Gilbert Barrington, South Shields school teacher and IRA officer, has featured in several previous posts to this blog. Now it is time to tell the story of this key figure in the history of Irish republicanism in the North East of England.
On 24 April 1922, South Shields Education Committee discussed a written request from Gilbert Francis Barrington seeking reinstatement to his post as an assistant teacher at St Bede’s Roman Catholic School in the town. Barrington had recently been released from Parkhurst prison, after having been sentenced in November 1921 for the possession of explosives, and, during his trial, his key role in a conspiracy to acquire and supply munitions to the Irish Republican Army had been revealed.
During the discussion, the committee’s chairman stressed that, in his opinion, ‘the children should be in charge of men whom the committee could trust’. And he added that Barrington had been ‘born in England and was practically an Englishman’, but ‘having taken up the Irish cause he wanted to make himself practically an outlaw’.[1]
Gilbert Barrington had indeed been born in England, in Blackburn, Lancashire, in November 1889.[2] His father, Joseph Barrington, had, however, been born in Queen’s County (County Laois) about 1853, but, at the time of the 1861 census, was living with his widowed father, a cabinet maker, and an older sister, in lodgings in Liverpool.[3] By the mid-1870s, Joseph was living in Blackburn, working as a house furnisher, and married to Mary Gilbert. She had been born in Chelsea about 1853 and, according to her granddaughter, her father had owned a stud-farm in Limerick before moving to London.[4] After Mary’s parents died, she was raised, again according to her granddaughter, by ‘Irish Sisters of Mercy’ near Bath.[5] In 1874, when she married Joseph Barrington,[6] she was probably living and working as an assistant school mistress in Oswaldtwistle, near Blackburn.[7]
Joseph’s business failed in 1877 and he was declared bankrupt.[8] He stayed in Blackburn, however, rebuilt his business and by 1901 was a cabinet maker with his own shop in the town.[9] By then, Joseph and Mary Barrington had a growing family of four daughters and two sons.
Some time in the 1900s (and for reasons unknown), the Barrington family moved from Blackburn to South Shields, County Durham, and by 1911 the family was living in a mid-terraced house in Mowbray Road with Joseph a self-employed furniture dealer, Mary managing the house, the younger son, Louis, working for his father, the four daughters, Mary Agnes, Theresa, Gertrude May, and Beatrice Josephine, all school teachers, and Gilbert an assistant teacher at St Bede’s Roman Catholic School in the town.[10]
So how did this young Catholic man, comfortably off, from a family that would best be described as lower middle class, outwardly English, and who almost certainly spoke with an English not an Irish accent, become ‘practically an outlaw’ – a dedicated Irish republican wedded to physical force and prepared to suffer imprisonment twice for his beliefs?
The answer, as with so many of his republican contemporaries, for example Theresa Mason, lay in his nurture.
According to Gilbert Barrington’s daughter, Joseph Barrington was ‘very Irish in sentiment’ and had in 1869, then aged just sixteen years old, been sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Liverpool by his father, though Joseph had opposed the use of physical force to achieve Irish independence. After moving to South Shields, Joseph joined the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOB) and the United Irish League of Great Britain (UILGB) and became thoroughly immersed in constitutional Irish nationalist politics in the town. Gilbert Barrington’s mother, according to her granddaughter, was also ‘very nationally minded’, and this had been imbued in her by an ‘intensely Irish Nationalist’ nun in the convent at Bath.[11]
And this nationalism infused Gilbert’s sisters, though only glimpses of their political activity may be seen in the local and nationalist press: Gertrude played the piano at the UILGB’s ‘National Festival’ in South Shields in March 1912;[12] all joined the Irish Self-Determination League (ISDL) in 1920, with one noted as playing the piano at a meeting of the town’s ISDL branch;[13] Agnes, the eldest sister, corresponded with Art O’Brien, the ISDL leader, concerning Gilbert’s continuing imprisonment in late 1921 and 1922;[14] and one of the sisters, almost certainly Agnes, went to London in April 1922 to accompany her released brother home.[15] In addition, Gilbert later admitted that he had used the family house in South Shields, 90 Mowbray Road, as a munitions’ dump.[16] A fact that could not have escaped the notice of his four sisters.
