90 years ago... death and fury in the Cattle Riots of Cork

IF seven is the age of reason, then surely 15 is the age of curiosity.

I know that when I was 15, I was consumed by what is usually described as nosiness. I wanted to go all places, to experience all things.

If two shawlies had a squabble on Upper John Street, where I lived, I was sure to be there, and close up to the action, too, in order to hear every curse that was uttered.

I was a ripe plum ready to fall when my neighbour, Jimmy, called on me that fateful Monday morning of August 13, 1934, a day of the summer holidays away from the calm of the seminary at Ormskirk in Lancashire where I was studying at the time.

“Paulie,” said the excited Jimmy, “my dad is after saying there is sure to be a blow-up in town today. It has to do with the Annuities and the seizure of cattle by the Government.

“The cattle are to be sold in Marsh’s, Copley Street, and scores and scores of farmers are coming into Cork to stop the auction. He says there will be bloody murder, skulls split and bones broken. Let’s get down there - quick!”

Getting to town quick might mean a bus or a taxi for an adult, but for us impoverished teenage chisellers it meant relying on ‘bangers’.

This involved giving some cast-iron door-knocker a resounding wallop and then running off helter-skelter to escape the anger of an irate householder. Four such ‘bangers’ along the way ensured that we got into town in as many minutes.

We made for Anglesea Street where, that summer’s day in 1934, a carnival atmosphere prevailed. Farmers were everywhere, leaning at ease against the walls of the abattoir and the Corn Exchange, or clustered together in small groups deep in conversation.

Though the morning was glorious, nearly all wore caps and were dressed in tweed suiting. They carried stout sticks in their hands but without any menacing intention that I noticed there and then.

Being naturally small, I realised I would not see a great deal unless I got above the nodding heads. So I sidled along by the boundary of the Model School and crossed the street, all the time gingerly avoiding having my toes crumpled by hob-nailed boots. I climbed 4ft up the Corn Exchange gate, that same gate that has been on the Grand Parade since 1885, giving entry to Bishop Lucey Park. There was no need to make room for Jimmy for he had got lost in the crowd.

My leather-soled shoes solidly planked on the gate’s cross-brace, my two arms gripping the uprights and looking in the direction of Copley Street, I saw a double cordon of Civic Guards linking Bateman’s pub with Mr Canty’s garage, a human chain that effectively cut off entry to Copley Street.

The Guards were being pushed and jostled by angry, excited farmers. There was a rising clamour of noises, shouting, whistling and cat-calling as the tension became more ominous.

Into sight from the direction of Parnell Bridge came an open-backed lorry, its engine roaring defiance. About a dozen men were aboard. A triumphant cheer from the gathered hundreds speeded their passage.

They drove relentlessly through the police cordon, scattering the men in blue, felling some and dislodging helmets that rolled like decapitated heads between the stamping feet of the sons of the soil.

That lorry continued on and on. No human chain was capable of staying its course. It crashed through the locked doors of Marsh’s Sales yard where it was fired on by members of the Broy Harriers, several men were wounded, one so seriously that he died later.

This development I did not see, for the huffing and puffing had become so intense that I realised that unless I got away, pronto, some other hot-headed protester in a second lorry might try to push his vehicle through my gate.

I dashed for the shelter of the Joachim and Anne Asylum and was glad enough to lie low in the grounds, concealed because I was frightened, although giving occasional peeps over the wall to keep in touch with what was afoot.

Enough was enough at this point and while the ambulance was busy removing the wounded to the South Infirmary, I made my way home.

There before me was my mother who listened, in the off-hand manner that mothers do to the blabbering of their children, as I excitedly told her about the events of the morning.

“Well,” said she, “that should satisfy your thirst for excitement for the next 50 years of your life.”

But it didn’t. Minutes later I was out the door once more and heading for town.

As I stood all alone at one corner of St Patrick’s Bridge, a procession of farmers, all reciting the Rosary, wound its way along Merchant’s Quay and into the main thoroughfare of the city.

In the cortege was this great mountain of a man who, like the seafarer in the Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, “held me with his glittering eye” as he passed by and roared out: “The murderers.” The words stunned me, it was as if he had fired two bullets into my heart.

The Rosary was being recited because by now word had spread that Michael Lynch, of Carrignavar, had died from his injuries.

It was also being recited as an incantation of defeat, for the farmers knew that the 14 head of cattle seized from John Coveney, of Bishopstown House, and Michael Corkery, from Poulavone, Ballincollig, had been sold for £17.15.00 and that the entire body of protesters had been driven back from the sales yard over the bridge into the South Mall, where in order to escape the pummelling by baton and truncheon they had sought shelter in the maze of side streets.

I was not au fait with all this at the time, but something in the dejected demeanour of the men, some sense that they were victims, not victors, assailed me and in a chastened mood I turned my face to Shandon and struck for home.

But my day was still not over. Having rested and eaten, I was stirred to go back into town for one last observation of how the citizen was contending with the State, the farmer with the policeman.

Away down Mulgrave Road on my bike I went at top speed. Then disaster struck. Across my path came a horse and butt being driven lazily by a dozy farmer, who was returning to his cot in the country after his long day in the city. There was a crash - then oblivion.

My injuries, I have to say, were soon forgotten but ever since I have grieved that it was to the North Infirmary I was taken and not the South, for there I would have met the dozen or so who were injured in the Copley Street fracas on that memorable day. By an unlucky chance I missed my place in history.

Protester who lost his life was aged just 22

THE death of Michael Lynch in the Cattle Riots of 1934 sent shockwaves through the city.

He and his fellow protesting farmers had rammed the gate of Marsh’s Auction Yard with a reinforced truck complete with an iron hook, according to an article on the Irish Family Detective website, from where the photo on the left was sourced.

A special branch of the garda, known as the ‘Broy Harriers’ opened fire and Lynch, 22, was fatally shot in the stomach. The Evening Echo reported that Lynch had been sat beside the driver of the lorry. “The bullet went clean through the liver and spleen and emerging at the back.” He was operated on in the South Infirmary hospital but died later that day.

Six other protesters were wounded by bullets and a further 30 men were treated in hospital for other injuries. In a reprisal, trees and telegraph poles were felled all over Cork. Ten men from north-east Cork were jailed for their part in these activities.

The funeral for Lynch attracted vast crowds and, at a time when the Blueshirts were riding high in popularity, added to the febrile atmosphere of the times.

Lynch was born on March 16, 1912 to Daniel and Hanora Lynch (nee Dunlea) in Lyre, Carrignavar, Co. Cork.

As recollected for the 2006 Holly Bough by Paul McSweeney, from Ballinlough Road, in an interview with Richard Henchion