1919-Later events

An extract from the article 'Law and Order in Ireland' by Erskine Childers published in Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review (Vol. VIII No. 32) December 1919.

Events that took place in Cork City in November anticipated the famous burning of the city in the following year. On the night of November 10th, members of the Shropshire Regiment ran amok in parts of the city, smashing windows, looting shops and attacking civilians. This behaviour was repeated over the following nights and the areas hit were King Street (now Mac Curtain Street), Lower Road and St. Lukes where one of the damaged buildings was the famous public house Henchy’s. This was the same regiment that had been attacked in Fermoy in September. This late retaliation may have been inspired by compensation claims before the courts for damages after the reprisals there, though one apologist claimed that insulting remarks had been passed to some soldiers in a pub earlier that night about that Fermoy incident.  By the end of the week, the troops in question were confined to barracks with talk of possible courts-martial. The rioting had been so extensive on the first night that police had to be called in to separate the soldiers and the civilians.

In December, an IRA volunteer died in an attempt to kill Lieutenant General Lord French and the offices of “The Irish independent” were raided by the IRA for referring to the deceased as a “would be assassin.”

There was no sign of any easing off of the conflict as 1919 came to a close but events unfolding in Britain, over which Ireland had no control, would have major implications in the following year.  A British cabinet committee recommended two parliaments for Ireland, one for the nine counties of Ulster and one for “Southern Ireland” and on 22nd December Prime Minister Lloyd George announced this policy to the House of Commons which would lead to the 1920 Government of Ireland Act and the partitioning of Ireland.