Anti-Treaty Soldier Jeremiah Long

Anti-Treaty Soldier Jeremiah Long (aged 35) of 109 Industry Street, Cork city (near Myrtleville in Crosshaven district)

Date of incident: 24 Sept. 1922

Sources: CE, 25, 26, 27 Sept. 1922; List of IRA Interments (Boole Library, UCC); O’Farrell, Who’s Who, 216; Cork One Brigade (1963), Roll of Honour; Last Post (1976 ed.), 98; Keane (2017), 309, 417.

Note: Jeremiah Long was fatally injured on Sunday, 24 September 1922, in a motorcycle accident near Myrtleville while traveling in the pillion of the cycle. Close to Myrtleville ‘something went wrong and Mr Long was thrown off the machine. His head struck the ground or a wall and was badly crushed.’ See CE, 25 Sept. 1922. He was brought to the South Infirmary in Cork city, but he died at 7:10 p.m. the same evening. See CE, 26 Sept. 1922.

At the inquest the victim’s brother Matthew F. Long of 72 Grand Parade identified the body. He stated that his dead brother ‘was an expert motorcyclist but incautious. He was also accustomed to pillion riding.’ Matthew Long expressed his belief that blame did not attach ‘to anybody in the case’. The evidence from Denis Callanan of 45 Lough Road in the city, who had been riding with Jeremiah Long, made clear that he and Long had been in the midst of returning to their ‘camp’ at Myrtleville, where they were both apparently IRA soldiers. Jeremiah Long, according to Callanan, had been sitting ‘sideways at the back’ of the motorcycle ‘on a pillow which was not strapped to the bicycle [i.e., motorcycle]. After they had rounded a corner, they encountered ‘a bump on the road’, and after Callanan had gone 40 or 50 yards, he ‘missed the deceased, and on looking round, found that the deceased had fallen off. He went back and found the pillow on which [the] deceased had been sitting, and further back he saw Mr Long on the road breathing heavily. He moved him to a patch of grass on the side of the road’, but quickly saw that the victim ‘made no response’. Called as another witness, the medical doctor E. V. Cantillon declared:

‘The case was hopeless from the start. Deceased was unconscious from the time witness saw him until he died.’ He had incurred a fatal fracture to the base of the skull. See CE, 26 Sept. 1922. Jeremiah Long was buried in the Republican Plot in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery. See Last Post (1976 ed.), 98. His name appears on a list of interments associated with the unveiling of an IRA monument in the early 1960s. See List of IRA Interments (Boole Library, UCC).

A death notice appearing in the Cork Examiner of 27 September 1922 stated that Jeremiah Long was the second son of Mathew and Ellen Long of Industry Street in Cork city. See CE, 27 Sept. 1922.