Ilaria Sponda: Historical events have usually been narrated through iconic images and words propagated by the media. With the advent of digital media, images have taken more power on society and its understanding of the world. Quoting Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites (2007), “[t]he iconic organizes public memory around a very few signal events as the exponential increases in information availability overwhelm individual processing capacity. A few dominant images can reflect either a scarcity of images or the reverse: an overabundance that has to be ignored if one is to function at all.” Your project For Those That Tell No Tales acts as a counter-narrative of the Irish War of Independence (1919-1923), told from the perspective of those forgotten victims. Where does your need for producing new images on this historical event lie?
Dara McGrath: Firstly, I wish to thank you for asking me to contribute. And a very interesting question to start off from The images that we deal with everyday have become more abundant and fleeting. Scrolling through social media, images have become instantaneous but more shallow and meaningless. These images only skim the surface of the true meaning of events/people/places. That was the conundrum that I faced in researching the project, was how to break out of the ‘cliché’ and shed new light on each of the events that unfolded and to depart from what has already been said. By framing the present upon the past, answering the question of where and what happened at this place, but also recalling the implication of ourselves in not knowing the history that had taken place many years ago at a place where we pass unknowingly from day to day It is also interesting that you signal the project as a ‘counter-narrative’. Yes, it is, and it is purposely constructed as so. The images try to weave the story with what is happening over many hours in front of my camera with what is going on in real life For instance, set up to take a photograph of the former Blarney Train Station some 5 miles outside the city to photograph where 23-year old British soldier Private Henry Woods, who accidentally discharged his rifle, while alighting the train and killed himself, you have a view of a black cat crossing the camera at the station, recalling the tale/myth of 7-years bad luck for a cat passing in front of your path It is also interesting to note Marcel Ophuls documentary, ‘The Sorrow and the Pity’ (1969) on the Nazi occupation of Paris during WWII, he interviews, collaborators, resistance fighters and others who took a more ambiguous role during the occupation. He interviews all the established sides both god bad and indifferent. What the viewer comes away with is a complex and interwoven story that goes against what is conveniently known about this period in history. That in conflict nobody or right and nobody is wrong. A certain greyness to the facts of war, hovers over his narration This was important for me to show all sides of the conflict. Both men women and children and soldiers on both sides. By that gesture I made, I went against the common narrative that the Irish were good and the British were bad. By confronting the myth of how the war was understood and accepted and bringing people on all sides of the conflict onto a level playing field.
01--Site-522-525 Ellis Quarry
Private Henry Alfred Morris
Corporal Harold Daker,
Sapper Albert G Camm
Sapper Albert Edward Powell
The four young soldiers, Morris (21), Daker (28), Camm (20) and Powell (20) were kidnapped near Gaol Cross on Sunday night, 10 July 1921, and executed on the north side of The Lough and their bodies dumped at Ellis Quarry on its south side. All four were found blindfolded and shot dead. They were unarmed.
It has been suggested that the killing of these men was a personal reprisal by the IRA for the murder of Volunteer Denis Spriggs on 8 July-just two days earlier.
At 8 p.m. they were captured by a patrol of seven IRA Volunteers who had been searching an area from Donovan’s Bridge along the Western Road to find a suspected civilian informer. The only surviving account of the executions by an IRA participant is the official report sent to IRA GHQ, which gave no indication as to the grounds on which the execution was carried out. It simply reads: “We held up four soldiers and searched them but found no arms. We took them to a field in our area where they were executed before 9 p.m.”
01--Site-522-525 Ellis Quarry
Private Henry Alfred Morris
Corporal Harold Daker,
Sapper Albert G Camm
Sapper Albert Edward Powell
The four young soldiers, Morris (21), Daker (28), Camm (20) and Powell (20) were kidnapped near Gaol Cross on Sunday night, 10 July 1921, and executed on the north side of The Lough and their bodies dumped at Ellis Quarry on its south side. All four were found blindfolded and shot dead. They were unarmed.
It has been suggested that the killing of these men was a personal reprisal by the IRA for the murder of Volunteer Denis Spriggs on 8 July-just two days earlier.
At 8 p.m. they were captured by a patrol of seven IRA Volunteers who had been searching an area from Donovan’s Bridge along the Western Road to find a suspected civilian informer. The only surviving account of the executions by an IRA participant is the official report sent to IRA GHQ, which gave no indication as to the grounds on which the execution was carried out. It simply reads: “We held up four soldiers and searched them but found no arms. We took them to a field in our area where they were executed before 9 p.m.”
IS: Could you explain the process you have been going through to bring about your research of the unmarked sites where people lost their lives in County Cork?
