Civilian Edward Meade

Civilian Edward Meade (aged about 44) of 4 Clarke’s Bridge, Cork city (Cork Military Barracks)

Date of incident: 23 Oct. 1920 (ex-soldier killed accidentally by crown forces)

Sources: Death Certificate, 23 Oct. 1920; CE, 25 Oct. 1920; CWN, 30 Oct. 1920.

Note: Meade was accidentally shot and mortally wounded inside Victoria Barracks when, as ‘he was passing a lorry full of armed soldiers’, one soldier’s rifle went off and a bullet struck him in the head. Incorrectly, it was said that he had died almost instantly. An ex-soldier who had participated in the Italian campaign during the Great War, Meade was employed in the barracks as a clerk; he was a nephew of W. J. Meade of the City Treasurer’s Office. See CE, 25 Oct. 1920

Born on Barrack Street in Cork and single, he had earlier resided (in 1911) as a lodger in house 8.2 in Mardyke Street and worked as a grocer’s assistant. Meade’s death certificate indicates that he was a ‘civilian subordinate’ at Victoria Barracks and that he was a resident of 4 Clarke’s Bridge and aged 48 at the time of his death. (To judge from the 1911 census, he was about 44 years old.) The cause of death was said to have been an accidental gunshot wound causing injury to the brain and the spine. He died in the care of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Montenotte, a fact suggesting that after having been fatally wounded, he survived a little longer than reported in the local press. See Death Certificate, 23 Oct. 1920.