David Williams

Introduction

For most people, the sight of Tommy Williams driving from New Ross to Taghmon one afternoon in August 1922 wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow or served as any cause for alarm.

For the informed, the interested and the observant, however, they would have known - or immediately understood - that there was ‘something happening’. For one, there were several two-gallon drums of petrol roughly assembled in the rear of the car, and a revolver on the dashboard.

They might have also recognised that the car belonged to the Ryans of nearby Tomcoole, good friends to the Williams and many other Republican-minded families. And they may, perhaps, have noted that the driver was sweating, and the car was being driven at a pace that would have generally been considered inappropriate for that particular stretch of road.

As it happened, following an order to commandeer petrol in the west Wexford town by his superior officers in the Active Service Unit of the 4th Battalion in the old IRA’s South Wexford Brigade, otherwise known as ‘The Kyle Flying Column’, Tommy was returning to his home village on what he likely assumed to be a successful mission.

His adventure that day was far from over, however, and his luck about to change.

As Tommy told it, he had no sooner rounded the corner at Fair Hill, when he saw an armoured car stopped outside the bakery on the main street, run then by Tommy’s parents, Lar and Kate.

A Free State soldier appeared in the turret of the car and beckoned him over. But Tommy had other ideas. Instead of rolling to a stop, he turned the car around and took off at speed towards Wexford with the armoured car in hot pursuit.

As he raced down the Wexford Road, the soldiers opened fire. Tommy said he remembered seeing plants and briars on either side of the road falling from a hail of bullets. Warning shots, but still, the soldiers meant business.

Tommy was not quite ready to give up, however, and turned left at the Cross of Furlongstown. He did so at such speed that he ran the car up on the ditch and lost some of the petrol drums through the side window. Fortunately, the car righted itself and he continued on to the Crooked Bridge and up towards Harristown.

Around this time, Tommy claimed that one bullet was fired directly at him, crashing through the back and out the front window of the car. He reckoned that the soldiers had stopped on the Wexford Road and, through a gate, saw him crawling up the hill at the Crooked Bridge and opened fire.

Although he lost his pursuers for a period, the chase ultimately ended after two hours around the vicinity of Brownescastle when the armoured car and its turret gun got so close that he had no option but to pull over. Tommy was hauled back to Taghmon and from there to Wexford, where his fate would be decided.

This incident took place during the height of the Irish Civil War.

Tommy Williams was just 23 years of age.

Early life

The fifth eldest of 10 children, Tommy was born in Taghmon on December 18th, 1898. He was preceded by Jack, Gretta, Mai and Annie, and followed by Cathleen, Frances (who died aged three months), Frances Mary, Lillie and Helena.

His parents, Laurence and Kate, came to Taghmon in the late 1890s when they purchased an old hotel and coach-stop on the main street and set up their bakery and shop business. Naturally, Tommy worked in the bakery as a child and teenager and, along with several of his siblings, including Jack and Gretta, slowly became an expert in the craft of breadmaking.

In his late teens and early 20s, he furthered his training, starting first in Daly’s bakery in the Bullring in Wexford Town, and then in O’Connor’s on the main street, alongside his elder brother, Jack.

Although his involvement in the Republican movement ultimately took up a relatively short period of his life – from approximately the age of 18 to 23 – from the records he left behind, and the stories he told, it was intense.

It would, one suspects, be fair to assume that he was influenced politically by his siblings, and friends in the village. According to his military service pension application, which was made publicly available along with thousands of others in recent years[1], Tommy stated that he joined ‘Taghmon Company’ in the 4th Battalion of the IRA’s South Wexford Brigade in August 1919.

Given his sisters’ earlier participation in 1916 (Gretta and Mai took part in the Rising in Enniscorthy and remained involved in Republican activities until the end of the Civil War) and Tommy’s close friendship with several local Republicans such as Jim and Tommy Boggan, it is highly likely that Tommy was involved in the movement in some sense before he joined the organisation on an official basis as a 20-year-old.

During the War of Independence from January 1919 to July 1921, he reported in his pension application that he took part in various activities such as dispatch and intelligence work, arms raids, the manufacture of ammunition, road blocking, and cutting telegraph poles.

Apart from participating in mail raids in Taghmon and Killurin in May 1921, he was involved in an arms raid later that summer that, although a serious operation, ultimately concluded in somewhat comical fashion.

Tommy and his comrades - including Bob Lambert, Jim Parle, Aidan Creane and his good friend, Matty Parle - surrounded the old quarry at Poulmarle one Sunday morning, where several members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) were swimming.