Probably encouraged by his father, Gilbert Barrington had joined the UILGB before the Great War, earned his spurs speaking to the branch on Home Rule and Irish education, and was elected a member of the branch committee in 1912.[17]
Shortly after the Great War began, Gilbert Barrington volunteered for the British Army, as did so many of his contemporaries on Tyneside. He did not, however, join the Tyneside Irish, but rather the Royal Army Medical Corps, as, according to his daughter, ‘he objected to the taking of human life’.[18] Unfortunately, Gilbert’s service papers have not survived, though his Medal Index Card has, recording that Corporal Barrington was awarded both the British War and Victory Medals.[19]
In March 1919, Gilbert Barrington was demobilised and returned to his family and work in South Shields.[20] But there was to be no return to the constitutional Irish nationalism of 1914. The executions in Dublin in 1916, the destruction of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the general election of December 1918, and the meeting of the first Dáil Éireann in Dublin and the opening shots of the Irish War of Independence in January 1919 – this was the reality of Irish nationalism that greeted Barrington on his return to Tyneside.
In his witness statement to the Bureau of Military History in 1952, Gilbert Barrington recalled that, shortly after he had returned home, he had been asked to join a new political party in South Shields, the Irish Labour Party (IrLP).[21] This party had been formed in Tyne Dock in early 1919, in the wake of the collapse of the UILGB and the widespread failure of Labour’s candidates on Tyneside in the recent general election.[22] And the new party achieved some success that April, when six of its candidates were elected as Poor Law guardians in South Shields.[23] When one of these six died, Barrington, nominated by the IrLP and ‘on the Labour ticket’, was returned unopposed.[24]
The new guardian, however, soon became unhappy with what he, and others, saw as the IrLP’s ‘movement towards complete absorption in English Labour interests’. They wanted the IrLP to have ‘a more genuinely Irish character’ and sought affiliation to ‘the Irish Labour Party proper in Dublin’.[25] When this move failed, Barrington and the others found a more advanced home in the Irish Self-Determination League,[26] which had been formed in March 1919 ‘on instructions from Sinn Féin’ in Dublin to mobilise the Irish in Britain in favour of an Irish Republic.[27]
When Gilbert Barrington embraced Irish republicanism and rejected constitutional nationalism is not known, nor is the date he joined the ISDL in South Shields, but by early 1920 he was branch chairman,[28] and in April 1921 secretary of the ISDL’s Tyneside District committee.[29]
His enthusiasm and commitment to the republican cause, however, was not unique on Tyneside, and, with Richard Purcell, an Irish-born coal miner, who effectively controlled the ISDL’s District Committee from May 1920,[30] and Joseph Patrick Connolly,[31] the ISDL’s ‘Northern Counties’ organiser, he formed a triumvirate, encouraging the formation of new branches and speaking at meetings and demonstrations across the North East to hammer home the importance of supporting the Irish Republic, a Republic, they asserted, that had existed since Easter 1916. Furthermore, they used these meetings to highlight the key issues of the day – be it supporting Irish railway workers refusing to handle British Army munitions,[32] demanding the release of political prisoners,[33] or condemning the ‘slow murder’ of Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, on hunger strike in Brixton prison.[34]
When Gilbert Barrington first met Richard Purcell is not known, but Barrington later wrote that by the autumn of 1919 both had become ‘dissatisfied by the rather ineffectual nature of our work’ with the ISDL and were discussing ‘the establishment of Volunteer units’.[35] Soon the discussions gave way to active recruiting and by early 1920 they had had ‘no trouble in getting a sufficient number of suitable men in Newcastle, Wallsend and Jarrow to form three companies’.[36]
It is important to note that these Irish Volunteer companies on Tyneside were formed without the knowledge of or approval by the IRA’s General Headquarters (GHQ) in Dublin. Some time in 1920, however, contact was made with Liam McMahon, who was the IRB’s Head Centre in Manchester and an active IRA officer there.[37] McMahon travelled to Newcastle in November 1920 and ‘met all the Volunteers from the Companies already formed and administered the Oath’.[38] He also appointed the Brigade headquarters staff, with Richard Purcell as Officer Commanding, Gilbert Barrington as Quartermaster, and Joseph Connolly as Adjutant.
Rory O’Connor, the IRA’s Director of Engineering and, from August 1920, Officer Commanding Great Britain, also visited Newcastle in November 1920, met the brigade staff, and arranged for a member of his staff, Michael McEvoy, to visit.[39]
McEvoy later wrote: ‘I went there knowing exactly when I left Dublin what I was going to do – to organise the particular area; get as many companies together as possible, and then to carry out whatever I thought was necessary in the area; to appoint the officers and to see that the work was done.’[40]
McEvoy also appears to have administered the IRB’s oath to Barrington, Purcell, and four other senior brigade officers, and he remained on Tyneside advising and assisting in the planning of operations until March 1921, when he was recalled to Dublin.
