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From 2008 to 2016 a significant portion of Americans were convinced President Obama was personally going to bust down their door and have them executed for possessing firearms. But something like that actually happened to Erskine Childers. He supported Irish independence, and the excuse the authorities used for executing him was possession of a small pistol.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: November 24, 1922--
Childers was actually English, born to an upper-class London family in 1870. But when he was 12, he was orphaned because you probably don’t understand how frequently everyone just up and fucking died from disease all the fucking time back then. His mother’s family was English landowners in Ireland, so he was sent there to live, and fell in love with the country.
He led quite a life that I can’t detail here, but he was raised to believe in the righteousness of the British Empire, having fought in the Boer War in the early 20th century. Over time, however, he became disillusioned and converted to the idea that Ireland deserved home rule. He was an author and a sailor. Those are both important because in addition to writing one of the most popular spy novels ever (The Riddle of the Sands), he published a book titled The Framework for Home Rule. As for the sailing? He had a yacht named Asgard that he used to smuggle guns into Ireland to help in the fight for independence. Continues below …
I don’t want to buy a yacht, but Acura is bringing back the Integra and they’re making it in a six-speed manual and I love driving stick—phrasing—and the only way I can ever afford one is if you click the green button.
The Irish Civil War began in 1922. On one side were those who said hey we support this treaty with Britain. On the other were those who said fuck your treaty. Childers was the propaganda man for the fuck-your-treaty side. As part of the war, the pro-treaty side brought in a law saying gun possession was a capital offense. And as an infamous member of the fuck-this-treaty forces, the pro-treaty folks wanted Childers dead.
Having no other evidence with which to convict him, they raided Childers’s house and found a .32 caliber pistol, which had been a gift from the famous Irish leader Michael Collins back before the pair were on opposite sides of the treaty issue. The pro-treaty guys were all haha gotchu motherfucker and put Childers on trial for the heinous crime of owning a wee little gun. He was convicted and sentenced to death.
He appealed and the appeal was rejected, and then appealed to the Supreme Court, but before it was heard the pro-treaty guys said let’s just hurry up and waste this fucker, and that’s what they did, on November 24, 1922. It was done by firing squad. Childers shook hands with all members of the squad before the synchronized kerblammo; his final words were “Take a step or two forward, lads. It will be easier that way.”
Erskine Childers’s son would later become the fourth president of Ireland.
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