File:Crowds at supposed miraculous event, Main Street, Templemore, Counity Tipperary, Ireland, August 1920 (6068653601).jpg

English: This photo shows a fraction of the thousands of people who flocked each day to visit and pray at "bleeding" statues set up in a yard beside T. Dwan's newsagents, Main Street, Templemore, Co. Tipperary in August 1920. The "manifestations" had appeared following Northamptonshire Regiment reprisals in the area for the killing of an R.I.C. officer by the I.R.A.

A local woman, Miss Maher, told the Irish Independent correspondent that after:

"the outburst in Templemore on Monday night [16 August 1920] some of the statues from which blood had been oozing in her house were taken by Walsh [first man to notice the "manifestations"] to Templemore, and it is believed that it was this action that saved the town from destruction."

(Irish Independent, Monday 23 August 1920)

And the furore did not die down quickly. Nearly a month later, this from the Irish Independent on Monday 13 September 1920:

"The G.S.W.R. ran its first Sunday excursion train, since the war, to Templemore yesterday, at 9.50 a.m. (13/- 3rd class). Five minutes before its departure it was packed with 800 passengers, and 100 persons were left behind. Such was the success of the excursion that the company ran a second special immediately afterwards, consisting of 14 coaches. This train took up passengers from Kildare, Partarlington, and Maryborough. it carried 150 passengers from Dublin..."

Later:

[Michael] Collins had received information from the local Catholic clergy that IRA Volunteers had engineered statues that would bleed at specific times. The internal mechanism of an alarm clock had been concealed inside the statue, connected to fountain pen inserts containing a mixture of sheep’s blood and water. When the clock mechanism struck at certain times it would send a spurt of blood through the statue, giving the impression that it was bleeding. According to an eye-witness, Collins ". . . took hold of the statue and banged it off the side of the desk, and of course out fell the works of the alarm clock. “I knew it”, he says. So that was the end of the bleeding statue."[1]

Date: 22 August 1920

NLI Ref.: HOG214