Cruxy O’Connor and the Central Park Ambush

That revelation landed the story on the entrance pages of the subsequent day’s newspapers. “Man Shot at Central Park Concerned in Irish Plot,” learn a banner headline in The Night World. “Hyperlink Taking pictures Right here With Irish Warfare,” mentioned a Occasions headline.

All of the publicity satisfied the I.R.A. males to get out of New York. In time, Jimmy McGee, the dockside fixer, helped ship the three again to Eire — two as stowaways and one beneath a false title. Britannia could have dominated the waves, however the Irish ran the New York waterfront.

To the amazement of practically everybody, Cruxy survived his 4 bullet wounds. And he refused to inform New York detectives who had shot him. Every time he was requested, he would adamantly shake his head. Maybe it’s not stunning {that a} spy who gave up spying and a insurgent who stopped rebelling turned an informer who ceased informing.

When he recovered from his wounds, Cruxy O’Connor moved to Canada, the place he married and had a baby. O’Connor led his household by way of a wandering life, shifting from Canada to New York, from New York to England, and from England again to Canada, the place he died within the early Fifties.

For years after Eire gained independence, veterans of the battle debated Cruxy’s motives. In an interview within the Nineteen Sixties, Pa Murray provided a stunning tackle the ambush in New York. “I used to be sorry after,” he mentioned with a sigh. “We heard later that the poor satan had been tortured to make him discuss” after his arrest in Cork.

However one other I.R.A. veteran who knew Cruxy nicely, Stan Barry, was satisfied that his arrest was faked — to usher in from the chilly a person who had been spying for Britain all alongside. And a insurgent spy who witnessed Cruxy’s interrogation agreed. “It was a means of kindness, this interrogation,” recalled Half Margetts, a former British soldier. “He had a furtive look in his eye and he checked out you from beneath his eyelashes, however he had not been ill-treated.”

Although the veterans differed, Cruxy stays the Benedict Arnold of Cork in standard reminiscence. An area ballad affords an unequivocal verdict:

However curse that Cruxy Connors, treacherous turncoat and spy

Who offered away on that fateful day the Ballycannon Boys.

Mark Bulik is a senior editor at The New York Occasions and the writer of “The Sons of Molly Maguire: The Irish Roots of America’s First Labor Conflict.” This text is tailored from an upcoming guide.