Sligo’s Linda Kearns was ‘in everything in Civil War and War of Independence’
In November we told the story of the arrest of Linda Kearns in Sligo while carrying arms in her car. Now, in a two-part feature, John Bromley uses her own account to continue her remarkable story, describing her time in jails in Ireland and England, her dramatic escape from Mountjoy Jail 100 years ago this year, her time on the run, and her part in the Civil War
WEST SLIGO woman Linda Kearns has been described as “one of those people who was in everything during the War of Independence and the Civil War”.
That description comes from Donal O’ Donovan in his biography of Kevin Barry (Kevin Barry and His Time), and he added that despite all she had been involved in she “has not yet got her due meed of praise”.
Linda Kearns was born in Cloonagh, Dromard, in 1888. She went on to become a nurse and it was because of her profession that she had her first direct association with the Republican movement.
On the first night of the 1916 Rising, John O’Mahony, a Sinn Féin politician and member of the First and Second Dáil, who lived beside her, came and asked her to open a hospital for the wounded volunteers.
Her next involvement after the Rising was in 1917 when she said Mick Collins and Diarmuid O’Hegarty called to see her and asked her to “carry messages to a man called White who lived in a place called Ballinabole about three miles from Collooney”. After that she carried out tasks for Michael Collins and others, carrying messages and arms and ammunition throughout the country. She was one of the few women at the time to have a car.
Apart from what other people have written about her, we have her own first hand account of her involvement in the War of Independence and the Civil War (in which she took the antiTreaty side) from a statement she gave to the Bureau of Military History in 1950.
In that she gave a dramatic account of her arrest in Sligo on the Saturday after Bloody Sunday (November 21, 1920).
She was detained at a road block by Auxilliaries, while driving local IRA men Jim Devins (also called Seamus), Eugene Gilbride and Andy Conway, along with arms and ammunition, including guns taken by the IRA in the ambush at Moneygold between Cliffoney and Grange (October 25, 1920), in which four policemen were killed and all their guns and equipment taken. After being held in Sligo gaol for a week, she and the three men were taken by a naval destroyer from Mullaghmore to Buncrana, from where they were marched to Derry.
After a week in Derry goal, where she was the only woman prisoner, they were brought to Belfast goal.
There the Governor refused to take her in because it was not a female prison and she was eventually taken to Armagh gaol.
In her statement Linda Kearns recounts how “some time towards the end of February” she was brought to Belfast for trial by courtmartial.
After the trial before four British officers she was told by the president of the court that the sentence would be promulgated in due course and she was brought back to Armagh prison. She recalled the day she learned of her sentence.
“On March 11, 1921, there was fearful excitement. Lorry loads of military came down from Belfast. They marched into the central bell of the gaol and lined up two deep, making a formidable display of force. I was brought down by two wardresses and was placed in the very middle between the two lines.
“A young officer stepped out and read me my sentence from a huge manuscript. It was a most impressive affair. The gist of it was that whereas and wherefore I was found guilty on 26 counts, I was sentenced to 10 years’ penal servitude. The main charge against me was that I was an accessory to the murder of six policemen. The officer’s voice was trembling and he seemed more upset than I was. “The case was well organised by our side. At no time could the authorities prove that the three men had been in possession of the arms that were the subject of the charge. However, they got 13 years’ penal servitude each. “I was brought back to my cell and from that on there was always a heavy police guard in charge of me whenever I went in the grounds.”
She went on to recount how a fortnight after that “somebody from Dublin arranged an attempt at an escape”. “One Sunday after Mass the curate sent for me to the sacristy. He told me that the following Wednesday would be a fair day in Armagh. He told me to remain in the grounds all day except at meal times when I would have to go in. At a certain point of the surrounding wall, which he indicated to me, a rope would be thrown over. I was to hold on to it and I would be pulled up. I agreed. “On Tuesday afternoon, however, an escort of 20 police and a sergeant came and took me in a lorry to Belfast where they put me on board a boat for Liverpool where I was imprisoned in Waltham Prison (in Liverpool). I have very little impression of that prison except an all pervading smell of raspberry jam from the adjoining factory.” She said that on the first day she refused to put on the prison clothes but a priest, Canon St John, came in and told her that “Madam Markievicz and others had been there and worn the clothes”.
“He blessed them and I submitted to putting them on. I was weak and ill and felt unequal to a further struggle. The food was bad and the prison was dirty and badly kept. Every prisoner was locked up at five o’clock. You would have to be dying to be let out after that hour. They asked you were you dying if you wanted to be let out. “We could not go to the lavatory, with the result that in the morning when the cells were opened there was a pestilential smell in the corridor. We were provided with a bucket in the cell.”
She recalled that some time after that another republican prisoner Eileen McGrane was sent back to serve her sentence in Mountjoy prison and she also “demanded to be returned to my own country”.
“I told the governor that I would go on hunger strike and would remain on it until I was returned to my own country.
“I went on hunger strike and was in the hospital in bed. I think it continued for about 10 days and then I was told to get up, that I was being taken to Ireland.
“I did not feel too bad because I was able to dress myself – with help – in my own clothes. The wardresses were decent, a lot of them were Irish girls but as the discipline was very severe they could do very little for me.
“On September 14, 1921, I was brought to Mountjoy accompanied by two plain clothes policemen and two
“In the cup of tea was a lump of dental wax with which I was to get impressions of the keys of my cell and the door leading to the grounds”
wardresses in plain clothes.
