Volunteer Michael Desmond

Volunteer Michael Desmond (aged about 22) of 17 Commissioners Buildings, Midleton (Clonmult)

Date of incident: 20 Feb. 1921 (dead in combat)

Sources: CE, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 Feb. 1921; II, 24, 25 Feb. 1921; Military Inquests,

WO 35/155A/53 (TNA); Seán O’Mahony Papers, MS 44,047/3 (NLI); Joseph Aherne’s WS 1367, 52-58 (BMH); Michael Kearney’s WS 1418, 21-23 (BMH); Patrick J. Whelan’s WS 1449, 51-58 (BMH); John P. O’Connell’s WS 1444, 15 (BMH); John Kelleher’s WS 1456, 23-24 (BMH); Patrick J. Higgins’s WS 1467, 3-7 (BMH); Diarmuid O’Leary’s WS 1589, 4-8 (BMH); Roll of Honour, Cork No. 1 Brigade (Cork Public Museum, Fitzgerald Park, Cork); Last Post (1976), 80; O’Neill (2006), 62, 96-100; Borgonovo (2007), 88; ‘The Irish Rebellion in the 6th Division Area’, Irish Sword, 27 (Spring 2010), 84-85, 143; Rebel Cork’s FS, 190-95; Sheehan (2011), 125; Midleton IRA Memorial, Main Street, Midleton; Cork No. 1 Brigade Memorial, Holy Rosary Cemetery, Midleton; Clonmult Ambush Site Memorial; Clonmult Village Memorial; http://midletonheritage.com/2015/12/11/few-families-suffered-as-we-did-war-of-independence-pension-files-associated-with-midleton/ (accessed 13 March 2016).    

Note: A member of B Company of the Fourth Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade, Volunteer Michael Desmond was killed in combat at Clonmult. His brother David Desmond was murdered after surrendering. See the notes on Clonmult and on David Desmond above. Volunteer Michael Desmond had supported his sister Bridget while he was alive; he had worked at Hallinan’s Flour Mills in Midleton, earning £2 8s. a week and contributing £2 per week ‘for the upkeep of his sister and mother’ (his mother died later in 1921 of a ‘broken heart’). See Garda Sergeant A. Beirne to Chief Superintendent, Cork city, 8 Feb. 1926, quoted at http://midletonheritage.com/2015/12/11/few-families-suffered-as-we-did-war-of-independence-pension-files-associated-with-midleton/ (accessed 13 March 2016).