On This Day / September 1, 1921

Summary: On This Day – 1st September 1921, eight more people died as violence spread across Belfast, with armed mobs and gunmen bringing disorder into the city centre. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.

8 More Killed | On This Day – 1st September 1921

SIX persons were shot dead in Belfast yesterday, a wounded man died during the night and a boy was killed accidentally by a Crossley tender.

The fatalities amounted to eight. The organised mobs were again the aggressors. They held the centre of Belfast during the day where, if they did not actually initiate disturbance, they deliberately provoked it.

The Lord Mayor, Sir W F Coates, appealed to the military. Soldiers appeared in the streets in the evenings. Their presence had a wholesome effect in some quarters but the sound of firing continued until Curfew.

The terrible scenes of disorder in Belfast since Monday at noon were renewed yesterday when fighting of a desperate nature took place over a much more extensive area of the city.

Armed men held possession of the York Street, North Queen Street and New Lodge Road districts for about nine hours, causing great havoc to life and limb.

A sudden decision by the authorities to call out the military to assist the police force had a good effect upon the gunmen who retired from their advance posts. Later, however, wild and indiscriminate shooting resumed.

As was feared, the activities of the gunmen extended to the city centre and matters assumed a very serious aspect when Orange mobs, apparently, had the freest licence to indulge in firing and assaulting inoffensive Catholic pedestrians.

Mob law reigned supreme in Royal Avenue from about 9 a m. until after dinner hour and hooligans, armed with revolvers, not alone interfered with passers-by but attacked shops. The casualties yesterday were the heaviest yet recorded.

Six persons were shot dead and a seventh killed as a result of being knocked down by a [police] Crossley.

Early in the morning there had been much shooting when the shipyard men were passing down North Street [fo the Shankill], Shots rang out from Carrick Hill and the shipyard men fired down Winetavern Street. Shortly after noon two sightseers were struck at the Free [Central Library].

A pathetic feature of the shooting of a woman, Alice Duffy, was that she was proceeding to her work in York Street Flax Spinning Company.

Three men bravely went to her assistance but they also fell victim to the sniper’s bullets and were wounded.

(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: WITH the Truce holding firm in the south from July 1921, the Belfast ‘pogroms’ – as nationalists termed them – were covered in detail by the British, French and American press.

In the words of Eunan O’Halpin, co-author of The Dead of the Irish Revolution, ‘in Belfast working-class loyalism took the lead in putting the nationalist minority firmly in its place.)

On This Day – 1st September 1921

Further Reading on Irish History:

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Other resources: National Library of Ireland Irish News CAIN Archive

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