Irish Civil War: 'Mollie got mental and is definitely mental since' — Kerry pensions data reveals the deep trauma of the conflict

In particular, these archives provide a disturbing and distressing catalogue of the immense physical, psychological, emotional, and financial suffering of those who were left behind.

Not only do they highlight the enormous distress of so many loved ones and families, they also emphasise the bureaucratic hoops through which many of them had to jump to secure recompense from the State which their loved ones had either fought to subvert or fought to defend.

And, notably, the difficulties in securing compensation and pension payments for the bereaved was by no means confined to those who had taken up arms against the Free State in 1922-23.

Kerry's most infamous incident 

The killing of eight anti-Treaty IRA members at Ballyseedy on March 7, 1923, is the most infamous incident of the so-called Terror Month of the conflict in Kerry.

A direct response to the deaths of five Free State officers at Knocknagoshel the previous night, Ballyseedy represented the highest death toll in any incident in the county.

George O’Shea from Kilflynn was one of those who died at Ballyseedy. His family suffered a litany of trauma, poor health, financial deprivation, and misery in the years after his death.

They had been heavily reliant on O’Shea’s income as a roads worker with Kerry County Council. 

When his mother, Annie, applied for compensation, the payment of £150 was recommended by the Compensation (Personal Injuries) Committee but was “withheld on the instructions of the Minister for Finance, Ernest Blythe”. 

The impact of Ballyseedy manifested itself in other ways on the O’Shea family. 

One of George’s sisters, Mollie, was a member of Cumann na mBan. After George was killed at Ballyseedy and she helped in recovering his mangled remains, Mollie “got mental and is definitely mental since”.

She was, according to the local company of Cumann na mBan, “hopelessly insane”. She was admitted to Killarney Mental Hospital in 1928.

Among those who wrote in support of her pension claim was Stephen Fuller, the sole survivor at Ballyseedy, who stated that the Kilflynn IRA company “deeply regret her mental incapacity which is a sad one … we insist that she is one of those who qualify for the Military Service Pension”. 

Bereaved by Countess Bridge killings

For the families of the four men who died at the hands of their Free State army captors at Countess Bridge in Killarney, the process of securing payments of allowances was convoluted.

Hannah Buckley, whose son Stephen, was killed when the mine was detonated, applied for an allowance. Ten years after the Civil War, her circumstances “had not changed appreciably”. 

She eventually received a payment of £112 under the 1932 Act on the basis of partial dependency on Stephen at the time of his death: He was the youngest of his family, working the family farm when all his siblings had left home.

Daniel Donoghue, also killed at Countess Bridge, was described as the “mainstay of the household” and was the principal worker on the family farm, which was “very poor land”. 

The pension application process was delayed, the family claimed, for political reasons, because as “ardent sympathisers of the ‘Irregulars’, they were debarred” from making a claim under previous Acts. 

Like so many bereaved families, the only immediate financial aid received after the Civil War was £50 from the Irish White Cross Association which supported families impacted by the wars between 1919 and 1923.

Willie Reardon was just 18 years old when he was shot in the legs and blown up by Free State soldiers at Bahaghs near Caherciveen. His mother, Ellen, relied on his income, the “greater part” of his wages being given to her each week.

In 1934, Ellen wrote to Dorothy Macardle, who had published the story of Bahaghs in her book, Tragedies of Kerry. Macardle told the Minister for Defence, Frank Aiken, that she had received a “very distressing letter” from Mrs Riordan, who was “desperately poor now”. 

Macardle wondered if “the families of prisoners murdered while in custody have or will have a claim?” Ellen was certified by her doctor as “neurasthenic”, a medical term used to describe what we now know as post-traumatic stress disorder. As a result, she was never able to resume work or “go out and follow an occupation like women of her age and time have done”.

Other Kerry IRA combatants and their families were left in dire straits in the years after the conflict ended. 

Michael O’Connell of Castleisland, had been shot in the leg during the War of Independence but continued to be active with the anti-Treatyites during the Civil War. 

In 1924, the Kerry Command of the Free State Army insisted that O’Connell was capable of maintaining “eight or nine cows” and that he didn’t appear disabled “in the least”. 

His doctor disagreed completely, certifying that O’Connell was suffering from a “general nervous and physical breakup” after the Civil War. Ten years later, O’Connell was in dire straits. In 1933, he wrote:

We are near starving, I cannot afford to pay a workman in my stead on my little farm.

