His father died when he was very young, so in 1910 his mother moved the family into Francis Street in Galway where she opened a small hotel (see photograph) to support them.
To enter the office at night, which I could not do officially, I was obliged to climb in through a second floor window, extract any mail I was doubtful about, bring them back home, break up the cipher, and pass the information to the Brigade Commandant, Seamus Murphy."
He also supplied information to units of the IRA in south Mayo and to Michael Collins in GHQ in Dublin, the latter usually via men who worked on the mail van on the Galway/Dublin train.
One day a cipher gave a large amount of trouble, so rather than copying it, he took it away, but this resulted in all the telegrams being locked away at night in the assistant superintendent's safe.
They managed to make an impression of the key to the safe while the assistant super was busy, and a blacksmith in the Volunteers named Flanagan made a perfect copy which worked beautifully.
A Captain Keating was in complete charge and had over-riding authority on all branches of the British forces, army, RIC, navy, auxiliaries, and Black & Tans – in all, some 2,000 men.
About this time the Volunteers decided someone was passing information on them to the Crown Forces – how else could they explain the precision attacks and raids being made on homes and people in the Barna/Moycullen hinterland?
Togher passed these on to John Hosty, and in turn they were sent to the Provisional Government in Dublin who sent back an order that Joyce was to be court martialled.
They also believed a priest had given him his last confession and wrongly assumed this to be Father Michael Griffin, so they abducted him, tortured him, shot him, and buried him in a bog in Barna.
He helped form a new company but they had problems, lacking as they were in arms and military training, so they could not do much apart from burning enemy stores and taking occasional shots at different barracks and at the 17th Lancers on Earl's Island from a point across the river known as the Dyke.
Among those he worked with at that time were Martin Brennan, Jack Darcy, Tom Lydon, Tim Duggan, Johnny Carter, William Carter, and on the civilian side, George Cunniffe, Joe Heneghan, Mick Brennan, Terry Mahon, Mr Temple of the railway staff, and Joe Kirwan of the National Bank.
He enjoyed a pint with his friends in his local, Carty’s in Dominick Street, and was an avid fisherman, the only survivor of a tragic boating accident on the Corrib when Bill Forde of the Skeffington Arms and Shane McNally drowned.