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1922-41

Anti-Treaty Soldier William O’Sullivan

 

Anti-Treaty Soldier William O’Sullivan (aged about 20) of 8 Farren Street, Cork city (Midleton Military Barracks)

Date of incident: 7 July 1922

Sources: Death Certificate (Cork Urban District No. 6, Union of Cork), 18 July 1922; CE, 20 July 1922; MSPC/DP6929 (Military Archives); List of IRA Interments (Boole Library, UCC); Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, 25; O’Farrell, Who’s Who, 219; Cork One Brigade (1963), Roll of Honour; Last Post (1976 ed.), 95; Keane (2017), 290.

 

Note: A member of E Company in the First Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade, O’Sullivan died at the Mercy Hospital in Cork city on 18 July 1922 from a gunshot wound reportedly received in an accident on 7 July at Midleton Military Barracks and from septicaemia. See Death Certificate (Cork Urban District No. 6, Union of Cork), 18 July 1922; MSPC/DP6929 (Military Archives). His death was ‘deeply regretted by his father, mother, sisters, brothers, and a large circle of friends’. After funeral services in St Finbarr’s Cathedral he was interred on 20 July in the Republican Plot in St Finbarr’s Cemetery. See CE, 20 July 1922.

According to his pension file, O’Sullivan had been born in 1901. He had been a factory worker in civilian life. His service with the Volunteers began in 1918 and continued with the IRA during the War of Independence, the Truce period, and the earliest part of the Civil War. His mother Julia O’Sullivan was awarded a dependant’s allowance in 1954 and received it until her death in February 1960. See MSPC/DP6929 (Military Archives). 

O’Sullivan’s name and date of death appear among the interments listed in a pamphlet printed in association with the unveiling in 1963 of an IRA monument erected over the Republican Plot in St Finbarr’s Cemetery in Cork city. See The Cork One Brigade: The Republican Plot, Cork (Cork, 1963), available in the Boole Library, Special Collections, UCC. The catalogue number there is MP 941.5081 BRIO. This list is cited above and hereafter in later entries as List of IRA Interments (Boole Library, UCC).

The Irish Revolution Project

Scoil na Staire /Tíreolaíocht

University College Cork, Cork,

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