John Carew, Garda 5198 [1923-1956 ], then NSPCC/ISPCC Insp 1956-66

Educated at Tipperary Town CBS, John, with no previous personal or family involvement, became from March 1921 a youthful Volunteer, 1 of 33 in July 1921 in *E* [ Kilfeakle ] Coy, 2nd [ Cashel ] Bn, 3rd South Tipperary Bde, Irish Volunteers, War of Independence, Jan 1919- July, 1921. The Brigade, with 8 Bns [ average July 1921 Bn strength 389 ], and 56 Coys [ average 56 fighters ] had 3,146 men by the July, 1921 Truce, and the 2nd [ Cashel ] Bn had over 296 fighters. It was, along with 3rd West Cork Bde [ with ex-British soldier WW 1 Royal Artillery Gunner Tom Barry, and also son of a retired RIC man ] the leading Formation, including Sean Treacy and Dan Breen, and had also started the war with their Solohead Ambush on Jan 21, 1919, shooting dead 2 middle-aged Roman Catholic RIC Constables, [ Belmullet, Co Mayo-born married father of 5, James McDonnell, 57, with 36 years service, and Patrick O'Connell, 36, Clonmoyle, Coachford, Co Cork-born and single, with 12 years service ], with neither any Volunteer GHQ [ or Dail ] approval or even knowledge, much less orders. 3rd South Tipp Bde was the only Bde with 2 mobile *Flying Columns*. No 1 Column had 70 fighters, led by Dinny Lacey, [ *B* Annacarty Coy, 3rd Dundrum Bn with 362 men ], 1890-1923 [ later Killed in Action fighting against fellow Irishmen, some his former comrades, in the new National Army on Feb 18, 1923 at Ballydavid, Glen of Aherlow, in the bitter 11-month 1922-23 Civil War against the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty endorsed by both 9 of the 13 Irish Volunteer GHQ Staff and also by a clear 64 to 57 majority of the elected TDs, with only 21.3 % then voting for Anti-Treaty candidates on June 16, 1922, a savage war wherein at least 492 National Army and 918 Anti-Treaty Irregulars were killed [ excluding whatever unknown number of civilians also perished ] - at least 1,410 Irishmen killed by fellow Irishmen, many former Volunteer comrades, and MORE Irishmen killed [ all by fellow Irishmen ] in only 11 months than had been killed in 30 months of hostilities with UK Forces. No 2 Column had 41 men, under Sean Hogan and Vice CO Jack Nagle [ New Inn ], both of whom survived to enjoy a natural death decades later - those 111 Active Service fighters were 1 of 28 of the total 3rd Bde strength.

John spent the grim 11 months of the Civil War [ and the previous months ] working on his fathers farm at Kilfeakle, on N 74, between Cashel and Tipp Town. .

John travelled 114.4 miles NE to the Phoenix Park Garda Depot [ the old RIC Depot ] to be trained in 1923, and later married a Kilkenny woman, Sally Davin, born in Sheastown, 58.3 Miles East of his native Kilfeakle, and Grand-daughter of RIC Con 15,585 from North Co Armagh, Peaden Lappin, a former Weaver and COI member.

John, who was 5 feet 11 inches, then served 32 years and 152 days *Exemplary Service* as Garda 5198 from Oct 4, 1923 to March 3, 1956, mostly in Waterford-Kilkenny Division, but including detached special duty [a] at Castle Morres [ Castlemorris ] 3.8 Miles East of Kilmaganny [ the same village where his Grandfather-in-Law Con 15,585 Peaden Lappin served in RIC before transfer to Bennettsbridge ], South Co Kilkenny, [ South of R 701 ] attached to *Broy Harriers* the armed Special Branch mobile support unit, which from 1933 included nearly 400 of Dev supporters, ex-Anti-Treaty Vols, and nicknamed after ex-DMP *G* Det Div Sgt, and Civil War Free State Army Col Ned Broy with whom Dev replaced Garda Commissioner Eoin O'Duffy, [b] Border Security Duty on the Fermanagh Border during WW II, based at Belturbet, NW Co Cavan [ involving very close co-operation with their fellow Irish Police Officers in the RUC, 10 miles NE in Newtownbutler in South Fermanagh, both force being targets of their common enemy, the Nazi-collaborating IRA gangs ], and [c] Rathmines, Dublin Metropolitan Region [ including Protection Duty for Tanaiste [ = Deputy PM ] Sean Lemass, as well as surveillance of the Nursing Home, 183, St Maelruin's, on the West side of Lower Rathmines Road, D06, and its owner from 1931, the notorious Nurse and Midwife Mary-Anne [ Mamie ] Cadden, oldest of 7 born to Mayo-born parents in USA Oct 1891, Patrick born 1861/5 and Mary born 1864/6. In 1901 he was a Shopkeeper and 1911 a Farmer, at Doonbreedia Townland, Addergoole, Newport, NW Co Mayo.

