Henry "Harry" Butler was an Anglo-Irish banker during the early 20th century. The son of businessman Edward Butler and the brother of Irish Citizen Army member Elizabeth Butler, Butler went from being a wastrel and a unionist to being a financial backer of the IRA during the Irish War of Independence.
Biography[]
Henry Butler was born in Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland, the son of Edward Butler and Dolly Mulcahy, the nephew of Father Richard Mulcahy, and the brother of Elizabeth Butler. Harry came from a wealthy Anglo-Irish banking family, and he was raised in his father's Protestant faith. Harry was spoiled as a child, and he grew up as a debaucherer, drinker, cynic, and dandy who wasted all of his money on drinks and women and frequently fell into debt. Unlike his sister, a devout socialist, Butler was a staunch unionist like his father and his friend George Wilson. During the 1916 Easter Rising, Harry instead focused on paying off his debts to his loanshark, as well as continuing to womanize. On his father's death in May, he became the new head of the household and the bank, and his mother forced him to grow up and change.
By 1920, Butler had become a very wealthy businessman and was married to Constance Butler, who was an Irish republican supporter. Michael Collins and other IRA leaders sought the financial support of Butler's bank during the Irish War of Independence, and Constance invited them to parties at Butler's mansion. Butler reluctantly agreed to grant a generous loan to IRA agent Maurice Jacobs, but his bank soon fell under the scrutiny of Inland Revenue agent Albert Saunders amid a British crackdown on Irish banks backing the IRA. Saunders discovered that the bank had made unsecured transactions with Irish businesses headed by fictitious people, and, at a meeting of the bank's board, Saunders claimed that the bank was bankrupt, and that its potentially fradulent transactions would result in its closure. US Senator Daniel Shea, a major financier of the IRA and a friend of Constance, loaned Butler $50,000 to end the panic at his bank so that he could continue his loan to the IRA. That same night, Saunders was murdered by the IRA, and Butler was arrested the next day on the orders of General Ormonde Winter, who had him imprisoned at Dublin Castle. He was ultimately forced to tell Winter of Shea's relationship with the IRA, and he was released, only to find that his wife had been forced by the IRA to leave their home and go into exile due to Harry's betrayal of the cause. Harry ultimately calmed an angry Constance and decided that the two of them would move to England.
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