100 years on: Corny Crean ambushed
TAKES A LOOK BACK AT WHEN CORNY CREAN, BROTHER TO TOM CREAN, MET HIS END IN A WEST CORK AMBUSH IN APRIL 1920
WHENTHE FIRST SHOTS TOOK DOWN MCGOLDRICK, CREAN INSTRUCTED CONSTABLE POWERTORUN FOR COVER
IT was in April 100 years ago when the brother of Annascaul’s Antarctic explorer Tom Crean was killed in an ambush in County Cork.
On the afternoon of April 25, 1920, a report reached Innishannon Royal Irish Constabulary barracks of suspicious activity in fields near Upton Railway Station, so a three-man foot patrol set out to investigate the matter.
The patrol consisted of Constable Patrick McGoldrick and Constable William Power, led by Sergeant Cornelius Crean, better known as Corny Crean.
He was born in Annascaul County Kerry, on September 27, 1871, and was the older brother of Tom Crean.
He joined the RIC shortly after his 21st birthday.
Crean was based in Belfast first and then Dublin before being based in Cork city. There he met Annie Stanton, who ran a hotel across the street from Crean’s RIC barracks on King Street ( now McCurtain Street).
They married in 1906 and had one child, Billy.
Crean played for Cork Constitution Rugby club and was a member of the RIC Tug of War team.
Like his brother, Tom, he too had an interest in exploring, and he knew every nook and cranny in the areas he was based in because he went on long hikes.
In 1916 he first experienced the burgeoning Republican movement in west Cork when, during one of his long walks, he came across a group of Volunteers drilling in Ballinadee.
Those drilling did not take too kindly to the observing constable, and battalion commander Tom Hales ordered his men to seize Crean.
After searching him, Hales ordered his men to let Crean go, but not without giving him a warning.
Hales told Crean to either leave his job or leave west Cork because, in the future, he would not be spared his life.
In March 1920, Crean’s zealous pursuit of rebels saw him promoted to Sergeant at the RIC Barracks in Innishannon, and just a month later the threats he received in 1916 would transpire to be true.
On that day in April, as the wind picked up and showers spat down on the countryside, Crean and his constables decided to head back to their barracks when they realised they had been sent on a wild goose chase to Upton.
It was shortly after 4pm and, as the men were walking along the tree-lined roadway not far from the entrance to St Patrick’s Industrial School, Constable McGoldrick stopped to light his pipe.
Suddenly, a volley of shots rang out and McGoldrick’s life expired.
The shots came from a number of volunteers of the west Cork Brigade situated in the woods by the roadside.
When the first shots took down McGoldrick, Crean instructed Constable Power to run for cover, and as the two RIC men reached a bend in the road, Crean then decided to take on the ambushers.
He told Power to turn and attack, but just as Crean did so, a number of bullets rained down upon him.
Power, knowing that he was outnumbered, ran to the nearby Upton Railway Station and, at the post office there, he wired to Innishannon for help.
Fr O’Connor and Brother O’Reilly from St Patrick’s Industrial school heard the commotion and went to the scene of the ambush, where they found McGoldrick dead on the spot where he was shot. Crean, meanwhile, was sitting upright against a ditch.
He had managed to drag himself as far as there but, at the inquest which followed, Fr O’Connor stated that when he reached Crean he had but a slight breath of life left in his body, which shortly extinguished before the ambulance arrived.
An inquest found that 59-year-old McGoldrick, a native of County Cavan, died from a single head-shot, while four bullets were removed from Crean’s chest.
The Funeral of Cornelius
Crean took place three days after the ambush at Upton.
Among the large cortège were RIC men from Belfast, Dublin and Cork city, as well as members of Cork Constitution Rugby club.
He was buried in St Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork city.
Cornelius Crean’s younger and more famous brother, Tom, would also succumb to death in the Rebel County, but not in the same violent fashion.
Tom Crean died in the Bon Secours hospital in Cork city in the summer of 1938 following a failed operation on a burst appendix. This was 18 years after the death of his brother in County Cork.