Volunteer Thomas (Sonny) Mulcahy Jr

Volunteer Thomas (Sonny) Mulcahy Jr (aged 18) of Tooreen North/Burnfort (Mourne Abbey)

Date of incident: 15 Feb. 1921 (executed by crown forces at Cork Military Detention Barracks on 28 April 1921)

Sources: Military Inquests, WO 35/155B/24 (TNA); Richard Willis and John Bolster’s WS 808, 12-13 (BMH); Tadhg McCarthy’s WS 965, 9-11 (BMH); Leo O’Callaghan’s WS 978, 15-18 (BMH); Jeremiah Daly’s WS 1015, 6-8 (BMH); Tadhg Looney’s WS 1196, 9-14 (BMH); John Ronayne’s WS 1269, 7-10 (BMH); John O’Sullivan’s WS 1376, 9-11 (BMH); Website on the War of Independence for County Cork, under the Second Cork Brigade and under ‘Serious Reverse for I.R.A. at Mourne Abbey’; O’Donoghue (1954, 1986), 136-37; 

http://homepage.eircom.net/~corkcounty/Timeline/Mourne%20Abbey.htm; http://www.tameside.gov.uk/museumsgalleries/mom/objectfocus/razor (17 Sept. 2015); http://irishvolunteers.org/cork-county-gaol-ira-volunteers-executed-memorial/ (accessed 3 Nov. 2015); Mourne Abbey Memorial, Knockmourne, Mallow; UCC IRA Memorial.

Note: Thomas Mulcahy, who was captured at Mourne Abbey, was executed at Cork Military Detention Barracks on 28 April 1921. His name appears on the bronze plaque on the outer wall of what once was the Cork County Gaol (Gaol Walk, Western Road). Volunteer Mulcahy was one of the sons of the Tooreen North farmer Thomas Mulcahy Sr (aged 48 in 1911), a widower with five children, three of whom lived with him, including his son Thomas (then aged 9). This Thomas was said to be 18 years old at the time of his execution in late April 1921.

He had been born at Tooreen in February 1903. He was educated at the Burnfort and Beennaskehy National Schools. He became a Volunteer in 1919, when he was only 16 or 17 years old. He was a member of the Burnfort Company of the Mallow Battalion of the Cork No. 2 Brigade (later H Company, Fifth Battalion, Cork No. 4 Brigade). Wounded in the engagement with British forces at Mourne Abbey on 15 February 1921, he was among the youngest Volunteers to be executed anywhere in Ireland during the War of Independence. In a contemporary photograph he looks even younger than he was. His remains were interred in the former grounds of the Cork County Gaol. See http://irishvolunteers.org/cork-county-gaol-ira-volunteers-executed-memorial/ (accessed 3 Nov. 2015).