At first, they overpowered the individuals on sentry duty and seized all the revolvers and ammunition at the scene. But then, in what was presumably a decision taken on a whim, they also took possession of all the clothing left on the bank by the soldiers.

According to a report in ‘The Enniscorthy Guardian’ the following Saturday, a passerby took pity on the constables and retrieved clothing from the barracks. Everything, it seems, except footwear, forcing the police to walk the half mile back to the station in their bare feet. Any thoughts of revenge by the officers were quashed the following day, July 11th, 1921, when the truce was called, putting an end to the war with the British.

That December, Tommy took the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War and joined the aforementioned ‘Kyle Flying Column’, under the command of Bob Lambert. His service ended following his capture in Taghmon the following year and, ultimately, he spent the next 15 months in jails across Leinster. Apart from Wexford, he was held at Portobello Barracks in Dublin; Maryborough in Portlaoise, and Tintown in the Curragh.

He was released in November 1923 at 24 years of age.

[1] The Military Services Pension Collection: https://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/military-service-pensions-collection-1916-1923

Although his allegiance remained with Fianna Fáil, he was not active politically after the Civil War. While he rarely spoke about those days, particularly his time spent in prison, he was, in later years, involved in the erection of memorials and monuments to his fallen comrades at places like Kyle Cross, Horetown and Whitechurch. Most especially, he was a central figure in arrangements for the construction of a garden and monument to Jim Parle, John Creane and Patrick Hogan in the centre of Taghmon village.

On his release from prison, Tommy returned to Taghmon and worked in the bakery until his own time came to take over the family business from Lar and Kate in 1937.

As it happened, that year was a particularly special one. On August 30, he married Annie Roche of Scar. Tommy had met Annie, or ‘Mary Ellen’ as she was more popularly known, while delivering bread to her mother’s shop. Annie was a competent businesswoman and played a key role in ensuring the success of the bakery over the following decades.

However, those initial years running the bakery were not easy, with the couple verging on bankruptcy more than once. On one occasion, a cheque for £500 - kindly lent by Pat O’Neill of Shanoo - saved them from insolvency. Repaid in due course, Tommy and Annie never forgot Pat’s generosity.

The start of the Second World War in 1939 ensured the survival of many bakeries around the country - including Williams - as the general scarcity of foodstuffs increased the consumption of bread.

As the shop and bakery prospered, Tommy – an ambitious and courageous businessman – decided to take on several other undertakings. He installed petrol pumps and sold coal, turf, and timber, as well as animal foodstuffs. In 1954, he was appointed postmaster in Taghmon; he ran an undertakers business for a brief period; and even operated a hackney cab for a few years. Not surprisingly, and primarily due to the pressure of his first and primary businesses, by the late 1950s, he decided to re-focus all his energies on the shop and the bakery.

Although they remained heavily involved, Tommy and Annie handed over the reins of the bakery, shop and general merchant business in 1960 to their eldest son, Dominic, who subsequently developed the old shop into a modern supermarket[1]. In 1970, Tommy and Dominic asked Tomás, the second eldest in the family, to take on the bakery. Tomás, with the support of Brian, developed the bakery, and, in the early 1980s, moved it on to a green field site across the road at ‘The Moinichaun’ (also known as Codd’s Field), situated directly opposite the old shop and bakery[2].

[1] The old Williams supermarket is currently ‘Daybreak’, while ‘The Country Bistro’ now forms a large part of the old bakery buildings.

[2] In 1989, an approach was made to Williams Bakery by the publicly quoted company, IAWS, to join them in founding a new bakery group together with Western Pride Bakeries in Ballinrobe, Kiely’s Bakery in Tipperary, Lydon House in Galway, and Keane’s in Limerick. The Directors agreed and thus, ‘First National Bakery Company’ was born, which was later renamed ‘Irish Pride’. Today, ‘Irish Pride’ is one of the biggest bakeries in the country and their bakery plant is the former Williams Bakery in Taghmon.

The beetle and the wireless

Tommy was widely considered a generous individual, and in fact, was warned by those close to him that he was becoming ‘a soft touch’ for money. He was, at the heart of it though, a businessman, and one of quick mind. One story told to the author by his own father encapsulates this.

The story goes that Tommy received a call from an irate customer complaining that he had sliced open a Williams barmbrack that morning to find a dead beetle in the middle of the loaf. Tommy listened and calmly assured the customer that he would be out to him promptly to deal with the matter personally.

