#OnThisDay 1920 Lt. Col Gerald B Smyth was shot dead by the IRA in Cork. Smyth had given a speech in Listowel RIC advocating the shooting of civilians. His assassin said “Colonel, were not your orders to shoot on sight? Well you are in sight now, so prepare.”
#OnThisDay 1884 Louise Gavan Duffy was born in France. A suffragist, nationalist, scholar, member of Cumann na mBan, & was present in the GPO till the evacuation during the Easter Rising. Duffy also established the first Gaelscoil in Ireland in 1917.
#OnThisDay 1798 Henry Joy McCracken, a Presbyterian, industrialist, one of the founding members of the United Irishmen & leader of the 1798 Rebellion in Antrim was hanged in Belfast. He was offered clemency for the names of other leaders but he refused.
#OnThisDay 1922 Frank Aiken & several hundred men from the Fourth Northern Division IRA were taken prisoner by the Free State Army after fighting took place over the Anne Street Barracks in Dundalk. Two deceased IRA were:
John Joseph Campbell
Patrick Quigley
#OnThisDay 1915 Trooper Thomas Cunningham, a carpenter from Raffrey, Co. Down enlisted in the Australian Army in Brisbane. He served with the 2nd Australian Light Horse Regiment in Egypt &was killed in action barely a year later defending the Suez Canal.
The Irish at War 