Offaly IRA Brigade man gave Erskine Childers his ‘final shave’

One file among the latest tranche of military service (1916-23) pensions applications released by the Military Archives before Christmas contains claims that a Kilbeggan man gave Irish republican hero Erskine Childers his final shave before his execution one hundred years ago.

James McGuinness, one member of a staunchly republican family from Kilbeggan who played a prominent role in the Irish War of Independence, was a prisoner in Portobello Barracks where Childers – the English born writer who in 1914 famously smuggled guns into Howth for the Irish Volunteers – was held before his execution at Beggar’s Bush on November 24, 1922.

The claim was made in a 1968 letter by McGuinness’s brother, Seán – also a storied veteran of the 1919-21 campaign – addressed to then Minister for Defence, the Meath TD and former IRA officer Michael Hilliard.

McGuinness claims that his brother took the responsibility of shaving Childers and other prisoners who had been sentenced to death, and also that Childers gave McGuinness a gold ring on the eve of his execution. The ring then passed into the possession of another McGuinness brother, Peter.

James McGuinness’s term of imprisonment during the Irish Civil War was the final stop in a very active career as a revolutionary which stretched all the way back to the founding of the Irish Volunteers in 1913.

Born on March 11, 1893, James McGuinness was the son of John J, a national school teacher from Main Street, Kilbeggan, and Mary Anne McGuinness, who ran a grocery in the town. James and his brothers grew up in a strongly Irish nationalist house.

He was working as a clerk at the D E Williams Distillery in Tullamore in 1913 when he joined the Irish Volunteers, enrolling in the Tullamore Company under the command of Peadar Bracken.

After the 1916 rising, he was involved in re-establishing the Irish Volunteers locally, and became a company commanding officer in Kilbeggan. When the force was reorganised as the Irish Republican Army, he also became part of the staff of IRA’s Offaly No. 1 Brigade, under whose remit Kilbeggan fell.

When the War of Independence began, the three McGuinness brothers, James, Seán and Frank, were among the most active guerrillas in the Westmeath/Offaly area, with Frank eventually succeeding his brother as OC of the Kilbeggan Company. According to historian Russell Shortt, the RIC regarded Kilbeggan as one of the most lawless areas of Westmeath during the War of Independence period, going by the number of indictable offences recorded there.

In statements given to the Army Pensions Board, Seán McGuinness claimed that his brother James was involved in organising and drilling Volunteers, raiding for arms and seizing property from the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), and that he went to London for unspecified work on behalf of the IRA in 1920.

On his return, it was claimed that in the spring of 1921, James took part in an ambush on the RIC at Newtown, Tyrrellspass, an attack on the police in Tullamore, the execution of a spy, the pursuit of a British intelligence officer at Geashill and the attacks on the RIC at Kilbeggan and Killeigh.

Shortly before the Truce between the IRA and Crown forces was called in July 1921, Seán McGuinness claimed that his brother was appointed signals officer for Offaly No. 1 Brigade and was involved in training the IRA in signalling.

It was in 1922 that James McGuinness’s career took an intriguing turn. As the prospect of civil war loomed between pro- and anti-Treaty IRA, McGuinness appeared to side with the pro-Treaty Provisional Government and accepted a position in the National Army. He was posted to a department under one of the army’s highest ranking officers, Gearóid O’Sullivan (a former member of Michael Collins’ ‘Squad’ of assassins).

The files released online by the Military Archives last week include conflicting accounts of McGuinness’s role in the National Army at this time. O’Sullivan claimed that McGuinness had been employed as a civilian clerk, while Seán McGuinness insisted that his brother had a military rank of staff commandant.

Either way, it appears that James McGuinness’s intentions of serving the nascent Irish Free State were either non-existent or evaporated quickly, as he began passing on sensitive National Army documents to his contacts in the anti-Treaty IRA.

He continued as a mole until November 1922, when high-ranking IRA officer Ernie O’Malley was shot and arrested on Dublin’s Ailesbury Road, and found in possession of documents which could be traced back to McGuinness.

James, then 29, was tried, convicted and imprisoned first at Portobello Barracks (where he encountered Childers), Beggar’s Bush, Arbour Hill, Mountjoy and Maryborough (Portlaoise).

Seán McGuinness, who applied for a military service pension on his brother’s behalf in the 1930s, said that James suffered extensive ill-treatment and psychological/physical torture after his capture by the Irish Free State authorities, which “broke his health and mind”. He was transferred to St John of God’s and later to Grangegorman and Portrane (St Ita’s) mental hospitals, and died at Portrane aged 44 in on December 8, 1937.

The pension application was in progress when James died, and a posthumous award of 5⅙ years’ service for pension purposes was eventually secured by Seán to the benefit of the McGuinness family in 1942.

However, remuneration was issued on the basis that James did not hold an officer’s rank in the IRA. Seán McGuinness insisted on the contrary, and spent a number of years trying to convince pensions adjudicators of his brother’s rank as Offaly No. 1 Brigade signalling officer at the time of the Truce.

To this end, he eventually tracked down the brigade OC in 1921, James Hayes, who was a native of Killucan. Hayes went to Laois (then Queen’s County) in 1914 to work in the building trade and became active in the IRA locally during the War of Independence. He was transferred to Offaly as No. 1 Brigade OC in April 1921 after the brigade was hit by a number of arrests.

However, Hayes was of little help to McGuinness. He could not recall James’s appointment as brigade signalling officer, and in 1956, told the Army Pensions Board that while he had received a letter from Seán McGuinness and a request to sign it, he could not do so as he “could n[ot] thruthfully [sic] stand by its contents”.