Vincent Fovargue
Vincent Patrick Fovargue was a company officer in the Dublin brigade of the IRA during the Irish War of Independence, who was shot dead in England by the IRA, which accused him of being a British spy.
Life
Fovargue was born on 22 August 1900 at 2 Rutland Place, Clontarf, to Robert Fovargue, an engineer/fitter, and Elizabeth Larkin.An intelligence officer with the 4th Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA in the Ranelagh area, he was captured by the British Army in Dublin. Under interrogation, he allegedly leaked information that resulted in the arrest of the other members of his unit a few days later. In return for this information, the Intelligence Corps allegedly allowed him to escape during a staged ambush in Dublin's South Circular Road.
This attempted ruse however did not go unnoticed by Michael Collins' many moles inside the Crown's security forces. On the night of the escape, Detective Constable David Neligan of the Dublin Metropolitan Police's "G" Division was on duty in Dublin Castle when McNamara passed him a telephone message on a police form. The message, issued by the British Military Headquarters, stated that a "Sinn Féin" suspect named Fovargue had escaped from three Intelligence Corps officers in a car whilst en route to prison. It gave a description of his appearance and asked that the British Army be notified in the event of his recapture by the Dublin Metropolitan Police.
Joe Kinsella was the I/O of the 4th Battalion. He was temporarily transferred to take care of munitions under Sean Russell for a few weeks and Fovargue was put in his place. From Joe Kinsella's own statement to the Irish Bureau of Military History:
Neither was Neligan fooled by this, as he explained:
The two men retyped the message and passed it to Collins the following day. Meanwhile, Fovargue had been sent to England where he adopted the alias of Richard Staunton. Fovargue had in fact been sent to England by Intelligence Corps Colonel Ormonde Winter to infiltrate the IRA in Britain.
Sean Kavanagh, a Kilkenny IRA man, claimed that Fovargue was put in a cell with him in Kilmainham Gaol in 1921 in order to try to extract information from him.