Civilian Michael Hickey

Civilian Michael Hickey (aged about 25) of near Edward Street, Limerick city (Patrick’s Bridge, Cork city)

Date of incident: 10 March 1923

Sources: CE, 12, 15 March 1923; FJ, 12 March 1923; Belfast Newsletter, 13 March 1923; SS, 17 March 1923; Keane (2017), 352, 422. 

Note: Michael Hickey was returning with some friends to his hotel in Cork city on Saturday night, 10 March 1923, when they were ordered to halt at Patrick’s Bridge by some National Army Soldiers who ‘were engaged in searching passers-by’. Hickey ‘was ordered to put up his hands and did so. An altercation then ensued, and in a few seconds . . . [Hickey] was fighting one of the soldiers. Shots then rang out. . . .’ Hickey’s two friends and others on the street fled for cover. When his friends returned a little later, they found Hickey ‘lying on the pavement, wrapped in his overcoat, and quite dead’. His remains were taken to the Mercy Hospital, where it was discovered that the fatal bullet had ‘apparently passed into the body in the region of the heart, and this injury was the cause of death’. See CE, 12 March 1923. This account was repeated in the Southern Star of 17 March 1923.

When Hickey’s remains arrived on 12 March in Limerick city for burial, they were met at the train station ‘by a large concourse of people and conveyed to St Michael’s Church, where they rested overnight, the interment taking place this evening [13 March]’. See CE, 15 March 1923.