Early Life
Born Ernest Bernard Malley, in Castlebar, County Mayo, he came from a middle class Roman Catholic family in County Mayo. He was the second of eleven children. His father, Luke Malley, was a clerk with the Congested Districts Board, which organised land reform in the west of Ireland. His family's politics were conservative nationalist, supporting the Irish Parliamentary Party. His first cousin, Gilbert Laithwaite, would become the British ambassador to Ireland in the 1950s. The Malleys moved to Dublin when Ernie was still a child and the 1911 census lists them living at 7 Iona Drive, Glasnevin. His older brother, Frank, joined the British Army at the outbreak of World War I. O'Malley was studying medicine at University College Dublin in 1916 when the Easter Rising convulsed the city, and he was almost persuaded by some unionist friends to join them in defending Trinity College, Dublin from the rebels should they attempt to take it. After some thought, he decided his sympathies were with the rebels and he and a friend took some shots at British troops with a borrowed rifle during the fighting.
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