92 Lower Baggot St
The IRA group that murdered Capt William Frederick Newberry, a courts martial officer, comprised about 12 men in the attack on 92 Lower Baggot Street. 2nd Battalion operation.
Captain William Frederick Newberry, and his wife blocked the gang from entering their rooms, but the intruders forced the front door of the apartment. Newberry and his wife blockaded themselves into their inner bedroom, but Capt Newberry was hit from bullets fired through the door. Newberry rushed for his window to try and escape but was shot while climbing out by Bill Stapleton and Joe Leonard after they finally broke the door down. Newberry's corpse hung out of a window for several hours as the Royal Irish Constabulary waited to approach, fearing the body might have been booby-trapped.
The IRA side of it is that about twelve men were admitted to 92 Lower Baggot Street at the same time. Four men went upstairs. William Stapleton was among the men who asked for Captain W. F. Newberry and made their way to the first floor flat. On the Friday prior to Bloody Sunday my Company Captain,Tommy Kilkoyne, instructed me to report armed at Baggot St. Bridge on the following Sunday morning at, I believe, half past eight, and there I would meet Joe Leonard in charge of a party consisting of five members of my Company, including Jack Stafford, Eugo MacNeill, who was somehow attached to our Company and two or three others.I understood from Tommy Kilcoyne that on this particular Sunday a general effort was to be made in various parts of the city to liquidate members of the B. I. Service who resided in private houses and hotels throughout the city. I reported as instructed, and our party moved down to 92 Lower Baggot St., where the British agent we were interested in was residing. We knocked at the hall door, which was opened by somebody from upstairs, and entered. Our information was that this British agent occupied the ground floor flat, which consisted of the back and front parlours. We knocked at the door of the front parlour, and, receiving no reply, knocked at the back parlour doorAfter some hammering on the door it was opened a little. It was evident that the occupant of the room was very cautious and suspicious because he tried to close the door again, but we jammed our feet in it. We fired some shots through the door and burst our way in. The two rooms were connected by folding-doors and the British agent ran into the front room and endeavoured to barricade the door, but some of our party had broken in the door of the front room and we all went into it. He was in his pyjamas, and as he was attempting to escape by the window he was shot a number of times. One of our party on guard outside fired at him from outside. The man’s wife was standing in the corner of the room and was in a terrified and hysterical condition. The operation lasted about fifteen minutes. Stapleton’s report said really very little at all. There was plenty about doors and getting in and getting out, but no details about what happened in that room. Captain Newbury was shot seven times; his body left hanging from the window, where as Stapleton said, he had tried to escape. His heavily pregnant wife could only cover him with a blanket.
Hansard reports. A party of raiders numbering a dozen were let in by Mrs. Slack, the tenant of the house, and asked for Captain Newbury. Captain Newbury was a Court-Martial officer who lived there with his wife. Seeing the crowd the landlady rushed upstairs in terror and saw nothing of what happened afterwards. The men knocked at Captain Newbury's door; Mrs. Newbury opened it, and seeing a crowd of men armed with revolvers slammed the door in their faces and locked it. The men burst the door open, but the Newburys escaped to an inner room. Captain Newbury and wife together tried to hold the door against them and almost succeeded in shutting it when the men fired through the door wounding Captain Newbury, who though losing blood nevertheless got to the window, flung it open, and was half-way out when the murderers burst into the room. Mrs. Newbury flung herself in their way, but they pushed her aside and fired seven shots into her husband's body. The police found the body half in and half out, covered with a blanket which Mrs. Newbury, though in a prostrate condition, had placed over it. It is reported that her resolution and her subsequent grief strongly affected the party of police who made the discovery. It is worthy of notice that the murderers in this case, as in two or three others, made diligent search for papers, hoping, perhaps, to find and abstract documents or evidence on which the military law officers were supposed to be working at the time.
W F Newbury died Dublin South Oct - Dec 1920 vol 2, p 514. Buried in a CWGC grave at St Pancras Cemetery. Son of the late W. C. and Myra Newberry, of Exmouth; husband of the late E. J.Newberry. And theby is another sad story. Mrs Newberry died in childbirth a few eeeks later, and her baby died too.
Mrs Woodcock wrote One officer had been butchered in front of his wife. They took some time to kill him. Shortly afterwards she had a little baby. It was born dead, and a few days after she also died This must refer to Mrs Newberry. It may well be a second marriage as his first wife would have been 45 in 1921. However I cannot find either a second marriage, nor a death for Mrs Newberry