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1922 Erskine Childers execution...
1922 Erskine Childers execution...
Item # 718504
November 25, 1922
FITCHBURG SENTINEL, Mass., November 25, 1922
* Robert Erskine Childers executed
* Irish Nationalist - Irish Civil war
The front page has a one column heading: "CHILDERS' FATE FAILS TO MOVE BRITISH PRESS" with subhead. (see image)
Complete with 12 pages, light toning and minor wear at the margins, generally in good condition.
AI notes: Robert Erskine Childers was executed by the Irish Free State on November 24, 1922, during the height of the Irish Civil War, in what remains one of the most contentious and symbolic acts of that conflict. A former British naval officer and celebrated author of The Riddle of the Sands, Childers underwent a dramatic ideological shift to become a staunch Irish republican and fierce opponent of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which he viewed as a betrayal of full Irish independence. As a leading propagandist for the anti-Treaty side, his articulate and passionate denunciations of the Free State alarmed its leaders, particularly Kevin O’Higgins, who saw him as dangerously influential. Childers was arrested in possession of a small revolver—a technical offense under emergency wartime regulations—and swiftly tried by a military court. Despite widespread appeals for clemency, the Free State leadership, eager to assert authority and deter dissent, upheld his death sentence. Childers faced the firing squad at Beggar’s Bush Barracks with stoic composure, famously shaking hands with his executioners and urging them to aim true. His death turned him into a martyr for many republicans, highlighting the tragic personal and political divisions that defined the civil war, and casting a long shadow over the new Irish state's early years.
Category: The 20th Century
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