Sligo’s Linda Kearns: Escape from prison, an IRA training camp ...then the Civil War
“When I next saw Dr Gogarty I told him that we would have to leave town as a reward had been offered for our capture”
Last week’s story of the experiences of west Sligo woman Linda Kearns in prisons in England and Ireland in 1921 after being arrested in Sligo while carrying arms for the IRA in 1920 ended with her escape from Mountjoy prison. John Bromley takes up the story, using Linda Kearns’s own account
IN A STATEMENT she gave to the Bureau of Military History in 1950 Linda Kearns describes what happened after she and three other women managed to escape over the wall of Mountjoy prison in October, 1921, her experiences at an IRA training camp and in the Civil War (in which she took the anti-Treaty side), including a dramtic account of being beside Cathal Brugha when he was shot.
After she and the others got over the wall of Mountjoy, via a rope ladder sent over from the outside, they were met near the prison by the famous surgeon, writer and athlete Oliver St John Gogarty and a Dr McLaverty, who were waiting in cars to aid their escape.
In her statement, Linda Kearns takes up the story: “Dr Gogarty brought us to his aunt’s house – Miss O’Rourke – in Earlsfort Terrace. He left us there and rushed off. He came back in a short time with some headed notepaper from the Shelbourne Hotel. “He said there was a vacancy for a matron in the Meath Hospital and I was to apply for it.
“He told me what to say, principally that I had vast experience of British institutions. I obeyed his instructions, but I was not surprised that I did not get the post.
“Although Dr Gogarty had the courage to propose me under my name, he found no seconder, but I am certain he got a great kick out of the whole situation, especially when he saw the British military raiding the Shelbourne Hotel the following day.
“We remained three days at Miss O’Rourke’s. Burke (a man who helped her escape) visited me twice during that time. The third night Dr Gogarty came back and said he had been talking to Cope (probably Sir Alfred William Cope, who was British assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland in 1920-22) at the Castle, jeering him for not being able to hold his women. Cope said it would be all right, he would be able to catch them again as they could not resist the attraction of Grafton Street.
“The next time I saw Dr Gogarty I told him we would have to leave town as there was a reward offered for our capture.
“Burke kept in touch with us, and Dr McLaverty arranged with Joseph O’Connor, afterwards chairman of the Pensions Board and then Circuit Court judge in Cork, to take us down to the Convent of the Cross and Passion in Kilcullen (Co. Kildare).”
She said that she and Mae Burke and Ethna Coyle went there, but Miss Keogh, who had also escaped with them, decided to go home to Fr John Sweetman’s school in Gorey, Co Wexford.
Ms Kearns said they were in Kilcullen about a week when a man arrived on a motor bicycle to say that Mick Collins had been informed that the Castle had got word of where they were from Burke “who evidently was weak and could not resist the temptation of the reward”. “I afterwards learned that the IRA put him on board a ship and sent him out of the country.
“We went up at dusk to the curate’s house’ – I forget his name – and he drove us straight down to an IRA camp at Duckett’s Grove.”
Duckett’s Grove, an abandoned mansion and estate near Carlow, was used as a training camp by the IRA. “A young man called Stack from Listowel, who afterwards was a superintendent of the Guards and is now dead, was in charge there.
“I think about the third day we were
in the camp the parish priest arrived. He was shocked at the idea that three woman would remain where there were so many men.
“I explained to him that I was a trained nurse and that there were nurses in charge of the hospitals in every army in the world and that I saw nothing wrong in remaining there. We won him round to our point of view. “We set to work and made a great job of the place which had been commandeered by the Volunteers. There was beautiful furniture in it, but the house was in a disorderly condition. We organised an officers’ mess, an emergency dispensary and we had quite a lot to do in it as there were 400 men in occupation.