Even before Tyneside’s IRA companies had been officially recognised by Dublin, firearms and ammunition were bought from seamen and ex-soldiers and explosives stolen from collieries by Volunteers, who were also miners. These munitions were then stored in Barrington’s house in South Shields, in an office he had rented in Newcastle’s Clayton Street, or in a house in Jarrow provided by the ‘Misses Brennan of Jarrow’.[41]
Barrington and Purcell took the first consignment of twenty small arms to Leeds, where it was handed over to Liam McMahon for forwarding to Dublin, via Liverpool.[42] The acquisition, storage and distribution of munitions became a key aspect of Barrington’s work for the brigade, especially after the brigade had expanded to ten companies, each with its own quartermaster and each tasked with acquiring munitions.
Barrington either visited these companies himself, collecting whatever had been acquired, or visited Newcastle’s Irish National Club, which, as well as acting as the brigade’s headquarters, was used as a temporary munitions’ dump.[43] These trips as far north as Ashington or as far south as Middlesbrough often involved over-night weekend stops, and, when he was asked in 1939, as part of his pension application, about the time he had devoted to brigade business,[44] he answered:
‘I had a good deal of leisure because I was a school teacher – I gave all my evenings and all my weekends… I was full time at holiday time.’
In early March 1921, as the Tyneside Brigade began operations, Gilbert Barrington was called to Dublin, where he was given instructions and two hundred pounds in cash to buy arms by Liam Mellows,[45] the IRA’s Director of Purchases. Back in Newcastle, Barrington called all company quartermasters to a meeting to stress the importance of locating and buying guns.
Further sums of money arrived from Mellows, and Barrington later estimated that the brigade had spent some £1,200 buying guns between March and October 1921, and forwarded between four hundred and five hundred revolvers and automatics to Ireland, together with ‘considerable quantities of explosives’.[46] Occasionally a vehicle from Liverpool made the collection, but usually someone from the brigade delivered the munitions to Manchester or Liverpool, and Barrington himself twice delivered to Liverpool.[47]
Had Gilbert Barrington been stopped by the police whilst carrying munitions he would have faced a long prison sentence, and Michael McEvoy remembered just how easily a carrier might be uncovered:[48]
‘I was coming myself one night from Newcastle to Manchester with two suit cases of gelignite and I had to stop at York and wait three hours for a connection when the bottom fell out of one of the cases and the sticks rolled all over the platform. A police constable came to me and said it was very hard luck. He thought they were sticks of sugarstick.’[49]
The unsuspecting constable then found McEvoy an empty case and even helped him re-pack the gelignite, before McEvoy caught the train to Manchester.
The brigade also acquired heavier weapons. Gateshead was home to the 9th Battalion The Durham Light Infantry, a Territorial Army unit with its drill hall in Burt Terrace. In March 1921, Lieutenant Edward Kerrigan and Sergeant Edward Costelloe from the brigade’s Newcastle company stole six rifles from the drill hall. Then in July 1921, three German machine guns on tripods, captured by the 9th Battalion during the Great War and placed in Saltwell Park as souvenirs, were stolen by the same two men. Barrington was closely involved in the planning of both these operations and hired a horse and cart from ‘a shady character in Gateshead’ to move the weapons out of the park. The rifles and machine guns were later successfully smuggled to Ireland via Liverpool.[50]
Whilst the IRA’s GHQ in Dublin might have seen gun running as his main function as Brigade Quartermaster, Gilbert Barrington, however, regarded it ‘as a side line’. To him, organising the companies, planning, and taking part in active operations were far more important.[51]
The IRA’s campaign in Britain had begun in Liverpool in November 1920 and, before the truce in Ireland halted the campaign in July 1921, over two hundred attacks, mostly setting fires in warehouses, farms, factories, and other properties, were undertaken in and around Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Newcastle. And these attacks were, in Michael Collins’ words, ‘by way of reprisals for burnings that were carried out at home by the Military and the Black and Tans’, as, for example, when Royal Irish Constabulary Auxiliaries or ‘Black and Tans’ burnt more than fifty homes and businesses in Balbriggan, County Dublin, in September 1920.[52]
