Remembering Eileen Biggs of Dromineer

One of the atrocities of the War of Independence was inflicted by a group of men on a woman in Dromineer a hundred years ago this summer.

Eileen Biggs, a 43-year-old married woman, was gang raped by a group of armed men - whom she said were “in IRA uniform” - after they entered her home near the village at about 12.30am on June 16 1922.

“Two men came into the room where I was, threw me on the bed and criminally assaulted me,” Eileen later recalled in a statement made as part of a personal injury claim.

“Other men came in from time to time and did the same thing. Then I was put into another room in the charge of one man and he did likewise.”

Eileen said she had been “outraged” by the men on a total of eight to nine different occasion.

Her ordeal occurred over the course of about two hours. Her husband, Samuel, and a friend Thomas Webb, a 74-year-old visitor to the house, were forced at gunpoint into another room while the men gang raped Eileen.

Samuel was kept informed by the attackers of what they were doing to his wife over the course of the atrocity.

Linda Connolly, Professor of Sociology at Maynooth University, said the house was completely ransacked by the raiders and valuables taken. While in the property the attackers consumed food, drank all the whiskey and vomited.

When the men eventually left Samuel discovered his wife in a “lifeless state”.

ODIOUS CRIME

Professor Connolly, who has carried out research into the atrocity, said Eileen suffered immense physical injury and a mental breakdown in the immediate aftermath of the odious crime.

She was first removed to a Dublin hospital and put under the care of Dr Ella Webb, who treated her for “shock and nervous prostration”. Other injuries also required treatment.

“The Biggses subsequently lodged in London for a period where Eileen was under constant care and in an acutely nervous condition,” Professor Connolly recalled.

“Doctors feared her leg would need to be amputated due to the severity of the injuries received.”

In her compensation claim (she was subsequently granted £6,000, considered a substantial sum at that time), Eileen recalled the impact the gang rape had on her husband. Samuel, who tended her “day and night” after her ordeal also “wholly lost his health” as a consequence of what Eileen called “the disgrace on me”. He was unable to obtain any employment due to his “prostration” brought about by the gang rape of his wife.

Indeed, the impact of the crime alsohad profound consequences for the couple’s wider family.

Eileen's sister Daisey Peacock “died from shock as a result of the incident and of the stigma on the family”, as a consequence of falling from the top window of her home at Pembroke Road in Dublin.

“We cannot hold up our heads amongst our friends and acquaintances,” Professor Connolly quoted Eileen as stating in the aftermath of the brutal attack, in article recalling the atrocity published recently in The Irish Times.

LEFT DROMINEER

As a result of the atrocity Eileen and Samuel had to quickly sell their home in Dromineer. They moved to Monkstown in Dublin were they lived together with the memory of the attack until Samuel died in 1937.

Professor Connolly wrote that Eileen died in 1950 at the age of 69. “At the end of her life, Eileen was committed to St Patrick’s Psychiatric Hospital, James Street, Dublin, where others traumatised by the violence and shock of the Irish Civil War had also been treated.”

Professor Connolly pointed out that Eileen was not institutionalised for all her life after the atrocity. She had returned from Dromineer to her native South Dublin and lived in the new Irish Free State between 1922 and 1950, where many of her relatives regrouped and resided, in the aftermath of the Irish revolution.

In 2019 Professor Connolly found Eileen and her sister, Hilda V Robinson buried together in Mount Jerome cemetery in an unmarked grave - a fate in stark contrast to men involved in the conflict who are heroically commemorated on monuments in towns across the country, such as Nenagh.

SPECIAL COURT

About six weeks after the outrage, a report of “a special court” in Nenagh Courthouse headlined ‘The Dromineer Outrage’appears on the August 5 1922 issue of this newspaper.

The report states that four young men held in custody, all with addresses in the Dromineer area - “and some others not in custody” - were charged with rape of a woman “Harriet” Biggs, whom Professor Connolly says was an incorrect name - her name was Eileen.

Mr James O' Brien, solicitor for the prosecution, stated that “unfortunately owning to the attack made on the lady, she was not yet in a fit condition to be present to give evidence.”

Mr O' Brien told the court that the Government was determined the case should be probed “to the bottom, and they would do their best to punish offenders with the utmost rigour of the law.”

Mr LP Gleeson, solicitor for all the accused, said it was a tremendous hardship on the four defendants and their families that they should be detained for so long, they having served six weeks in custody.

Mr Gleeson said there had been no evidence yet produced to connect the men before the court with the crime.

Thomas Webb, who had been locked in the house on the night of the attack, told the court that Eileen Biggs “was in a frightful state” when he saw her directly after the multiple rapes. He described her as “almost unconcious”.

The Magistrate, Mr PJ Dempsey, ordered the defendants to enter a bond of £200 each to be of good behaviour “towards all subjects of the realm, and Mrs Biggs especially, for a period of 12 months, or in default serve a four month jail sentence”.

Professor Connolly has written that justice for the crimes inflicted on Eileen and her family was not subsequently served, despite the public condemnation of the attack.

She has pointed out that Eileen Biggs' original family, the Robinsons, were not “Big House” Protestants from Tipperary as some historians have suggested. They were, in fact, south Dublin Protestants - at a time a quarter of the south Dublin population were Protestants.

Eileen married into the “landed Biggs family, some of whom lived at Bellevue, Borrisokane, where Eileen resided before her marriage to Samuel, in the company of her sister Grace who had wed another member of the Biggs family, George Washington Biggs, a brother of Samuel.

RAPE IN WARTIME

“The rape of women by soldiers during wartime has occurred throughout history,” Professor Connolly has written. “Silence and turning a blind eye are not an option; they serve to reinforce the shame, stigma and impunity for perpetrators.”

She has pointed out how women in Ukraine are now speaking out about sexual violence in their country in a time of war.

Women like Eileen Biggs also spoke out about such crimes during Ireland's revolution - crimes inflicted by men who were both for and against the Treaty.

Yet the Irish Civil War of 1922-'23 has been presented as a conflict of “brother against brother”, says Professor Connolly, who asserts that gender-based and sexual violence have not been considered a major aspect of periods of violent conflict in Ireland’s past, despite many attacks on women in that period.

The multi-award winning poet from Dromineer, Eleanor Hooker, has written a poem inspired by the atrocity experienced by Eileen Biggs, titled ‘Returning to the Land of the Dead - for Eileen Mary Warburton Biggs’. The poem will feature in a forthcoming book of a series of poems about five women who suffered great trauma during the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War. The book, titled ‘Where Memory Lies’ is due for release late next year and will also feature a sketch by artist Stephen Rhatigan of Eileen.