Francis Sheehy-Skeffington - Public Inquiry, Conviction and Release of Bowen-Colthurst

Public Inquiry, Conviction and Release of Bowen-Colthurst

Bowen-Colthurst was eventually arrested on 6 June, charged with murder and court-martialled.

An inquiry, chaired by Sir John Simon, took place on 23 August 1916 at the Four Courts which concluded that the proclamation of martial law does not confer on officers or soldiers any new powers, but is a warning that the Government, acting through the military, is taking such forcible and exceptional measures as are needed to restore order. The measures taken can be justified only by the practical circumstances of the case. The shooting of unarmed and unresisting civilians without trial constituted murder, whether martial law has been proclaimed or not. Failure to understand and apply this elementary principle seems to explain the free hand which Capt. Colthurst had been exercising.

Bowen-Colthurst successfully pleaded insanity arising from shellshock as a means of escaping a potential murder conviction. His court martial became a cause celebre and provoked a political furore which culminated in a Royal Commission of Enquiry into the murders. He was sent to Broadmoor Hospital briefly and then to a hospital in Canada. He was deemed 'cured' 20 months later on 26 April 1921 and was eventually released with a pension at the age of 40.

Sheehy-Skeffington's wife was offered financial compensation by the British government of the day but she refused this. Vane was dishonorably discharged from the army in the summer of 1916 owing to his actions in the Skeffington murder case.

Francis Sheehy-Skeffington was survived by his wife, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington who became increasingly nationalist-minded and his son (then aged 7) Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, who attended the secular Sandford Park School with his cousin Conor Cruise O'Brien, (because Hanna refused to send her son to any school with a pro-Treaty ethos,) and eventually played a moderate role in Irish politics.