Patters of Evidence VI: Death on the Wards - The Hospital Murders
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| John Proctor |
The 14th September 1981 hadn’t been an easy day for John Proctor.
Earlier he had served as a pallbearer for his friend and neighbour Alan Clarke, a UDR man shot two days earlier as he walked along Hall Street in the Co Londonderry town of Maghera. The two had been close friends.
Paradoxically, however, as the off duty RUCR man arrived at Magherafelt Hospital his thoughts were of new life. He was going to visit his wife June who had just given birth to a baby boy, the couple’s second child, and his wife recalled some thirty years later how they teased one another over how fast she had been in getting back to her ward to watch her husband from the window after leaving him to the front door of the hospital.
She said that as he passed the hospital ward window, he joked: "You're very fast tonight", to which she joked back: "I'm not as fat as what you are”.
As her husband walked on, she told him for the last time: "God bless... I love you... watch yourself".
Her husband then walked on alone with Mrs Proctor recalling how "Johnny would just have had time to reach his car when I heard the sound of shooting”.
She then ran to the nurses' room which overlooked the car park and looked out the window to see an ambulance parked at the the back of her husband's car.
As the new mother watched a man was lifted into the back of the ambulance. She recognised it was her husband from the clothing he was wearing.
Mrs Proctor was then taken to the casuality unit where minutes later she was told her husband was dead.
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| June with baby John Proctor |
After Seamus Martin Kearney was convicted in 2013 June recalled how “For 32 years he would drive by my place of work. I would see him. He would just look at you, knowing he knew who I was and that I knew who he was.”
Kearney was sentenced to 20 years. He was released after 2 years under the terms of the Belfast Agreement - and reported his victim’s widow to the police over remarks she made about his early release from prison.
The murder of John Proctor in the grounds of a hospital was not a one off in the PIRA campaign.
Ten years to the day before the new father was gunned down in a hospital car park - 14th September 1971 - a young English soldier had been shot just outside the Royal Victoria.
Private Paul Carter was guarding an Army vehicle delivering medical supplies when he was shot twice in the chest.
The army were not forthcoming to the family about the circumstances of the death. Rumours of heartless conduct by local people filled the vacumn.
Perhaps those stories go some way to explaining why his mother collected signatures on a petition calling on the Government to pull troops out of Northern Ireland.
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| Private Paul Carter |
A Historical Enquiries Team report in 2012, however, told a different story. It said:
“Two men, who were close by, ran down the road to where Private Carter was lying and carried him to the casualty building inside the hospital.
“As they were doing so, they heard a second burst of gunfire but continued to carry Private Carter to safety.”
Speaking to the BBC about the report his sister Trudie Baker said:
“We were told that somebody tried to take his rifle from him while he lay bleeding to death. That was not true.
“The way it was told to us, he was on his own, and that wasn’t the case.
“He wasn’t just left there to die. To me that has made a huge, huge difference.
“To find that somebody wanted to help him, and a lot of people did, that has been just invaluable for me.”
Six years later, on 8th June 1977, Gerald Tucker, a 37 year old hospital porter, had just left the hospital morgue at the same hospital outside which Private Carter was shot and driven about 10 yards when he was fired on by two IRA murderers. He was hit in the head and died a short time later.
“Two men, who were close by, ran down the road to where Private Carter was lying and carried him to the casualty building inside the hospital.
The murder of the part time UDR lance-corporal caused widespread revulsion with staff at the hospital staging a 30 minute silent protest and 500 people attending an interdenominational service in the hospital grounds which was told that the victim was going home to his widowed mother when he was shot.
His union said it was the first time an employee of the National Health Service had been killed.
Tucker’s father was a Second World War hero who served in the Black Watch. He had been killed and posthumously mentioned in dispatches. The UDR man also received a posthumous award - the Queen’s Jubilee Medal.
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| James Johnston |
On 8th May 1984 another hospital porter was shot as he arrived for work at Drumglass Hospital in Dungannon. Two masked gunmen, alleged at the time to have been dressed as ambulance men, ran to James Johnston’s car and shot him in the head and chest.
A colleague who rushed to the scene said:
“We ran out to see what was happening and we found Jim lying dead in the driver’s seat. They didn’t even give him time to turn his car radio off. It was still playing away after the shooting”.
A Cooktown woman had been held captive overnight as the IRA prepared to use her car in the attack on the off duty UDR man.
Nine years later his sister-in-law’s brother, David Martin, was murdered when an IRA bomb exploded under the ex-UDR man’s car.
Other cases could be cited but the most infamous incident is surely the 1991 bombing of a hospital.
On 2nd November 1991 an IRA bomb went off in Musgrave Park Hospital. The hospital was largely civilian but also contained a military wing in which soldiers received treatment. A device estimated to have contained 20 lb of semtex was placed in a tunnel leading from the basement of the civilian section to the recreation room of the military wing. It reduced the two storey building above to rubble and left two dead and ten people injured - including a 5 year old girl.
Lance Corporal Philip Winstanley, an operating theatre technician with the Royal Army Medical Corps, survived the bombing:
“We were all watching England play Australia in the Rugby Union World Cup Final on the TV in the rest area. At the time England were losing 12 - 3.
