Thursday 30 April 2020

The Killing of Edward Parsons


The Killing of Edward Parsons - Baby Steps on the Road to Unthink



‘No widespread killings of civilians by Cork City IRA.’

This is the headline to a letter by UCC academic John Borgonovo to the Irish Examiner of 20 April 2020. It was written in response to an article by journalist Victoria White which dealt with the experiences of her grandmother as a Protestant living in Cork in the early years of the century.[1] My initial reaction was to ignore the letter, partly because Borgonovo has never engaged in the kind of personalised attacks on me that seem to characterise much of these ‘debates’ and partly because I knew that in making such a claim he was fooling nobody, especially since his own book says the precise opposite.

However, when professional historians, presumably with the imprimatur of a respected academic institute, make points which are at odds with reality, I felt it important to correct some of the claims made. The general gist of the letter, and this is a thesis advanced in some detail by Andy Bielenberg, is that Martin Corry, the future TD, greatly exaggerated his role in the War of Independence in order to burnish his reputation among his voters. This is an argument which requires a much more detailed response than I can do here.

Here I will confine myself to a specific claim that Borgonovo repeats as evidence of Corry’s supposed exaggeration: ‘In their recent article ‘Missing person file’s release sheds new light on boy’s disappearances, (Irish Examiner November 11 2019), historians Andy Bielenberg and Padraig Óg Ó Ruairc have convincingly argued that Martin Corry was not involved in the secret killing of Edward Parson [sic].’

I had long wondered why historians in Cork had never bothered to deal with the killings carried out in Knockraha, though local historian Jim Fitzgerald’s book on the subject had been sitting on the shelves of Cork City Library since 1977. Then it began to dawn on me that they were deliberately ignoring it. This was confirmed by the publication of Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc’s article on the abduction and disappearance of 15-year-old Edward Parsons who was killed in March 1922.[2] The disappearance of Parsons was an important element in my book The Year of Disappearances. Martin Corry claimed that the IRA hanged Parsons from a beam in his barn in his farmyard to extract information out of him before executing him. Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc claimed they had new information: ‘the recent release of a missing persons file’, ‘released under a Freedom of Information request’, that showed that this was incorrect and promised – or so they told us – to would shed new light on the disappearances of Parsons.

On reading the article, however, the only new piece of information the file yields up is a photograph of Parsons and his mother, taken not long before his death. Apart from this, the article was effectively a retelling of the brief Chapter 32 in The Year of Disappearances – without, of course, giving me any credit for having done all the ground work over ten years ago. In 2009, I had uncovered two files, one in the Department of the Taoiseach and the other in Military Archives and based my account on those. It was clear then that there was another file in the Department of Justice which had not then been released.[3] I had made some inquiries to the Department about getting this and other files listed in the same register. These inquiries came to nothing. Now, ten years later, Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc had got their hands on these files thanks, it would seem, to a FOI request.

However, apart from the photograph, there was very little new in the file – or at least nothing that Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc reported was new. In fact, the file contained less than what I had reported from the files I had found. Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc then mentioned ‘another’ file that they located. But this was one of the two files that I had used. So where does ‘the new light’ come from? Well, it comes from the interpretation extracted from the data. Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc’s analysis was that Parsons was abducted and killed by C Company of the 2nd Battalion and his body buried between Lehanagh and Ballygarvan on the Kinsale Road. The evidence for this is the account given by local Volunteer Stephen Harrington to the investigating officers of the National Army who were inquiring into the case in 1923. ‘Parsons was tried and found guilty of being a spy for the British.’

Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc’s conclusions were that ‘the declassified State papers leave little doubt that C Company, 2nd Battalion was responsible for Parsons’ disappearance and that Corry had no involvement’. ‘Contrary to Corry’s bogus claims’, Parsons could not have been killed by his group. ‘Corry was prone to exaggeration and even flights of fantasy regarding his record in the IRA, claiming to have taken part in numerous killings for which there is no historical evidence and which in all likelihood were self-promoting fantasies of his own creation’. ‘Hopefully, the continued release of state papers will help to separate the [sic] fact from folklore surrounding the disappeared’.

What their article does in effect is kill three birds with one stone. It casts doubts on Corry’s reliability, it would appear to ‘correct’, on the face of it, my interpretation of these events, and of course it effectively states that the IRA never hanged and tortured a 15-year old in Corry’s farm in 1922. Bielenberg and Borgonovo have long claimed that what happened in Knockraha was little more folklore and this was further proof of it. All neat and wrapped up and problem solved.

But is it?

