Volunteer Denis Christopher Morrissey

Volunteer Denis Christopher Morrissey (aged 17) of 3 Bride Terrace, Commons Road, Cork city (1 Watercourse Road, Blackpool)

Date of incident: 26 Nov. 1920

Sources: CE, 27, 30 Nov. 1920; II, 29 Nov. 1920; CWN, 4 Dec. 1920; Military Inquests, WO 35/155A/52 (TNA); WS 719 of Maurice Forde et al., 6 (BMH); IRA Roll of Honour, Cork No. 1 Brigade (Cork Museum, Fitzgerald Park, Cork); Rebel Cork’s FS, 25; Last Post (1976), 75.

Note: Morrissey was killed on 26 November 1920 along with fellow Volunteer William Mulcahy in this second bomb explosion within three days. According to the BMH witness statement of Maurice Forde and six other city Volunteers of E Company, ‘Christy Morrissey and Liam Mulcahy were killed outright when in their inexperience they tampered with a bomb in an upper room of O’Leary’s undertaking establishment at Blackpool. They had belonged to E Company and so did Donal Kelleher, who, coming up the stairs at the time, stopped outside the room to light a cigarette just as the bomb exploded. He escaped with injuries.’ See WS 719 of Maurice Forde et al., 6 (BMH). Like his fellow bomb victim Mulcahy, Volunteer Morrissey was interred in the Republican Plot in St Finbarr’s Cemetery. He was the eldest of the three sons (in 1911) of the Blarney mill hand John Morrissey and his wife Ellen.