National Army Soldier Henry (Harry) Pomeroy

National Army Soldier Henry (Harry) Pomeroy (aged 41) of Killarney Road, Millstreet (Millstreet)

Date of incident: night of 4-5 Jan. 1923

Sources: CE, 6, 8, 10, 20 Jan. 1923; FJ, 6, 8 Jan. 1923; Evening Herald, 6 Jan. 1923; Belfast Newletter, 6, 8 Jan. 1923; II, 8, 11 Jan. 1923; Death Certificate (Cork Urban District No. 6, Union of Cork), 19 Jan. 1923; MSPC/3D292 (Military Archives); Keane (2017), 345-46, 421.

Note: Private Henry Pomeroy was badly wounded in the attack by the anti-Treaty IRA on Millstreet on the night of 4-5 January 1923. In a last-ditch attempt to save his life, surgeons at the Mercy Hospital in Cork city amputated his wounded leg, but his condition gradually deteriorated and he died of his injuries on 19 January. See CE, 20 Jan. 1923. Private Pomeroy’s death certificate indicated that he had died of sepsis and secondary haemorrhage stemming from gunshot wounds received at Millstreet about two weeks earlier. His age at death was given as 41. See Death Certificate (Cork Urban District No. 6, Union of Cork), 19 Jan. 1923.

In his pension file Henry Pomeroy’s date of wounding is given as 4 January 1923, but since this battle raged over parts of the two days of 4-5 January, it is not certain that Pomeroy was badly wounded before midnight on 4 January. Private Pomeroy had reportedly served in the British army during the Great War. His mother Honora (or Hanoria, as in the 1911 census) was awarded a dependant’s allowance of 15s. per week. Their address in the pension file was listed as Killarney Road in Millstreet. See MSPC/3D292 (Military Archives).

Harry (or Henry) Pomeroy was in 1911 one of the two living children (four born) of the 66-year-old widow and ‘housewife’ Hanoria Pomeroy of 6 Killarney Road in Millstreet. Harry Pomeroy (then aged 29) told the census-taker that he was an unemployed ‘plate layer’. He was unmarried.