Caden who died April 20, 1959 at 67, from a Heart Attack, had twice been convicted for performing illegal wartime Abortions, and had unintentionally caused the death of 2 women. Before D-Day on June 6, 1944, UK for the first time introduced restrictions on travel between the 2 Islands, and this fuelled a boom in illegal wartime Abortions in Dublin - between 1942 and 1946, there were 25 Criminal Prosecutions. Caden, tho the most notorious, was not the first but in fact the last of 8 to be convicted, but most, unlike her, had no professional medical qualifications.

Christopher Williams, a Chemist, and a widow who lived with him since 1938, Mrs Mary Moloney, 47, were convicted in 1943 for their Parkgate Street operation - she got 10 years jail and he got 7. Women were referred to them by a wealthy, elderly Doctor, Co Wexford-born Church of Ireland member, James Ashe, born 1876, living in 19, Merrion Square North - he, due to his age of 68, got only 18 months from Nov 24, 1944, but his old friend and associate in the business, and owner of *Paris Gowns* dress-shop, with many affluent female customers, Edward Cecil Flynn, got 8 years from July 31, 1944. 4 women were named - Mary Davison, Teresa Andreucetti [ 1941 case ], Louise Moro and Karmel Murtagh. The case was investigated by the then Det-Sgt Michael Wymess who was Garda Commissioner 19-19XX. 3 others jailed in this period were Annie Robinson, Upper Rathmines Road, George McCabe, St Helen's Road, Booterstown and Christopher Brocklebank, with a Fownes Street Shop and like Flynn, many female customers. And a married Electrician, William Henry Coleman, 25 Merrion Square North, in operation there from 1936, was also jailed - for 15 years but reduced to 7 years on Appeal. 2 women in his case were Maureen Patricia Brabazon and Judy Marjorie Bolton, 19, who married a TCD student Alphonsus Mifsud the day after Coleman was arrested. Coleman had also been jailed in 1933 for 3 years for Arson and other Crimes.

Caden, who graduated as Midwife in 1925, and whose first Nursing Home was from 1929 in Ranelagh, was from 1931-1939 in Rathmines when she got 12 months in 1939 for abandoning a new-born Infant in Co Meath. From her 1940 release, she lived in a large Basement Flat at 21, Upper Pembroke St. She got 5 years jail in 1945 for Ellen Thompson, single, a maid for her Oct 22, 1944 Abortion. Caden on release then lived 1950-56 in a 1-room first-floor flat in 17 Hume street, beside the Fine Gael Party HQ in 16. She escaped Conviction for the death of an Olympia Theater Dancer, 33, from Buckingham Buildings in the North Inner City, Brigid Breslin, pregnant from an Affair with Standish O'Grady, a married ex-Royal Navy Officer, from a Farm of 171 Acres at Carrigeen Hall, Conna, Fermoy, North Co Cork who arranged and paid for her Abortion - he had a Ford V-8 Car and on the night of the Abortion, and her death, June 9, 1951, he was with another Mistress in her Ballsbridge Flat, a Nurse in a Private Hospital. Breslin's body was left outside No 19, Hume St.

