This small hotel owned by Mrs B O’Sullivan was prominently situated in Salthill (near where Seapoint is today ), fully licensed, hot and cold running water in all bedrooms, and had a large bungalow in the grounds at the back.
On May 14, 1921, John Green, a student from Sligo, was staying there sharing a room with Patrick McDonagh and Gerald Hanley. James Egan, an insurance inspector from Mayo, was also staying. On this night, the three in the room were in bed when they heard shots downstairs, then two RIC men, quite drunk, came into the room, talked amicably for a while, then left but fired about a dozen shots back through the bedroom door. Obviously they were confused by drink and came back and dragged Green and Hanley out in their pyjamas. As Green toppled down the stairs, he found James Egan lying in his own blood.
Hanley, Green, and Egan were taken to the seashore where their assailants began to beat them with clubs. Hanley managed to escape over the sea wall but the constables kept beating Green in particular, asking questions about Sinn Féin, but he had no information to give them. They made him walk into the sea and told him to say his prayers as he was about to die. He obeyed but he was shot at point blank range in the back of the neck and in the chest, then they fired a third shot to ‘finish him off’ and decided he was dead.
James Egan had been shot as he left his bedroom, was badly beaten at the seashore then ordered into the sea. They shot at him as he went in, one of them tried to drown him but he managed to make it to the shallows. They then dragged him out, placed him against a wall and told him to say an act of contrition. They shot him in the leg, clubbed him again with their revolver butts, and left him for dead. Happily, both he and Green were still alive and managed to make it back to the hotel where they were treated by Surgeon O’Malley. They reported the attack to the police and two constables, James Murphy and Richard Orford, were arrested the next morning. They were court martialled in May for the attempted killing of Egan and Greene. After a lengthy enquiry with numerous sworn statements testifying to seeing the men kidnap Greene and Egan and march them into the sea before seriously wounding them, the case was dismissed as “a purely internal disciplinary matter”. They were ultimately tried, convicted, and imprisoned for this crime, a rare event.
The two survivors, Green and Egan, later sued the British government.
Listen to Tom Kenny and Ronnie O'Gorman elaborating on topics they have covered in this week's paper and much more in this week's Old Galway Diary Podcast.
