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“Ambush at Central Park: When the IRA Came to New York” tells tale of intrigue and violence
Visitors to the MacSwiney Club in Jenkintown will have the opportunity to learn about a unique intersection of the United States and Irish history at the club’s speaker series event this month.
The MacSwiney Club will host Mark Bulik, author of “Ambush at Central Park: When the IRA Came to New York.” The presentation will be at 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16, at the MacSwiney Club headquarters at 510 Greenwood Ave., in Jenkintown.
Bulik’s book explores the only attack by the Irish Republican Army in the U.S., a failed assassination attempt in 1922 of Patrick “Cruxy” O’Connor, a former IRA member who had fled to the United States amid accusations he was a spy for the British. O’Connor provided information led to a British raid of a safe-house in which six IRA members were killed, but accounts vary as to whether O’Connor was a spy for the British or gave up the information only under torture.
IRA gunman Danny Healy – part of a three-man IRA hit squad – shot O’Connor on the evening of April 13, 1922, near his apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York. Despite suffering five gunshot wounds, O’Connor was rushed to the hospital and survived. He refused to cooperate with police investigating the attack
The book explores O’Connor’s long and convoluted history on both sides of the Irish War for Independence and explores the question of where his true loyalties, if any, lay, mixing both national politics and a long simmering feud between O’Connor’s family and that of a neighbor.
Author Mark Bulik is a senior editor of The New York Times and the author of a previous historical book, "The Sons of Molly Maguire: The Irish Roots of America's First Labor War."
Admission to the lecture is $25 and includes a copy of the book.
The MaCSwiney Club is a civic organization devoted to Irish and Irish American heritage and culture, named for Irish statesman Terrence MacSwiney.
