Robert Erskine Childers was born in London on 25 June 1870, second son of Robert Caesar Childers and Anna Mary Henrietta Barton, whose family were from Glendalough House, Annamoe, Co. Wicklow. He was a clerk in the House of Commons, and served as a volunteer in the army expeditionary force in the Boer War. He married Mary Alden Osgood in Boston in 1904 and they had three sons, one of whom died in infancy. During the First World War, he served with the Royal Naval Air Service and was decorated by George V in 1917. After spells in the secretariat of the Irish Convention and with the Intelligence wing of the Royal Air Force, he became a convert to Home Rule and Irish independence. He was a skillful propagandist during the Irish War of Independence and was appointed secretary to the Irish delegation to London to discuss a treaty with Britain. He subsequently aligned himself with the anti-Treaty forces during the Irish Civil War. Childers was arrested at Glendalough House on 10 November 1922 and charged with possession of a small pistol, actually given to him as a keepsake by Michael Collins. On 24 November 1922 Childers was duly executed by firing squad. The execution was justified as coming under the terms of the public safety act.

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