ONE OF THE MOST depraved deeds of Easter Week 1916 was the murder of the pacifist Francis Sheehy Skeffington and two other innocent men. The report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the killings gives a graphic account of the callousness with which Sheehy Skeffington's widow and family were treated by the British authorities immediately after his death. Presided over by Sir John A Simon, a barrister and MP, the inquiry sat for six days at the Four Courts in Dublin during August 1916 and examined 38 witnesses. Its report, issued just a month after the hearing, described the savagery of the shooting of the three men at Portobello Barracks two days after the Rising on Easter Monday, writes
WESLEY BOYD
Sheehy Skeffington was arrested on his way to his home in Rathmines after holding a meeting in the city centre on the Tuesday in an effort to recruit civilian volunteers to stop looting.
A few hours later two journalists were detained. Patrick James McIntyre, was the editor of the Searchlight, and Thomas Dickson, was the editor of an equally obscure journal, the Eye-Opener. Neither had any connection with the Rising or with Sinn Féin. They were all kept overnight in Portobello Barracks. (“Mr Sheehy Skeffington, as being of a superior social position, was put into a separate cell and was made as comfortable as possible,” the report notes.)
The next morning Capt Bowen-Colthurst of the Royal Irish Rifles, who had been seriously wounded in France and invalided home, and who was now the senior captain in Portobello, informed his fellow officers (“young men who had recently left school”, according to the report) that he intended to shoot the three men as he thought “it was the best thing to do”.
They were taken out to the yard and Bowen-Colthurst quickly assembled a firing party of seven soldiers. On his order they fired “upon the three prisoners who had then just turned to face them”.
All three fell as a result of the volley. The bodies were wrapped in sheets and buried in the barrack square.
Mrs Sheehy Skeffington could not find out what had happened to her husband but was hearing alarming rumours from various sources.
On the Friday her two sisters, Mrs Culhane and Mrs Kettle, went to Rathmines police station but were told the police had no information; it was suggested they should enquire at Portobello Barracks.
The shocking treatment which they and their sister had subsequently to endure is particularly distressful in the light of their family background.
Roaring revolutionaries they were not. They were the daughters of David Sheehy, MP of the Irish Parliamentary Party. Their brother, Lieut Sheehy, of the Dublin Fusiliers, was fighting against the insurgents in the city. Mrs Kettle’s husband, the poet Tom, himself a former MP at Westminster, was fighting on the Somme (where he was to be killed five months later) with the same regiment. Mrs Culhane’s recently deceased husband had been a senior court official.
The report notes: “In such circumstances Mrs Sheehy Skeffington not unreasonably expected that whatever fate had overtaken her own husband, her two sisters would at least be treated with candour and consideration at the barracks and would be able to obtain such information as was available about their brother-in-law.”
But her sisters were shown no consideration at Portobello. They were arrested on the grounds that they had been seen talking to Sinn Féiners after inquiring about the whereabouts of their brother, Lieut Sheehy, and their brother-in-law. They were questioned by Bowen-Colthurst, who told them: “I know nothing whatever about Mr Sheehy Skeffington.”
He ordered them to leave the barracks “the sooner the better” and they were escorted to the tramway by a junior officer.
Later in the day, Mrs Sheehy Skeffington learned about the death of her husband in a roundabout way. She was in contact with a man named Coade whose son had been shot on the street by Bowen- Colthurst as he was returning from a religious sodality meeting on the same day that her husband had been arrested.
Mr Coade had been allowed to see the dead body of his son in Portobello by Fr O’Loughlin, the chaplin at the barracks. Alongside his son was the body of Sheehy Skeffington. Mr Coade suggested that Mrs Sheehy Skeffington should get in touch with Father O’Loughlin. She did and he confirmed her husband was dead and already buried.
A couple of hours after learning of her husband’s death, Mrs Skeffington was putting her seven-year-old son to bed when a volley of shots shattered the windows of her house.
Soldiers with fixed bayonets, led by Bowen-Colthurst, smashed through the door. Mrs Skeffington, her son and a young maid-servant were held under armed guard while the house was ransacked for more than three hours. Books and pamphlets belonging to her husband were taken away, along with photographs of Keir Hardie, the British Labour leader, and Michael Davitt. The house was raided again three days later.
Mrs Skeffington and her son were not at home but a new maid-servant – the first had fled terrified after the previous raid – was arrested and detained for six days at Rathmines police station without charge.
The Commission of Inquiry’s main conclusion was: “The shooting of unarmed and unresisting civilians without trial constitutes the offence of murder, whether martial law has been proclaimed or not.”
The following June Bowen- Colthurst was tried by court martial. He was found guilty but insane and was committed to the prison for the criminally insane at Broadmoor. Some reports claim he was quietly released after a few years and allowed to go to Canada.