The Badger's Sett - Prisoners

Return of the RPROH

nospam@example.com (The Badger) — Sat, 24 May 2008 16:55:36 +0200

Inspired by 1169 and Counting, I added a bunch of entries to the Republican Prisoner Roll of Honour.

More RPROH updates

nospam@example.com (The Badger) — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 07:00:30 +0100

I'm reading The Hunger Strikes by R. K. Walker and I came across three more names I had missed from the Republican Prisoners Roll of Honour: Joseph Murphy, Dan Downey, and Joe Witty. They have been duly added. Other than that I would rate the book as OK. It seems to put a lot of present day Sinn Fein slant on incidents that were probably a lot different at the time, and it leaves out the role of the INLA assasination of Airey Neave as a motivation for the shooting campaign against the H-Block campaign leaders (most of whom were associated with the INLA). Plus there are a lot of editorial mistakes: capitalization errors, spelling errors, etc.

Portlaoise fire of 1922

nospam@example.com (The Badger) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 07:32:48 +0200

I added another entry to the Republican Prisoner Roll of Honour. This one is sort of vague. In August 1922 the interned Republican prisoners set a fire in Portlaoise jail. During the ensuing disturbance the guards shot and killed one of the prisoners. Unfortunately the information I've been able to find is somewhat contradictory.

According to the first comment in 104 year old Veteran views Wind that shakes the Barley, the prisoner was named Paddy Hickey and was from Dublin. The comment is a quotation from a 2002 article in Saoirse. But according to two mentions in The IRA in the Twilight Years 1923-1948 his name was Jim Hickey and he was from Cork. The rest of the details match up so he must be the same person. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any other mentions of the incident to try to clarify it.

Tom Smith

nospam@example.com (The Badger) — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 16:33:31 +0200

Added Tom Smith to the Republican Prisoner Roll of Honour. Not sure how I managed to miss somebody killed in the 26 Counties as late as 1975, but he's on the list now.