DM: The initial idea came from a series of discussions with curator Dan Breen of Cork Public Museum in Cork City. Following on from this my attention was brought towards some recent research undertaken by the Modern History Dept. at University College Cork. In which Dr Andy Bielenberg and Dr James Donnelly of the University of Wisconsin tabulated all the fatalities in County Cork between 1916 and 1923 (this project is ongoing).
This gave me a solid basis in which to research the sites in more detail. However, there was discrepancies between their research and what was found when these sites were examined by me in person and when I spoke to residents and family members of the victims.
The project was quite a different approach to my previous photographic project that looked at the landscapes of chemical and biological weapons in the United Kingdom. Instead of researching that was distant from me to come full circle to photograph sites that were possibly too familiar to me, places that are in the city where I have lived for over 20 years.
IS: What’s the main purpose of your mapping of those places? How is your collection being used and who by?
DM: The main purpose is to understand a specific history that has gone on in the city where I live and it is also a way to understand my own history that is somewhat like many Irish families in respect of these events. The project was a means to clarify myths, legends etc. that are endemic in this country, and that have mostly been hijacked by the republican/IRA cause that have been somewhat poisonous to most Irish people.
I work part-time at the main city museum, so I am researching these events and people practically every day. Even thought my training was in photography and visual arts practice, I wanted to explore ways of representing the past.
03 –Site-487 Blarney Station
Private Henry Woods
Woods of the Royal Fusiliers accidentally shot himself and died instantly while alighting off a guarded train at Blarney railway station and died of his wounds to his heart on the 9th June 1921. He was one of two soldiers travelling on the engine part of the train scheduled to reach Cork city at 9:20 a.m. The use of soldiers in this way was designed to prevent robbery of the mails and other kinds of IRA attacks.
03 –Site-487 Blarney Station
Private Henry Woods
Woods of the Royal Fusiliers accidentally shot himself and died instantly while alighting off a guarded train at Blarney railway station and died of his wounds to his heart on the 9th June 1921. He was one of two soldiers travelling on the engine part of the train scheduled to reach Cork city at 9:20 a.m. The use of soldiers in this way was designed to prevent robbery of the mails and other kinds of IRA attacks.
IS: In your images, the past is bridged to the present not only through the simple event of photography but also through the captions narrating the life of the victims. How do see those sites still echoing their relation to the now absent victims?
DM: Researching and making the images was a constant struggle to stay relevant and focused. The making of each photographed was taken over hours, days and even almost a week in some of the images.
One thing that was very important was to have the story or history of the site fresh in my mind. Viewing and scanning the site to make the image composition as engaging as possible. Looking at everyday life passing by and trying to connect what was happening in the scene to the historical event.
In some ways, it has recharged in invigorated the spaces. Much of the public reaction to the photos has been of shock and surprise to now know that an event people pass everyday has now taken on a darker and more sinister meaning
IS: What’s photography to you?
DM: It means many things to me. Firstly, it is a mechanical aid to give you the means in which to interpret and understand the world. A way of understanding and compiling concerns and issues.
It is a means in which to explore the discourse between subject matter and audience.
It is a flawed medium that can never capture the experience of being, seeing, feeling at a place in time.
The way traditional photographic practice has opened up in the last few years to using mixed media, the photo book and the use of parallel narrations, has freed us to be more experimental in our approach to subject matter and interpretation.
05 -Site-343 Blarney St
Civilian Cornelius Sheehan (aged 54) of 198 Blarney Street, Cork city
‘Long Con’ Sheehan (54), was found dead at his house on Blarney St on the 19thth March 1921.
Early in the evening of the 8th January, Sheehan and an off-duty RIC officer were shot on Blarney St by a group of armed men. Both survived their injuries.
This might have alerted local Volunteers to the fact that he was a person of note.
It is alleged that there was a long-standing feud between Sheehan and his landlady Abina Walsh, who lived 2 doors down from Sheehan and she was alleged to say that he was a spy.
On the night of the 19th March, gun men broke down the door of his house and shot him as he tried to make an escape out the back door.
The accounts of his family and those of Abina Walsh were conflicting.
The Sheehan family has long argued that he was innocent and had been set up by his landlord. In testimony given at the inquest into his death, his wife Abina Sheehan declared that ‘the only enemy my husband had was a woman—Mrs Abina Walsh of 196 Blarney Street—who had threatened to shoot my husband.
Sheehan left a wife and three young children. His wife was awarded compensation of £2890 in March 1923, as a consequence, she was able to set up a boarding house in London.
