Few commentators would dispute that, as regards historical records, 1922 was a year of destruction and displacement. Months before the conflagration in the Four Courts annihilated a broad cross-section of official records the departing representatives of the crown régime had turned their attention to those most recently in use. Nobody really knows how much of this material was deliberately burnt in Dublin Castle in the days preceding the takeover by Free State troops on 16 January 1922. It is all but certain that at least some intelligence files were destroyed: these would no doubt have identified informants, double agents, serving intelligence officers (whether English or Irish), and the more discreet crown servants. Certainly the new custodians were greeted by empty cupboards and bare shelves. Legends, which may or may not have been founded in reality, grew of the extent of the destruction and, by implication, of the scale of the guilty secrets thus concealed forever.But the incoming officials were in no doubt, either, that much had been simply removed, whether to the Irish Office in London or to some other safe place. Assurances were offered to the Free State government by the departing Castle official A. W. Cope ‘that the only papers we are removing from the Castle to London are confidential papers relating to the political movement in this country. The removal of the papers will not hamper the future administration.’ Should any person apply for the return of papers seized in police raids during the conflict, their requests would be considered. Cope was being less than candid. During March an Irish Office official noted in an unmistakably complaining tone that the office was having to accommodate ‘a number of files belonging to the Crimes Special Department of the R.I.C. and an Irish Secret Service organisation. Some of the matter in these files is highly secret.’ The material occupied one hundred deed-boxes, half-a-dozen large packing cases, a couple of six-foot-high cupboards, along with thirty-eight card-index trays (‘twelve of them in cabinets’).