“Apparently the IRA had timed the bomb to go off at half time in the game, just as the bar would be crowded with drinkers during the interval. Fortunately only 9 people were in the bar to watch the game and the bomb was late in exploding so people had returned to their seats. The injuries and fatalities could have been far, far worse. The device had been planted there the night before by a hospital porter who had gotten in through a door which had been deliberately unlocked. We never did find out who left the door unlocked ….
“The sound was a roar and then it all went black. Then, all I could see were sparks as the electrical wires which had been blasted, hung and crackled from the walls and the ceilings. Then the silence hit me; it was deafening if that makes any sense.
“There I was, lying on the floor, covered in debris and afraid to move in case any more of the wall fell on top of me and there was an incredible ringing in my ears.”
33 year old father of 2 Philip Cross and 22 year old Craig Pantry were dead. Warrant Officer Cross’s body was burnt beyond recognition and he died of severe brain damage. Private Pantry was killed by a piece of wood driven into his back.
33 year old father of 2 Philip Cross and 22 year old Craig Pantry were dead. Warrant Officer Cross’s body was burnt beyond recognition and he died of severe brain damage. Private Pantry was killed by a piece of wood driven into his back.
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| Philip Cross |
Two days after the bombing the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, told the Commons:
"In addition to the deaths and injuries, the blast from the explosion caused severe damage to both buildings. In particular, a newly refurbished children's ward in the Withers block was damaged, with debris falling on a father who was nursing his baby daughter. Other children in that ward were immobilised in traction. So far, 97 operations due to have been performed early this week have been cancelled, 80 out of the 200 national health service beds in the hospital have been rendered unusable and damage totalling at least £250,000 has been caused.”
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| Craig Pantry |
John Alderdice, the leader of Northern Ireland’s Alliance Party, said:
“This devilish atrocity strips away the IRA pretence to be fighting a war. Soldiers in every civilised army have always respected the sanctity of hospitals. Direct attacks on the sick and injured have always been regarded as unacceptable”.
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| Musgrave Park Hospital after the bombing |
The Irish Times carried an interview with Warrant Officer Cross’s widow a few days later in which she described telling her sons aged 11 and 12 that they had lost their father: “That was the hardest thing I ever had to do. They assumed that because he worked in a hospital he was safe”.
In 1994 Liam Dougan, a 26 year old hospital porter, was given two life sentences and 199 years in concurrent terms for his part in the attack.
He was released after 6 years under the terms of the Belfast Agreement.
Dougan made the news again in 2012 when, following a judicial review of a decision to refuse him a doorman licence due to the criteria automatically excluding convicts from the job, he successfully argued that as the conviction was "conflict-related" it should therefore be exempt from the licensing criteria.
The case was brought by publicly funded Republican ex-prisoners' group Coiste na nIarchimí.
In 2013 Dougan put his licence to use - by providing security for Sinn Fein at their Europa Hotel conference attended by the PSNI Chief Constable.
What do these cases tell us about the IRA campaign?
In my blog The Chapel Murders I noted the fact that people attended a particular church - or went to a relative’s wedding - meant that the PIRA knew where they would be at a particular time and could plan the murder with that in mind. Similar things could be said about the murders of hospital porters Gerald Tucker and James Johnston and it did not take a great intelligence operation to know that John Proctor would visit his wife and new born son thus presenting an opportunity to shoot him in the car park.
Once again these cases illustrate that for the PIRA nowhere was off limits.
The murder of Private Paul Carter is particularly tragic given the inaccurate stories which floated around for 40 years.
The truth was that, far from dying friendless in a Republican area of Belfast, locals risked their lives in an attempt to save him.
The true story also showed that, rather than defending the people of the Falls, the PIRA fired on them when they sought to save the life of the young soldier shot outside a hospital.
The truth was that, far from dying friendless in a Republican area of Belfast, locals risked their lives in an attempt to save him.
The true story also showed that, rather than defending the people of the Falls, the PIRA fired on them when they sought to save the life of the young soldier shot outside a hospital.
Importantly the 1991 bombing gives the lie to a myth repeated in many books about the PIRA campaign that under the Adams / McGuinness leadership the PIRA became more discerning and less brutal about who they targeted and where they targeted them.
The Proctor case brings home in particularly stark terms how close victims could live to those who made them victims.
But perhaps even most shocking than that is the lack of justice for the innocent victims which these cases highlight.
RUCR Constable Proctor’s widow waited three decades for justice yet Seamus Kearney served just 2 years in spite of being sentenced to 20.
Liam Dougan was sentenced to two life sentences and 199 years. He was released after 6.
Small wonder that Mr Proctor’s widow has described the justice system in Northern Ireland as “a joke. … We served a life sentence without a son, a husband, a father, a brother.”
A note on sources
To write this blog I have drawn material from the following sources:
Lost Lives by McKittrick et al
The Thin Green Line The History of the Royal Ulster Constabulary 1922 - 2001 by Richard Doherty
Shameless IRA killer Seamus Kearney reports his victim's widow to the police
Truth behind soldier's murder 40 years ago comforts family
Truth behind soldier's murder 40 years ago comforts family
I have sought to be careful but if anyone spots factual errors in the above piece please email me at onthisdayni@gmail.com, message the Facebook page or PM me on Twitter.
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