“We organised concerts and helped to keep discipline and to keep the boys happy while they were in training,” she said
Interestingly, it has been claimed that while Linda Kearns and the other two women were at Duckett’s Grove that fellow Sligo woman Countess Markievicz sent a woman down to inform the three women that they had been ordered to face a court martial for not having told her of their plans to escape from Mountjoy. Linda Kearns makes no reference to this in her statement.
She said that they remained at Duckett’s Grove until the Treaty was signed (in December 1921).
She went on: “Poor Stack (the commanding officer) was very upset about the Treaty. He knew it would be a failure. I came back to town (Dublin) the night the Treaty was signed.
“I took part in the Civil War, starting at Barry’s Hotel, and going from there to the Gresham. When the various groups were ordered out of the Gresham, some going with de Valera, and some with Madam Markievicz,
there remained only 16 men with Cathal Brugha, Dr Brennan, Art O’Connor, Katty Barry, Muriel McSweeney and myself.
“We held the place for two days after the rest had gone. Then Cathal asked Art O’Connor to take out the 16 men, Katty Barry and Muriel McSweeney. “Art, who was not a soldier but a Red Cross man, took off his Red Cross badge and led them out. They were captured immediate1y outside the door.
“One boy refused to go and hid. He was brought before Cathal Brugha. Cathal asked him did he not know the punishment for a soldier who disobeyed orders on the field of battle. The boy replied: ‘I do, but I would rather be shot by you, sir, than leave you’. Cathal said: ‘Won’t you go for love of me?’ The boy saluted and left. I wish I knew that boy’s name.
“I had a conversation with Cathal about two hours before the end. I asked him was he acting wisely in going to his death. ‘We have too many unnecessary deaths already,’ I said. He replied: ‘Civil war is so serious that my death may bring its seriousness home to the Irish people. I feel that if it put a stop to the Civil War it would be a death worthwhile.’
“At that time we were alone and the place was burning all round us. It was the most poignant moment of my life. “We kept moving back from the smoke until we reached the back door. We went out into the lane. Cathal had a revolver in each hand and he kept on shouting, “No surrender”.
“He was shot in the hip, the femoral artery being severed. I was beside him but was not hit. To give the Free Staters their due, I don’t think they wanted to kill him and aimed low. But as he was a small man, he was struck higher than they expected and in a vital part.
“The ambulance came at once and took him to the Mater (hospital). He lived for two days. I blamed the hospital for not getting more speedy aid, as he had not lost much blood up to his arrival there. I had kept my fingers on the artery, which stopped the flow of blood. He was not taken to the theatre until an hour after his arrival and it was another hour before the doctor arrived.
“I stood by him for an hour and then I collapsed and fainted and the same ambulance that took Cathal to the Mater brought me back to my home. “Meanwhile, his life blood had been flowing away and when the doctors attended to him it was too late to save him. He lived for two days.
“After Cathal’s death I went out to Brittas where the fighting was going on, and brought Harry Boland in to the funeral. When it was over I drove him part of the way to Skerries.
“He was picked up on the road and brought the rest of the way by someone else. He was shot that night in his bed by the Free Staters.”
She said that after that she and Muriel McSweeney were sent by de Valera to America, and “we were in Cork, waiting for our boat, when the city fell to the Free Staters”.
She concludes her statement by saying: “It would take too long to describe my experiences in America and in Australia, which I visited later.”
She subsequently travelled to America and Australia and later Canada on fundraising tours on behalf of the Republican cause.
Later, Linda Kearns was one of five women elected to the executive of Fianna Fáil when it was formed in 1926, and she was elected to Seanad Éireann in April 1938.
After that she went back to nursing and was the first person to be awarded the Florence Nightingale medal in the Republic of Ireland for her extraordinary services to her profession. In 1929 she married Charles Wilson McWhinney, an IRA commander from Derry, and they had one daughter, Ann, but they later separated.
She died on June 5, 1951, and is buried in Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery.
“I talked to Cathal Brugha two hours before the end. I asked him if he were acting wisely. I said to him: We have too many unnecessary deaths already”