Scullabogue Barn massacre

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The Scullabogue massacre was an action committed in Scullabogue, near New Ross, County Wexford, Ireland on 5 June 1798, during the 1798 rebellion when insurgents murdered nearly 200 perceived loyalists, both Catholic and Protestant, held prisoner in a barn.

[edit] Background

A farm and out-buildings in the townland of Scullabogue were used as a staging post for rebel forces before the 1798 Battle of New Ross. The rebels had rounded up over 200 alleged loyalists (including the elderly, women and children) who were mainly held in a barn to prevent their supplying the military with intelligence of rebel movements.

Thomas Cloney, a rebel commander present at the Battle of New Ross, reported that: "The wretches who burned Scullabogue Barn did not at least prophane the sacred name of justice by alledging that they were' offering her a propitiatory sacrifice. The highly criminal and atrocious immolation of the victims at Scullabogue was, by no means, premeditated by the guard left in charge of the prisoners; it was excited and promoted by the cowardly ruffians who ran away from the Ross battle, and conveyed the intelligence (which was too true) that several wounded men had been burned in a house in Ross by the military." The news incensed certain elements of the rebel force stationed at Scullabogue who joined with the deserters in agitating for revenge against the prisoners. The prisoners' guards twice prevented the gathering mob from harming the prisoners, but eventually gave in to the crowd by allowing the executions by musket-shot of well over a dozen particularly hated individuals. However all semblance of control was quickly lost and the barn was soon torched. People trying to escape the barn were shot, stabbed and beaten to death or forced back into the flames. Only two men are thought to have escaped the flames of Scullabogue Barn. One being Richard Grandy, and the other being Loftus Frizzel.

There is a Scullabogue Memorial stone in the graveyard of Old Ross Church of Ireland church. The theme is one of reconciliation. To date there is however no state memorial to the people who were murdered en masse during this incident.

[edit] References

[edit] Sources

A personal narrative of Those Transactions in the County Wexford, in which the Author was engaged, during the awful period of 1798, Cloney Thomas. James Mullen Pub. Dublin 1832