gaelgoir Posted 30 August , 2011 Share Posted 30 August , 2011 yes i would be most interested in following up, i have not had a chance to look over the Beaslai papers but have realised that the most significant things later written about the1920s had already been published in Beaslai's book in the late 1920s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gaelgoir Posted 3 September , 2011 Share Posted 3 September , 2011 I have checked the Irish Press (1932-1985) , The electronic scanned edition has been put up on Irish newspapers digital archive recently. The first mention of the Cairo gang in Saturday October 6th 1962. It is a trailer for an article in the next day's Sunday Press which is apparently not scanned yet. I will follow up the article presently as it is about agents in Dublin. It will have been written while many of the people with first hand knowledge were still alive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kildaremark Posted 5 September , 2011 Share Posted 5 September , 2011 Corisande, Did I see a print out from your website on the Genealogy Roadshow on RTE last night relating to the death of McCormack? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murrough Posted 5 September , 2011 Share Posted 5 September , 2011 Corisande, Did I see a print out from your website on the Genealogy Roadshow on RTE last night relating to the death of McCormack? MacCormacks relatives were interviewed very briefly,I thought Mooney would come back to the story but he did'nt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corisande Posted 5 September , 2011 Share Posted 5 September , 2011 Did I see a print out from your website on the Genealogy Roadshow on RTE last night relating to the death of McCormack? I have no idea - I don't get RTE here in Spain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhifle Posted 5 September , 2011 Share Posted 5 September , 2011 Hi, Was this the show? Regards Mark The Genealogy Roadshow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kildaremark Posted 5 September , 2011 Share Posted 5 September , 2011 I have no idea - I don't get RTE here in Spain [/quote You need to update your Sky box! Relative of McCormack from the west spoke about how he had left or was leaving the army and wrote 'Captain' on the register of the hotel and was killed as a result...or at least soething to that effect but she clearly had a printout with his MIC and those telltale articles from theTimes with the relevant search terms highlighted - defintely your website! Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corisande Posted 5 September , 2011 Share Posted 5 September , 2011 Thanks Mark, I will see if I can track her down and see if she has anything I can add You need to update your Sky box! As part of a serious quest to learn Spanish, I don't have a Skybox! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kildaremark Posted 5 September , 2011 Share Posted 5 September , 2011 The proof...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corisande Posted 5 September , 2011 Share Posted 5 September , 2011 Not much doubt about that then It is a pity that people like her do not contact me. There is always some little snippet that they can add which may help add even more Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhifle Posted 4 October , 2011 Share Posted 4 October , 2011 Hi, There was some posts about the Show and the people on it, on the Castlebar Nostalgia Board. Regards Mark Castlebar Nostalgia Board Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corisande Posted 4 October , 2011 Share Posted 4 October , 2011 Would anyone have any further background information on Captain Patrick MacCormack's life in Castlebar, not available on the 'Cairo Gang' website? That is what I am looking for too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gaelgoir Posted 5 November , 2011 Share Posted 5 November , 2011 Dan Breen’s “my fight for Irish Freedom” (1964 edition, described as revised and enlarged P146, chapter entitled Fernside and after), mentions the Cairo gang. the context is as follows Colonel G.B.F. Smyth during a speech in Listowel urged policemen to shoot men with their hands in their pockets assuring them that no policeman will get into trouble. He was shot in Cork. The exact statement is Major (G.O.S.) Smyth…applied for Intelligence work in Ireland…and brought over eleven picked men with him to avenge the death of his brother. They became known as the Cairo Gang. Major Smyth was killed at Fernside. The earlier editions of the book 1924 and 1952 seem to be the same and have different chapter titles from eth above revised edition. One chapter is "adventures with the murder gang" and mentions Smyth coming from Egypt with 14 Intelligence officers but does not call them the Cairo Gang. This is interesting because the name Cairo Gang, absent in the earlier editions appears in 1964 leaving the first mention of Cairo Gang to my knowledge as 1958 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corisande Posted 5 November , 2011 Share Posted 5 November , 2011 An interesting