He was a former attendant at the Cork District Lunatic Asylum of twenty-two years,
06–Site-070 Pouladuff
Civilian James Herlihy
An ex-soldier, Herlihy (31) was arrested by Volunteers on 20 August 1920 and executed two days later. He was taken into custody as a spy by men of G Company of the Second Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade. According to the witness statement of G Company member Patrick Collins, he was then ‘removed to the Pouladuff district south of the city, where he was executed by a firing squad from the company on instructions from the brigade’. James Herlihy ‘and some other civilians were known to our Intelligence Service to be in touch with the British military and to have supplied to them the names of prominent I.R.A. members. Collins, who knew Herlihy well, had asked him on the day before he was executed ‘why he gave us away to the enemy’, and ‘he said he could give no reason why he did it, but added that he had given the military a wrong address in my own case’ —a detail that Collins confirmed
The location of his body was never disclosed or located.
IS: When images start circulating globally they become transitional entities fluctuating as data being configured and re-configured as superficial information. How could images escape this lack of amplitude?
DM: If I understand you correctly, how these images are recontextualised?Regardless it’s a very interesting question to ask. The images taken from their context, cause detachment from the true meaning of what I’m trying to say. Yes on first glance they look like nice pictures well composed and executed, but on further insight into the events with the aid of the captions, the meaning of these pictures flips the whole meaning of the images into a totally different meaning.
Over the years some of my images have been appropriated over the internet for other purposes, for instance colleges prospectives, home gardening blogs, literary magazine, to name a few.
In some ways, I am intrigued by the many uses my images have been appropriated. I’m not annoyed, but look for the meaning of why they used my images and their intent.
IS: For Those That Tells No Tales seems to activate what Ariella Azoulay calls “visual citizenship” (2011). She claims that there’s a civic skill embedded in the act of photography, and it’s “activated the moment one grasps that citizenship is not merely a status, a good, or a piece of private property possessed by the citizen, but rather a tool of a struggle or an obligation to others to struggle against.” (2008, 81). Images could function as sites of recognition of regime-made disasters and criticism of the way disasters are managed and transformed into non-disasters or disasters from the point of view of the victims, so that they don’t concern us (2011). I think that the way you perceive and depict the Irish War of Independence makes it a concern not only for the inhabitants of the city but for all of us spectators. Do you relate to this discourse?
DM: It’s quite an interesting statement regarding the project and how you might view it in relation to the ideas of ‘visual citizenship’.
Maybe I was not attuned to this idea but I was attuned to the ideas of taking a personal and visceral story/event that belonged to someone else and how best to represent the different sides in the conflict equally.
I think my act of taking on this subject matter was fraught with landmines if my images didn’t correlate exactly to the narrative I was correlating or not being able to stand over what I photographed. Even before public scrutiny of my project, I was fully aware that I was going to undergo it. The legacy of the conflict looms over the publics history. It shaped us in some way to what we are now.
Making the project involved the research into imagery and documents of that period. However, with a disjointed archive of materials to work from, the project needed to reinterpret the story into frameworks and methodologies that through photographic projects that have been navigated before. For instance, Amy Romer-The Dark Figure (2019), Joel Sternfeld- On This Site (1996) and Paul Seawright- Sectarian Murders (1988).
However even if the same methodology is present, the subject matter needs the photographer to re-establish the narrative within their own research field.
By making the photographs, exhibiting them and publishing them I have re-inserted the trauma of the event back into the public sphere, but approx. 100 years after the event, when the visceral effects of the even have drifted into history and connected memory. Consider when the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911, thousands of people queued at the Louvre to view the empty space left in its wake.
In the absence of the famous painting, the space itself had become a charged entity, the case a clear illustration of Foucault’s observation that spaces are “saturated with qualities” and are neither lifeless nor neutral.
07-Site-247 Dennehys X
Civilian James Charles Beal
An Englishman and a Protestant who had come to Cork city about eleven years earlier, Beal (53) was abducted by armed men and brought by car to a field opposite Wilton Church, where he was executed. He ‘was last seen leaving his place of business at 7 p.m.’ on Monday night, 14 February 1921. His remains ‘bore several wounds, one in the head and others in different parts of the body’. The report of Beal’s disappearance ‘caused a tremendous sensation in the city. His wife was greatly distressed, more particularly because her father, James Blemens, and her brother Fredrick, a clerk, were kidnapped two months ago. Nothing has been heard of them since, and they are believed to have been tried, executed and disappeared.
According to IRA witness statements, he was ‘tied around the neck with a looped piece of ordinary twine was a piece of cardboard about one foot square on which were printed in ink, in capital letters roughly formed, the words: “Convicted spy. This is the penalty for all those who associate with the Auxiliaries, Black and Tans, and R.I.C.—I.R.A.” “P.S.—Beware.”’