When Tommy arrived at the front door later that morning, the customer produced the brack and revealed what looked suspiciously like what he had described over the phone. In a flash, Tommy plucked out the offending item, threw it into his mouth, swallowed it and exclaimed; “sure that was only a burnt raisin!” Evidence gone. Case closed.

Outside of family, friends, and work, he loved animals; was a billiard player of the highest standard; and had a particular weakness for gadgets of all shapes and sizes. His was also one of the first households in Taghmon to have a radio. On summer Sundays, particularly during the 1940s and 1950s, he would attach a loudspeaker to the ‘wireless’, as it was known then, and position it on the window ledge outside the Williams home, thus enabling any GAA fan in the village to listen to whatever match Michael O’Hehir was commentating on at the time.

Despite his business acumen and his love of technology, Tommy - like many men of his generation – would not have been a particularly well-travelled man. In his later years, he decided to make a trip to London to visit his son Kevin. It would have been a significant journey for anyone in those days, never mind a man born in the previous century. Kevin took him to the city centre and upon encountering the hordes walking to and from work on one of the main thoroughfares, he enquired whether ‘there was a match on’. It was a mark of the man that he would enjoy the laughter of others when gently teased for this innocent remark for years to come.

Service to the State

Like many of his comrades in Taghmon and further afield, Tommy Williams did the State considerable service. As was his right, he applied for a military service pension under the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934. Unlike his sister, Gretta, who received a pension for her activities in Enniscorthy in 1916, he was unsuccessful, and was informed of this by letter on July 16th, 1940, despite representations on his behalf by the then Minister for Agriculture, James Ryan from Tomcoole.

Under the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934, to qualify for the receipt of a military service certificate, and hence a military service pension, an applicant was required to have seen ‘active service’ while serving with the old IRA, or with one of several other forces including The Irish Volunteers, or Cumann na mBan.

Unfortunately for Tommy - and all other applicants - the legislation did not define what qualified as ‘active service’. As Michael Keane, an archivist in the Military Service Pensions project, explains it: ’While definitions and/or rules relating to aspects of qualifying active service have been found in the Military Service (1916-1923) Pensions Collection (MSPC) regarding the week of 23 April 1916, no such definition(s) or rules for other periods have been found to date. Similarly, in the thousands of application files processed by the Military Service Pensions Project to date, an example of the Referee explaining his decision(s) regarding the failure of a military service pension application has yet to be found. What is generally found is a standard letter issued by the Department of Defence to all unsuccessful applicants stating only that the Referee “…has reported that you are not a person to whom the Act applies”[1].

In a letter he wrote to the pensions board on August 6th, 1940, indicating that he wished to appeal the decision, Tommy’s view was clear: “I claim that my active service during the periods 1st April 1920 to 11th July 1921 entitles me to a service pension. I am enclosing references from my Brigade OC giving an outline of my activities which should prove beyond doubt that I am entitled to a service pension. Trusting this, my appeal, will have your kind consideration and approval.”

Ultimately, for whatever reason, the decision not to award Tommy a pension was upheld. However, his service to his country was recognised by the State on several occasions. He was awarded a War of Independence Service (1917-1921) Medal in 1948, and a jubilee medal in 1971, recognising 50 years of the truce. He was also awarded an ‘Emergency Medal’ following his service with an auxiliary regional volunteer police force called the Local Security Force (LSF), an organisation formed by the government during the Second World War to act as back up to the Irish Defence Forces.

[1] From an email from the Military Archives section of the Defence Forces to the author on June 21, 2021. 

Final years

As Tommy watched the shop and bakery prosper and bring further employment to the village - and he had more time to spend with his eight grandchildren - his death was untimely. He had a stroke in 1974 and although he recovered well, regaining the use of his arm and his speech, he was devastated when his beloved Annie died suddenly during the night of February 21, 1975. Just a few months later, Tommy was admitted to Wexford General Hospital for a relatively routine operation and died on June 11 in Ely Hospital from complications arising from the surgery.

He was interred alongside his wife in St Fintan’s Cemetery, Taghmon. Military honours were accorded at his burial.

*Author’s note: A significant proportion of the content for this article originated from a short profile of Tommy Williams, which was included in an extensive history of the Williams family, written by Tom Williams (Tommy’s son, and the author’s father). Thanks also to the wider Williams family for their memories of Tommy, particularly his son, Dominic and daughter, Ann, and to Taghmon native, Seamus Seery.