Civilian Thomas McCarthy

Civilian Thomas McCarthy (aged 20) of Mallow (Kilconnor near Doneraile)

Date of incident: 10 July 1921

Sources: Death Certificate (Doneraile District, Union of Mallow), 10 July 1921; Military Reports, WO 35/89 (TNA); Compensation Registers, WO 35/163 (TNA); Richard Mulcahy Papers, P7/A/23 (UCDA).  

Note: A labourer, McCarthy received fatal gunshot wounds from crown forces and died of shock and haemorrhage on 10 July 1921. McCarthy was the victim of a military search party that fired on some twenty-five civilians near Kilconnor, 4 miles north-east of Doneraile, at about 10 p.m. that night. The soldiers reputedly ordered the civilians to halt, but they allegedly failed to do so, and McCarthy was mortally wounded. See Military Reports, WO 35/89, and Compensation Registers, WO 35/163 (TNA). Painting a different picture is a report in the Richard Mulcahy Papers, which reveals that on 10 July 1921, following an IRA attack in the area of the Sixth Battalion of the Cork No. 2 Brigade in which two Volunteers had fired upon some soldiers, killing one and seriously wounding another, there was an apparent reprisal. A party of crown forces fired into a crowd of boys and girls at a dance; the youth Thomas McCarthy was shot dead. See Richard Mulcahy Papers, P7/A/23 (UCDA).

The victim was probably Thomas McCarthy of Fair Street in Mallow, the only resident with that forename and surname of approximately the right age (in relation to his known age at death) in the 1901 and 1911 censuses. This Thomas McCarthy, born in about 1901, was aged 20 at death according to the Civil Registration of Deaths Index, 1864-1958, vol. 5, p. 265 (FHL Film Number 0101608). He was in 1901 the infant son of the London-born general labourer John McCarthy and his wife Margaret, who in that year had three daughters and two sons living with them and ranging in age from under 1 year to 6 years old. By 1911 these McCarthy parents had eight children (three daughters and five sons) co-residing with them (nine born), and ranging in age from 1 to 16. Thomas McCarthy, the second of their five sons, was aged 11 in that year. The McCarthys were Catholic.