New book on Irish republican prisoner escapes by Kildare archivist and author

By James Durney

Anyone that has grown up in Kildare in the early 1970s will recall the escapes from the Curragh Camp and Portlaoise Prison.

Sirens would sound in Naas, the Curragh and Kildare town, signalling that something major had happened and calling all troops back to barracks to aid in the search for escapees or man roadblocks and checkpoints.

Escapes from both the Curragh and Portlaoise feature in my new book — Jailbreak: Great Irish Republican Escape 1865-1983.
During the War of Independence and the Civil War, the Curragh plains was home to some of the largest and most important internment camps in the country.

The Rath Camp, opened on 1 March 1921 and housed up to 1,300 men. Within days Rory O’Connor and an accomplice walked out the front gate.

In September 1921, during the Truce and while negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty were ongoing, over fifty republican internees tunnelled their way out of the Rath Camp.

With the outbreak of the Civil War the following year, Newbridge Cavalry Barracks was converted to an internment centre for anti-Treaty IRA prisoners.
The Greatest Escape in Irish prison history occurred over a weekend in October 1922 when 112 prisoners escaped through a tunnel leading into the sewer. Thirty-five men from Co. Kildare escaped— the biggest group by county, including William ‘Squires’ Gannon, then only twenty-one, who made a successful escape and was not recaptured.
Squires Gannon was later a winner of two All-Ireland medals (1927 and 1928) and was the first captain to raise the Sam Maguire Cup.

Tintown Internment Camp, on the Curragh plains, held about 5,000 internees.

Apart from intermittent escapes — Peadar O’Donnell also walked out the front gate — another seventy internees tunnelled their way to freedom. One of them was John McCoy, from Mullaghbawn, Co. Armagh. He later settled in Kill and was father of Olympic boxer Colm McCoy and Art and John of McCoy Motors, Lucan.
The Curragh was back in business after the IRA launched the Border Campaign in 1956 which led to internment in the Republic.

Another mass escape followed in December 1958 when fourteen republicans successfully broke out through the barbed wire.
As soon as the alarm was sounded, local republicans came to their aid in the escape. One local was known to have led a group of escapees to safety, assisting in carrying Terry O’Toole, who had been shot in the leg by a military policeman.
This was the third escape to have taken place at the Curragh in the same year. Earlier, leading republicans Daithi O’Connell and Ruari Ó Bradaigh had successfully fled their humble surroundings and returned to active duty on the border.
Once again, the Curragh became a holding centre when the Troubles erupted in 1968, when the Glasshouse Military Prison was used to house republican prisoners.

The Curragh was chosen in the likely expectation that its remoteness would preclude riots, which had taken place inside and outside Mountjoy Jail in 1972.

However, within weeks a major clash took place on the Curragh Plains when a demonstration of 2,000 people, organised by Provisional Sinn Féin and People’s Democracy, degenerated into a full-scale riot, involving around 200 breakaway demonstrators, gardaí and riot-gear-clad soldiers.

This was the first time riot troops had been deployed in the Republic. The crowd set fire to a building at the Curragh complex and attacked the troops and gardaí with petrol bombs, fireworks and stones.
An army baton charge eventually dispersed the crowd.

But, the Curragh seemed as leaky as earlier years when seven men escaped from the Glasshouse through a tunnel in October 1972. Within a year two of the escapees, Paddy Carty and Michael McVerry, were dead — killed while engaging in actions against Crown forces.
After a helicopter escape from Mountjoy by three leading republicans — Seamus Twomey, Kevin Mallon and J. B. O’Hagen — all IRA prisoners held at Mountjoy and the Curragh Camp were transferred to the maximum security Portlaoise Prison on 9 November 1973.
Eddie Gallagher, recently released from the Curragh Military Detention Barracks, arrived in Portlaoise Prison on 15 August 1974.

Three days later, Gallagher was instrumental in helping a picked bunch of top republicans escape from the prison. A hole was blown in the perimeter wall from the inside and twenty-five prisoners, including Gallagher and a recently recaptured Kevin Mallon, went out through it.

Six prisoners were recaptured, but nineteen successfully escaped.
Piaras Béaslaí, a two-time escapee, said, ‘It is a theorem with prison-keepers that, while a man may serve twenty years in prison without once thinking of escaping, he who has once escaped is certain to attempt it again.’
This opinion was justified in Béaslaí’s case, for he subsequently escaped five months after having been recaptured.
He was not the only one. Tomás Ó Maoláin escaped through a tunnel from the Rath Camp in September 1921 and again went out through a tunnel from Tintown in 1923.

Patrick Bagnall escaped from Newbridge Barracks in October 1922 only to face a firing squad two months later when he was recaptured.

Many other escapees returned to active service only to be killed in action. Three of the 1983 H-Block escapees were also subsequently killed in IRA operations.
Jailbreak — Great Irish Republican Escape 1865-1983 tells the stories of the many successful republican escapes, but also the elation and the heartbreak that followed.

Jailbreak: Great Irish Republican Escapes 1865-1983 is published by Merrion Press.