The Death of Patrick Waters

CONNACHT TRIBUNE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2016

The Death of Patrick Waters

BY RÓNÁN GEARÓID Ó DOMHNAILL

Galway RIC man

was killed in Kerry

– and a century on

his body has never

been found

On Halloween evening 1920, a young

RIC constable from Galway vanished

in Tralee and his body was

never recovered.

Those who killed him and disposed of his

body never informed his family – and Patrick

Waters became one of what became known

as ‘the disappeared’.

Patrick Waters or Pádraig Ó Tuairisg as he

was known locally, was born on 15 May 1896

in Lochán Beag near Indreabhán in Connemara.

He came from a family of eight children,

five sons and three girls. According to the 1911

census, which lists him as a sixteen-year-old

scholar, he had a number of younger siblings.

By the time he enlisted in the RIC his occupation

was given as farmer.

Farmers in South Connemara were not

that big and a job in the RIC would have provided

a steady income with a pension after 25

years and financial support for his family.

Waters had limited options if he did not

want to farm the land, go to America or join

the priesthood.

Thus he went into Galway and was recommended

by District Inspector Hildebrand.

According to the RIC register, the original

of which is kept in the Public Records Office,

Kew, Surrey, he was appointed constable

with the number 69079 on 17 April 1917.

No promotions or punishments are

recorded and Tralee was his first and only

posting.

The RIC – unlike the police in Britain – were

armed and essentially the eyes and ears of

the British government.

Most of the rank and file members were

Catholic while the officers were Protestant.

They never served in their home county or

even that of their wives.

Things changed however when on 11 April

1919 the Dáil announced a policy of ostracism

of RIC men. There were now seen as agents

of the crown and traitors.

The War of Independence itself began in

1919 with the killings of two RIC constables,

Patrick MacDonnell and James O'Connell,

when they were shot by Dan Breen at Soloheadbeg,

County Tipperary.

Recruitment dropped and resignations increased.

The infamous Black and Tans, former

British soldiers now filled their ranks.

Those who remained in the force did so

out of a sense of loyalty to duty and some,

such as Glenamaddy man Jeremiah Mee,

worked with the IRA providing them with

valuable information.

In the last of week of October 1920, the IRA

HQ in Dublin ordered attacks on Crown

forces across the country.

This was in reprisal for the death of Terence

MacSwiney who died on hunger strike

in Brixton prison on 25 October and also for

Kevin Barry who was due to hang on 1 November.

The RIC patrolled in large numbers and

Waters would have been safe in his barracks.

His Achilles heel however was that he single

man far away from home and probably looking

to find a wife.

According to Ryle Dwyer in his book Tans,

Terror and Troubles - Kerry’s Real Fighting

Story 1913-23, both he and Ernest Bright were

lured to a house in Strand Street by two local

women, believed to be in the Cumann na

mBan.

The two men were confronted by IRA man

Paddy Paul Fitzgerald who was waiting at Gas

Terrace.

What happened next, I have pieced together

from different witness statements of

former IRA men, given to the Bureau of Military

History in the late 1940s and early 1950s

and made public in 2003.

As they were unarmed they had no choice

but to surrender. They were passed on to the

Strand Street company and according to IRA

man Michael Doyle, were shot later that night

at a spot at the end of the canal known as The

Point, on orders of Brigade staff

and Paddy Cahill as Brigade officer.

The RIC register for Waters states

that he died on 31 October and had been ‘kidnapped

and presumed murdered’.

The IRA never publically acknowledged

killing the two constables. All the Waters family

would learn is that their loved was sent to

Kerry where he was killed but they would

never have a body to mourn over.

When it became known that the constables

were missing, the Black and Tans unleashed

a reign of terror in Tralee in events which become

known as the Siege of Tralee which

lasted for nine days.

Several notices are put up around the town

declaring that unless the two RIC men were

returned by 10am on the 2 November terrible

reprisals would be unleashed.

A few days previously, two unarmed constables

in Ballylongford, James Coughlan and

William Muir had been taken by the IRA and

held for sixty hours until IRA HQ in Dublin

ordered their release.

The British authorities had threatened to

raze the town to the ground if they were not

released. Both were released though had

been severely beaten.

The RIC in Tralee were hopeful that by

threatening the local population, Waters and

Bright would also be released. They did not

know they were already dead and had been

secretly buried.

When the two constables never reappeared,

rumours began to circulate and it

was reported locally that the pair were

thrown alive into the furnace in Tralee Gas

Works, which was repeated in Richard Abbott’s

Police Casualties in Ireland 1919-1922,

written in 2000.

Another theory was that they were buried

in the canal near the house of the lockkeeper,

William O’Sullivan, who was a member of the

IRA Company involved in killing Waters.

His grandson told local historian Ryle

Dwyer in the mid-1990s that he believed that

the two constables were buried in the family

tomb at Clogherbrien graveyard just outside

Tralee on the road to Fenit.

When his grandmother died in 1926, his

grandfather was horrified at the idea of burying

her in with the two constables and she

was buried outside the tomb. This in my view

is the strongest theory of where Waters is

buried.

I went along to Clogherbrien graveyard

and discovered two O’Sullivan tombs. Beside

one was a cross corroborating this story

and the O’Sullivans were buried outside

their tomb since 1926. Jim

Herlihy, author of The Royal

Irish Constabulary - A Short

History and Genealogical

Guide believes that Waters

may be buried in Derravrin

bog in Lixnaw, close to Listowel.

Farmers Michael O'Connell

and Brendan Cronin

who want see the body

buried there given a

proper burial, claim it

is still located under a

crab tree.

Others such as

Helen O’Carroll, the director

of Kerry County

museum, with whom I

spoke, are sceptical of

this. Lixnaw is about 18

km from Tralee and to transport

a body such a distance

would have been very risky.

Clogherbrien on the other hand is in

close proximity to the canal.

In either event, the body of Waters is

one of the few never to have been recovered.

Patrick Waters was neither a nationalist

nor a unionist. He was a small farmer from

the rocky shores on Galway Bay trying to

make a living in difficult times and came

from a very similar background to those who

ended his life.

People get killed in wartime but it benefits

nobody to deny the family the corpse of their

loved one. I believe Patrick Waters is buried

at Clogherbrien – and maybe now, after

nearly a hundred years, it is finally time to

bring him back to Galway.

Rónán Gearóid Ó Domhnaill, from Galway

city and living in Dublin, is the author of Gone

the Way of Truth - Historic Graves of Galway

published by the History Press.