By February 1921, McEvoy had judged the Tyneside IRA ready to cause a ‘stir’, and it was probably McEvoy, who decided that the brigade’s first operation should be high-profile incendiary attacks on Tyneside.[53] The brigade staff then selected targets in Newcastle and Tyne Dock, and, after Rory O’Connor had visited Newcastle to approve the plan, McEvoy and the brigade staff reconnoitred the targets to decide ‘on the methods to be adopted and the men to be employed’. Unfortunately, and clearly the result of an oversight, Barrington had recently dispatched weapons to Liverpool, so, before the attacks could take place, he had to go to Manchester to collect hand-guns and ammunition.[54]
The planned synchronised evening attack on Monday 28 February involved four four-man teams working to a time-table. This was, in hindsight, overly complicated for the brigade’s first operation and only the attack on a timber store in Tyne Dock was partially successful. Armed with one of the hand-guns, Gilbert Barrington led the team attacking an oil store on Newcastle’s quayside, and, although he and Michael Mackin, ‘A’ (Jarrow) Company’s Quartermaster, successfully broke into the store, the two men carrying the incendiary materials failed to arrive, and the attack was aborted.[55]
In his witness statement, Barrington wrote that the press had ‘attributed the earlier operations to a flying column with the object, no doubt, of minimising the extent of the I.R.A. organisation’.[56] Therefore, the brigade’s next operation was to show the extent of that organisation in the North East of England by lighting thirty-eight fires spread across twenty locations in three counties, Northumberland, Durham, and North Yorkshire. The fires were to be started in ‘barns, haystacks, outhouses, sheds, etc.’ and all were to be lit at 8 o’clock on Saturday evening 26 March.
Though Barrington was not one of the one hundred men, who took part in this operation, he was involved in the planning, and, as quartermaster, he called the Tyneside companies’ officers to a meeting in Newcastle and visited the outlying companies to finalise their plans and ensure that all had sufficient firearms and ‘the necessary materials’ for the night.[57]
Throughout April and May 1921, Barrington was involved in planning operations, reconnoitring targets, and equipping the squads undertaking the actual attacks.
After the success of the widespread burnings on 26 March and the outraged press attention they had achieved,[58] the brigade staff sought another high-profile target and chose ‘the aerodrome at Gosforth’.[59] Barrington and Purcell then surveyed the target, devised the plan, chose the men for the job, and arranged for diversionary haystack fires to keep the local fire brigade occupied.
The attack at Gosforth on 8 April was followed by several small-scale farm burnings, before all brigade companies were ordered to select their own targets and prepare plans for coordinated operations to take place on Saturday 21 May. The companies then submitted their plans to the brigade staff, who subsequently inspected the targets and vetted the plans. On the eve of the operations, all company officers attended a meeting at the Irish National Club for last-minute instructions from the brigade staff and to receive from Barrington ‘arms and gelignite, detonators, cable and batteries’.[60] Some forty attacks were made across Tyneside and Teesside, including farm fires, timber yards, telegraph poles, a gas main, a water main, a railway station, a post office, and Jarrow’s Empire Picture Hall.[61] These operations were considered a great success, though five Volunteers were arrested by police.[62]
Low level operations, mostly farm fires, continued in late May and June, when Purcell and Barrington were called to Dublin to report to Liam Mellows and Rory O’Connor. After a truce was declared in Ireland on 11 July 1921, O’Connor, who visited Tyneside about that date, ordered the brigade the stop all active service operations but to continue acquiring and shipping munitions to Ireland. The planning of future operations also continued, and in August Purcell and Barrington met Cathal Brugha, Minister for Defence, in Dublin to submit their plans for operations in the event of the truce breaking down, which Brugha expected. These included destroying Newcastle’s High Level road and railway bridge and Middlesbrough’s Transporter bridge, destroying the waterworks at Cleadon that supplied South Shields and Tyne Dock, and multiple fires in timber yards and factories across the North East. O’Connor, accompanied by Michael McEvoy, again visited Tyneside, and toured the proposed targets with Barrington and Purcell, before agreeing the plans.
