Anti-Treaty Soldier Patrick Duggan

Anti-Treaty Soldier Patrick Duggan (aged about 19) of Kilbrogan near Bandon (Glengarriff)

Date of incident: 17 Nov. 1922

Sources: SS, 2 Dec. 1922; MSPC/DP1423 (Military Archives); Administration Files, A/0991/Lot 3 (Military Archives); Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, 208; Last Post (1976 ed.), 100; Keane (2017), 326, 419; Cork No. 5 Brigade Memorial, Bantry. 

Note: Patrick Duggan died while fighting with the anti-Treaty IRA at Glengarriff on 17 November 1922. He was buried in the Republican Plot in St Patrick’s Cemetery in Bandon. See SS, 2 Dec. 1922; Last Post (1976 ed.), 100. His name is recorded on the memorial of the Cork No. 5 Brigade of the IRA in the middle of Bantry. It appears from a letter sent from the First Southern Division of the IRA that Duggan was a machine gunner who had been shot accidentally by a comrade. See Administration Files, A/0991/Lot 3 (Military Archives). 

This fact was confirmed in Duggan’s pension file, which indicated that he had been killed instantly on 17 November 1922 at Glengarriff by the accidental discharge of a fellow IRA member’s rifle. The Military Service Registration Board certified that Patrick Duggan had fought with the IRA from 1920 until his death—during the War of Independence, the Truce period, and the Civil War. His body had been buried immediately, according to the victim’s father John Duggan, but his death was not registered until 25 September 1933. Patrick Duggan was the son of a small farmer with a holding of 13 acres. The victim’s father John Duggan was finally awarded a partial-dependant’s allowance or gratuity of £112 10s. in 1934 under the Army Pensions Act of 1932. See MSPC/DP1423 (Military Archives). 

Patrick Duggan was in 1911 one of the two children of the Kilbrogan farmer John Duggan and his wife Mary. Patrick (then aged 8) was the older of their two sons.