Riots in Belfast - July 10th to 15th and Belfast’s Bloody Sunday
Introduction
from Chronology
During a large raid by RIC and Specials on Raglan St in the late hours
of July 9th, an RIC patrol in a Crossley tender is attacked in Ross St., off
the Falls Rd in Belfast resulting in the death of one policeman (Constable
Thomas Conlon) and the wounding of two other people in the tender.
As the result of this and other incidents, lorry loads of Specials
attack Catholic areas, shooting wildly. The ensuing disturbances last
until July 15th and results in the deaths of 22 or 23 people with injuries
to many more. Over 200 houses were destroyed. (15 or 16 of those killed were
Catholics and 7 were Protestants.)
More Detail
Hopkinson says that 16 Catholics are killed in Belfast and 216
Catholic homes destroyed in an extended reprisal for an ambush in Raglan St. in
the week between July 10th and July 17th.
McDermott says 12 killed and 100 wounded over the weekend. Macardle does not mention any attack on the RIC but says
that on the day before hostilities were to cease Orange mobs and Special
Constables attacked Catholic areas, 161 “houses of Catholics were burnt down;
fifteen persons were killed and the number seriously injured and treated in
hospital was sixty-eight. … Not a single house belonging to Protestants had
been burnt.” Gallagher says 17 people were killed between 11th and
13th - 13 Catholics and 4 Protestants and the burning of 161 houses
– all belonging to Catholics. Phoenix contrasts the situation in Belfast
with the peaceful situation that the truce brought to the rest of the six
counties and says that 15 people were killed and over 100 houses burnt on the
eve of the truce. Lawlor notes that a number of Special Constables were
involved in the killings and burnings.
In his detailed account of Belfast during this period,
Parkinson (2004) gives considerable detail on the attack on the RIC tender and
notes that Constable Conlon was killed in the attack. He goes on to say
that, within a week, over 20 people had lost their lives in the city, over 70
were injured and over 200 houses were destroyed. 16 were killed or died from
wounds received on July 10th, 11 of whom were Catholics. Most
of the violence was in the Shankill-Falls area. The Catholics killed
were: Alexander Hamilton (21); Henry Mullholland (49); James Lenaghan (48);
Daniel Joseph Hughes (50); Frederick Craig (22); Bernard Monaghan (70); William
Tierney (56); James McGuiness (35); Daniel Hughes (28); Patrick Hickland (46) and Patrick Devlin. The Protestants
killed were: William Baxter (12); Ernest Park (13); David McMullan (19);
William Mullan (50) and Francis Robinson (65). (O’Halpin
and Ó Corráin agree with all the above – with some
age differences – except they do not include Patrick Devlin.)
Parkinson goes on to note that, while the night of July 11th was
relatively quiet, there were still three fatalities: a 45-year-old
Protestant, William Brown; a 19-year-old IRA man, James (Seamus) Ledlie and a
young Catholic woman, Mary McGowan (13). Parkinson continues that “the
Twelfth evening was pretty quiet, largely on account of the decision to keep
curfew restrictions”.
On July 13th, there were the funerals of those killed
on July 10th. Parkinson says that, on July 13th,
there was disturbances in the Harding St. district with five people wounded and
a Catholic woman, Maggie McKinney (26) was killed near her home in Balkan St.
On July 14th, Parkinson continues, there was widespread disturbances
with shootings, beatings and a bombing. A Protestant teenager, Margaret
Walsh (14), was shot by a sniper in York St and a Catholic, Patrick McKeena
(60), was shot outside his home in Lepper St. He goes on to say that
sniping continued the following day (15th) in the York St. area and
that a Catholic, Bernard Mooney (24), was killed in a friend’s house in Lepper
St. (O’Halpin and Ó Corráin
concur with all the above names – again with slight age differences.)
In other words, Parkinson names 23 people who were killed, or
subsequently died from wounds received, from July 10th to July 15th in Belfast
with sixteen Catholics and seven Protestants killed. (O’Halpin and Ó Corráin say 22 people killed – fifteen Catholics and seven
Protestants.)
Thereafter, Parkinson says that “Most of Belfast enjoyed a
prolonged period of comparative peace from mid-July”. Hamar Greenwood
announced that the ‘B’ Specials are to be removed from the streets and the ‘A’
Specials are to be disarmed. But Lawlor
notes that this order only affected Belfast and that “Elsewhere in Northern
Ireland it was business as usual. In rural areas, intimidation and the killing
spree continued unabated.”
Commenting on the period leading up and after the Truce, in his
2020 book Parkinson says that “In the North, recruitment for both the new
police force (the RUC) and the USC was frozen and this, along with the delay in
the transfer of police powers to Belfast, made unionists feel that they were
being sacrificed on the high altar of political pragmatism. … It also showed
that the Ulster crisis was different from the situation elsewhere in Ireland, …
the increased fears and suspicions of northern unionists … were close to
boiling over.” (Parkinson (2020), pg 134).