A GHASTLY SUNDAY.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 February 1921, Page 10

A GHASTLY SUNDAY.

DUBLIN MURDERS. MEN MURDERED BEFORE THEIR WIVES. / London, Nov. 24. Sunday’s ghastly events in Dublin make one wonder what is to happen next. We in England were all hoping that the epidemic of atrocity had nearly exhausted its virulence, and that the rule of terror over the Irish themselves was about to be broken. And now comes awful evidence that the murder organisation which has so horribly fouled the name and cause of Sinn Fein is capable of even viler atrocities than the scores of cold-blooded murders which have marked the activities of the extremists of Ireland’s republicans during the past year. What must raise the gorge of any reader of the accounts of the latest crimes is the evidence of a depth of spiritual |degradatson which even in deliberate murder is not always present, and of which the murderer who claims to be a “political” assassin generally claims to be free. The slaughtering of men before the eyes of their wives, the riddling of the corpses with bullets, is nothing more nor less than sheer hooliganism under the influence of the lust for blood. That is not Ireland. It is not the spirit of the men whom Nationalist Ireland honors as its martyrs, but the very reverse. This is so evident that even such events as these, and the crimes that preceded them, cannot crush the hope of settlement ofc enfeeble the efforts now being made to further it. When all is known it may |)e proved that the deeds of last Sunday were done with the deliberate aim of destroying that hope. Things have happened lately, and in particular the decision of the Irish Labor Conference not to pledge itself for republicanism and total separation, which many believed to point the way to a political solution at last. If the murder gang had meant to ruin that prospect, they could have done nothing better calculated to achieve that abject. The official account of Sunday’s murders loses nothing of its horrors by reason of its severely plain language and entire avoidance of “purple passages.” Describing the shooting of Captain Newbury, court-martial officer, who lived with his wife at 92, Lower Bagot Street, Dublin, the account states that a party of raiders, numbering a dozen, were let in by the landlady, who rushed upstairs in terror, and saw nothing of the subsequent happening. The men knocked at Captain Newbury’s door. Mrs. Newbury opened it, and seeing a crowd of armed men, slammed the door in their faces and locked it. The men burst open the door, but Captain and Mrs. Newbury escaped to an inner room. Together Captain Newbury and his wife tried to hold the door against intruders. They had almost succeeded in shutting it, when a man fired through the door, wounding Captain Newbury, who, though spitting blood, got to the window, opened it, and was half way out when the murderers burst into the room Mrs. Newbury flung herself in their way, but they pushed her aside and fired shots into Captain Newbury’s body The police found the body lying halfway out of the window, covered with a blanket, which Mrs. Newbury had placed over it. It was significant that the murderers in this case, as in two or three others made a diligent search for papers, hoping no doubt, to find documents or evidence on which military law officers were working. TRAGEDY IN EVERY ROOM.

The residence of Mrs. Grey at 28 Upper Pembroke Street was raided by about twenty men. Two officers were murdered and four wounded. The nouse consisted of several flats. Raiders, armed and disguised, held up a maid and Mrs. Gray. They broke up into parties and went to various parts, of the premises. Ten or twelve shots were heard and the assassins decamped. Mrs. Gray and her maid visited the rooms immediately, and found Major Dowling, Grenadier Guards, had been shot dead at his bedroom door, and Captain Price, of the Royal Engineers, was found dead in his room next door.

