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1921-184

Private F. Roughley

Private F. Roughley of the 1st Battalion, Manchester Regiment (Ovens)

Date of incident: 1 April 1921 (abducted, killed, and disappeared by IRA)

Sources: British Forces Missing (Military Archives, A/0909); Pre-Truce Absentees from British Troops in Ireland (Military Archives, A/07304); Collins Papers, A/0909 (Military Archives); Letter to G. C. Whiskard (Dominions Office), April 1926 (Jus/H/257/13, NAI); irishmedals.org (accessed 28 July 2014); Commonwealth War Graves Commission; http://www.cairogang.com/soldiers-killed/list-1921.htmlhttp://www.cairogang.com/soldiers-killed/band-boy-murders/roughley/roughley.html (accessed 8 Aug. 2014); Murphy (2010), 336, 372.

 

Note: A member of the First Battalion of the Manchester Regiment, Roughley reportedly disappeared from Ballincollig Military Barracks on 1 April 1921. He was later killed (perhaps about 15 June) by the IRA and secretly buried. Gerard Murphy contends that his body was exhumed at Ovens and reburied after the Civil War. See http://www.cairogang.com/soldiers-killed/list-1921.htmlhttp://www.cairogang.com/soldiers-killed/band-boy-murders/roughley/roughley.html (accessed 8 Aug. 2014); Murphy (2010), 336.

On the other hand, correspondence between the Dominions Office and the Department of Justice in April 1926 suggests that Roughley’s body was among those which still had not been located at that point. See Letter to G. C. Whiskard (Dominions Office), April 1926 (JUS/H/257/13, NAI). A letter in the Collins Papers dated 18 February 1924 certainly detailed the location of a body on a farm near Ovens, and it was suspected that this might have been that of a young British soldier stationed in Ballincollig and shot by the IRA. Yet the file does not confirm that the remains were those of Roughley (though he was a likely fit). A letter from the Office of Intelligence, GHQ, Parkgate, Dublin, dated 15 January 1925, listed Roughley among those about whom information was still being sought as to their places of burial. See Michael Collins Papers, A/0909 (Military Archives).

The Irish Revolution Project

Scoil na Staire /Tíreolaíocht

University College Cork, Cork,

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