I am trying to find out more about this quite bizarre raid on the mail on 11 Sep 1920
Raid on mail bags in Kilkenny Post office. At 2.30 a.m., in the middle of the night, the mail van taking mail from the railway station to Kilkenny Post Office was held up by armed and masked men at the post office yard. The driver was "beaten, tied and gagged" and the postman and clerk waiting to received the mail were also boud and gagged. The mail car was later recovered, some of the bags were returned and some just dumped in a river. It turns out that the raid was by a group of Auxiliaries pretending to be IRA men (for once this spin is actually true)
E.C. Bruce of ADRIC took part in the Kilkenny Mail Bag robbery, an "official" raid under Major Tottenham, chief ADRIC Intelligence Officer at that time. In his second appeal against his conviction for theft Bruce said "I believe that Mr Tottenham had worked on the fears of the authorities by saying that I had told him that "it seemed a damned dirty game" when I found him writing "Censored by IRA" on the envelopes [picked up in Kilkenny mail robbery by Auxiliaries] and his pointing out that I left the force a few days later and was the only person outside the force who knew the story of the raid. Now it is rumoured that a large sum of money, between £700 and £1100 was missing when the mailbags were returned and I knew in whose hands they were in from the time the seals were broken until they were returned" Crozier was later to clam that this raid was not sanctioned by either him nor the A Coy commander, Col Kirkwood. A party of ADRIC disguised themselves as IRA Volunteers, bound and gagged the sorters, and took the mail bags back to A Coy base at Innistiogue for examination. An unknown amount of money appears to have ben stolen and some mail returned and some dumped in a river. Leeson in "Black & Tans" notes that Tottenham was ADRIC Chief Intelligence Officer at that time.
I have the very short Irish Times reports on 13 and 14 Sept 1920 -
on this link click - but cannot find anything else about this mailbag theft
Can anyone help
