Buried Lives Page 9

  Both Dudley and Burchett thought there had been a significant exodus of loyalist families from the baronies of Upper and Lower Ormond during this period. It looks as if they are correct. The 1911 census shows 233 Episcopalians, 21 Presbyterians and 2 Methodists in Nenagh,123 a total of 256, whereas the 1926 census shows 132 Episcopalians, 7 Presbyterians and 2 Methodists,124 a total of 141, a sharp drop of 45 per cent. Presbyterian numbers fell by two-thirds.

  It is worth looking at some compensation claims in the barony of Ikerrin, north-east Co. Tipperary, where Roscrea is the major urban centre. In contrast to Nenagh, however, the number of claims made to the IGC from the Roscrea area was small: only fourteen compared to twenty-nine from the Nenagh area. A Roscrea resident, Adrian Hewson, maintains that relations were generally good between the Catholic and Protestant communities during the period 1920–23, partly because the Cistercian Order outside Roscrea, Mount St Joseph, exercised a calming influence.125 The Free State Army, based in Roscrea, also helped to maintain law and order during the Civil War.

  But not everyone enjoyed a peaceful life. An elderly woman, Elizabeth Vaughan – who was aged 78 in 1926 – lived at Golden Grove, Roscrea. Between May 1922 and January 1923, her out offices and greenhouse, crops, trees and gatehouse were damaged. She believed that these incidents occurred because her husband had been a JP and DL. She claimed £4,000 in the Birr circuit court in November 1925, when Judge Roche observed that ‘it is a sad thing that the people of the locality should indulge in such a debauch of savagery towards such a defenseless old man and woman’.126 The destruction and ‘savagery’ occurred partly because of a dispute with the Vaughan farm workers. The Transport Union backed a seven-week strike. Mrs Vaughan made it clear in court there was no agrarian motive. She was awarded £1,320 and the IGC awarded an additional £1,500.

  There is the exceptional case of two Orange Order members – a father and son – being forced out of the Roscrea area, the only Orange Order claim I found in the IGC files for Co. Tipperary. William McKenna was 72 when he applied for an IGC grant in November 1926. He was employed as a steward on the Vaughan estate, where he arrived in March 1922 with his wife and son, who had been in the Ulster Volunteers. In June, he received a warning letter telling him to leave within 24 hours. This was at the time that his employer, the Vaughan family, was under severe attack. McKenna wrote that ‘he could not get away at the time’.127 Subsequently the family was robbed, and McKenna’s wife and son were taken into a wood and tied up. He only found them the following morning. Thereafter, to avoid being attacked at night, they slept outdoors and then left for the Isle of Man. McKenna’s wife was 75 when this attack took place and he later stated that she had ‘lost her health ever since’.128

  He returned to Belfast, where his wife was ‘an invalid’,129 aged 75 in 1928. He initially claimed £50 for loss of employment, travel expenses and goods stolen, but the IGC considered that he had not presented his case ‘to the claimant’s best advantage’.130 and encouraged him to reapply for fuller compensation, which he did, receiving £350 in October 1928. This is a rare case of an applicant being asked to increase the amount of a claim.

  It seems there was no significant exodus of Protestants in the Ikerrin barony. The Church of Ireland preachers’ book for St Cronin’s church, Roscrea, gives a congregation of 216 on Easter day 1915 and 177 in 1924, a decline of 18 per cent, but it seems that 26 Church of Ireland men fell in the First World War in the Roscrea parish, accounting for the reduced numbers. The censuses of Ireland 1911 and 1926 reported that there were 233 Church of Ireland people in Roscrea in 1911 and 202 in 1926.131 However, in 1911, there were 56 Methodists in Roscrea and by 1926 there were 36, a fall of 36 per cent. Dudley Cooney, the Methodist historian of the Irish midlands, has commented:

  The upheavals of the War of Independence and the Civil War between 1919 and 1923 created difficulties for the Methodist people as well as for others, and some people found it difficult to adjust to the new regime. In particular, those who had served in the security forces during the British administration felt insecure, and emigrated.132

  In the dioceses of Cashel and Emly, which includes parishes in the South Riding of Co. Tipperary, there were 16 Church of Ireland primary schools in 1915–16 with 246 pupils on the roll. In 1925–26 there were 11 schools with only 154 pupils in the roll, a fall of 62 per cent in pupils in 10 years.133 The 1924–25 report stated:

  … the numbers in attendance are for the most part small … The finances of the Board are much depleted and unless more generous help is given by Church people in future years, the work of our young people will be greatly hampered.134

  Looking at the decline in civilian Protestant numbers in Co. Tipperary from 1911 to 1926, there were 8,088 Episcopalians, 432 Presbyterians and 435 Methodists in Co. Tipperary in 1911, making a total of 8,088 and 4,143 in 1926, the drop being 3,637.135 Of this 3,637, there were 1,213 in the British Army who were Protestants.136 These army men had dependents, possibly 20 per cent137 so we have 250 dependents and certainly not all were Protestants, perhaps 200. So we are looking at 1,400 British Army Protestants in Co. Tipperary in 1911. The total number of Protestants (Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists) in Co. Tipperary was 8,088, so if we take away 1,400, we get 6,688 civilian Protestants in 1911. In 1926 there were 4,143 civilian Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists, so there was a drop in the number of civilian Protestants of 2,545, or 38 per cent in the county.

  Why the widespread persecution, intimidation and looting? The Church of Ireland identified ‘covetousness’ as a motive, as well as ‘personal dislike’, and there can be no doubt that anti-British sentiment was sometimes used as a cloak for land-grabbing. Tom Garvin thinks that ‘land hunger and communal hatreds commonly led to sectarian and agrarian murders’138 ‘Communal’ hatreds included ‘the traditional Anglo-Irish (meaning Protestant Irish) and British Ascendancy’.139 But as we have seen, by 1921 various land acts had seen to it that landlordism had been abandoned and there was little ground for ‘hatred’ on agrarian grounds. Land had been transferred to ex-tenants on a national scale, but the small Protestant community nevertheless felt insecure and fearful, and with reason. They suffered intimidation, arson, land seizures, boycotting and cattle driving at a time when there was no police force or army and when there was much poverty, unemployment and landlessness during the post-war depression. R.B. McDowell thought ‘it was hard to say’ whether the motives were ‘political, religious or purely agrarian’ and ‘victims seem to have believed it was a compound of all three.’140 Opportunism played a part as well as association with the British forces, RIC and service as DLs and JPs which led to many cases of harassment. There can be little doubt that some Protestants lost the goodwill of their neighbours because they were loyal to the Crown. A distant relative of mine, Lady Emily Bury of Charleville Forest, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, expressed the view to the Irish Grants Committee in 1926 that: ‘It is quite clear a conspiracy started in 1920 to drive all loyalists out of Ireland to make their places absolutely no use to them with the object of getting hold of their land as being aliens in the country’.141

  In the neighbouring King’s and Queen’s Counties, there was a ‘forcible ejection of large numbers of Protestants’.142 In south Donegal, some Protestants similarly received notices ordering them to leave.

  On 16 June 1922, the Church of Ireland Gazette reported that Protestants had been evicted at Ballinasloe, Co. Galway:

  The system which is usually followed is, first, the dispatch of an anonymous letter giving the recipient so many days, or hours, to clear out. If this notice be disregarded, bullets are fired at night through his windows, bombs are thrown at his house, or his house is burnt down … In one case an old man and his crippled son were left destitute … a large number of Protestants have left and others are under sentence of expulsion … A large number of Protestants throughout the County Westmeath got notice to quit.143

  In Mullingar, ‘disgraceful scenes’ were reported ‘wh
en business premises of nearly all the Protestant residents were attacked … Furthermore, a large number of the Protestants throughout the County Westmeath got notice to quit … the windows of all the Protestant houses in the town were riddled with bullets’.144

  In the area of Stradbally, Co. Laois (then Queen’s County), John Salter, a Protestant, wrote of ‘a body of republicans encamped in the hills adjoining the village … they descended upon the Protestant traders in the adjoining villages and looted whatever they required for their purposes. They were well aware that none of the Protestant farmers nor shopkeepers in the neighbourhood were in the least in sympathy with or would have anything to do with their movement and they then proceeded to punish them in this way’.145

  Leigh-Anne Coffey wrote at some length about the background to the sectarian attacks around Luggacurran and Stradbally, Co. Laois, in her book The Planters of Luggacurran. There was a history of agrarian agitation going back as far as 1870 on lands owned by Lord Lansdowne. Local Catholics resented the Protestants, who replaced Catholic tenants evicted by Lansdowne’s agent. They were branded ‘Orange’, though they were not from Northern Ireland. By 1922, with the new State involved in a civil war, the enforcement of law and order had become difficult, if not impossible, in many rural areas, thus giving an opportunity for the law to be taken into the hands of local agitators. Consequently, in certain areas old resentments were given expression through acts of persecution and occasional violence.

