National Army Soldier Thomas Manning

National Army Soldier Thomas Manning (aged 26) of 2 Castle Street, Macroom (Carrigaphooca Bridge near Macroom)

Date of incident: 16 Sept. 1922

Sources: Death Certificate (Slieveragh District, Union of Macroom), 16 Sept. 1922; CE, 18, 22 Sept. 1922; FJ, 18, 19, 20, 21 Sept. 1922; Evening Herald, 18, 20 Sept. 1922; Belfast Newsletter, 18 Sept. 1922; Derry Journal, 20 Sept. 1922; II, 21 Sept. 1922; SS, 23 Sept. 1922; Kilkenny People, 23 Sept. 1922; Longford Leader, 23 Sept. 1922; Connaught Telegraph, 23 Sept. 1922; Connacht Tribune, 23 Sept. 1922; Ulster Herald, 23 Sept. 1922; Fermanagh Herald, 23 Sept. 1922; Strabane Chronicle, 23 Sept. 1922; MSPC/2D107 (Military Archives); O’Farrell, Who’s Who, 207; Boyne (2015), 185-86; Keane (2017), 99-101, 306, 394; http://www.irishmedals.ie/National-Army-Killed.php (accessed 7 July 2017); Carrigaphooca Bridge Memorial.

Note: Six soldiers of the National Army including Thomas Manning were killed on the spot and a seventh was mortally wounded when a powerful road mine exploded as they were in the process of trying to disable and remove it a short distance from Carrigaphooca Bridge near Macroom on Saturday, 16 September 1922. See CE, 18 Sept. 1922; http://www.irishmedals.ie/National-Army-Killed.php (accessed 7 July 2017).

Thomas Manning was in 1911 one of the six living children (nine born) of farmer Charles Manning and his shopkeeper wife Ellen. All six of these children (three sons and three daughters), ranging in age from 8 to 22, co-resided with them at house 2 in Castle Street in Macroom in that year. Thomas (then aged 14) was their middle son.                                                                          

During the War of Independence Thomas Manning was a member of the Macroom Company of the Seventh Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade under the command of Daniel Corkery. He had become a Volunteer in 1918 and remained one through the Truce of 11 July 1921. Manning later joined the 32nd Battalion of the National Army under Commandant Peadar O’Conlon. In civilian life he had been a tailor for five years before his death, earning £2 a week and contributing £1 to the support of his family until he joined the National Army, when his contribution declined to 10s. weekly. His father Charles Manning and his sister Mary Anne Manning both made unsuccessful pension applications.

Charles Manning had once been a substantial farmer, according to a report submitted decades later, but in 1918 the family’s 119-acre farm had been transferred to his daughter Ellen upon her marriage to Peter White. (The farm had originally belonged to her mother and she had willed it to Ellen Manning before the marriage.) Years earlier (in 1898), her father Charles had sold another holding at nearby Hanover Hall and gone to live on Castle Street in Macroom. His daughter Mary Anne had agreed to the transfer of the 119-acre farm to her brother-in-law Peter White in 1918, but subject to a right of maintenance and free lodging and also subject to the payment of £150 to her when she reached the age of 27 (she did so in 1928). She was 53 years old in 1954. The £150 was long gone. See Report on Amended Claim of Miss Mary Anne Manning, 22 Dec. 1954, MSPC/2D107 (Military Archives). Owing to these facts, all pension claims in the 1920s and later years were disallowed.