During the period 1948-1951Ernie O’Malley conducted
interviews with around 400 of his former colleagues from the revolutionary
period concerning their experiences during the time. The handwritten
transcripts of these interviews are contained in 53 notebooks which are held in
the UCD
achives. Liam Langley gave a number
of interviews to O’Malley, the following is an extract from one of the
interviews. It is concerned with
imprisonment post 1916.
 |
| Galway Jail Record |
‘In
1916 in Richmond Barracks I met Austin
and Terry Mac. Austin Stack was in another room. He was terribly worried about the the
volunteers, Con Keating, Daniel Sheehan and Charlie Monahan who had been
drowned in the car in Kerry. Desmond
Fitzgerald was also there he was
well dressed. He was complaining about
the untidy condition of the Galway men and about their being uncouth, but Liam
Mellows had already warned me of what to expect from Desmond Fitzgerald. Joe Mac Bride I met there, and we became good
friends, we went to Wakefield together. For a week we had free association, but
4 of us were picked out and were put into solitary confinement in a basement in
another wing of the goal. Conor Deere
of Goulds Cross Clonoulty Tipperary, Joe MacBride, Terry
Mac Sweeney and myself.
Some
Kerry chaps came along who seemed to know that I was an IRB centre for a fellow
was brought along for me to take into the brotherhood and I gave him the
oath. He was Vincent O’Doherty now in
Howth. He was shifted after a few
weeks. In the exercise ring we had to
keep a few paces apart, and we were not allowed to talk. One evening when it was very silent; and very
hard after the free association in
Galway (100 prisoners there) Richmond and Wakefield, Terry MacSweeney came in
to me with an egg which he had boiled. The four men of us were put in front in the
train under a guard, away from others,
In
Frongoch we were
isolated, put into the ‘clink’ which was a roughly built building with 6 cells
3 each side and a passage in the centre.
In the North Camp, there were others Dinny MacCullagh* in solitary
confinement. Donnacha
O’Buchalla was amongst the chefs in the kitchen. Joe
Connolly, brother of Sean, was there also.
Terry
Mac Sweeney and I were sent to No 4 Distillery which was a terrible hole for
there was always noise off a generating plant on the first floor of the grain
loft. The machinery racked our nerves
and there was a glaring light on all night with sentries shouting at night at
intervals.
We
were sent up in batches to an Advisory Committee in London, Pim,
Shankey and others were on it. We
were brought to Wormwood
Scrubs. The Scrubs was a terrible
place and we got little black loaves of bread, with straw sticking out of
them. They brought a few back to
Frongoch as a souvenir. The Commission
seemed to have a lot of information about my movements. ‘This man Liam Mellows stayed with you when
he came to Tuam’, they said I was in Athenry on Easter Monday. I was.
They didn’t know any more about my movements after that. When exactly I went to Athenry, I didn’t know what/when was coming off for Liam
(Mellows) had told me that he would let me know what was coming off. There were 100 I.R.B. in North Galway
then. Liam left word with old James
Roche an old Fenian, that he’d be back to me, but I didn’t see him before
the rising. My second in command in the
Fianna (Tuam) met with an accident and I sent/saw him to Jervis St Hospital on
the Saturday before Easter Week and he was there all that week.
29th
June: I served mass in Wormwood Scrubs.
In the camp we were with the rest but us four were taken out and sent on
to Reading.’