There are a number of problems with Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc’s analysis of the Parsons case. The first is why would you choose to accept the evidence of someone who claimed he was not present at the killing ahead of someone who claimed he was? Stephen Harrington lived on High Street, just down the road from Parsons but he was no longer active in the IRA by the spring of 1922 so his information was, by definition, second hand. There are, on the other hand, several accounts by eye witnesses which state that Parsons was indeed killed at Corry’s after being hanged to extract information out of him. The first is by Jimmy Murphy, a member of E Company of the 4th Battalion, that is to say, Corry’s Knockraha company. Murphy’s account, given to Jim Fitzgerald, is worth repeating because it lays out in plain detail what happened.

During the latter part of 1920 the intelligence section of the 1st Cork Brigade of the IRA came to know that there existed an organization which called itself the Junior Section of the Young Mens Christian Association. . . It further came to their notice that a Mr. Parsons was actively engaged in the work of this movement. At that period none of the names of the other members of this organization were available so Peter Donovan, who was O/C of the Cork No. 1 column did mount a trap in the city and succeeded in arresting this man Parsons. After his arrest he immediately brought him out to Corrys in Glounthaune and handed him over to Martin Corry for questioning. They were particularly interested at this stage in getting the names of other members of his organization who were also engaged in spying work. The first efforts to cross examine him proved fruitless and no information was extracted from him.’[4]

Fitzgerald’s account then goes on to detail how Corry suggested that Parsons be hanged from a beam in an outhouse after which he finally confessed and was then executed by shooting and his body buried in Corry’s land.

As well as this information Parsons also gave the names of six other members of the Young Mens Christian Association which was the important information that the IRA wanted to extract . . . After this the column of the Cork No 1 Brigade did seek to capture the other names that had been given by Parsons and eventually they succeeded in doing this and all other individuals on being captured in Cork also brought down to Corrys were executed at Corrys and buried in the farmyard. As a result of the work of the members of the flying column this spying section of the British establishment was completely eliminated.[5]


This is effectively confirmed by Corry himself when he told Ernie O’Malley.

Parsons was a spy from the Junior section of the YMCA. He was a lad of 26 years and had a limp. . . He wouldn’t talk so I said to the lads “bring him upstairs”. We had the rope ready for him above and we tied a noose around his neck and we put it around his neck. Then he talked. This was during the Truce.[6]

Now Corry did say that Parsons was a 26-year-old and had a limp but he was hardly going to tell Ernie O’Malley that he had hanged a 15 year-old. Indeed, to judge from the photograph, Parsons could pass for 26. One of the few salient details in the newly released file is that his mother stated that he that was ‘anything but a strong lad’.[7] In the photograph he certainly looks aged beyond his years.

These accounts are corroborated by Charlie Cullinane in his IRA Pension application in which he reports guarding prisoners ‘of a certain kind’ in Glounthaune between the end of March and the middle of June 1922. While only two of these can be identified – Parsons and a young ex-soldier William Dalton, another member of the YMCA, who was captured while camping near Crosshaven – there is no reason to disbelieve Corry and Cullinane when they claim that these events actually took place.[8]

And here is another interesting thing in the Department of Justice file, though not reported by Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc. Initial inquiries led the Civic Guard in Cork to believe that Parsons had been ‘executed in March 1922 by members of the IRA and that his execution was unofficial. His body [they believed] was either buried in Ballyvolane or thrown into the River Lee’.[9] Subsequent inquiries through Garda Sean Kenny could find no evidence that Parsons had been buried in Ballyvolane (on the north side of the city). Kenny knew nothing about the killing but got in touch with James Quinn, then with Oriel House who had been a detective on the staff of the Cork Civic Patrol in March 1922. Quinn told him that Parsons had not been shot ‘but officially deported in March last by the IRA to America for 12 years for giving information to the enemy’. There the matter stood, at least as far as the Gardai were concerned. Parsons of course was not deported, but deportation was the standard euphemism used by the IRA for disappearing persons.

In other words, what we have are three different stories to avoid telling the truth about what happened to Parsons. Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc simply choose the one that best suited their agenda. In that, they are just reprising the kind of dissimulation used by IRA veterans to avoid uncomfortable truths. Mick Murphy, for instance, waffles all over the place to avoid having to say that Parsons – whom he states categorically was a 15 year-old – was shot in 1922, rather than in 1921. This is a theme running right through the accounts of Murphy and Connie Neenan, where they tie themselves up in knots trying to predate killings that took place after the Truce to make them look like they happened a year earlier. Corry was the only one of the half dozen or so who refer to the killing of teenagers to admit that Parsons was shot after the Truce. He also got his timing precisely right when he stated that it took place just before the lorries bearing the arms taken from the Upnor came up the hill from Carrigtwohill. So the chances are that if he got the timing right, he also got the name right. After all, why would he call him Parsons, if he was someone else? There was only one Parsons family in Cork. And why would he – and Jimmy Murphy – know that there was a Junior and Senior section in the YMCA, which was correct, unless it was extracted from someone in Glaunthaune? In fact, it is extremely unlikely that someone in rural County Cork in the 1920s would even have known what the letters YMCA stood for.