08-Site-457 Model Farm Rd
Civilian Christopher William
An ex-soldier, O’Sullivan (22) was kidnapped on the 26th May 1921 from his house by ‘two strong, tall, young men. Dragged down River Lane, put into a motor car, and driven off.’ He was shot dead in a field adjoining the Model Farm Road near Dennehy’s Cross. The doctor at the inquest reported finding bullet wounds in the left ear and the forehead. A note found on the body stated, ‘Dear [wife], I am going to my God.’
Listed as one of the numerous ex-soldiers and Victoria Barracks employees whom the IRA considered as spies and executed.
He had worked as a motor mechanic in Victoria Barracks but had lost that job some six weeks earlier. He was one of the sons of Daniel and Kate O’Sullivan of Blarney St.
IS: How do you feel those events from the Irish War of Independence still affect Irish society?
It does effect Irish society and has now been highlighted again by the War of Independences 100th anniversary and the government lead ‘Centenary of Commemorations 1913-1923’
DM: The 3 largest political parties of today in Ireland, Sinn Fein, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail were formed from this war and its resulting fallout through a Civil War. It cemented the idea of partition of the south and north of Ireland, and cemented the ideas of Irish republicanism and unionism towards Great Britain.
This debate continues today in the wake of Brexit, the EU protocol regarding the status of Northern Ireland and the threat of the imposition of a border on the island, which is ongoing even today.
The act of photographing these places and the public display and distribution of these images has evoked a strong local audience from the people who live in and around the city, from initially one of negativity and criticism to one of positivity.
IS: How does your ongoing project intersect with your overall scope and research?
DM: It very much falls into line with my developing practice. I am constantly researching new means of exploring stories and interlinking events in history and constantly changing the approach to photographing and representing them. A way of reinventing oneself at every opportunity.
For Those That Tell No Tales, the photo book has been self-published in Aug 2021 and is available to buy at https://daramcgrath.com/publications/
09 -Site-141 Watercourse Rd
Volunteer William Mulcahy
Volunteer Denis Christopher Morrissey
Mulcahy (22) and Morrisey (17) were killed when the bombs that they were assembling caused an explosion that killed them in the loft of No. 1 Watercourse road in the Blackpool District of Cork on the morning of fri 26th Nov 1920.
Three days previously there was another bomb explosion—at the same address which was the premises of Daniel O’Leary, a coffin maker.
Morrissey was dead on arrival at the North Infirmary, while Mulcahy died within a half hour of admission. A third man—Daniel Kelleher of Killeens, another apprentice in the workshop—was wounded. He had gone out to buy cigarettes, and the bomb exploded just as he was returning to the loft where the others were working.
Mulcahy was a member of E Company of the First Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade. He was buried in the Republican Plot in St Finbarr’s Cemetery in Cork, as was Morrissey.
He was the eldest of the three sons (in 1911) of the Blarney mill hand John Morrissey and his wife Ellen.
10-Site-506 Mount Vernon
Volunteer Charles J. Daly
A member of the Cork No. 1 Brigade and later battalion adjutant, Daly (31) was shot on 28 June 1921 by Lieutenant Hammond of the Dorset Regiment, allegedly as he was trying to escape after offering to provide information on the whereabouts of IRA battalion weapons. His body was found in a field near Mount Vernon in the Cork suburb of Douglas.
According to the medical examiner’s autopsy of Daly’s body. It reported that Daly suffered six bullet wounds, five bayonet wounds, a broken left eye socket, a crushed skull, fractured ribs and fingers, and a broken arm, tibia, and fibula.
He concluded that Daly was beaten to death.
He had previously been employed at the Gas Office on the South Mall and at the time of his death as an engineer at a local gas works. He was unmarried. He had also been a member of the Cork Rural District Council.
Daly in 1911 a member of a household headed by his older brother John that included two younger brothers and two younger sisters. He was interred in the Republican Plot in St Finbarr’s Cemetery in Cork city.
11-Site-166-167 Carroll’s Bog
Civilian James Blemens
Civilian Frederick Blemens
James Blemens (55) was abducted from his home, on the Blackrock Road in Cork city by armed men on the 29th November 1920. His son Frederick (30) had been ‘reported missing earlier in the day’. They were both executed as spies on 2 December after having been tried and convicted by members of the Cork No. 1 Brigade of the IRA. The Volunteers had information about them from letters captured by raids on postmen for mails.’ According to Volunteer leader Michael Murphy in his interview with Ernie O’Malley, he and other IRA men had listened to meetings in the Blemens household from the backyard. The IRA believed that Blemens and his son Frederick were among the most active members of a pro-British body often styled the ‘Anti-Sinn Féin Society’
According to the witness statement of Volunteer Murphy: ‘We buried the bodies in Carroll’s bogs; every spy who was shot in Cork was buried so that nothing was known about them. They just disappeared.’
