Patrick Colgan’s escape from Ballykinlar Internment Camp 1921
In November 1920 Sir Hamar Greenwood, the Chief Secretary of Ireland, gave the order for the mass arrest of suspected IRA volunteers to be undertaken. This was partially in response to Bloody Sunday, a day of violence which saw co-ordinated IRA assassinations of British intelligence agents in Ireland, and British armed forces firing into a crowd at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park in Dublin. In an attempt to weaken the IRA and its’ support network it was decided that if there was not enough substantial evidence to secure a conviction on someone lifted in these arrests their name was put forward for internment. Who was arrested during this mass sweep was often based on captured information and the submission of names by informers and loyalists. The use of internment without trial was made possible due to the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act (ROIA) which had come into law in August 1920, it was the successor to the wartime Defence of the Realms Act (DORA) and all existing regulation under DORA which had been “employed for counter-insurgency purposes in Ireland” was to be retained. This included non-judicial internment and court martials of civilians. Internment camps were subsequently established throughout the island of Ireland including at the Curragh in Kildare, the largest of these camps was Ballykinlar in County Down.
Ballykinlar camp was made up of two separate compounds, No.1 Camp and No.2 Camp, which were separated from one another by a double barbed wire fence. The British Army at the camp was The Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, who were in charge of camp administration, and the King’s Royal Rifles who acted as the camp’s guards and sentries. The internees were housed in huts constructed of wood and zinc sheeting. Each hut contained a table, chairs, a heating stove, buckets and a bed consisting of a straw filled mattress. Every internee was supplied with 4 brown army blankets. Two of the huts were used within the camp as punishment cells. Conditions within the huts were cramped and illness and disease such as Tuberculosis and scabies spread. The internees within Ballykinlar organised themselves along a Prisoner of War structure. The first person to serve in the role of Commandant of the internees was Patrick J. Colgan, from Maynooth, Co. Kildare.
Patrick Colgan was one of the Maynooth 15, a group of men who had walked from Maynooth to the GPO in Dublin during easter week 1916 to take part in the Easter Rising. Following the rising Colgan spent time imprisoned in Richmond Barracks, Stafford Prison in England and Frongoch internment camp in Wales. In 1917, after being released he was involved in reorganising the Irish Volunters in North Kildare and appointed Officer Commanding of the Battalion. Having first come into contact whilst imprisoned together Colgan and Michael Collins were well acquainted with one another. In 1919 he was asked by Collins to provide a safe place for some of those who had been involved in the rescue of Seán Hogan at Knocklong including Hogan, Dan Breen and Seán Treacy before they could be moved to safehouses in Dublin. He was involved in republican activity throughout Kildare until November 1920 when he was arrested and held in the Curragh camp before being sent to Ballykinlar in December.
Escape attempts from the camp were frequent and took many forms. Despite the frequency overall these attempts were not very successful, yet they still posed a challenge to the camp authorities and the institution of internment. One such escape involved Patrick Colgan and his co-conspirator Maurice “Mossie” Donegan, a prominent volunteer from County Cork. Donegan had been involved in a previous escape attempt, the digging of a tunnel under the camp, but this was foiled after the tunnel was discovered by Army engineers. For their escape the two men planned to simply walk out of the camp right under the nose of their captors. In September of 1921 Colgan feigned an illness so as to be moved from No.2 Camp to the hospital located in No.1 Camp. It was here where he informed Donegan of his plan and produced two khaki uniforms and caps which contained no unit badges or markings. Despite the risk and the obvious shortcomings Donegan agreed to take part as in his own words “anything short of suicide was worthy trying to get out.” The uniforms had been supplied by a Military Policeman, for the cost of £5 each, who had been put in contact with Colgan through another internee with whom the M.P. had previously served in the army. On the 16 October 1921 the two men placed ‘dummies’ in their beds and donned the uniforms over their regular clothes. They proceeded to blend in with the other soldiers present in the camp and successfully made it through a guarded gate which was unlocked for them by a soldier without arousing any suspicion. As they walked toward the camp perimeter however the two men were challenged by a sentry, but thinking quickly they saluted a passing officer who noticed nothing out of the ordinary, which satisfied the sentry who allowed them to continue.
Successfully out of the camp the two men then boarded a ferry along with soldiers going on local leave and crossed the water to the village of Dundrum. It was in Dundrum that they by chance came across C.Q.M.S Farrell, an Irishman serving in the British army who was stationed in Ballykinlar. Farrell was paid to serve as a contact between the internees and the republican movement outside the camp. In both Colgan and Donegan’s witness statements to the Bureau of Military History, given years after the event, they claim they did not trust Farrell, accusing him of being a British spy passing information to the camp authorities whilst feigning the role of a double agent. After inquiring with Farrell about where to find a car he led them to a local garage where they acquired both a car and a driver, discarding their uniforms they began the drive to Dublin. Freedom was not to last however as on the road between Drogheda and Dublin they encountered a joint British Army and Royal Irish Constabulary checkpoint. The authorities immediately knew the identities of Colgan and Donegan and they were arrested and brought to Drogheda before being returned to Ballykinlar. The driver of the car, supposedly unaware his passengers were escaped internees was also detained for a short period. Back at Ballykinlar the two men were placed into solitary confinement for a number of weeks before being court-martialled and sentenced to six months hard labour in Belfast’s Crumlin Road Gaol.
Escape attempts, despite endeavouring in a case like this to only get 2 men out of the camp, required the assistance of multiple internees, demonstrating the solidarity which existed amongst those imprisoned in Ballykinlar. According to Commandant Hugh Gribben, a fellow internee and the Officer Commanding of the Newry Battalion, Colgan and Donegan’s escape was aided by an internee who remained in the camp. During the nightly check of the huts this internee pretended to be Donegan and faking sickness lay in his bed during the count, answering “anseo” when Donegan’s name was called. After the Army officer had left and locked the door this internee then escaped through the hut window to return to his own hut to be there for the count. Following the recapture of Colgan and Donegan the authorities imposed restrictions across the camp as a form of collective punishment. In response to this the internees initiated a strike, which involved removing locks and bolts from the hut doors, the barbed wire from the windows and smashing windows and lights throughout the camp. After a few days an arrangement was agreed and conditions in the camp returned to the way they had been.
The end of Ballykinlar internment camp would come with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on the 6 December 1921. At the time of release the internees in the camp numbered around 1700. Patrick Colgan would later serve in the National Army, achieving the rank of Major. He retired in 1946 and in 1948 he purchased the Muckross Park Hotel in Killarney, Co. Kerry, which he ran alongside his wife Annie. He died in 1960.
By Daniel Rafferty
