enright and Seán Larkin, all subsequently sentenced to death.
The men captured here became the four executed in Donegal in January 1923, among the most poignant executions of the Civil War.

1950 — Death of George Bernard Shaw

Shaw died aged 94 at Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire. The Dublin-born playwright and Fabian polemicist had skewered Anglo-Irish attitudes in John Bull’s Other Island (1904) and maintained a lifelong, argumentative engagement with Irish questions, refusing both Home Rule certainties and revolutionary romance.
Shaw was Ireland’s Nobel laureate in literature (1925) and its most internationally influential writer of the revolutionary era.

---

References:

1. Dictionary of Irish Biography (n.d.) ‘Mahon, Denis’. Royal Irish Academy. Available at: https://www.dib.ie/index.php/biography/mahon-denis-a5390 (Accessed: 1 November 2026).

2. Irish History 1919–1923 Chronology (n.d.) ‘November 1921’. Available at: http://irishhistory1919-1923chronology.ie/november_1921.htm (Accessed: 1 November 2026).

3. Irish History 1919–1923 Chronology (n.d.) ‘November 1922’. Available at: http://irishhistory1919-1923chronology.ie/november_1922.htm (Accessed: 1 November 2026).

4. National Famine Way (n.d.) ‘Assassination of Major Denis Mahon’. Available at: https://nationalfamineway.ie/history/assassination-of-major-denis-mahon/ (Accessed: 1 November 2026).

5. Wikipedia contributors (n.d.) ‘Arthur Balfour’. Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Balfour (Accessed: 1 November 2026).

6. Wikipedia contributors (n.d.) ‘Balfour Declaration’. Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration (Accessed: 1 November 2026).

7. Wikipedia contributors (n.d.) ‘Denis Mahon (British Army officer)’. Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Mahon_(British_Army_officer) (Accessed: 1 November 2026).

8. Wikipedia contributors (n.d.) ‘George Bernard Shaw’. Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw (Accessed: 1 November 2026).