Cavanman's Diary: 100 years gone but not forgotten

Remembering Br Michael Morgan from Drumavaddy

It was July, 1920 and Belfast was burning. Tensions had been running high for weeks and around the traditional Twelfth of July season, reached a crescendo.

At lunchtime on July 21, the first day back at work after the holiday, Catholic workmen were expelled from the Harland and Wolff shipyard, many severely beaten.

The purges spilled out into the Catholic neighbourhoods which bordered Loyalist areas. Rioting and looting was widespread as Catholic families were forced from their homes. A church, St Matthew’s, was attacked and nuns were forced to flee a convent.

In the middle of it all, a 28-year-old Christian brother from Drumavaddy was going about his business in Clonard Monastery, an iconic building which would shelter people from both sides of the divide during the blitz and at the worst of the Troubles to follow.

Clonard, opened in 1911, was situated at the bottom of the Falls Road, bordering on to the Shankill. Outside its walls, the military, heavily armed, were in position. From where they stood, only one or two windows were visible.

As Brother Michael Morgan carried a basin of water between two rooms, a colleague pointed out their presence. He stopped and looked out the window. “Lord save us,” he cried, “they are going to shoot.”

At that, he was engulfed in a hail of machine gun fire and was struck in the neck, dropping dead on the spot.

The following week, The Anglo-Celt reported on the riots, in which 14 people would lose their lives.

“During the machine gun fire led by the military, a ricochet bullet entered the house of the Redemptorist Order in Clonard St, killing Brother Morgan, son of Mr James Morgan, Drumavaddy, Co Cavan, who was in his 28th year.

“The Press Association stated that sniping had taken place from the Redemptorist House, a statement which the Principal says he is prepared to contradict on oath.”

Brother Morgan was the sacristan and spent most of his time in the sacristy. When Very Rev John Kelly heard the firing, the dreadful sound of bullets hopping off the wall and the breaking of glass, he immediately realised what was happening and telephoned Springfield Road Police barracks.

When the firing stopped, he then called all of the members of the community together, the dozen priests and six lay brothers. One was missing.

The routine in Clonard was that each member was called by a different signal and when Morgan’s signal was sounded, he still failed to appear. Panic ensued. The clergymen ran to the upper corridor where a terrible sight awaited them.

Rev Kelly recognised that the Cavanman was dead and called for two others to get the holy oils and anoint the brother. At that, more shots rang out. A bullet whizzed past the head priest’s face; it was, he would say, “a miracle” that he was not himself struck.

“It appears,” reported the Freeman’s Journal, “that Brother Morgan was walking in the corridor of the monastery when he was killed by machine gun fire.

“Father Kelly, director of the Community, ran to his assistance but was compelled to retire owing to the intensity of the fire. When it ceased, Fr Kelly was able to administer the last rites of the Chruch to the dying man.

“The other residents of the monastery were compelled to take refuge in the cellars, many of the windows being broken with shots.”

The inquests into the deaths took place at the Royal Victoria Hospital.

“Dr Daniel McSparran went to the Monastery on the evening of the 22nd in response to an urgent summons. The rector informed him that one of the lay brothers had been shot and he thought he was dead. Witness saw the body on a landing. It was quite warm and death had taken place. Witness said death was due to haemorrhage and shock,” read one report.

“The case of the bullet was a military one. From the nature of the wound, it was a high velocity bullet.”

District Inspector William Atteridge had been in charge of the police and arrived after being alerted by Fr Kelly, who would later claim that he received very little assistance. A few days later, Atteridge returned on the prompting of Kelly. By now, the rumour was out that the army had been shot at from the Monastery’s bell tower by snipers and were merely returning fire. It was untrue.

Asked at the inquest whether Fr Kelly had called Atteridge back “to deny the rumour he said he had heard that there had been sniping from the monastery?”, the policeman said “Yes, he persistently denied that all the time.”

“There was no discussion of that when you called on Thursday?” “No.”

“The suggestion was that there was sniping from the belfry?” “Yes.”

“And he asked you to come up and see it?” “Yes.”

“From the examination you made, was there any suggestion that would lead you to believe that there had been anyone in that belfry?”

“From what I saw, I could not say there was.”

On August 11, the jury at the inquest found that “the firing was entirely unnecessary for the purpose of suppressing the riot and was unprovoked by the action of any person in the monastery of grounds.”

The jury further expressed the opinion that the soldiers who actually discharged the shots at the Monastery ought to have been called at the inquest, with one speaker describing the military’s actions as “inhuman and unjustifiable”.

I had heard of the Belfast pogroms, in which 500 people died between July 1920 and July 1922, but, to my shame, never of the death of the young clergyman from Denn, although Fr Liam Kelly has written extensively on the subject and, in 2013, a busload travelled from Brother Morgan's home area to visit the monastery.

The Cavanman, 100 years dead last month, has not been forgotten at Clonard, where his portrait hangs on the wall to this day and, under the window where he fell, there is a small altar of memorial in his honour.