#OnThisDay 1882 Eamon De Valera was born in New York City. De Valera was a Commandant in the Easter Rising (and avoided execution), Anti-Treaty politician, founder of @fiannafailparty, writer of the Irish constitution, Taoiseach for decades & two term president of Ireland. De Valera dominated Irish politics for sixty years.
#OnThisDay 1318 Edward Bruce was killed at the Battle of Faughart, Louth by an Irish-Norman army. Bruce, brother to Robert the King of Scotland, was declared by some Irish kings to be the High King of Ireland through his matrilineal line. His claim died with him. #Ireland #History
#OnThisDay 1923 Michael Kilroy, O/C IRA Western Command, called for a hunger strike in Mountjoy Jail by 400 IRA POWs protesting their incarceration, as the war had ended in May. It spread to all camps until there was 1000s on hunger strike.
The figures given by Sinn Féin at the time were :
Mountjoy Jail: 462;
Cork Jail: 70;
Kilkenny Jail: 350;
Dundalk Jail: 200;
Gormanston Camp: 711;
Newbridge Camp: 1,700;
Tintown: 123;
Curragh Camp: 3,390; Harepark Camp: 100;
North Dublin Union: 50 women.
The government entered negotiations but were really just a threat, ““we are not going to force feed you, but if you die we won’t waste coffins on you; you will be put in orange boxes and you will be buried in unconsecrated ground”.
Two strikers died, Denis Barry on November 20th and Andrew Sullivan on November 22nd. Bishop Daniel Cohalan, who supported Terence MacSwiney’s hunger strike, he compared him to Pearse and Emmet and saw that he got Church support. However when Barry passed, Bishop Cohalan wrote,
“Republicanism in Ireland for the last twelve months has been a wicked and insidious attack on the Church and on the souls of the faithful committed to the Church by the law of the Catholic Church”.
Twenty two year old Denis Barry was not allowed a religious burial.
Eventually the strike was called off as it was not achieving its aims. Some prisoners were released slowly but others stayed in for nearly another ten years.
#OnThisDay 1920 In Saltmills, Wexford, Martin Roche (pic) & four more IRA men were killed & nine more injured when a bomb factory they were working in exploded. A accidental detonation caused by a candle.
Roche, like many Volunteers at the time, had lost a brother in First World War. The injured were arrested & deported to English prisons.
The other decease were:
The injured were:
#OnThisDay 1917 Chaplain Micheal Bergin MC from Roscrea, Tipperary, was killed in action while working at an aid post. Despite orders restricting chaplains from the front lines, Bergin was often found there, once even giving Mass under enemy artillery fire.
In 1914, Bergin was working in a catholic school in Syria, then part of the Ottoman Empire and was taken prisoner as an enemy civilian. He was eventually extradited to Egypt where he joined the Australian Imperial Force (despite having never even visited Australia), who were short on Roman Catholic chaplains and so he was assigned to the 5th Light Horse Brigade.
He served as chaplain in all the unit’s major actions in France and Belgium, including at Pozières, Mouquet Farm, Messines, and the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele). He was awarded a Military Cross for his “magnificent zeal and courage”.
The Irish at War 