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ucdarchives.bsky.social
UCD Archives
@ucdarchives.bsky.social
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We curate private paper collections documenting the modern Irish State; UCD; and many elements of the Franciscan manuscript patrimony. www.ucd.ie/archives
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ucdarchives.bsky.social
Transcription of Matty MacDonald's account of the killing of Captain G.T. Baggally on Bloody Sunday, #OTD 1920.

The O'Malley Notebooks are available to consult by appointment in our reading room. 2/2
“We knocked at the front door a maid came along have a letter from the Castle will you deliver this not to Captain Bagelly a one legged man. The maid pointing and in we went. We tapped at the door, opened it and walked in. There were 3 of us. Bagelly was in bed. Lemass, Jimmy and I. I was kind of scared. ‘Captain Bagelly?’ ‘That’s my name.’ ‘I suppose you know what we came for. We came for you.’ He was the Judge Advocate General. ‘I suppose you’ve come for my guns’ he said. One of us, Jimmy Brennan hid it under the bed and he reached behind for it… Slugs and a little more was our reply. ‘Get up.’ He was in pyjamas. Lemass and Jimmy and I fired 2 in the head from the 3 guns. I heard maids screaming afterwards but I was told she was alright. On the ground floor was Jack Foley. A fellow came out with a towel in pyjamas for a bath and Jack stuck him up and he was balls naked. Thinking he was a lodger but he was another British army officer and how we didn’t know about him, we hadn’t any orders about him.” Matty MacDonald, Ernie O’Malley Notebooks, UCDA P17b/105
November 21, 2025 at 1:16 PM
ucdarchives.bsky.social
Always a pleasure! Best of luck with your paper!
October 22, 2025 at 1:48 PM
ucdarchives.bsky.social
Farmer not happy about the introduction of the Daylight Saving Act (Summer Time) 1916: "the farmers will lose with the new time as the fields won’t be dry enough to start at 7...”’

Transcription in ALT text.
Clare O’Rourke, County Monaghan to Bernard O’Rourke imprisoned in Richmond Barracks, [May 1916]: ‘Peter and Pat Carny came in last night at half ten on our clock. Pat is always a later visitor and does not believe at all in the new time—so when we are ready to go to bed Pat strolls in and says it’s only half nine. He thinks “that the farmers will lose with the new time as the fields won’t be dry enough to start at 7...”’.
October 22, 2025 at 1:05 PM
ucdarchives.bsky.social
Irishman and soldier with the French Foreign Legion, Michael MacWhite, writes from the Front #OTD 1916.
5/5
Will that be the end of all my strivings, of all my [theories], of all my ambitions and ideals? Shall no one dear to me ever hear how I fell. Shall no one tell my thoughts? Is immortality a fraud? Ah, no, the flesh, the blood, the thought, the soul rebels against the idea. We do not live for today alone. We are part of the universe and we live as long as it lasts. On the left hand margin on page 2: How I strove against fate and suffered and was battered and thwarted but never beaten. How a remorseless destiny pushed me on without realising my cherished hopes & pet desires.
October 11, 2025 at 11:41 AM
ucdarchives.bsky.social
Irishman and soldier with the French Foreign Legion, Michael MacWhite, writes from the Front #OTD 1916.
4/5
The hand of dawn is in the eastern sky and now the shells fall thick and fast. Pandemonium is let loose and in anticipation of the day we enter our dugouts where we anchor in a metre of mud. And now the buzz of the telephone is heard. Faces brutalised by fatigue and misery light up a little while the corporal cries out that we are relieved but as I repeat the commandant’s orders on the wire there is an agony of silence. “Preparez-pour-l’assaut-á-midi-cinq” – and the artillery thunders until we can no longer hear our own voices. Death claims another hostage and yet another. The end of the trench has been blown up. The cook who sat there need[s] no gravedigger’s tools to make him a home. Who shall be the next? Who has a cigarette for after as the [] diminishes hope fan the smouldering embers in the next.
October 11, 2025 at 11:41 AM