Caden was finally convicted in 1956 for Murder [ sentenced to Death but commuted to Life  - she died in Dundrum Central Lunatic Asylum in Dublin  ] simply because of another inadvertent death in her own Flat on the North Side of Hume St, Dublin 2, on April 18, 1956 during an Abortion there. Under Irish but not UK Criminal Law, the doctrine of *Constructive Malice* meant a death during a Felony was Murder, and not merely Manslaughter.  The Abortion was arranged, according to Caden's Diary,  by Jack Phelan, the Kilkenny-based older  brother, of  Kilkenny-born Mrs Helen (O) Reilly, nee Phelan, 33, a  woman in the 5th month of  a Pregnancy by  Preston-based James Wilson Byers,  and already mother of 6 [ placed in temporary care in RC Convents ],  a native of North Kilkenny, who was  the later-deserted  wife [ she married him when she was 23 and he was  30,   on Nov  29, 1946, 18 months after his May 1945 release from Arbor Hill Jail but he, then 38,  left her in March 1955, with no job or income except Social Welfare Childrens Allowances,  to care alone for  their  6 young children and he went to Nigeria ]  of  the tall [ 5'11'' ]  John Francis Reilly, an Irish-born  Nazi spy, the 11th of 12 landed here and all captured, who had worked in Rosslare, Co Wexford as a Customs & Excise Clerk for 18 months in 1936-1937, then worked at various jobs in England before moving to Jersey in the Channel Islands in May 1940 before  the Nazis invaded them in 1940. He broadcast Radio Propaganda for them and then was parachuted, aged 27, into Ireland  -  near Moveen, Kilrush, SW Co Clare,  near Kilkee where his ex-RIC Sgt father had retired when the RIC was disbanded in 1922, and the town where he was reared, and his mother's native County ] by Abwehr Mil Intel during WW II, but quickly arrested. After the war, he opened the *Parachute Bar* in the Esplanade Hotel, Parkgate St, Dublin, also around the corner from Infirmary Road  on R 101, where the G-2 Mil Intel Directorate of Col Dan Bryan, 1900-1986 who led it 1941-1952,  had its HQ  during WW 2 in the [ red-brick 3-story 3-chimney  ] *Red House* on the East side of the street [ junction with Montpelier Hill ]  in the 126-Acre Townland of Grangegorman-West,  in the Civil Parish of Grangegorman, in Arran Quay {D} Electoral Division and the Barony of Dublin. The ex-spy returned to Ireland in late 1960s, worked in Shannon Airport Industrial Estate, re-married and  fathered another  [ 7th ] child but died in London in 1971 after a car a crash. His RIC father, Co Cavan-born RIC Con Bernard Reilly, 35,  stationed in Ardfert RIC Bcks, had arrested the *republican revolutionary* and ex-UK Diplomat,  as well as homosexual buyer of rent-boys in many cities, Sir Roger Casement, 52, at Banna Strand, North Kerry, in April 1916 - he had tried, with minimal success,  to induce Irish POWs in German POW Camps to join a planned but abortive  *Irish Brigade*. 