Meanwhile the pursuit of munitions continued and over one weekend in early October 1921 Purcell and Barrington went to Hull and successfully raised a new company solely for this purpose. They also visited Grimsby ‘but were unsuccessful in finding any Irishmen there of the right kind’.[63]
Though Gilbert Barrington was not one of the raiders of a colliery magazine at Bebside in Northumberland in early October 1921,[64] he had assisted in the raid’s planning and had hired a taxi to carry the stolen gelignite to a house in Newcastle’s Hawes Street that had previously been used as a temporary munitions’ store. This was the home of Arnold Margetts and his wife, Agnes. Though Arnold Margetts was not Irish, he was in the pay of Barrington and it is very likely that his house had been used to store the stolen Saltwell Park machine guns.[65]
After suspicious neighbours informed the police, the house in Hawes Street was searched, and Arnold and Agnes Margetts arrested. Both spoke freely to the police, and, on 21 October 1921, police arrested Richard Purcell outside the Irish National Club in Newcastle and Gilbert Barrington in South Shields. Police searched Barrington’s home, the family’s furniture shop, and his rented office in Clayton Street, and documents were found that suggested that Barrington and Purcell were part of a wider conspiracy that included Joseph Connelly in South Wales to smuggle munitions to Ireland.[66]
Tried at Newcastle Assizes on 10 November Barrington and Purcell were found guilty of possessing explosives and conspiracy and were sentenced to three years imprisonment.[67] Before sentence was passed both spoke from the dock. Barrington said:
‘Like Purcell, I am standing here because I am an Irishman and an Irish patriot. I have done nothing of which I have the slightest cause to be ashamed… I am proud of standing here… and I am proud to be able to suffer a little in the struggle to make my country free.’[68]
Whilst Gilbert Barrington was in Parkhurst prison, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed and the Irish prisoners held in English and Welsh prisons were granted an amnesty. This amnesty, however, did not apply to those convicted after the July truce, and so Barrington remained in prison, as did Richard Purcell and Joseph Connolly. Finally, after appeals to the British government organised by the ISDL and after submissions from Michael Collins, these prisoners were released on 3 April 1922.[69]
Purcell, Connolly, and Barrington, accompanied by Purcell’s wife and Barrington’s sister,[70] returned to Newcastle and were met at the station by cheering, flag-waving supporters, ‘and carried shoulder high from the station’.[71]
On Wednesday afternoon 5 April, just two days after his release, Gilbert Barrington went to St Bede’s School to speak to his headmaster. The headmaster later told the school managers that ‘Mr Barrington broke down’ during this meeting, and so the headmaster suggested that he ‘might like to see his old class’. Gilbert Barrington agreed and told the boys that prison was an ‘unpleasant place’ and urged them ‘to keep out of it, and never do anything to get there’.[72]
When, however, South Shields Education Committee met on 24 April to discuss Barrington’s written request for reinstatement, it had before them a letter from the Chief Constable of South Shields informing them that Barrington had spoken to the boys, saying that ‘he was proud to have been in prison and to suffer for the cause of Ireland’, and telling them that ‘when they grew up to be men to fight for Ireland and against the British Government’.[73]
St Bede’s school managers investigated and found no evidence to support the Chief Constable’s accusation,[74] and South Shields Education Committee finally accepted the managers’ report clearing Barrington’s name.[75] The whole bureaucratic process, however, had taken months and by then Gilbert Barrington was no longer living in South Shields.
Barrington was called to Ireland shortly after his release from prison by Rory O’Connor, who was then based at Dublin’s Four Courts after its occupation by the anti-Treaty IRA on 14 April 1922.[76] O’Connor then ordered Barrington back to Tyneside to try to take control of the ISDL’s Tyneside District from Richard Purcell and Joseph Connelly, who were actively promoting the Treaty.[77]
Barrington also visited ISDL branches to gauge their views on the Treaty and reported his findings to Art O’Brien:
‘Hull has a good Republican Committee, but of course there is a reduction in membership. Bedlington is fairly good. So is South Shields. Newcastle would be worth visiting by you.’[78]
And adding ‘were it not for the financial commitments of the League [ISDL] I should advocate it being wound up altogether, and a new organisation started on a definitely Republican basis’.[79]
Back in Dublin, Barrington found work with British Petroleum (BP) with the help of Rory O’Connor, and started work on 12 June.[80] Two weeks later, on 28 June 1922, pro-Treaty National Army forces fired on the Four Courts. The Irish Civil War had begun.
Barrington then joined ‘D’ Company of Dublin’s 2nd Battalion IRA and moved to Barry’s Hotel in Gardner Row and thence to the Hammam Hotel on what was then Upper Sackville Street (O’Connell Street). Shortly before intense fighting forced the evacuation of the Hammam, Barrington, appointed by O’Connor as officer commanding on Tyneside, was ordered to go to Newcastle and reorganise the companies ‘with a view to raiding for money’.[81] It is not known, however, if any bank or post office raids followed or if any money was sent to Dublin from Tyneside.
