Anti-Treaty Soldier James Moloney

Anti-Treaty Soldier James Moloney (aged about 19) of Blackpool, Cork city (Belmont Cross near Rochestown)

Date of incident: 9 Aug. 1922

Sources: CE, 15 Aug. 1922, 9 Aug. 1923; Poblacht Na h-Eireann (Scottish edition), 21 Oct. 1922; Irish Democrat, 8 Sept. 2006; List of IRA Interments (Boole Library, UCC); Roll of Honour, Cork No. 1 Brigade (Cork Public Museum, Fitzgerald Park, Cork); Irish Pension Rolls, MSPC/RO/28 (Military Archives); Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, 25; O’Farrell, Who’s Who, 217; Cork One Brigade (1963), Roll of Honour; Last Post (1976 ed.), 95; O’Mahony (1986), 106; Borgonovo (2011), 147, fn. 30; Boyne (2015), 137; Keane (2017), 293-94, 416; https://archive.irishdemocrat.co.uk/features/mackenzie-kennedy-remembered/ (accessed 30 June 2017).

Note: James Moloney was killed in action with the anti-Treaty IRA at Belmont Cross near Rochestown as National Army troops forced the IRA into retreat and continued their march towards Cork city. Moloney’s dead body was carried to Cork city on 11 August 1922 in a Corporation ambulance. See CE, 15 Aug. 1922. He was a member of E Company of the First Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade. See Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, 25. He was interred in the Republican Plot in St Finbarr’s Cemetery in Cork, where his gravestone records 9 August 1922 as the date of his death and renders his surname as Moloney.

‘There werer differing reports as to the circumstances [of the deaths of James Moloney and Ian Graeme Baun (‘Scottie’) MacKenzie Kennedy]. There was a republican claim that the two men were shot after surrendering, with their hands up. The Free State side insisted there was no surrender. That version was supported by one particular republican who was present on the day and who was interviewed by Father Patrick Twohig. Jamie Moynihan stated that Scottie had jumped up to re-attack across a roadway and was hit by a stream of tracer bullets from a machine gun. Many years later, in his RTÉ interview with Cathal O’Shannon, [Free State General] Emmet Dalton paid tribute to the courage of the young Scotsman: “He wouldn’t give in. Wouldn’t surrender. So he died.” Dalton added: “I salute bravery wherever I see it.”’ See Boyne (2015), 137. Presumably, Dalton’s comment applied to Moloney’s conduct on that day as much as to MacKenzie-Kennedy’s.  

It appears that in 1911 James Moloney was one of the eight co-resident children of the stonecutter Timothy Moloney and his wife Norah, who resided at 2 Gerald Griffin Street in the sub-district of Blackpool in Cork city. James (then aged 8) was the second of five sons, and he had three sisters.