John loathed the indiscriminate element of 1940 IRA Internment List, sent down to Provincial Garda Districts from C-3 [ Security/Intel dept ] in HQ, and not open to local amendment, in the light of local knowledge and judgement, which included both dangerous thugs, who, as he said, would readily shoot Gardai in the back, the gangsters who murdered 6 Gardai and 6 RUC during WW 2, along with more harmless fringe elements, some of whom were in transition to a political future - like Kilkenny City Publican, Paddy Gleeson, later a Clann na Poblachta Mayor in the Marble City. While stationed in the Railyard Bcks, Castlecomer, John seized a Revolver in the mid-1930s from one of the latter, the Moneenroe, North Kilkenny left-wing Miners Trade Union organizer, Nixie Boran, 1904-71, who started work in 1918 as a Miner aged 14 in Jarrow Pit, Clogh, was wounded in 1922 [ with the Anti-Treaty IRA, having first joined but then deserted from the new National Army of the Provisional Govt of Southern Ireland ] and detained when in the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Civil War, whom he knew well [ and trusted - unlike certain of Nixie's IRA comrades ] as he did all his decent family, but [ wisely if irregularly ] John returned it to him, but with the Pin removed - which both saved Nixie's honor but also rendered it useless if it ever fell into other and dangerous hands. Nixie served as an Officer in the LDF [ Local Defence Force ] part-time military reserve during WW 2 [ armed with US-made Springfield 0.30 Rifles which at peak had 106,500 men in 130 local Bns ] and was later ITGWU Branch Secretary in Castlecomer, and from 1965 Worker Director on the Board of the Mine which closed in Jan 1969, ending 333 years of Mining in the Comer area, an era which went back to the arrival from Yorkshire of the Wandesfordes in 1636. Via her mother, a Delaney whose father was from North Co Kilkenny, Nixie was related to Sam Power, Pres Obama's Dublin-born US Ambassador to the UN. John also definitely included the future *Clann na Poblachta* 1948-1951 TD, Con Lehane, 1911-1983, a left-wing member of he IRA *Army Council* in the 1930s, whom he knew well while stationed in Waterford City, in that decent political category. John's counter-terrorism motto was *There are republicans and republicans*. And John saw Nixie and Con as both morally, humanly and politically very different from the likes of George Plant, 1904-1942, a Church of Ireland member, from St Johnstown, Killenaule, South Tipperary, a veteran of the No 1 Flying Column, 3rd South Tipp Bde in the 1919-21 era [ as was his older brother James [ in *B* Fethard Coy, 1st Rosegreen Bn ] and executed on March 5, 1942, at Portlaoise Prison, for an IRA murder of a fellow terrorist, Michael Devereaux of Wexford, in Sept 1940 at Slievenamon, South Tipp, during WW II. Plant was convicted following re-trial by the wartime Military Tribunal. The Garda who obtained vital Intel which cracked that case was also a good pal of his.

On May 2, 1930, the Committee of the DSPCA [ Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals - then Patron His Excellency, the Governor-General, and President His Grace, the Duke of Portland - founded 1840 and now the largest and oldest animal charity in Dublin and the only one serving all animals, both wild and domestic ] unanimously resolved that John, stationed in County Kilkenny, was justly entitled to their Honorary Testimonial, for *his exertions in preventing cruelty to animals*.

Before retiring, he formally complained the conduct of Supt James O'Gara who was then District Officer in Kilkenny City, and as a result O'Gara was punished by transfer to a minor District on the Border, during the IRA 1956-62 cross-border Campaign of murder. O'Gara, who was notoriously hen-pecked and vindictive, and had never earned the respect of his Station Party, completely unlike his ex-RIC predecessor, Leitrim-born John Henry Reynolds, had raided John's home at 5.45 AM on a Saturday morning to see had he finished Night Duty early - he had been on temporary transfer to Bennettsbridge Bcks [ where until death in 1845, his wife's maternal GF Con 15,585 Peaden Lappin had been stationed ]. At that time the Ch Supt's Div Clerk in Waterford was Sgt Larry Wren, a future Commissioner and a son of an RIC Sgt from Tipperary.

John had often been Acting District Court Clerk in Kilkenny when the permanent civilian holder of that post had been ill, and on retirement John received a glowing Reference from the District Court Judge Timothy O'Shea,  which, among many other qualities, commended him for being *meticulous*. 

1956-1965 John was Inspector in the NSPCC and then ISPCC [ child protection ] for Counties Kilkenny, Carlow and Leix. and Trade Union member, WUI [ Workers Union of Ireland ]. During this final decade of his working life, this former South Tipperary Volunteer [ from the Brigade which had included Dan Breen and Sean Treacy, with the latter buried beside John's parents and brother in Kilfeakle Cemetery, Tipperary ] also worked for the RBL - Royal British Legion in caring for the many Irish veterans of the British Forces living in the region, many of them in considerable need. 210,000 Irish volunteered during WW I, and another 130,000 in WW II - most of them from the South. Plus at peak 40,000 Southerners in the expanded Irish Defence Forces, and another 103,500 in the part-time LDF [ Local Defence Force ] reserve, with 38,500 p/t in the similar UHG - Ulster Home Guard. While up to 400,000 Irish, all volunteers, were mobilized to defend Freedom and Democracy in WW II, in both UK and Irish uniforms, under 1,500 from IRA gangs were detained or executed by both Irish States - fringe terrorists outnumbered 274 to 1. The will of The ReaI Ireland was never in doubt.