At the end of July, after some ten days on Tyneside, Barrington returned to Dublin to find the anti-Treaty IRA defeated and the city in the hands of the National Army. Barrington then took up his old job with BP, and, after making contact with anti-Treaty forces remaining in the city, was asked to help with intelligence work ‘for which I was quite unfitted, and while I spent a great deal of time and money on it got no worthwhile results’.[82]
In January 1923, Barrington was asked to arrange the moving of munitions across Ireland for the anti-Treaty IRA using BP’s organisation as cover.
‘The idea was to dispatch cases under the guise of cases of candles… It was a ticklish job because it meant building up a kind of organisation inside our own business. I had first to get hold of railway transport men… It was an elaborate business but I had it all worked out.’
Just as the under-cover shipments began, Gilbert Barrington was arrested by National forces and interned first in Dublin’s Mountjoy prison and later in ‘Tintown No.3’ internment camp at the Curragh in County Kildare. He was released on 23 December 1923 and, as the company had no inkling of his clandestine activities, returned to work for BP.[83]
In April 1940, Gilbert Barrington was granted an annual pension of £70.16.8, backdated to 1934, by the Military Pensions Board in Dublin for his military service with Óglaigh na hÉireann (Irish Volunteers) between 1919 and 1923. In support of his pension application, one referee wrote:
‘The personal risk and danger of his activities in the Newcastle area was at least as great as that of the officers and men who took part in the fighting in Ireland’.[84]
Whilst Captain Patrick Daly of the Irish Army Medical Services, and formerly the IRA’s chief gun-runner in Liverpool, wrote:
‘Barrington was the brains in the area… Next to Liverpool, Newcastle was the best area in England, and Barrington was one of the best men in England.’[85]
Gilbert Barrington died in Dublin in August 1977.[86]
[1] Sunderland Daily Echo, 25 April 1922.
[2] The main sources for this post are (1) Bureau of Military History, Dublin, Military Service Pensions Collection [hereafter MSPC], MSP34REF58934, Gilbert Francis Barrington, 1939; (2) Bureau of Military History, Dublin, Witness Statement [hereafter BMH WS], WS 773, Gilbert Francis Barrington, 1952; (3) before Barrington’s death in 1977, his daughter compiled an accountbased on her father’s witness statement, his earlier pension application, and conversations with her father and others. In January 1999, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the First Dáil, the Dún Laoghaire Genealogical Society published: Mary A. Barrington (compiler), The Irish Independence Movement on Tyneside 1919-1921 (Dún Laoghaire, 1999).
[3] The National Archives, Census Returns of England and Wales, 1861: Class: RG 9; Piece: 2680; Folio: 82; Page: 39; GSU roll: 543011.
[4] Barrington, Irish Independence Movement, p. 4.
[5] These nuns did not have a convent in Bath. This was more likely the convent and boarding school of the Holy Union Sisters, a French order. Anon, The religious houses of the United Kingdom. Containing a short history of every order and house compiled from official sources (London, 1887), p. 221.
[6] Free BMD: https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=d7jq0sOWDDkRHtsAdaPBPw&scan=1
[7] The National Archives, Census Returns of England and Wales, 1871, Class: RG10; Piece: 4184; Folio: 96; Page: 19; GSU roll: 846941.
[8] The Blackburn Times, 14 July 1877.
[9] The National Archives, Census Returns of England and Wales, 1901: Class: RG13; Piece: 3908; Folio: 92; Page: 8.
[10] The National Archives, Census Returns of England and Wales, 1911, RG14, piece 30312.
[11] Paragraph based on Barrington, Irish Independence Movement, p. 4; See Sophie Cooper, ‘It was the Presentation nuns who made a rebel of me’: women religious and Ireland’s Revolutionary Era, Women’s History Review, 2022, Vol. 31, No. 6, pp. 1047–1068.
[12] Weekly Freeman’s Journal, 30 March 1912.
[13] Tyneside Catholic News, 31 July 1920; see Barrington, Irish Independence Movement, p. 10.
[14] National Library of Ireland (NLI), Art Ó Briain Papers, MS 8427/48/2, 25 December 1921 and MS 8445/17/25, 17 March 1922.
