First garda was a bigamist and debtor

It’s enough to make the toes of every serving garda curl. The first member of the force has been exposed as a bigamist, forger and debtor, and was sacked for beating a prisoner.

Jim Herlihy, a historian and genealogist who is a serving garda in Co Cork, has uncovered the life of PJ Kerrigan, the first person to take the force’s oath on Feb 21, 1922.

Kerrigan, who was born in Westport, Co Mayo, in 1892, was friendly with the first Garda commissioner, Michael Staines. In 1913 and although declared medically unfit by an RIC surgeon, Kerrigan had been accepted into that force as a constable.