National Army Soldier (Sergeant) Patrick Perry

National Army Soldier (Sergeant) Patrick Perry (aged 24) of 20 Brookfield Terrace, Blackrock, Co. Dublin (Rochestown)

Date of incident: 8 Aug. 1922

Sources: Irish Times, 14 Aug. 1922; II, 15 Aug. 1922; CE, 17 Aug. 1922; List of FSS Cork Civil War Deaths; MSPC/2D133 (Military Archives); Borgonovo (2011), 147, fn. 28; Keane (2017), 292-94, 416; http://www.irishmedals.ie/National-Army-Killed.php (accessed 30 June 2017).  

Note: Sergeant Patrick Perry was killed in action at Rochestown on 8 August 1922 as Free State Forces met resistance in their advance towards the capture of Cork city. Perry was among a group of National Army soldiers ‘killed at Cork’ who were buried on Monday, 14 August 1922, in the National Army Plot at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. See Irish Times, 14 Aug. 1922; II, 15 Aug. 1922; CE, 17 Aug. 1922.

Pension records reveal that Perry had previously been a messenger at Taaff’s butcher shop on Main Street in Blackrock, Co. Dublin, and a labourer in the shipbuilding industry at Greenock in Scotland. He had served in the British army with the Irish Guards before joining the National Army; he had been wounded during the Great War. His mother Mary Perry was awarded a gratuity of £50 as a partial dependant of her deceased son under the Army Pensions Act of 1923. Patrick Perry also had an ‘unmarried wife’ named Rose Perry, who applied to the Army Pensions Board for relief for herself and two children. Rose Perry had a living husband to whom she apparently remained legally married, but she had resided with Patrick Perry before he joined the National Army, and they had produced two children together. The Irish authorities long debated whether Rose Perry and/or the two children were entitled to payments under the 1923 act, and even though the Irish Defence Minister favoured the granting of an allowance to Patrick Perry’s two children, legal advisors and the Minister for Finance ruled against the award of any gratuity to them. See copious documentation in Patrick Perry’s pension file: MSPC/2D133 (Military Archives). See also http://www.irishmedals.ie/National-Army-Killed.php (accessed 30 June 2017).

Patrick Perry was in 1911 one of the eleven children (fourteen born) of the van driver William Perry and his wife Mary of 10 Brookfield Avenue in Blackrock, Co. Dublin. Of these eleven children, five sons and three daughters, ranging in age from 6 to 25, co-resided with their parents in that year. Patrick (then aged 15) was then in the middle of the five sons still living at home, with two elder and two younger brothers