[15] The Irish Exile, April 1922.
[16] MSPC, MSP34REF58934, sworn statement of Gilbert Barrington, 13 November 1939.
[17] Shields Daily Gazette, 20 June 1911; Weekly Freeman’s Journal, 8 April 1911 and 7 September 1912.
[18] Barrington, Irish Independence Movement, pp. 4-5.
[19] The National Archives, WO/372/2, Medal Index Card, 73304 Corporal Barrington, RAMC. After his conviction at Newcastle City Assizes in November 1921, these medals were forfeited, as is noted on his index card.
[20] Barrington, Irish Independence Movement, pp. 4-5.
[21] BMH WS773, Barrington, p. 1.
[22] For a detailed study of the Irish Labour Party on Tyneside see Stephen Desmond Shannon, Irish Nationalist Organisations in the North East of England, 1890-1925, Northumbria University, 2013: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/16050/1/shannon.stephen_phd.pdf
[23] South Shields Daily Gazette, 20 March 1919; Tyneside Catholic News, 19 April 1919.
[24] BMH WS773 Barrington, p. 1; Tyneside Catholic News, 30 August 1919.
[25] BMH WS773, Barrington, p. 1.
[26] Tyneside Catholic News, 12 July 1919; BMH WS773, Barrington, pp. 1-2.
[27] NLI, Art Ó Briain Papers, MS 8432 /44), Ó Briain to Sinn Féin, 16 January 1925.
[28] Tyneside Catholic News, 14 January 1920.
[29] Tyneside Catholic News, 23 April 1921.
[30] Born in County Kilkenny c.1883, Richard Purcell was a coal miner and activist in the Northumberland Miners’ Association, when he joined the IrLP in Newcastle in 1919, Tyneside Catholic News, 30 August 1919. He later joined the ISDL and took control of the ISDL’s Tyneside District committee in May 1920, Tyneside Catholic News, 10 July 1920. Purcell was elected president of the Tyneside District committee in April 1921, at which meeting Barrington was elected district secretary. Tyneside Catholic News, 23 April 1921.
[31] For Joseph Patrick Connolly, see my earlier post: ‘These things I have done I have done as an Irishman’: Joseph Patrick Connolly, 1921. https://exilesinengland.com/2023/08/02/these-things-i-have-done-i-have-done-as-an-irishman-joseph-patrick-connolly-1921/
[32] Tyneside Catholic News, 19 June 1920.
[33] Blyth News, 31 May 1920.
[34] Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 24 September 1920.
[35] BMH WS773, Barrington, p. 2.
[36] MSPC, MSP34REF58934, Barrington, letter to Department of Defence in support of pension application, 1 September 1939.
[37] BMH WS 274, Liam McMahon, 7 July 1949.
[38] BMH WS773, Barrington, p. 2. This was the oath of allegiance to ‘defend the Irish Republic and the Government of the Irish Republic which is Dáil Éireann’ taken by all Volunteers from August 1920.
[39] Lawrence William White, ‘Roderick (Rory) O’Connor’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://www.dib.ie/biography/oconnor-roderick-rory-a6614
[40] BMH MSCC, MA/MSPC/RO/610, Newcastle on Tyne IRA (including Tyneside Division IRA), ‘Michael McEvoy describing events that occurred pre-Truce in Newcastle upon Tyne’, 26 September 1939.
[41] Ibid.; McEvoy, September 1939; also see my earlier post: ‘The women were better than the men’: Irish nationalist women and the IRA’s Tyneside Brigade, 1920-1922. https://exilesinengland.com/2023/04/30/the-women-were-better-than-the-men-irish-nationalist-women-and-the-iras-tyneside-brigade-1920-1922/
[42] MSPC, MSP34REF58934, sworn statement of Gilbert Barrington, 13 November 1939.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Ibid.
[45] William Murphy & Marie Coleman, ‘William Joseph (Liam) Mellows, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://www.dib.ie/biography/mellows-william-joseph-liam-a5795
[46] BMH WS773, Barrington, p. 9.
[47] MSPC, MSP34REF58934, sworn statement of Gilbert Barrington, 13 November 1939.
[48] BMH MSCC, MA/MSPC/RO/610, Newcastle on Tyne IRA, McEvoy, 1939.
[49] BMH MSCC, MA/MSPC/RO/610, Newcastle on Tyne IRA (including Tyneside Division IRA), report co-authored by Michael McEvoy and Gilbert Barrington, 1939.
