Richard B. Woulfe (1884–1937)

Richard Barrett Woulfe was born on October 26, 1884, in the townland of Cratloe, parish of Athea, County Limerick, the son of Richard Maurice Woulfe and Johanna Barrett Woulfe. His siblings included Johanna (b. 1870), Mary (b. 1872), Maurice (b. 1874), Catherine (b. 1876), John R. M. (b. 1878), Ellen (b. 1880), and Bridget (b. 1882). Maurice Woulfe died in 1891, possibly of tuberculosis.

Little is known of Dick Woulfe’s early life except that he studied pharmacy in Dublin, where he met Catherine Elizabeth “Katty” Colbert. The two married on April 16, 1913, in Dublin, and soon after returned to County Limerick, apparently at the urging of Woulfe’s father. The couple had five children: Johanna Frances (b. 1914), Honora Josephine (b. 1915), Cornelius Colbert “Con” (b. 1917), Richard Michael (b. 1919), and Michael Joseph Colbert (b. 1922). All of them became priests or nuns.

Early Republican Activities

Woulfe ran a pharmacy on New Street in Abbeyfeale. According to the later testimony of James J. Collins, who apprenticed under and worked for Woulfe and later served in Dáil Éireann (1948–1967), “The Woulfe’s were great supporters of the Irish independence movement and their shop and house, from the earliest days of the movement, became a meeting place for men like Con Colbert, Captain Ned Daly and others who later figured prominently in the fight for freedom.”

Cornelius Francis “Con” Colbert was Katty Colbert Woulfe’s younger brother and participated in the Easter Rising, which began on April 25, 1916. He was executed at Kilmainham jail, in Dublin, on May 8. According to Collins’s testimony, given in 1955, Woulfe’s pharmacy was a site of rebel activity during this time. In the weeks after the uprising, authorities frantically searched for Robert Monteith, an aide to Roger Casement, a British diplomat who had become an Irish nationalist. The two had landed via German submarine at nearby Banna Strand in County Kerry, but Casement had been captured. “Mr. Woulfe sent me to Fr. O’Flaherty of Brosna, Co. Kerry, to borrow his car for the purpose of bringing Monteith to Co. Limerick,” Collins recalled. The mission was accomplished in a Model T Ford.

On June 24, 1916, the Liberator newspaper of Tralee, County Kerry, reported Woulfe having attended a meeting in Abbeyfeale of the Irish Aid Association, established to provide support for the families affected by the violence. He made a donation of £2 2s.

War of Independence

During the War of Independence (1919–1921), Woulfe’s pharmacy again became a site of nationalist activity. According to Collins, a British spy calling himself Peadar Clancy and claiming to be from the Irish Republican Army’s General Headquarters in Dublin attempted to infiltrate the West Limerick Brigade in 1919. He was brought to Woulfe’s pharmacy in Abbeyfeale. “I was working in the shop at the time,” Collins said. “Mrs. Woulfe called me and told me that she knew the Clancy family of Dublin and that this man was not one of them.” Collins explained that “as a result of Mrs. Woulfe’s suspicions,” the man was arrested, tried, and executed as a spy.

In Victory and Woe, his memoir of the West Limerick Brigade, written in the 1940s and published posthumously in 2002, Mossie Harnett does not mention the Woulfes or their role in exposing Peadar Clancy. He notes only that “our intelligence received information that led” to his arrest. Harnett then relates how Clancy was found with hidden money and papers that, once decoded, exposed his guilt. His execution took place in the spring of 1920: “Fully realising now his terrible predicament, and visibly trembling, he clutched his Rosary beads in his hands. Near the place of execution, a priest heard his confession; then he shook hands with his executioners and admitted his crime.” The man was eventually identified as Denis Crowley, a former soldier.

A later account by the IRA man Daniel Doody notes that in May 1920 Woulfe accompanied a local doctor on a motorbike with a sidecar to an IRA hideout to treat the wounded. At about 11 p.m. on September 18, 1920, according to a report in the Kerryman, an active service unit of the IRA that included Collins and Harnett ambushed a six-man patrol of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) outside of Abbeyfeale. A constable, John Mahony, was killed and two others wounded. The next day a large number of policemen and soldiers arrived, members of both the RIC and so-called Black and Tans—temporary constables recruited from England and notoriously violent. “The Tans remained for a couple of hours while they fired some thousands of rounds of ammunition all round and bombed several houses,” Collins recalled. According to the Kerryman, “The local Temperance Hall was subsequently burned, [and] Mr. Woulfe’s pharmacy was considerably damaged.”

The official British report on the incident notes that £1,500 in compensation was sought for damages, that no complaint had been made to the police, and that Woulfe was missing. “It is stated that he and his two assistants are alleged to be members of the Abbeyfeale Company of the I.R.A. and that they were experimenting with some chemical substances and that there was an explosion on the occasion.”