“We travelled by Holyhead and Dún Laoghaire. I have very little recollection of the journey, except the joy I felt on coming into Dún Laoghaire. “I arrived in Mountjoy where I was given a great welcome. I was given a lovely tea, the first decent one I had had for a long time. I was very sick and was put into the hospital.”
She said that altogether there were nine women political prisoners, including three young girls from Cork who had been working thinning turnips in a field near where an ambush took place and they were arrested, although they had nothing to do with it, and they met together at exercise. “We discussed everything including the possibility of escape. We heard that peace negotiations were going on. Then I suggested to Eileen McGrane that I would try to organise an escape and asked would she come too. She said she wouldn’t and so did K Brady. “Eileen also asked me not to take the three Cork girls as she considered them too young and the plan too dangerous.”
She went on to recount how she managed to make contact with “the Volunteer authorities” through a Fr Dominick of Church Street, who put her in touch “a boy called Burke from Silvermines” who had been in prison with the priest and was now being released.
“He had a letter to bring to me – he had several letters for other people. The letter to me contained a recommendation of the boy who wanted to get in touch with. I, as well as others, assumed that the boy was a political prisoner, but we afterwards found that he had been convicted for some crime connected with a bank. He called at my house and a nurse brought him up to Mountjoy Prison to see me. It was he suggested that he could help me to escape.
“He was able to contact one of the male warders who brought me notes from him. I was at the time in the hospital which was over the male prison hospital. I got a parcel and a thermos flask of hot tea and in the tea was a lump of dental wax with which I was to get the impression of the keys concerned, i.e. the key of my cell and the key of the door leading from the corridor to the grounds. For this I had to get transferred from the hospital to my cell, so I promptly got well and was released from the hospital.
“I took Ethna Coyle into my confidence and she agreed to help me in every way she could. During exercise when the wardress was on duty with us, Ethna talked to the wardress – her name was Waters – while I took the impression of the key which was dangling at her side. The same key opened all the cells on that landing. I sent that impression out to Burke who had the key made and sent it in to me.
“It fitted perfectly, but as it turned out, I never had to use it because at the time arranged for my escape the cell doors were open. The other key was more difficult and I got the impression by bribing another wardress called Dunne.
“The next thing was to decide at what particular spot we would get over the wall. Burke arranged that we should get out opposite the laundry door – we used to exercise between the wall and the laundry. Now, the question was, who would come with me. Ethna Coyle, Miss Keogh and Miss Burke agreed to come with me.
“The day and the hour were fixed by Burke who had, meanwthile, sent me in the key of the corridor also. Between six and seven in the evening we were allowed freedom in the corridor and I organised a football match for the evening of our escape. I had already found out that if we made plenty of noise, the wardresses relaxed their vigilance.
“While playing football on the appointed evening, we pushed our ball down towards the door and Eileen McGrane promised to keep up the noise. I opened the door quietly and the four of us slipped out and raced towards the appointed spot on the wall. We hid in the doorway of the laundry until the sentry who was on duty passed to the other side of his round, which left us sufficient time to effect our escape. “There was a revolving light on the corner of the wall which flashed intermittently and we succeeded in dodging that too.
“I threw a stone over the wall – I had been practising that for a week and was now well able to do it. A strong string with a piece of lead attached was thrown over to me.
“I called the other three and we started to pull. Unfortunately, the ladder (a rope ladder) which was attached to the string on the other side was too heavy and we pulled it too close to the wall, with the result that the string was cut by the sharp stones and the whole thing fell back on the other side, leaving me with the piece of lead in my hand.
“We all ran back to the laundry doorway and waited until the sentry had passed again. I again went back to the well and threw another stone over it. I got the string back again, this time with a penknife attached. We all pulled carefully and well out from the wall. Our time was getting short and I was beginning to worry. This time the ladder came down with a flop. Although it was night we had sufficient light to see it.
“We had already agreed to climb up in accordance with the length of our sentence, I, having got 10 years, went first; the next was Miss Burke, who was serving three years, then Miss Keogh and finally Miss Coyle, who had only 18 months to serve. She said she would not mind even if she failed to escape.
“During this whole time we never spoke one word, which shows what a state of tension we were in. The ladder was so close to the wall that although the other girls did their best to keep it out as far as possible, the knuckles of my hands were skinned and bleeding and when I got to the top I had to slither down a rope which skinned and flayed the inside of my hands. The others had the same experience. “Outside the wall I found Burke, a young fellow called Ryan, a brother of the priest in Dominick Street, who had made the ladder of window cord and had tested it carefully before he let it out. Ryan was a friend of Mick Collins and must have been one of his squad because be had a motorbike belonging to them.
“I also found Nurse O’Connor, a great friend of mine and of surgeon St John Gogarty.”
Oliver St John Gogarty was to become well known as a writer, athlete and politician. He was also a friend of James Joyce and WB Yeats and was the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in Joyce’s novel Ulysses.
Linda Kearns said that Ryan “conducted me along the canal and over the bridge at Doyle’s Corner where I found Doctor Gogarty and Dr McLaverty with two cars. I got into Gogarty’s car and he had orders to wait for a second passenger. Ryan ran back and appeared in a minute with Miss Burke and we drove off.
Dr McLaverty waited for the other two and drove them away.
NEXT WEEK: Linda Kearns on the run, at an IRA training camp and her involvement in the Civil War, including trying to save the life of Cathal Brugha after he had been shot by holding a severed artery together with her fingers