Anti-Treaty Soldier Patrick Joseph Mangan Jr

Anti-Treaty Soldier Patrick Joseph Mangan Jr (about 20) of Carrignagower, Lismore, Co. Waterford (Cork Gaol, Cork city)

Date of incident: 24 Sept. 1922

Sources: CE, 25, 26 Sept. 1922; FJ, 28 Sept. 1922; II, 28 Sept. 1922; SS, 30 Sept. 1922; O’Farrell, Who’s Who, 217; Last Post (1976), 98; Kilcrumper Memorial, 1916-23; Keane (2017), 308, 417.

Note: Patrick Mangan Jr died of gunshot wounds received in Cork Gaol. Along with about 435 other republican political prisoners (almost all captured Irregulars), Mangan had been on hunger strike. Following the escape of thirty-nine prisoners on 21 September 1922, the remaining Irregulars interned there rioted on Sunday, 24 September. They refused at first to return to their cells from the recreation yard, and after being forced to move inside the gaol by National Army Soldier-guards using their rifle butts, the prisoners rioted in the corridors, smashing doors and windows and tearing down railings; most were frightened into returning to their cells when sentries under orders fired over their heads, but ‘one party, amongst whom was [the] deceased, still remained on the corridors, shouting and defiant. The sentry was again ordered to fire, and Mangan fell wounded.’ He died on the following day at the Mercy Hospital. The military court investigating the case found that Mangan had ‘met his death as the result of a shot fired by a sentry in the execution of his duty, and that the officer who gave the order to fire was justified, as the prisoners had sufficient warnings and ample time to comply with the order to return to their cells’. See CE, 26 Sept. 1922. 

Patrick Mangan had been a resident of Carrignagower near Lismore, Co. Waterford. He had been attached to the Third Battalion of the Cork No. 2 Brigade. During the Civil War he was attached to battalion headquarters as a dispatach rider. He had been captured by Free State forces in Fermoy in August 1922 and then imprisoned in Cork Gaol. After being shot and mortally wounded by a sentry there (he died on 25 September 1922), he was buried in the Lismore Old Cemetery in County Cork. See the pamphlet issued in connection with the opening of the UCC IRA memorial (Boole Library, UCC). He is also commemorated on the IRA memorial in Kilcrumper Cemetery outside Fermoy. 

Patrick Mangan Jr was in 1911 one of the three living children (five born) of the Carrignagower farmer Patrick Mangan Sr and his wife Margaret. These three children were all boys, and Patrick Jr (then aged 9) was the eldest. The Mangans employed a female domestic servant.