Captain Kenlyside, Lancashire Fusiliers, who wife most gallantly struggled with the murderers, and thereby frustrated their purpose was wounded in -the arm. Colonel Woodcock, was fired at as he came downstairs. He called out to Colonel Montgomery, who, coming out of his room, was wounded in the body. Turning towards his room to secure a weapon, Colonel Woodcock was also wounded. Colonel Woodcock and Colonel Montgomery both belong to the Lancashire Fusiliers. A sixth officer, Mr. Murray of the Royal Scots, was also wounded as he descended the stairs. A lady resident in the house went from room to room seeking help, and in every room found only dead, dying or wounded men. At 38, Upper Mount Street, two murders were committed. The house was entered soon after 9 a.m.. by twenty armed, unmasked men, let in by a servant, who unwillingly pointed out the rooms occupied by Lieutenant Ames, of the Grenadier Guards, and Lieutenant Bennet, of the R.A.S.C., Motor Transport. The maid then rushed upstairs and told an officer, who was sleeping on an upper floor, and another lodger, that murder was being done downstairs. A fusillade of shots was heard. When the two men came downstairs they found two bodies in pools of blood in Ames’ bedroom. Bennet had evidently been dragged from his bedroom into his brother officers’ room, where both were shot, their bodies lying side by side. ' At the Gresham Hotel, Sackville Street, a party of fifteen to twenty men entered the open door of the hotel, held up the boots and head porter by revolvers, forced the latter to l ea d them to the rooms occupied by ex-Captain Patrick M’Cormack, Army Veterinary Corps, and Lieutenant Wilde. One of the men. who carried a huge hammer, knocked at the room occupied by Wilde. Wilde opened the door, and three shots were fired into his chest simultaneously. The party then repaired to M’Cormack’s room, and found him sitting up in bed reading a paper. Without a word five shots were {fired into his body and head as he sat there. TJie bed was saturated with blood, and the body especially the head, was horribly disfigured as though the hammer was used to finish off the victim. At 119, Lower Bagot Street, the raid was carried out, and Captain Baggalay, court martial officer, was shot dead, but no witness was available to describe the circumstances. Captain Baggalay iAd lost a ieg in the war, and had been

employed as prosecutor under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Regulations.

One officer and two civilians were murdered at 117, Morehampton Road. Just before nine o’clock a party of armed men knocked at the door, and it was opened by the 1 , ten-year-old son of Mr. Smith, the housekeeper. The men rushed into the house and dragged from their rooms Mr. Smith and Captain M’Lean, who were in bed with their wives, and took them into a spare bedroom. Mr. Caldow, brother of Mrs. M’Lean, was thrust in beside them, and. all three were shot in cold blood, M’Lean and Smith being killed, and Caldow seriously wounded. Both Mrs. Smith and Mrs. M’Lean were in the house when their husbands were murdered, and the assassins dragged their victims to the spare room to murder them, as Captain M’Lean, when overpowered, implored them not to murder him under his wife’s eyes. On completing their dastardly work the murderers disappeared.

At 28, Erlstort Terrace the murderers’ leader rang the bell and asked the maid for Colonel Fitzpatrick, but she showed them the bedroom of Captain Fitzgerald. The leader entered Fitzgerald’s room and the maid heard four shots fired in rapid succession. The police found the officer in bed in a pool of blood with his forehead shattered with bullets, another bullet through the heart, and, one through the wrist.

Captain Fitzgerald, who was recently employed as defence officer of the police barracks at Clare, had been kidnapped by men of the Republican Army, who tried to shoot him with his own revolver which miraculously missed fire. They then twisted his arm until it was dislocated, dragged him to a field, propped him up against a wall, and fired at him. He leapt over the wall and escaped, and had come to Dublin for surgical treatment for liis arm. He had been out of hospital only a few daya before he was assassinated. At 22, Lower Mount Street, a maid opened/the door and twenty men rushed in and demanded to know the whereabouts of the bedrooms of Mr. Mahon and Mr. Peel. Mahon’s room was pointed out, and on entering they fired five shots at a few inches range killing Mahon outright. At the same time others attempted to enter Peel’s room. The door was locked, and seventeen shots were fired through the panels, but Peel escaped uninjured. Meanwhile another servant, hearing the shots, shouted from an upper win dow to a party of officers of the Auxiliary Division, R.T.C.—who were passing. These officers at once attacked the house, after dispatching two of their number— Cadets Morris and Garnis—to their depot for reinforcements. They chased the assassins through the 'house and captured one, whom the fire, had wounded, and three others, all of whom were armed. Reinforcements on arrival were asked the whereabouts of Morris. and Garnis. They replied, “We know nothing?’ THey never arrived at the depot. We came because we. heard firing.” On a search being made the bodies of Morris and Garnis were found lying in a neighboring garden. Apparently they had been intercepted by the murderers’ pickets and shot.

It is officially stated that the death® numbered fourteen, and five persons were wounded. One Sinn Feiner was injured and four prisoners taken. Investigations have established pretty clearly that there must have been at least two hundred men engaged in Sunday morning’s murders. The gangs who visited the houses and hotels certainly numbered a. hundred and fifty, and there were possibly another fifty posted as pickets outside the places where the crimes were committed. It seems clear, too, that there were at ’ least a dozen gangs at work simultaneously, for other addresses were raided in addition to those where the officers were done to death.