In 1887 Colonel John O’Callaghan moved to evict a number of his tenants in the village of Bodyke in Co Clare. If he thought the operation would be straightforward, he was mistaken. The evictions took a number of weeks and cost him — and the Crown — far more than he was owed in rent. The doughtiest opponents of the bailiffs, or “emergency men”, who had come to evict were the younger members of the O’Halloran family. They faced down dozens of members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and hundreds of British soldiers deployed to support the bailiffs and the resident magistrate, Colonel Alfred Turner.
Buried in the Lawrence Collection [in the National Library of Ireland] is a photograph of four teenage girls taken against