Further evidence for the hanging comes from ‘A Sympathetic Mother’ writing in 1924 to investigators looking into the trial and killing of a Constable Williams, who was executed at Corry’s, allegedly for his involvement in the assassination of Tomás MacCurtain. She describes the hanging and struggling of Corry’s victims, and, while she believed this applied to Williams, it is clear it has to refer to Parsons whose death occurred some time earlier. Williams was simply shot. Incidentally, it is worth noting that Parsons was also accused of having carried information to the RIC on MacCurtain’s whereabouts on the night of his death and that this was the reason why so much effort and time was put in in trying to track him down. Connie Neenan was adamant that this was the case –though he does not name the 15 year-old – and that it was not for a long time afterwards that they managed to find out who the teenager was. Curiously, Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc don’t mention any of this. Nor do they mention the fact that it was I who tracked down the essential story of what had happened to Parsons – as indeed it was I who discovered Neenan’s memoir. Is this to avoid having to draw attention to Neenan’s memoir in the first place, which inter alia gives plenty clues as to what went on with regards to the targeting of Protestants around Cork city? But we would not want to be drawing attention to things like that now, would we?

And some of Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc’s arguments are frankly ludicrous. They say that C Company ‘had little reason to take the risk of sending Parsons to Corry’s farm in east Cork’ so they sent him up to Lehanagh instead. But what was the risk in sending him to Glounthaune? The IRA was in control of Munster at that point. Their biggest risk might have been a puncture.  Bielenberg and Ó Ruairc are right on one point though: C Company probably did capture Parsons, since it was company captain Peter Donovan who brought him to Corry’s. Donovan was also in charge of the ASU in the city at the time – exactly as Corry said he was. It is clear from the accounts of Mick Murphy that senior IRA officers were involved in the interrogation of Parsons before he was killed and, if they were, it is more than likely that the boy was brought to Corry’s when previous efforts to extract information out of him had failed. To say that he was simply lifted and disposed of by C Company is to ignore the accounts left by half a dozen senior IRA men.

My interpretation of the evidence provided to Free State forces by Stephen Harrington on the abduction of Parsons was that his second-hand information concerned another teenager who disappeared in the same area a fortnight earlier. This was 18 year-old Thomas Roycroft, a former RIC cadet and also a member of the YMCA – and a friend of Parsons. Since there is no trace or mention of Roycroft ever being transported to Corry’s my view at the time I was writing The Year of Disappearances was that Stephen Harrington’s information referred to Roycroft, rather than to Parsons. I have seen nothing since would lead me to change that view. Both would have been captured by C Company in any case.

All this of course is typical of the ‘creative scepticism’ method employed by Bielenberg, Ó Ruairc and others. Some might argue that it is just an example of what is called 'cognitive dissonance', the inability to believe what you don't want to believe. But this is being too charitable. What's going on here is elision, a technique widely used by propagandists who want to push a particular agenda, in that it glides over what it does not want to see. 'Creative scepticism' is highly selective. In the Cork Spy Files, every BMH witness statement from every Captain Mainwaring-style IRA intelligence officer in the county is liberally quoted to support the case that someone was a spy. You would hardly expect them to say otherwise. Yet at least one of those I/Os in a town in County Cork was the best source the British had in that town. Sometimes this kind of thing approaches the level of comedy. At least Old IRA men from the 1920s had an excuse for avoiding the facts. Academic historians of the 21st century have none.

Their final statement however is actually true, that ‘the continued release of state papers will help to separate the fact [sic] from folklore’. Because it will. In fact, it is already beginning to do so. Though only a fraction of the IRA pension applications have been released, those that have strongly support the thesis that there were a lot of killings, both in Knockraha and later in Glounthaune. But that is an argument for another day.

In the meantime, we should all take on board Borgonovo’s final comment. ‘I would also suggest that misremembering the past is an even worse transgression than forgetting it.’ Though maybe not worse than deliberately forgetting it – or trying to pretend it never happened.




[1] Irish Examiner, 16 April 2020.
[2] Irish Examiner 11 November 2019.
[3] National Archives, Department of Justice 2019/58/6.
[4] Jim Fitzgerald, Knockraha, Foras Feasa na Paroiste, pp.151-2 (Knockraha, 2005). The above quotation is from the 1977 edition of the book (p.77) which is slightly different. This edition is long out of print.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Martin Corry, Ernie O’Malley Notebooks, UCD, P17b/112
[7] Mrs J. Parsons, 8 May 1922. NA, Dept of Justice 2019/58/6.
[8] Charles Cullinane, MSP34REF59839.
[9] E. Cullen Temp. Superintendent to Garda Commissioner, 17 May 1923. NA, Dept of Justice 2019/58/6.