British spy killed in Dublin as ‘murder and mayhem’ spreads across country

Dublin, 9 March 1920 - A man, alleged to have been a British spy, was shot dead on Ballymun Road in Glasnevin on 7 March.

He has been named as John Charles Byrne, 38, from Romford in Essex, and is believed to have been staying in the Granville Hotel under the fictitious name of John Jameson. At the inquest into Mr Byrne’s death, contrary to the usual custom, no questions were asked by the police or the coroner as to whether anything was found on the deceased, although it is being reported that some documents were.

‘There seems to be a peculiar lack of interest in [Mr Byrne’s] identity’, the Dublin correspondent of the Daily Herald has commented, adding: ‘He is generally believed to have been a political agent, and some persons declare that he occupied an important position in the secret service.’

Press inquiries in Romford have done little to dispel suspicions around Byrne’s activities in Ireland. He leaves behind a wife and three children, and was known in Romford to often work ‘away for short periods’, the local understanding being that he was acting for a well-known London firm of music publishers.

The late Frank Shawe-Taylor who was killed in Galway on 3 march 1920. (Image: Irish Life, 12 March 1920. Full collection available at the National Library of Ireland)

Other recent attacks
The Belfast Newsletter has stated that the increasingly daring attacks by ‘rebels’ demonstrate that the government’s methods of dealing with them are ‘not proving very effective’.

One of those methods has involved the deportation of Sinn Féiners without trial. Last week on 28 February, 10 political prisoners were deported from Ireland – eight from Cork and two from Dublin – to unknown locations in England.

On the same day, possibly in reprisal for the Cork deportations, a party of five soldiers were fired upon by a large group of masked men armed with revolvers who subsequently relieved the soldiers of their weapons. In the wake of this incident, Private William Newman, a member of the Nottingham and Derby Regiment, was taken to hospital where he later died of his injuries.

In Galway, Frank Shawe-Taylor, a Justice of the Peace, died when he was shot on his way to a fair on 3 March. A barrier was placed on the road as Mr Shawe-Taylor's motor car approached, and when his chauffeur got out to remove it, armed men surrounded the vehicle and two shots were fired at Mr Shawe-Taylor from close range. One report suggests that they ‘almost blew his head off’. His chauffeur, John Barrett, was wounded in the attack.

In Clare, police discovered a body in a coffin buried in a bog near Ennistymon on 2 March. The body had a bullet hole in the head, and is believed to be that of a man who took part in a recent attack on a police patrol in the Inagh district.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]