In an oral history conducted when she was in her nineties, Woulfe’s daughter Honora, or Sister Íde, recalled how the Black and Tans had attempted to arrest her father. “They were going to shoot him,” she said, “and I understand my mother screamed. She was upstairs. They’d locked my mother and one of the babies in […] They were trying to burn the house and my mother in it.” Dick Woulfe, however, was able to free her and escape out the back.

Now, at the back of our house, our garden opened into the river [Feale], and it seems he got out to the river and walked the river that night. And he walked, the story is told, in such a way that he got to the convent. And the nuns took him in and hid him behind the altar. And the soldiers came to the convent, and the reverend mother met them, but I think she must have told them they couldn’t go into the chapel, and they respected that.

On October 5, the Liberator reported that one of Woulfe’s assistants, Tim Stack, along with Michael Woulfe, who worked at a hardware store in nearby Listowel, County Kerry, were both arrested by the police. Stack may have been connected to the family of Austin Stack, of Tralee, who went on hunger strike during the Civil War (1922–1923). Within a week, Stack had been released, but, as the Cork Examiner reported, “Mr. Woulfe, together with his wife and family, have abandoned his pharmacy since the place was raided and partially wrecked. A compensation claim has been lodged.”

Woulfe was on the run for the rest of the war, serving as a medical officer with the West Limerick Brigade of the IRA. He sometimes hid out at the nearby home of his sister Catherine Woulfe White, where, with his mustache shaved, he pretended to be “Uncle Jack” to his own children.

Civil War and Later Years

Woulfe’s actions during the subsequent civil war are not well documented. His sympathies were anti-Treaty, and according to his daughter, the pharmacy was boycotted as a result. She recalled that the mothers, wives, and sisters of irregulars, or anti-Treaty fighters, congregated each night in the Square at Abbeyfeale to say the rosary. One night a group of pro-Treaty locals attacked them, including Katty Woulfe, with rotten eggs.

On April 18, 1923, the same day that the famous anti-Treaty fighter Dan Breen was reported captured, the Cork Examiner also noted that “Dick Woulfe, Listowel, a prominent irregular, surrendered to the troops last night with a rifle and ammunition.” It’s unclear whether this is the same Woulfe.

After the war, Woulfe continued to operate his pharmacy, for a time apprenticing Seán Ó Séadhacháin, who later became a noted folk artist. At some point he brought a younger cousin, David Woulfe, into his business in Abbeyfeale. David Woulfe’s brother, Maurice Woulfe, later became pastor of the Infant of Prague Church, near Buffalo, New York.

Dick Woulfe died on April 19, 1937, in Abbeyfeale, after what one obituary described as “a tedious illness, borne with exemplary patience.” The Irish Press wrote that “many people attributed his death indirectly to the heroic sacrifices which he made in the service of his country,” noting that an honor guard from the West Limerick Brigade, which included James Collins, stood vigil over his coffin and that “the funeral procession was more than two miles long.” He was buried at the Templeathea graveyard.

Woulfe’s probate was settled on September 7, 1937, and the value of his effects totaled £1,052 15s 4d. The pharmacy remained in the family until its sale in 1950. In 2018, the building and empty storefront were owned by Woulfe’s nephew, Richard Woulfe.

Top of the page: Members of the Irish Republican Army, 1920s (National Library of Ireland)

Selected Sources

“Abbeyfeale,” The Liberator (Tralee, County Kerry), June 24, 1916. Donation to the Irish Aid Association.

“Anglo-Irish War. Recalled by Death of Mr. R. B. Woulfe of Abbeyfeale. President de Valera’s Sympathy,” The Cork Examiner, April 29, 1937.

“A Boon to Farmers!” Weekly Observer (Newcastle West, County Limerick), April 15, 1916, 4. Advertisement for The Pharmacy, Abbeyfeale.

“Death of Well-Known West Limerick Chemist,” The Liberator (Tralee, County Kerry), April 20, 1937 [transcript].

“Funeral of Mr. R. B. Woulfe,” The Irish Press (Dublin), April 23, 1937 [transcript].

Mossie Harnett, Victory and Woe: The West Limerick Brigade in the War of Independence (2015).

“Irregular Surrender,” The Cork Examiner, April 18, 1923.

“Military Activities in Listowel,” The Liberator (Tralee, County Kerry), October 5, 1920.

“Mr. David Woulfe, MPSI,” The Chemist and Druggist, April 22, 1950, 493.

Note from Con Colbert, 1916.

Notice of Sale, Irish Examiner, July 9, 1949.

“Police Patrol Ambushed Near Abbeyfeale,” The Kerryman (Tralee), September 25, 1920.

Registration of Birth, 1884.

Registration of Marriage, 1913.

Royal Irish Constabulary Report, October 13, 1920.

Sr. Íde Woulfe, excerpts from an oral history, 2015. Part 1. Part 2.

Statement of Daniel Doody, 1953.

Statement of James Collins, T.D., 1955.

“The West Limerick Mystery; Unknown Man’s Identity,” Limerick Leader, April 30, 1920.

“West Limerick Raids,” The Cork Examiner, October 12, 1920.