  Robert Stanley of Stradbally was forced out of his home and farm in April 1922, meaning that he was unable to sell his crops.146 Henry Sydhes received similar treatment. In March 1922 he was given notice by republicans to leave. He ignored the demand, so on 20 April armed men turned him out, throwing his furniture on the ground outside his home. He only had 9 acres. His son, meanwhile, was forced to leave the country, sailing to make a new life in Canada.147 In May, Thomas Stone, also from Stradbally, was driven from his home for 3 months in March. The house and garden were damaged.148

  In nearby Mountrath, Co. Laois, ‘all loyalists in Ballyfin were boycotted’. William Bloomfield, a small farmer in the same area, complained that no one was allowed to plough for him, machinery on his farm was wrecked and 3 acres were spiked.149 In nearby Ballycarney, Annie Wilkinson, a Protestant widow, was attacked. In July 1922 her cattle were removed and her crops were destroyed. She had 56 acres. Colonel Hutcheson Poe, once the Lieutenant for Queen’s County, wrote that:

  A number of decent Protestant farmers received notice to give up their lands and had their cattle driven off and in some areas had their houses occupied by landgrabbers … people suffered in that area because they were Protestant.150

  Four small Protestant farmers were persecuted near Fethard, south Tipperary. Alfred Stephenson was a tenant farmer with 72 acres in Cramps Castle. The IRA ordered him to leave in June 1920 and on 19 July, part of his house was burnt. In March and April 1921, three neighbouring Protestant farmers, named Lysaght, Stone and Boyle, were shot. Stephenson asked the local British military to protect him, but after spending two days in their barracks, he was taken by soldiers to the train and travelled to Belfast, leaving all he had behind. His lands were ‘seized and confiscated’ when the British Army withdrew in 1922 so, aged 50, he decided to make a new life in Canada, emigrating in July 1924 to Spring Lake, Grand Prairie, Alberta. The Grants Committee awarded him £1,500.151

  Walter Kelly, a small farmer with 16 acres near Glassan, Co. Westmeath, was punished for being a loyalist who had relations serving in the British Army, who stayed with him when they were on leave. He sold milk to the RIC, something the IRA forbade. In May 1922, three armed men informed him that they were going to take possession of his land. He succeeded in finding a buyer, a Mr Killian, but when the news got out some 100 IRA men called to his house and burnt it, along with the hay barns. He fled to Dublin, where he started a boarding house. This failed, and he emigrated, ending up as a farmhand in New Zealand in 1926. The Irish Grants Committee awarded him £1,500.152

  Nearby, in Waterstone, Co. Westmeath, Arthur Harris-Temple was driven from his land, his house having been attacked repeatedly. His steward, who had served in the British Army, was attacked twice and left unconscious. Harris-Temple was ‘obliged to leave in August 1922 … my house was greatly damaged and I was obliged to dispose of furniture, pictures and china at great sacrifice.’ He had been a JP and his family had been in Westmeath since Elizabethan times. His house, built in 1773, stood on about 1,000 acres. The Free State Army occupied the building and badly damaged the woodwork. Harris-Temple was unable to sell privately as his tenants, who had not paid rent during the Troubles, wanted to divide his land. It was ‘owing to the kindness of friends have we been able to live at all’. He eventually found himself living in lodgings in London on £2 a week. The Grants Committee gave him £5,000.153

  In Birr, Co. Offaly, a prosperous Protestant businessman, Michael Tilford, was ruined by a prolonged boycott from 1921 to 1922. He had enjoyed a successful auctioneering business for years but Roman Catholics would not use him; even some Protestants, intimidated by the IRA, boycotted his business when selling their houses. On fair days men were posted at the four corners of the square in Birr and warned people not to buy from him.154

