Volunteer Patrick Morrissey

Volunteer Patrick Morrissey (aged about 28) of Lady’s Bridge, Garryvoe (North Infirmary, Cork) 

Date of incident: 8 April 1920

Sources: Death Certificate (Cork No. 4 Urban District), 9 April 1920; CE, 9, 12 April 1920; IRA Roll of Honour, Cork No. 1 Brigade (Cork Museum, Fitzgerald Park, Cork); Midleton IRA Memorial, Main Street, Midleton; MSPC/DP 7951 (Military Archives). 

Note: 

Badly wounded on 8 April 1921 in an IRA raid on a house at Pilmore near Youghal, Morrissey died the next day of septicaemia and haemorrhage (resulting from gunshot wounds in the buttocks) at the North Infirmary in Cork city. Those who brought him to the hospital ‘declined to supply his name or address or any particulars concerning the date or the manner in which the wounds had been received’. Some personal details about him emerged at the coroner’s inquest, but the cover name of ‘John Walsh’ was used to conceal his real identity. See CE, 12 April 1920.

According to the census Patrick Morrissey was in 1901 the only child (then aged 10) of the farmer David Morrissey (aged 45) and his wife Mary (aged 40). They resided at house 11 in the townland of Upper Garryvoe, located on the southeast coast of Cork and to the east of Cloyne. According to a letter dated 23 November 1936 in his son’s pension file, David Morrissey was almost 70 years old when Patrick died of his wounds in Cork’s North Infirmary. The father had been ‘dependant entirely on his son for the working of his farm, from which he . . . eked out a living’, and he was ‘incapacitated by ill-health and old age’. See MSPC/DP 7951 (Military Archives).  

Patrick Morrissey appears under his real name and by date of death (9 April 1920) on the IRA Roll of Honour deposited at the Cork Public Museum in Fitzgerald Park in Cork city. His death certificate stated his age as 28, and this is confirmed by the family-gravestone inscription in the Old Mogeely Cemetery where he is buried. (Thanks to Joe Carroll for correcting mistakes in an earlier entry.)