On This Day / September 4, 1970

Banbridge Siege Recalled

Letter to the Editor

A chara – The Irish News dated 1st July 1970 refers to a legal case of the 1920s.

It made reference to the case of Miss Bernadette Devlin and went on to refer to the attack by an Orange mob on our house in Banbridge on the evening of July 29, 1920. The purpose of the letter was to point out that Mr J C Lardner, counsel defending my father and brother at our Court-martial in 1920, said that an Englishman’s home is his castle and that he was legally entitled to defend it and that this statement effected our acquittal.

That was not so. An Orange mob, about 300, attacked our house on July 20, 1920.

My father, my younger brother, aged fifteen and myself had a broken revolver each and we fired into them, killing one and wounding two others.

They immediately ran off. We surrendered about three hours later at 11pm to a party of British military who came in from Newry.

When it became known that we were prisoners and disarmed, the mob returned and set fire to our premises and made attempts to shoot us.

We were taken to the police barracks and a guard of soldiers was posted outside. Next morning we were charged with the murder of William Starritt and feloniously wounding two others.

Later on, when it was known that Mr Tim Healy, KC [former Nationalist MP] and Mr J C Lardner would be defending us, the charges were altered to ‘firing on police and military’ and ‘possession of firearms without a permit’.

We were court-martialled in Victoria Barracks, Belfast. I refused to recognise the court. It was Mr Lardner [defending] who made the claim already quoted about ‘the Englishman’s home’.

We were not acquitted, however. I was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment which I spent in Worcester Prison, England.

My father was fined £20 or a month in jail and my young brother 10 shillings or a day in jail. Both fines were remitted.

Every Catholic shop in Banbridge was wrecked and looted that night including our own.

As a result of that night’s orgy of looting and destruction of property, the only persons charged before the law were the three Monaghans who were simply defending their lives and property.

Thus were British law and order and British justice maintained in 1920. Le mór meas, Seamus O Muineachain, Dublin

(Dr Phoenix notes: This extraordinary letter by Seamus Monaghan recalls Northern Ireland’s 1920s’ Troubles when his family’s premises in Banbridge were attacked by a mob following the IRA assassination of Lieutenant-General GB Smyth of the RIC in Cork.)