Carroll’s Bog or Tramore Marsh is now the Kinsale Road Civic Amenity Site.
British liability was accepted for both members of the family and £3,000 in compensation was awarded.
James Blemens was a horticultural instructor with the Cork County Agricultural and Technical Committee. Both he and his son were Anglican.
11-Site-166-167 Carroll’s Bog
Civilian James Blemens
Civilian Frederick Blemens
James Blemens (55) was abducted from his home, on the Blackrock Road in Cork city by armed men on the 29th November 1920. His son Frederick (30) had been ‘reported missing earlier in the day’. They were both executed as spies on 2 December after having been tried and convicted by members of the Cork No. 1 Brigade of the IRA. The Volunteers had information about them from letters captured by raids on postmen for mails.’ According to Volunteer leader Michael Murphy in his interview with Ernie O’Malley, he and other IRA men had listened to meetings in the Blemens household from the backyard. The IRA believed that Blemens and his son Frederick were among the most active members of a pro-British body often styled the ‘Anti-Sinn Féin Society’.
According to the witness statement of Volunteer Murphy: ‘We buried the bodies in Carroll’s bogs; every spy who was shot in Cork was buried so that nothing was known about them. They just disappeared.’
Carroll’s Bog or Tramore Marsh is now the Kinsale Road Civic Amenity Site.
British liability was accepted for both members of the family and £3,000 in compensation was awarded.
James Blemens was a horticultural instructor with the Cork County Agricultural and Technical Committee. Both he and his son were Anglican.
13 -Site-504 Mayfield
Private Frederick Crowther
Three members of the South Staffordshire Regiment’s 2nd Battalion—Privates Crowther (25), Spooner, and Evans—were returning to Victoria Barracks from a public house at Dillon’s Cross on Monday night, 27 June 1921, when IRA gunmen attacked them on the Mayfield Road, killing Crowther and wounding Spooner.
The three went into the public house and after receiving threats from the patrons, they left. Outside the pub, there was a hostile group there blocking their return to the barracks.
They went up the Mayfield Road and past the church. Crowther then went into the hedge to possible relieve himself. A little while later nine civilians came out of the hedge and attacked Spooner and injured Evans. The soldiers made their escape back to the barracks, leaving Crowther.
Crowther’s dead body was soon found later by other soldiers. There were bullet wounds in his side, chest, and head.
Crowther was interred in Holy Trinity Churchyard at Heathtown, Wolverhampton in the West Midlands.
14 -Site-099 Quarry Douglas
Civilian Joseph Cotter
Cotter’s body was discovered on 15 October 1920 in a disused quarry in the eastern suburbs of Cork city between the Ballinlough and Boreenmanna Roads; he had been missing for two days. He had several wounds on his face, head, and neck. After the onset of curfew on 13 October, a soldier had fired a shot at residents, and Cotter may have run to the vicinity of the quarry to avoid curfew patrols. On balance the evidence points to death by misadventure.
15-Site-449 Lee Road/Mountdesert
Civilian Edward Hawkins
An ex-soldier, Hawkins (29) was one of four men kidnapped by Cork city Volunteers the 20 May 1921. He was abducted while on his way to the Bandon railway station to assist in the loading of military stores. His father Daniel (52) and another man named John Sherlock (35) were kidnapped at the same time. They survived their wounds but Edward Hawkins did not. He was taken to the Mardyke opposite St Joseph’s School, where he was searched. He had in his possession British-army discharge papers and a barracks pass, one sign of the fact that he worked at Victoria Barracks. He was shot eight times at Mountdesert Quarry on the Lee Road and died within thirty minutes of his admission to hospital.
Hawkins was one of the five children of the Cork city chair maker Daniel and Jane Hawkins of Broad Street. In 1914, he joined the British Army as a private, and was charged with desertion from the Royal Munster Fusiliers barracks in Tralee. He left a wife and three children.
Dara McGrath is an Irish based artist whose work centres on exploring the dialogue between the built environment, architecture and landscape. Straddling both the local and global, his work is rooted within a strong historical context, while also referencing contemporary sociological concerns. His photographic series of works are shown both within the gallery context and as site specific public interventions/installations. McGrath recently exhibitied this body of work at the Crawford Art Gallery. His works are represented in collections in the US, Japan, Luxembourg, Australia and Ireland
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