O'Connor · 1922
Rory O'Connor at the Four Courts
From the fourteenth of April to the thirtieth of June 1922, in the Four Courts complex on the north bank of the Liffey in central Dublin, an anti-Treaty IRA garrison of about a hundred and eighty men under Rory O'Connor, thirty-nine years old, the anti-Treaty IRA Director of Engineering and one of the anti-Treaty figures, occupied the Four Courts as a political statement against the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed by Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith in December 1921. The Provisional Government of Ireland under W. T. Cosgrave (constituted after the Treaty's Dáil ratification of January 1922 and the formation of the new government in February) had political-tolerance for the occupation through the spring of 1922, on the Collins-Mulcahy political-judgement that any Free-State military action against the anti-Treaty IRA would precipitate Civil War. The British government, on the Lloyd-George direct political pressure of late June, demanded the Provisional-Government move on the Four Courts. The assault began at four in the morning of the twenty-eighth of June 1922 with the British-loaned 18-pounder field-artillery firing across the river from the south quays into the Four Courts walls. The Four Courts garrison surrendered on the thirtieth of June. O'Connor was taken prisoner, held at Mountjoy Prison, and was executed by the Free State Government on the eighth of December 1922 as a reprisal for the anti-Treaty assassination of the Free-State TD Seán Hales the day before. The Civil War of 1922–23 had begun.
It is twenty past three on the morning of Wednesday the twenty-eighth of June 1922, on the first floor of the Four Courts complex on the north bank of the Liffey in central Dublin, in the darkness of the cleared corridors of the occupied building. He is thirty-nine years old. He is Rory O'Connor, born at Kilmainham in Dublin on the twenty-eighth of November 1883, son of the Dublin solicitor John O'Connor and Kate Kelly, schooled at Clongowes Wood College and University College Dublin, qualified as a civil engineer in 1909, in the twenty-second year of his Irish-Republican political-engagement since the 1900 Conradh na Gaeilge Dublin University branch.
He has, in the Four Courts garrison-quarters in the Round Hall, about a hundred and eighty anti-Treaty IRA men under his command. The garrison has been in the Four Courts since the fourteenth of April 1922, eleven weeks. The Four Courts is the principal courthouse of the Irish judicial system and the symbolic political-target of the occupation: by holding the Four Courts, the anti-Treaty IRA has made the political-statement that the Treaty-Free-State government cannot administer justice in the name of an Irish State.
He thinks: the British-loaned 18-pounder field-artillery has been at the south-quay positions since the evening of yesterday. The Provisional Government has, in the eighteen-hour ultimatum issued at six in the evening of yesterday, given us until four in the morning to evacuate the Four Courts. The ultimatum expires in forty minutes.
He thinks: Liam Mellows, Joe McKelvey, Dick Barrett, Pat Cosgrave, Charlie Daly and the others of the IRA-Executive who are in this building with me will not evacuate. The political-point of the occupation is not retained on evacuation. The political-point is the occupation under fire.
He thinks: Collins has the political authority to call off the artillery. Collins will not call off the artillery. The British-government Lloyd-George pressure on Collins through the past ten days has been too great. Collins will, by the Civil-War political-trajectory, lose his personal political position if he refuses the British demand.
He thinks: the Four Courts is the Public Record Office of Ireland. The Four Courts holds the Public Record Office repository of the Irish state archives from the twelfth century onwards: the Inchiquin papers, the Plantation grants, the Down Survey, the eighteenth-century parish registers, the Census returns of 1821 through 1851. If the Four Courts is shelled, the Public Record Office burns.
He thinks: I have to balance the political-symbolic occupation against the archival-destruction risk. The political-symbolic occupation is the strategic priority. The Public Record Office may or may not survive the artillery exchange.
The Provisional Government's 18-pounder field-artillery opened fire from the south-quay positions at the Bridewell Police Court yard at four-five in the morning of the twenty-eighth of June. The Four Courts walls were hit repeatedly through the morning. The Public Record Office repository, on the east wing of the Four Courts, took an incendiary hit on the second day (the twenty-ninth) and burned through the afternoon. The archives of the Public Record Office (the Irish state archives from the twelfth century onward, the most-comprehensive collection of medieval-and-modern Irish state documents in existence) were almost entirely destroyed in the PRO fire of the twenty-ninth of June 1922. The loss is the greatest single archival-disaster in Irish historical-record terms.
The Four Courts garrison surrendered on the afternoon of the thirtieth of June. The anti-Treaty IRA leadership was taken to Mountjoy Prison. Rory O'Connor was held at Mountjoy from the thirtieth of June to the eighth of December 1922. He was executed by firing-squad in the Mountjoy stonebreakers' yard at three thirty in the morning of the eighth of December 1922, alongside Liam Mellows, Dick Barrett, and Joe McKelvey, as a Free-State Government reprisal for the anti-Treaty assassination of the Free-State TD Seán Hales the previous day (the seventh of December). O'Connor was thirty-nine years old. The execution was, by every careful judgment of Irish-Civil-War historiography (Tim Pat Coogan, Anne Dolan), the most-political of the seventy-seven Free-State executions of the Civil War.
The Four Courts was rebuilt under the Office of Public Works architect Thomas Joseph Byrne and reopened as the principal courthouse of the Irish State in 1932. The Round Hall and the east wing were faithfully reconstructed; the Public Record Office archives could not be replaced. The Beyond 2022 project at Trinity College Dublin, an international collaborative effort to digitally reconstruct the lost Public Record Office archives from the surviving copy-collections in other repositories, was launched on the fourth of July 2022 (the centenary of the Four Courts fire). Rory O'Connor is buried in the Civil War republican plot at Glasnevin Cemetery, beside Mellows, Barrett, and McKelvey.