As a member of Kilkenny City Garda Station Party, John served under a District Officer, Suot JH [ John Henry ] Reynolds, from County Leitrim, who had transferred to the Garda in 1922 from the RIC, and who enjoyed total respect and deep admiration from all under his command, as from the community he served. Another honorable link in the continuity of police service on the Island of Ireland was the Garda Divisional Clerk in Waterford when John retired, Sgt Larry Wren, son of a Co Tipperary-born RIC Sgt and himself a future Garda Commissioner, and a notable figure in successfully combating the long campaign of Provo IRA [ and later INLA-IPLO ] terrorism from its launch in 1970.

John remained all his life a dedicated follower of his native Tipperary in Hurling, but also a supporter of his adopted County, Kilkenny - except when they were playing one another, and he had, for those occasions, a speaker in the front room which was connected to the 1947 mains [ 3-Band = MW, with RE=Radio Eireann from Athlone, LW with BBC Home Service, later Radio 4, on 1500m, and SW with the exotic Moscow, East Berlin, Vatican Radio and VOA-Voice of America ] Pye Radio in the kitchen, and enabled Parity of Esteem to operate when the Clash of the Ash and fierce inter-county loyalty threatened to strain normal family relations.

On June 8, 1943, John married Sally Davin in St Canice, Kilkenny City, with his First Cousin and Kilfeakle neighbor, Rev Mossie Morrissey presiding

When he retired from the Gardai in 1956, he was until 1966 involved with 3 charity NGOs, being both [a] full-time Inspector, covering the 3-County Kilkenny, Carlow and Leix region of the NSPCC [ National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, founded in 1884 and then covering the UK and Ireland, whose Southern Irish operation became separate in 1956 as the ISPCC ], and [b] part-time with the RBL [ Royal British Legion, founded June 10, 1921 ] which served the many Irish Ex-Service men and women in the region, some of whom were in very poor circumstances, as well as with [c] the similar SSAFA [ Soldiers, Sailors and Airmens Families Ass, founded in 1885 ].

The NSPCC in 1884 followed on the RSPCA [ for animals ] founded June 6, 1824, inspired and founded by, among others, the first of his landed family to be a Church of Ireland member, the Irish MP [ first elected 1776 and serving intermittently to 1826 - and after 1800 in the UK House of Commons - for a total of 29 among those 50 years ], and a life-long campaigner for animal welfare, Col Richard Martin [ *Humanity Dick* ], 1754-1834, of Ballynahinch Castle, Recess, Connemara [ now a leading hotel ], with the largest Estate on the Island, of 200,000 acres=312.5 Square Miles [ 13.63% of County Galway = 3 of every 22 Sq mls ], dominating Connemara and stretching 30 miles from the Castle, which was mortgaged and lost due to the extreme generosity to tenants and others during the 1845-1849 Great Famine, of his grand-daughter, the writer, Harriet Mary Letitia Martin, 1815-1850. Educated in England, at Harrow School and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a lawyer called to the Bar in 1781, practising on the Connaught Circuit, this fighter of over 100 Duels was also noted as a very benevolent and popular Landlord and was a Col in the County Galway Vols. In USA, the New York SPCC was founded in 1874, a decade before the SPCC in London, but 8 years after the ASPCA in 1866, which itself followed 42 years after the SCPA in London [ Royal SPCA from 1895 ]. In Scotland in 1889, the SPCCs there formed the SSPCC, known as Royal SCPCC from 1921, and as *Children 1st* from 1995. The admirable Connemaraman Humanity Dick Martin and his fellow humanitarian campaigners lit a flame in 1824 which spread far, but is very well-known that while some people are cruel only to humans, almost all those who are cruel to animals are also cruel to their fellow humans.