[2] After Elias Ames' death in 1891 at age 39, Peter's mother moved the family to Morristown, New Jersey, where her children had a privileged upbringing in the town that was then known as an "inland Newport.

[5] In June 1920, at the height of the Irish War of Independence, Ames moved to Dublin, Ireland on assignment from the British military intelligence, serving as an undercover agent for MI5.

Along with the other members of the Cairo Gang spy ring, Ames worked to end the operations of Irish Republican Army and restore British control in Dublin.

[6] The activities of the Cairo Gang were soon detected by Irish Republican Army leaders, however, who formulated a plot, led by Michael Collins, to eliminate the covert group.

Peter Ashmun Ames was engaged to marry Millicent Orr-Ewing, a niece of the Duke of Roxburghe and a close friend of Barbara Cartland, at the time of his death.

[9] On the morning of Sunday, November 21, 1920, IRA gunmen stormed into the house at 38 Upper Mount Street where Ames and another agent were staying.

They both fell dead.The report delivered to the House of Lords on the murders of Bloody Sunday described the events at 38 Upper Mount as well:This house was entered at 9.10 a.m. by twenty armed, unmasked men who were let in by a servant, Catherine Farrell, who unwillingly and under constraint pointed out the rooms occupied by Lieutenant Aimes, of the Grenadier Guards, and Lieutenant Bennett, of the R.A.S.C., Motor Transport.

Four other IRA men - Frank Flood, Thomas Bryan, Patrick Doyle and Bernard Ryan were convicted of high treason for the Drumcondra ambush on the 21 January 1921.