Rory O'Connor (Irish republican)

Rory O'Connor (Irish: Ruairí Ó Conchubhair; 28 November 1883 – 8 December 1922) was an Irish republican activist. He is best remembered for his role in the Irish Civil War (1922–23), and the circumstances of his execution.

O'Connor was born in Dublin November 28, 1883 and executed as a reprisal on December 8, 1922. He was born in Kildare Street, Dublin, and educated in St Mary's College, Dublin and then in Clongowes Wood College, a public school run by the Jesuit order and also attended by James Joyce, and by the man who would later condemn Rory O'Connor to death, his close friend Kevin O'Higgins.

In 1910 O'Connor took his Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Arts degrees in University College Dublin, then known as the National University. He went to work as a railway engineer in Ireland, then moved to Canada, where he was an engineer in the Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian Northern Railway, being responsible for the construction of 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of railroad. He returned to Ireland in 1915 at Joseph Plunkett's request and worked for Dublin Corporation as a civil engineer. He joined the ultra-Catholic nationalist organisation the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and served in the Easter Rising in 1916 in the GPO as intelligence officer. He was wounded by a sniper during reconnaissance at the College of Surgeons.

During the subsequent Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1921 he was Director of Engineering of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a military organisation descended from the Irish Volunteers. The specialist skills of engineering and signaling were essential to the development of the 5th Battalion, Dublin Brigade. Its men were forbidden frontline duty as their contribution was regarded as vital, their number too small. But units only expanded on an incremental local basis, disappointing Gen Richard Mulcahy.

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