Kilkenny’s daring 1921 tunnel escape features in new book

The tunnel escape from Kilkenny Jail in 1921 features prominently in James Durney’s ‘Jailbreak: Great Irish Republican Escapes 1865-1983’.

In the new book, in shops now, James Durney deftly records 23 action-packed factual accounts of daring rescues, incredible escape bids and jailbreaks that raised the morale of nationalist Ireland and defied the might of empires and governments. Here is a taste of the Kilkenny escape.

A system of parole had been introduced for republican internees after the signing of the Truce in July 1921, but when John Grehan, interned in the Rath Camp at the Curragh, applied for parole on the death of his father, John, he was refused. Unperturbed, Grehan decided to escape.

On the night of October 18, 1921, Grehan and ten other internees made an unsuccessful attempt to cut through the barbed wire of the Rath Camp, and for their efforts were sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment.
They were transferred to Kilkenny Jail where Grehan and Tommy McCarrick, of Sligo, approached the OC of the republican prisoners, Martin Kealy, and suggested that they should tunnel out of the prison as the Curragh internees had done the previous September. Kealy wholeheartedly accepted the suggestion.

The escapees decided to begin their escape from an unused solitary-confinement cell below A Wing which was out of bounds.
The confinement cell provided the perfect place to start digging, as it was about fifty yards to the perimeter wall. They used a trowel, pokers, knives and sharpened spoons to dig the tunnel.

Earth from the tunnel was dumped into pillowcases and pulled up to the punishment cell. It was then disposed of in adjoining cells that were rarely entered. The tunnellers removed eight tons of earth in total.

James Durney

A friendly prison officer, Tom Power, turned a blind eye to the digging and the disposal of the earth. Tunnellers dug by candlelight, in three shifts, largely at night, when Power was on duty.
Conditions were far from ideal. The tunnel, three-feet high by two-feet wide, was not ventilated, and the cramped conditions made it unbearably hot.

The tunnel had to be shored up with bed boards to prevent collapse. For security reasons, not everyone was privy to the escape tunnel. After nearly a month of digging the tunnel was ten feet from the wall.
The tunnellers reported to Kealy, who fixed the escape for 6pm on November 22, on Warder Power’s watch. Those serving the longest and those facing the death sentence were allowed out first.

Edward Punch and Tim Murphy, of Limerick, were facing the death penalty and had nothing to lose. Martin Kealy, the prison OC, along with James Hanrahan, who had been OC 5th Kilkenny Battalion, and Joe O’Connor, OC 3rd Dublin Battalion were also on the escape list.

Michael Burke, who had survived a hunger strike in Cork Jail that had lasted ninety days and taken the lives of three hunger strikers, was also picked to escape. So, too, was Fr Patrick H. Delahunty, who had been arrested for the possession of ‘seditious literature’.

Earlier in the day Ally Luttrell, a member of Cumann na mBan, collected a letter attached to a stone that a prisoner threw over the wall. The letter stated that there would be an escape at 6.30pm. the next day.

Denis Tracey, of Dunnamaggin, arranged for six of his men to be in Patrick Street with six ponies and traps to receive the escapees.

The tunnel, on completion, exited along the foundation of the outer prison wall with the three-foot wide exit coming out in the centre of a public thoroughfare in St Rioch’s Street.

Warder Tom Power, however, became suspicious when he noticed several men entering the cell that accessed the tunnel. He went to investigate, and when he saw what was happening complained that they should have picked another time to escape and not when he was on duty.
The prisoners ‘invited’ Power to play draughts in a cell, and they then gagged and bound him, to conceal his collusion.
In the meantime, dozens of prisoners had entered the tunnel and made their escape. They had laid lengths of wood along the base of the tunnel to assist them in crawling through, and some of the prisoners held lighted candles to show the way through the pitch darkness.

Larry Condon was in command of the escape party. In keeping with respect for the clergy at that time, Fr Delahunty was offered to be the second prisoner to escape after Larry Condon. However, he replied, ‘I’ll go with you lads, but only after the men who are sentenced to death and the other men who are serving life sentences.’

Condon entered the tunnel at 6.40pm and was to remain outside the tunnel entrance until all the men were safely away. When he exited the tunnel, Condon went immediately to a house facing the jail, informed the occupants what was happening and asked for their cooperation.
PICTURE GALLERY: COIS NORE FUNDRAISER

A member of the household accompanied Condon to the exit of the tunnel and helped the next prisoner through. Small groups of people were beginning to concentrate around the tunnel at this stage, and Condon ordered them into an adjoining house, asking them to remain quiet.

As the going was laborious and difficult, the other prisoners came through the tunnel slowly. The escape took an hour and 40 minutes in total. Many of the prisoners were scantily dressed while some were fully outfitted, and two carried hand baggage with their belongings.

Denis Tracey had his volunteers from Dunmaggin Company at the ready with the ponies and traps waiting to pick up some prisoners. Groups of men in threes and fours jumped into each trap and lay down on the floor as the driver headed away, out the Waterford Road and towards south Kilkenny as fast as he could.

As confused prisoners emerged from the tunnel, two local men in St Rioch’s Street, Paddy Donoghue and Matty Power, both later Kilkenny hurling stars, helped them get their bearings. They directed some of them up Kennyswell Road and out the Ballycallan Road. Among the prisoners they guided out was Edward Punch, who was under sentence of death.

Many of the escapees were dropped off in the Hugginstown district and made their way out of the city on foot to their destinations.
READ KILKENNY COMMUNITY NEWS HERE

Power’s colleagues noticed that something was obviously wrong when the warder was discovered trussed up at around 8pm. They blew whistles to sound the alarm, and the military guard rushed to the entrance of the tunnel. Before the last three escapees had exited, they heard the loud whistles in the prison announcing the alarm.

There were so many prisoners passing through the tunnel that it was probably damaged by the sheer volume of men and was blocked by falling debris from overhead. As the last escapee, 18-year-old Maurice Walsh, from Limerick, crawled through the tunnel a portion of it collapsed in front of him, forcing him back. On his return to the tunnel entrance, armed soldiers and warders met him and took him back to his cell.

Initially, it was thought that up to 28 men escaped, but others later calculated the number at 43 escapees. None were recaptured. Despite the huge manhunt, all escapees successfully returned to their units.

The IRA was still on alert in case the peace negotiations failed. Two weeks later the Irish plenipotentiaries and Lloyd George’s government signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in London, thereby ending the War of Independence.