Civilian Mary Quirke

Civilian Mary Quirke of Davis Street, Mallow (Mallow)

Date of incident: night of 28-29 Sept. 1920

Sources: CE, 30 Sept., 2, 4 Oct., 10 Nov. 1920; American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, Evidence of Conditions, 917-18; O’Malley (1936, 1979), 195; Donnelly (2010), 185.

Note: A refugee in a Mallow graveyard like many other civilians on the night of the sacking of Mallow, Quirke became seriously ill and mentally deranged; she died about a month later. Her death occurred on 8 November 1920, as noted in the inscription on a family gravestone (plot no. 162) in St. Joseph’s Graveyard in Mallow. According to the 1911 census, Mary Quirke (then aged 49) was the wife of the victualler/butcher Michael Quirke of 106 Davis Street in Mallow. She had given birth to fourteen children (eleven still living in 1911), of whom four sons and five daughters were co-resident with their parents in that year. A widow at the time of her death, she was predeceased by her husband Michael, who had died in September 1914. Her own death notice appeared in the Cork Examiner on 10 November 1920.