Civilian Edward G. F. Williams

Civilian Edward G. F. Williams (aged 18) of 15 Burley Street, Liverpool (MacCurtain and Bridge Streets, Cork city)

Date of incident: 14 Sept. 1922

Sources: Death Certificate (Cork Urban District No. 4, Union of Cork), 14 Sept. 1922; CE, 15, 16 Sept. 1922; FJ, 18 Sept. 1922; II, 18 Sept. 1922; SS, 23 Sept. 1922; Murphy (2010), Appendix 2, 338; Keane (2017), 305, 417; http://www.irishmedals.ie/Civilians-Killed-Civil-War.php (accessed 8 Aug. 2017).

Note: Allegedly as a result of some sniping directed at National Army soldiers at the corner of MacCurtain Street with Bridge Street, one male civilian was killed and a girl was wounded on 14 September 1922. The dead victim ‘was a sailor on board a vessel which recently arrived in Cork’. On the same night a bomb was thrown at Gregg Hall on the South Mall, which was occupied by Free State troops. See CE, 15 Sept. 1922.

At the coroner’s inquest a day later, the victim was identified as Edward Williams, an apprentice merchant sailor on board the SS. Kenmare. He had died of his wounds shortly after admission to the North Infirmary. The evidence given at the inquest contradicted the story that Williams had been hit by a sniper’s bullet. Rather, according to an eyewitness and fellow shipmate, a man with a revolver emerged from a public house at the corner of MacCurtain and Bridge Streets and deliberately fired at Williams, who was dressed ‘in the ship’s uniform, dark blue serge, with a peek cap’. See CE, 16 Sept. 1922.

Williams had joined the crew of the SS. Kenmare only on Tuesday, 12 September, according to Captain William Kinley, its skipper, who identified the body at the inquest. According to the medical evidence, Williams ‘had been shot in the head, in which there were two wounds, from the larger of which the brain substance was protruding’. The coroner J. J. McCabe ‘said that for some unaccountable reason some man shot this inoffensive young man’. See FJ, 18 Sept. 1922.