Skip to main content

1921-250

Lance Corporal Arthur Wilfred Lavington Hill

Lance Corporal Arthur Wilfred Lavington Hill (aged 21) of the 7th Company, 2nd Battalion, Hampshire Regiment (Lower Glanmire Road, Cork city) 

Date of incident: 18 May 1921 (executed as suspected intelligence operative by IRA)

Sources: CC, 20 May 1921; IT, 19 May 1921; II, 20 May 1921; FJ, 20 May 1921; CE, 4 June 1921; RIC County Inspector’s Monthly Report, Cork City and East Riding, May 1921 (CO 904/115, TNA); Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Sheehan (2011), 75; irishmedals.org (accessed 28 July 2014); http://www.cairogang.com/soldiers-killed/list-1921.htmlhttp://www.cairogang.com/soldiers-killed/hill/hill.html (accessed 16 July 2015).

 

Note: Hill was assigned to the railway-transport staff at Glanmire station. After visiting a girlfriend in civilian clothes, he left there to return to the barracks at about 9:30 p.m. He was killed at about that time at or near the level crossing on Lower Glanmire Road. He was shot in the head with a .45 revolver by one of the IRA men who had been crouching in wait behind a nearby wall. A second bullet penetrated his skull from back to front. A military court adjudged the killing a murder by persons unknown. Sheehan has identified Hill as an ‘intelligence operative’. But as a Dublin Castle report was right to point out, ‘The corporal had just said “Good-night” to a young girlfriend and was proceeding to barracks when he was murdered.’ See FJ, 20 May 1921. Hill was interred in Fareham Cemetery near Portsmouth Harbour in south-east Hampshire.

The Irish Revolution Project

Scoil na Staire /Tíreolaíocht

University College Cork, Cork,

Top