[50] Barrington, Irish Independence Movement, p. 19. The tripods (‘sleighs’) were found by police in Liverpool before they could be shipped to Dublin. BMH WS814, Patrick Daly, 1953.
[51] MSPC, MSP34REF58934, sworn statement of Gilbert Barrington, 13 November 1939.
[52] BMHWAS 684, George Fitzgerald, quoted in Gerard Noonan, The IRA in Britain, 1919-1923: ‘In the heart of enemy lines’ (Liverpool, 2014). Paragraph based on Noonan, pp. 138 and 184.
[53] BMH MSCC, MA/MSPC/RO/610, McEvoy, 1939.
[54] BMH MSCC, MA/MSPC/RO/610; Barrington, Irish Independence Movement, p. 14.
[55] BMH WS773, Barrington, p. 4. In his witness statement, Barrington did not give the names of the two men, but see my earlier post: These things I have done I have done as an Irishman’: Joseph Patrick Connolly, 1921. https://exilesinengland.com/2023/08/02/these-things-i-have-done-i-have-done-as-an-irishman-joseph-patrick-connolly-1921/
[56] BMH WS773, Barrington, p. 4.
[57] MSPC, MSP34REF58934.
[58] BMH MSCC, MA/MSPC/RO/610. Barrington sent news cuttings to Rory O’Connor in Dublin following operations, e.g. ‘‘Fire Fiends on Tyneside’, North Mail & Newcastle Chronicle, 1 March 1921.
[59] BMH WS773, Barrington, p. 6. The target burnt at Gosforth on 8 April 1921 was not an ‘aerodrome’ but one of Armstrong Whitworth’s ‘aircraft assembly works’ dating from the Great War. The damage was estimated at £7,000. Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 9 April 1921. See TNA, HO 144-4645-32, ‘Northumberland County Police, Return of loss or damage during the period from 1st January 1919, and attributable to persons actuated by Irish political motives’.
[60] BMH WS773, Barrington, p. 6.
[61] Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 23 May 1921.
[62] ‘Five arrests follow orgy of fires and explosives’, North Mail & Newcastle Chronicle, 23 May 1921.
[63] BMH MSCC, MA/MSPC/RO/610, Newcastle on Tyne IRA, ‘No.3 Area (Tyneside) Britain’.
[64] The raid took place between 7 and 11 October 1921. TNA, HO 144-4645-32, ‘Northumberland County Police, Return of loss or damage’.
[65] At Barrington’s trial, a witness testified as having seen items ‘about three foot in length and covered in canvas’ removed from Margetts’ house. Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 11 November 1921.
[66] See my earlier post: ‘These things I have done I have done as an Irishman’: Joseph Patrick Connolly, 1921.
[67] Arnold Margetts was also found guilty and sentenced to twelve months hard labour. Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 11 November 1921.
[68] Ibid.
[69] Noonan, The IRA in Britain, p. 306.
[70] Almost certainly Mary Agnes Barrington, The Irish Exile, April 1922.
[71] Northern Daily Mail, 5 April 1922.
[72] Shields Daily News, 29 August 1922.
[73] Shields Daily News, 25 April 1922.
[74] Shields Daily News, 29 August 1922.
[75] Weekly Freeman’s Journal, 7 October 1922,
[76] Dictionary of Irish Biography, Rory O’Connor.
[77] MSPC, MSP34REF58934, sworn statement of Gilbert Barrington, 13 November 1939; also see my earlier post: https://exilesinengland.com/2021/12/02/the-anglo-irish-treaty-and-irish-nationalists-in-the-north-east-of-england/
[78] NLI, Art Ó Briain Papers, MS 8427/48/2, letter from Barrington to Ó Briain, 31 May 1922.
[79] Ibid.
[80] MSPC, MSP34REF58934.
[81] Ibid. Barrington was accompanied by David Fitzgerald, an Irish-born veteran on the Easter Rising, who had worked on Tyneside and took over as adjutant of the Tyneside Brigade on Barington’s arrest in October 1921. https://www.donmouth.co.uk/local_history/ira/david_fitzgerald.html
[82] MSPC, MSP34REF58934.
[83] Ibid.
[84] Ibid., referee’s letter in support of Barrington’s pension claim. 14 March 1940.
[85] Ibid., observations re Gilbert Barrington’s service from Captain Dr Patrick G. Daly, 5 March 1940.
[86] Barrington, Irish Independence Movement, p. 5.
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