analysis you have there with the three editions of the book, and "Cairo Gang" only appearing in 1964 (Dan died in 1964). It looks as if either he or the editors of the revised edition were swayed by the expression enough to add it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corisande Posted 15 November , 2011 Share Posted 15 November , 2011 I just came across this Google gizmo called "ngrams" which gives you a figure each year for number of mentions of a word or phrase in books. If you use a word like say "Dublin" as a control, its appearance in books is fairly uniform But when one looks at "Cairo Gang" it only appears as this thread is finding out, in late 1950s, and is not contemporaneous to the War of Independence Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gaelgoir Posted 16 November , 2011 Share Posted 16 November , 2011 That is a truely scientific piece of research and strongly supports the information to date. This makes Michael Collins By Rex Taylor the first to mention the Cairo Group in June 1958. He acknowledges many prominent sources but admits to being an outsider ((Silverdale Lancashire). Taylor is unclear on the identity of the agent Lt G in militaRY headquarters who he suspects was in prison with Collins, we now know that she was Lily Merin, niece of Paiasas Beaslai the 1916 veteran and Intelligence officer. This information must have remained secret even in 1958. Similarly the name of Josephene Marchmont and her role in Cork barracks only came to light in relatively recent years - she married Florence O'Donoghue - intelligence officer in Cork. There is still work to be done in separating the various groups Secret service Comment in the Castle on Bloody Sunday they have killed the secret Service Cairo Group maybe an early sub group of the above or a nickname or just a new name for above from 1958 Igoe Gang - country police sent to Dublin to identify and kill volunteers hiding out in the city Special gang F company Auxilliaries - the photograph commonly called Cairo Gang Anti Sinn Fein Society - asociated with Cork and possibly killed at Dunmanway and Cork (Douglas and Watergrasshill) after the truce and even the treaty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
west coast Posted 1 December , 2011 Share Posted 1 December , 2011 I don't know if anyone has come across other "fake" British propaganda photos like the" "Battle of Tralee". Basically the British staged scenes for the benefit of the press like the "Tralee" fight which was actually staged in the suburbs of Dublin. The photo on the right above is a staged photo at "Tralee". I have come across other staged photos with "prisoners", but too grainy to try to compare with the "Cairo Gang" photo. However one's suspicions are usually aroused when the "uniform" of the prisoners looks too pristine. If anyone come across photos that they think could be staged, and where one can get some sort of fix on the prisoners, I would be grateful if they could post them here. I am trying to prove or disprove a theory that the men in the "Cairo Gang" photo were off to do a photo-shoot, perhaps even for the Battle of Tralee, and that is why they indeed look like extras from central casting. I have always felt that it would have been insane for a group of intelligence men to have their photos taken, but having established that they were F Company men who were not undercover men and had dressed themselves up to look like "Irish" I can see that they might have been happy to have a photo for the family album hi corisande, just browsing through this interesting thread. i have nothing to add to it, except to mention that the 'staged' photo on the right was taken at vico road dalky ,dublin. there are a couple of shots of the same incident. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
west coast Posted 1 December , 2011 Share Posted 1 December , 2011 sorry i didn`t sign off. ps , it wasn`t dalkey....it was killiney....not too far away..... its actually a pic from a news reel. west coast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corisande Posted 31 December , 2011 Share Posted 31 December , 2011 west coast I have old and modern comparison photos at this link - click Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Colonel Gerald Smyth Posted 12 June , 2012 Share Posted 12 June , 2012 I have now had the opportunity to view the Beaslai collection of photographs. There are 130 about half of which are family photos. The photo of the Cairo Gang is accompanied by an envelope marked "special gang F company Auxillaries". The most plausable location for the photo from an examination of Dublin Castle is an alleyway just inside and to the right as you enter the Dame Street Gate. The buildings in the background have been rebuilt but the perspective is similar. This location is only 100 feet from the guardroom at Exchange Street beside the City Hall where Clancy, Clune and McKee were murdered by the Auxilliaries on the Saturday night before Bloody Sunday. Their killers claimed that they were "shot while trying to escape". There are three more photos