  Alan Stanley tells a moving story of the cold-blooded murder of the two Pearson sons, Richard and Abraham, on 30 June 1921 in Coolacrease, Co. Offaly. Both were shot in the groin and back and left to bleed to death. Their mother, three sisters and two cousins witnessed the murders. The Pearsons’ house was burnt and some of the family ended up in Australia, some in England. The family belonged to a Christian sect called ‘Cooneyites’. Founded by Edward Cooney in Fermanagh, this group was accused of helping the British military, though there seems to be no evidence to support this accusation. They were accused of wounding a local IRA man who was with a party of men felling trees on their land to prevent the Black and Tans using a road. Again there seems to be no evidence this happened. The story can be found in Stanley’s book, I Met Murder on the Way. RTÉ made an award-winning documentary of these murders, shown on 25 October 2007 and directed by Niamh Sammon.

  The Church of Ireland Gazette reported on 6 October 1922 that ‘Protestants and loyalists are being expelled from their homes, which are being ransacked and destroyed … undoubtedly a campaign of persecution is in progress’. It also noted that ‘there is a large exodus to England.’ On 20 October the Gazette observed that ‘it would be better that her (the church’s) messages should be delivered to living souls than to empty pews in Ireland.’ The Protestant churches were emptying. As one clergyman pointed out, the parishes of Munster and Connaught were almost deserted, for ‘there is no use sticking to Ireland when our parishioners are not any longer with us. If the laity are driven out, why need we stick to Ireland?’155

  The Most Revd Dr Fogarty, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, came to the defense of the Church of Ireland community in May 1923, noting that ‘Protestant fellow countrymen had been persecuted and dealt with in a cruel and coarse manner’.156

  In view of all this widespread and prolonged intimidation, it is not surprising that many Protestants left. Marcus Tanner commented: ‘Practically the whole of the Protestant working class – perhaps 10,000 – fled from Dublin in the early 1920s’.157

  This estimate is speculative; however, there is no doubt that there was an exodus, which was of concern to the Church of Ireland as pointed out by the Church of Ireland Gazette on 15 April 1921: ‘From Dublin there is beyond dispute a considerable exodus of Church people. Whole families of the best type are quietly slipping away, and these represent a net loss, since others do not come to take their vacant places.’

  The professional middle-class Protestants in Dublin mostly stayed on as barristers (38 per cent), doctors (21 per cent), solicitors (37 per cent), chartered accountants (45 per cent) and civil engineers (30 per cent).158 However, for the 26 counties as a whole, Protestant numbers in the middle-class professions declined by
over 30 per cent between 1911 and 1926. This indicates that the professional middle class left in the same numbers as the rest of the Protestant population.

  In 1871, the Protestant population of Dublin city was 18.8 per cent, with 27.5 per cent in the county. By 1926, numbers had declined to 8.7 per cent in the city and 19.4 per cent in the county. In all wards of Dublin, there was a decline of 40 per cent between 1911 and 1926. Protestants were mainly an urban population and of those in Dublin many suffered from poverty and distress; Sean O’Casey’s biography bears this out. Though there was a solid educated Protestant middle class with its own schools and university, it is a myth that Protestants were solely middle class and comfortably off.

  By 1923, some native-born Protestant Irish loyalists were dead and thousands had been driven out of their homes and homeland. They did not fit in the new Ireland. Irish Protestants who stayed on soon learnt, in the words of the late Professor W.B. Stanford, to ‘lie low and say nothing.’ As the historian F.S.L. Lyons put it, the tiny Protestant minority ‘was, or seemed to be, enervated by the almost repressive tolerance shown to it by the majority’.159

  By 1939, ‘Protestants enjoy toleration at the moment but that is largely because they no longer possess anything, either power or property, which others want. It is the toleration we all accord to the dead’, reported the Christian Irishman, the paper of the Home Mission, perhaps over dramatically.160

  There seems to be an unwillingness by Irish historians to shine a light on this dark period of Irish history. Little analysis has been done on the reasons for the exodus. One historian in Trinity College, Dublin, corrected me for pointing out that there had undoubtedly been a major exodus of Protestants who had been persecuted for sectarian reasons, for their allegiance to the Crown, for their service with the British forces and for holding land; a mixed bag of reasons, as this chapter makes clear. This historian told me all had suffered in this period. True, but this period saw the exodus of many unionist Protestants and few Catholic nationalists.