Civilian Daniel O’Mahony or Mahony

Civilian Daniel O’Mahony or Mahony (aged 17) of Garranenagappul near Clondrohid (Clondrohid Bridge near Macroom)

Date of incident: 11 Feb. 1921

Sources: CE, 14 Feb. 1921; CC, 14 Feb. 1921; FJ, 14 Feb. 1921; Military Inquests, WO 35/155A/10 (TNA); Military Reports, WO 35/89 (TNA); Charles Browne’s WS 873, 33 (BMH); Timothy Buckley’s WS 1641, 14 (BMH); Ó hÉalaithe (2014), 145, 274; http://theauxiliaries.com/companies/c-coy/c-coy.html (accessed 28 April 2016).   

Note: Members of the Clondrohid Company of the Macroom Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade demolished Clondrohid Bridge on 7 February 1921. Local Volunteer Timothy Buckley recalled: ‘We claim that it was the first bridge in Ireland to be broken by the I.R.A. A party of Black and Tans raided the village [of Clondrohid] about 3 p.m. on February 11th. When they came to the broken bridge, they fired shots indiscriminately, shooting a boy of 14 years—Dan O’Mahoney—dead. They then seized a few old people and took them to Macroom Castle, where they were interrogated about the identity of the men who knocked the bridge. Nobody gave any information, not even children who were later questioned on the same subject.’ See Timothy Buckley’s WS 1641, 14 (BMH).

Other accounts explained O’Mahony’s death in different ways. According to the Cork Examiner of 14 February 1921, there was a crowd in the vicinity of the bridge when ‘the police’ approached. Members of the crowd then began to disperse. They failed to halt when told to do so by ‘the police’, who then fired, killing O’Mahony, the 17-year-old son of a local shoemaker. He was shot through the head and died instantly. See CE, 14 Feb. 1921. Macroom Battalion leader Charlie Browne later maintained that British forces had shot O’Mahony because he had ‘refused to give information about the demolition of the bridge’. See Charles Browne’s WS 873, 33 (BMH). In his memoirs former Volunteer Jamie Moynihan gave still another version of the circumstances of this death: ‘Dan [O’Mahony] was working in Kelleher’s bar in the village [of Clondrohid] on the day he was shot, and at the time there were only two customers in the bar, the brothers Jim and Jack Seán Kelleher from Clashmaguire, and the owner of the bar, Dan Kelleher, was also present. The men were deep in conversation when suddenly they heard the noise of lorries approaching from the Baile Mhúirne [Ballyvourney] direction. The four of them ran out the back door of the pub, and when they got outside, two ran to the left and the other two went to the right. The Tans saw them and fired at them from the lorries. Dan O’Mahony was hit and died immediately in the little field at the back of Kelleher’s bar.’ See Ó hÉalaithe (2014), 145.

In the 1911 census Daniel Mahony (then aged 7) appears as one of the six co-resident children (two sons and four daughters) of the Garranenagappul shoemaker John Mahony and his wife Annie. A seventh child was out of the home, and an eighth had apparently died in infancy.