of Auxillaries in the collection, one with men standing on and about an armoured car, the other two have the men on trucks. These three photos are without doubt taken in Dublin Castle. In all of the photos the men are numbered in a fashion and hand similar to the "Cairo" photograph. The envelopes are marked in the same hand. There are about twenty other photos of agents and police in the collection. Some of the portraits are accompanied by envelopes addressed to the person in the photo from a studio photographer. This indicates that they result from interception of mail. The subject in the photos did not pose for an IRA intelligence photographer deliberately. I have not been able to verify the names on the Cairo Photo as given by tonybradley40. Many Auxillaries were shot in Dublin in the 1920s and it is probable that they were "made" using this series of photos. It would be useful to have a roll call of F company and its casualties and perhaps pursue the other photos to see if they too were used to set up executions. I believe that F company and their armoured car were involved in the shooting into the crowd at Croke Park on the afternoon of Bloody Sunday and if this is indeed the case they would have been definite targets for execution. Fourteen people died in that reprisal including aplayer on the field. Details about Piaras Beaslai are on wikipedia. As an older Republican who fought in 1916 he might have been engaged in intelligence himself . Although the phrase 'shot whilst trying to escape' has a very cliched ring to it in the case of the Dublin Castle killings on Bloody Sunday it may well be true, Michael Foy's The Intelligence War is very good on the subject. The traditional story seems to have been invented by Erskine Childers and the Castle traitor David Neligan so it should be automatically disbelieved, Irish Nationalism once more clinging to the idea of a reprisal somehow justifying their act of aggression in the first place. Equally I would think the player on the field shot at Croke Park would probably have been shot accidentally by the gunmen in the crowd. There's a lovely picture in the Belfast Telegraph 27th November 1920 of the dozen or so pistols recovered from the stands after the shooting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kate Wills Posted 20 June , 2012 Share Posted 20 June , 2012 There are many varied views on any given subject, especially Ireland. These are not necessarily right or wrong, just different. All we ask is that differences of opinion are expressed in a friendly manner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murrough Posted 21 June , 2012 Share Posted 21 June , 2012 There are many varied views on any given subject, especially Ireland. These are not necessarily right or wrong, just different. All we ask is that differences of opinion are expressed in a friendly manner. Quite so, but the black and tans, Auxies,Cairo gang,Bloody Sunday,Smyth Brothers, Carolan raid and Croke Park Massacre fall outside the declared scope of this forum(unless in skindles,per forum ruling made last year) I found this out last year when some of my own posts were deleted when I tried to opine a different course of events relating to an event in Ireland during the War of Independence.Have forum guidelines now changed?is Ireland 1919-1922 now open to be discussed by all participants? and if so,will balanced moderating be applied to all the posts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keithmroberts Posted 21 June , 2012 Share Posted 21 June , 2012 Murrough This thread has been allowed to stretch into some of the topics that are to say the least tangential to the great war. Emotive or partisan language has been removed, and generally is likely to be in the future. We try to allow some leeway and to permit reasonable freedom of expression and some flexibility in subject matter, as has happened throughout this thread, which does contain material of significant interest. I'm not sure in my own mind whether is sits in the correct location, and it may well be moved to either Ireland or Skindles when the mods have had a chance to confer. we don't follow every topic and action will often only follow reports. The guidelines stand, but I don't want to end up (nor do my colleagues I am sure), examining every topic in the Ireland sub forum to remove numbers of them to Skindles unless this area becomes a major issue. Our time is limited, and the draconian approach would be much less demanding of our time but we really don't want to go there. Please don't make too much of this. Keith Roberts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murrough Posted 21 June , 2012 Share Posted 21 June , 2012 Thanks Keith,for the clarification and the action you took regarding the said posts. Regards, murrough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murrough Posted 22 June , 2012 Share Posted 22 June , 2012 Good article here on Croke Park Shootings http://www.thefreeli...20.-a0105710450 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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