Research which I carried out in
recent years gave me the names of only two Athy men who were interned in Ballykinlar
Camp in County Down throughout 1921. Joe
May was arrested on 22nd November 1920 and charged as an I.R.A.
officer. Bapty Maher was arrested around
the same time and both were lodged in the guard room of Gough Barracks before
being transferred to the former British Army camp in Ballykinlar. Opened in 1901 the camp had been vacant
following the end of World War I but was quickly brought back into use as an
internment camp in December 1920 following the assassination of British spies
on Bloody Sunday. The camp was divided
into two separate areas, both surrounded by barbed wire fences and each capable
of holding approximately 1,000 internees.
A complete listing of the men
interned in Ballykinlar has not survived but efforts to prepare such a list
from different sources has revealed that Richard Murphy was another Athy man
detained in Ballykinlar Camp in the year immediately preceding the signing of
the Anglo Irish Treaty. His name had not
previously been known to me and no address other than Athy was given for
him. Faced with so many Murphy families
in Athy I held out faint hope of being able to positively identify the man who
over 90 years ago spent almost a year in captivity near the County Down village
of Ballykinlar. I remembered however one
Murphy with the name Richard, a school mate and friend of my brother Tony,
whose sister Bernie still lives in Athy.
A phone call to Bernie Bowden of Ashville, a sister of that Richard
Murphy, brought success. Richard Murphy,
who with Joe May and Bapty Maher was interned in Ballykinlar Camp, was indeed
Bernie’s father. Bernie graciously
answered my questions, as did her older brother Billy whom I later contacted
that same evening in my attempt to unravel the story of another member of
Athy’s freedom fighters.
Richard Murphy was a farmer’s son
from Kilcoo, who on leaving school was apprenticed as a motor mechanic to a
firm in Cork. Born in 1894 he later
worked for Magees garage in Ardee, Co. Louth.
While working in Ardee he was an active member of the I.R.A. and was the
officer in charge of the Ardee Battalion of the South Louth Brigade. However, this aspect of his career has yet to
be properly documented for unfortunately like most men and women involved in
the War of Independence Richard Murphy did not talk of the part he played in
the drive for independence in post 1916 Ireland.
Conditions in Ballykinlar Camp were
the subject of a press report in the Evening Telegraph in March 1921 following
an interview with John Rice of Clonegal, Carlow. He described how many of the prisoners were
in delicate health due to the cold and damp conditions in the camp huts. The food supplied to the internees was described
as almost inedible with ‘water soaked
potatoes’ supplied with ‘nauseating
bacon’ on three days a week.
Sleeping accommodation and sanitary arrangements were described as bad,
resulting in ‘disease raging in the
camp’. Several men died while
incarcerated in Ballykinlar and Patrick Sloane and Joseph Tormey, both from
County Westmeath were shot and killed in January 1921 after they went too close
to the wire fence surrounding one of the camps.
The three Athy men were released in
December 1921 after spending a year in Ballykinlar Camp. Their return journey to Athy was an eventful
one. The trains bringing the former internees
to the South were attacked by mobs in Portadown and Banbridge. While the trains were stopped in Banbridge
railway station attempts were made by a Unionist mob to get at the men who
although weakened by prison camp conditions managed to beat off their attackers. Eventually the trains crossed into the South,
but further trouble awaited those alighting at Thurles station where Black and
Tans threw bombs at the train injuring three returning internees, one of whom
later died.
Joe May recounted the difficulty the
Athy men had in getting a County Down based railway ticket vendor to understand their
request for tickets to travel home to Athy.
Unable to get him to recognise their destination they eventually settled
for tickets to Kildare and walked from Kildare town to Athy.
Richard Murphy who suffered poor
health following his year long internment died aged 56 years in 1950, survived
by his wife Molly and five children, the eldest of whom, Billy, was just 18
years of age. Richard, or Dick as he was
generally known in Athy, served as a member of Athy Urban District Council from
1928 to 1934. He carried on a garage and
hackney car business in Duke Street next to the then disused Hannons Mill. He married Molly Dooley, daughter of Patrick
Dooley of the bakery, Leinster Street, while his fellow internee, Joe May,
married Hester, the daughter of Michael Dooley who was Paddy’s brother.
Richard Murphy was buried in St.
Michael’s Cemetery, Athy with members of the Old I.R.A. providing a guard of
honour to St. Michael’s Church on the Monday evening and to St. Michael’s
Cemetery on the following day. Richard
was one of the forgotten heroes of our country’s struggle for independence, but
thankfully his name has now been recovered and will never again be overlooked
as we face into several years of remembrance and commemoration of events
surrounding 1916, the War of Independence and the Civil War.
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