There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
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David Eagleman – Sum: Forty Tales From The Afterlives

“In June 1920, Constable Daniel O’Sullivan resigned from the RIC. O’Sullivan was a 31-year-old native of Limerick who had joined the force in 1908, spending his career stationed in Kerry. O’Sullivan had not been shot at, held up and disarmed, ambushed while on patrol, or defended his barracks against a late night attack. He was home on leave in Limerick, when a gang of masked men entered the family home and told him to resign from his job or he would be shot. O’Sullivan refused, and as the gang attempted to drag him outside his mother tried to intervene, before promptly fainting. At this point O’Sullivan agreed to the demand and signed a declaration that he would not return to his station ‘on account of his mother’s health’. O’Sullivan’s reason for resignation in the RIC’s General Personnel Register is simple: ‘Intimidation by S.F.’”

​Defying the IRA? Intimidation, Coercion and Communities During the Irish revolution, Brian Hughes, 2016, Liverpool University Press.
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“The RIC general Personnel Register lists 108 Irish-born police who resigned from the force between 1919 and 1921 and explicity cited IRA intimidation”

​Defying the IRA? Intimidation, Coercion and Communities During the Irish revolution, Brian Hughes, 2016, Liverpool University Press.
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“This form of terror, consisting of a general boycott and regularly enforced by intimidation and aggression, was not new to Ireland. Its most common features were anonymous threatening letters, proclamations, forcefully administered oaths, raids, and damaged property aimed at inducing members of the RIC to resign and make it impossible for those who remained to carry out their duty”
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Defying the IRA? Intimidation, Coercion and Communities During the Irish revolution, Brian Hughes, 2016, Liverpool University Press.

“When a member of the force was at home or on leave, and away from the comparative protection of his barracks, he was most vulnerable and did not have to form part of an ambush patrol to come under fire. Between 1919 and 1921, 412 serving policemen were shot and killed in Ireland (there had been no casualties between 1917 and 1918). Almost 30 per cent had not been engaged in police activity when killed but had been alone or unarmed, travelling to or from work, taking a walk, visiting the local shop, leaving mass. Everyday tasks suddenly became potentially dangerous for the Irish policeman”

Defying the IRA? Intimidation, Coercion and Communities During the Irish revolution, Brian Hughes, 2016, Liverpool University Press.
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​“As the republican guerrilla campaign escalated in late 1919 and early 1920, the police responded to the revolutionary challenge in various ways. Some tried to carry on as best they could, while others lapsed into passive inactivity. Many resigned or took retirement, as Daniel Galvin did. As a result of these resignations and retirements, the strength of the force declined steadily until the autumn of 1920. ….
….the British government was aware that its Irish police force was militarily vulnerable, and was taking steps to reinforce the beleaguered RIC. Small police stations were closed and the force was concentrated in fewer, more-easily defensible barracks that were fortified against rebel attacks. The police themselves were re-equipped with service rifles and grenades. But this was not enough: new recruits were needed. Though Irish men continued to join the force during the conflict, there was widespread intimidation of police recruits in Ireland, and thus no chance of obtaining sufficient number of replacements from the usual sources…”

The Royal Irish Constabulary, Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, David M. Leeson in Atlas of the Irish Revolution (ed. John Crowley, Donal Ó Drisceoil, Mike Murphy, John Borgonovo), 2017, Cork University Press.