In a reflection of the political tensions which surrounded the whole pension applications process, O’Connell wrote that he had been warned that he might not get any recompense if he did not support Cumann na nGaedheal.

An 'exceptional' case

In a case which the Minister for Defence described as “exceptional”, Siobhán (Johanna) Cleary from Ballymore near Dingle suffered a horrific breakdown and death as a direct result of her involvement in the Civil War. 

Siobhán Cleary worked as a nurse at Cork Mental Hospital and was an active member of Cumann na mBan in the city between 1920 and 1923. She was arrested in 1923 and spent 14 days on hunger strike.

Despite a very traumatic experience in prison, she returned to her work as a nurse but became very unwell in the summer of 1924. Cleary was admitted to the infirmary of the hospital where she worked.

She died on 9 November from exophthalmic goitre and exhaustion from “incessant vomiting [for] seven days”. 

Dr Cashman, who cared for her, was in no doubt as to why she had died so suddenly, writing: 

Shock, strain, hardship of imprisonment and hunger strike during the period of civil stress.

The aftermath

It wasn’t just those on the anti-Treaty side who were adversely impacted in the years after the Civil War: The Military Archives are replete with the horror stories of the families of soldiers who faced financial, physical, and psychological trauma for years and decades afterwards.

Private Joseph O’Brien, a father of three from the North Wall in Dublin, was the only survivor of the trip-mine explosion at Knocknagoshel which claimed the lives of five Free State soldiers on March 6, 1923.

Such were the extent of his injuries that both of his legs were amputated just below the knee and he lost most of the sight in his eyes. His plight was raised in the Dáil by Alfie Byrne TD, who told President Cosgrave that O’Brien was:

“… confined to bed and cannot see; that he is not in receipt of any allowance or pension; that his wife has three children to support, and if in the view of this he will see that an immediate payment is made in order to enable her to provide food for her children and proper medical treatment for her husband.”

In August 1925, Joseph’s wife, Annie asked for an “invalid chair” as it was the only way she would be able to take Joseph “out for air each day”, an application which was approved, but the wheelchair had still not been provided six months later.

O’Brien also required a tricycle and harness to get around and, as he became increasingly blind. For many years after, there was a need for a tricycle, stump socks, shoulder straps, replacement prostheses, glasses, and other medical supports, which were provided with departmental assistance.

John Joe Horan was a Free State army officer from Tralee. A father of six, after being demobilised from the army, he fell on hard times and was out of work. He applied, and waited patiently for a pension payment. 

He pleaded with the Department of Defence in 1926. He was, he told them, a “married man with five children whose ages are from seven years to five days … I am able to just feed them but as for clothing including myself and wife who is at present ill, we are absolutely in the rags.”

When the family moved to Dublin, his wife, Kathleen, appealed to President Cosgrave for an advance on her husband’s pension so they could afford a house in which to live. When Kathleen was widowed, she was forced to write again, this time to President de Valera:

“… could [you] help me to get my three little boys into O’Brien’s Orphanage … It is an Orphanage for respectable boys, as I have heard some ladies left sums of money to be used for respectable boys like mine whose fathers die … I have no pension or means of support whatever to rear my six little children … what in God’s Holy name am I to do?”

In 1975, Kathleen Horan was bereft, “living on bread and tea from one end of the year to another. My pension is £6 it is dreadful in these hard times.” 

She continued to plead her case until her death on December 6, 1978, ironically the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty which her husband had fought against his fellow Irish men to defend.

A cold place

The Military Service Pensions Collection reveals how families and the loved ones of those killed and injured during the Civil War, on both sides of the conflict, faced not only immense suffering, hardship and a range of physical and mental health problems, they were also confronted with a bureaucratic nightmare in securing financial recompense from the State.

The new Free State was a cold place for the loved ones of Irregulars who had fought and died in Kerry during the Civil War. But is was also a cold place for the families of the soldiers who had fought to defend that State against the anti-Treatyites.

On the centenary of this deeply distressing period in our history, it is time to consider the legacy of the conflict for the families of those left behind who had to endure financial poverty, nervous breakdowns, intimidation and alienation, and a protracted and bureaucratic system of pensions and allowance payments.

Their stories now deserve to be told and listened to. By doing that, we can come to meaningfully appreciate a hitherto largely unknown aspect of the appalling legacy of the fratricide of 100 years ago.