1944: Charlie Kerins, IRA Chief of Staff
Add comment December 1st, 2016 Headsman
On this date in 1944, the Irish Free State hanged Irish Republican Army Chief of Staff Charlie Kerins.
The IRA had been sorely pressed in these war years by the Special Branch, and the inroads of counterintelligence help explain why Kerins himself took such a prominent position in the IRA at the tender age of 24.
And it also explains how he ended up on the gallows at Mountjoy Prison.
Key to the Special Branch’s campaign was the recruitment of Irish republicans — men like Denis O’Brien, a veteran of the Civil War turned police spy whom Kerins and two mates ambushed and shot to death in his driveway on the morning of September 9, 1942.
As one might expect, this incendiary assassination redoubled state pressure against the IRA. Living on the run under assumed names, Kerins managed to dodge arrest until June 1944. But when captured, he knew how to comport himself from implacable precedent of forerunners like Kevin Barry.
Kerins refused to recognize with a defense the legitimacy of the court that tried him; indeed, so reluctant were the authorities to make a martyr of Kerins that they paused proceedings for six hours with his conviction cinched to give Kerins the opportunity to save his neck by applying to submit to mercy. Kerins wasn’t the submitting type.
“You could have adjourned for six years as far as I am concerned,” Kerins sneered when the session reconvened. “My attitude to this court will always be the same.”
In the words of a verse he wrote to a friend just before his hanging —
What, said Cathal Brugha, if our last man’s on the ground.
When he hears the ringing challenge if his enemies ring him round.
If he’d reached his final cartridge — if he fired his final shot.
Will you come into the empire? He would answer, I will not.
On this day..
- 1892: Jozef Lippens and Henri De Bruyne, Congo Free State hostages - 2019
- 1958: Istvan Angyal, Hungarian revolutionary - 2018
- 1671: Hans Erasmus, Count of Tattenbach - 2017
- 1848: James Langford, violent drunk - 2015
- 1865: The Jacksonville Mutineers - 2014
- 1922: James Mahoney, Seattle spouse slayer - 2013
- 1868: Sam Dugan lynched in Denver - 2012
- 2010: Shahla Jahed, the footballer's lover - 2011
- 1327: Adso's lover in The Name of the Rose - 2010
- 1945: Anton Dostler, gone commando - 2009
- 1842: Philip Spencer, Samuel Cromwell and Elisha Small, on the ship yardarm - 2008
- 1581: Edmund Campion, Ralph Sherwin and Alexander Briant - 2007
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Assassins,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,History,Ireland,Murder,Power,Terrorists
Tags: 1940s, 1944, charlie kerins, december 1, dublin, irish republican army, irish republicanism, nationalism
Recent Comments