1921 On the eve of the Truce, four off-duty British soldiers, including two from the South Staffordshire Regiment, which had been involved in several reprisal killings in the preceding weeks, were spotted by the IRA, arrested and executed without the sanction of a senior IRA officer, in Ellis Quarry, Cork.
1927 Kevin O’Higgins (35), vice-president of the executive council and minister for justice, was assassinated as he made his way to Mass in Booterstown, Co. Dublin.
1992 Albert Pierrepoint (87), hangman, died.During much of the last century Pierrepoint was a household name on these islands. In fact, there were three Pierrepoints. First there was Henry Pierrepoint, who dispatched over 100 souls between 1901 and 1910 before being sacked for drunkenness. Then came his brother, Tom, followed by Albert, Henry’s son, who assisted his uncle from 1932 and succeeded him in 1946. Tom Pierrepoint did the business for the Irish Free State—on a fee-per-hanging basis—26 times from the 1920s to the 1940s.His expenses claim, written in spidery black ink, for the rare double execution of Annie Walsh (31)—the only woman ever hanged by the Irish state—and her nephew Michael Talbot (24) for the murder of Annie’s husband, Edward Walsh (61), in August 1925, recently came up for auction.Waiving his standard fee of £10 per hanging, he charged not £20 but, in a ‘buy one, get the second half-price’ fashion, a mere £15. As for travel expenses from his home in Bradford, pre-War English class rules were strictly observed.Tom travelled first class ‘by rail and saloon’, while his assistant was holed up in third class.And there were no fancy hotel bills. Both men stayed overnight in Mountjoy Jail and claimed ‘10 shillings’ apiece for ‘refreshments’ of the non-alcoholic variety. All of which, no doubt, would have come as a relief to the cash-strapped Department of Finance. Over a 24-year career Albert dispatched well over 400 men and women, including the last four hangings carried out in the state, the last being that of Limerickman Michael Manning (25) in 1954.
1917 Éamon de Valera (Sinn Féin) defeated Patrick Lynch KC in the East Clare by-election.
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Personal Histories
Personal Histories is an initiative by History Ireland,
which aims to capture the individual histories of Irish
people both in Ireland and around the world. It is hoped
to build an extensive database reflecting Irish lives,
giving them a chance to be heard, remembered and to
add their voice to the historical record.
Click Here to go to the Personal Histories page
1821 Napoleon Bonaparte (51), outstanding military leader and emperor of the French (1804–14), died from cancer as a prisoner of the British on the island of St Helena.
1980 The Iranian Embassy siege in London ended after five days when the SAS stormed the building, killing all but one of the six members of an Arab terrorist group who had taken 26 people, mainly embassy staff, hostage.
1916 Major John MacBride (47) executed.
1966 In Britain the ‘Moors murders’ trial ended with the sentencing of Ian Brady and his accomplice Myra Hindley to terms of life imprisonment.
1808 Sarah Curran, aged 26, youngest daughter of the lawyer John Philpot Curran (1750–1817) and lover of Robert Emmet, died in Hythe, Kent, from tuberculosis.
1879 Isaac Butt, barrister, writer and politician who founded the Home Rule movement (1870), died.
1818 Karl Marx, German philosopher, author notably of the pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (1848) and the three-volume Das Capital (1867), born in Trier, south-west Germany.
1999 Taoiseach Bertie Ahern apologised on behalf of the Irish people to those who had spent their childhoods in residential institutions run by eighteen religious orders, an apology that came before the broadcast of the final episode of the three-part ‘States of Fear’ series by Mary Raftery, which detailed the abuse of children in such institutions. He also announced the setting up of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and the establishment of a Redress Board.
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