Anti-Treaty Soldier (Section Commander) Patrick Pierce or Pearse

Anti-Treaty Soldier (Section Commander) Patrick Pierce or Pearse (aged about 25) of Cork Street, Kinsale (at or near Upton)

Date of incident: 4 Oct. 1922

Sources: CE, 10, 14 Oct. 1922, 5 Oct. 1923; FJ, 10, 11 Oct. 1922; Belfast Newsletter, 10 Oct. 1922; Derry Journal, 11 Oct. 1922; SS, 14 Oct. 1922; Leinster Leader, 14 Oct. 1922; Anglo-Celt, 14 Oct. 1922; Donegal News, 14 Oct. 1922; Ulster Herald, 14 Oct. 1922; MSPC/ DP1908 and MSPC/DP6907 (Military Archives); Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, 208; O’Farrell, Who’s Who, 219; Last Post (1976 ed.), 98; Keane (2017), 312, 418; http://www.irishmedals.ie/Anti-Treaty-Killed.php (accessed 13 July 2017). 

Note: Apart from the 1911 census, almost all other known sources spell the surname of the victim Patrick Pierce as Pearse; we will use the 1911 census spelling in what follows.

Patrick Pierce was killed at or near Upton on 4 October 1922 while fighting with the anti-Treaty IRA. O’Farrell asserted that Pierce had been shot dead in Free State custody. See O’Farrell, Who’s Who, 219. The Last Post too stated baldly in its brief entry on him that Patrick Pierce had been ‘murdered after being captured at Upton’. See Last Post (1976 ed.), 98 

This incident in which three Irregulars were killed was very widely reported. Typical of such reports was the account that appeared in the Freeman’s Journal on 10 October: ‘While troops of the Kinsale Command were operating in the Upton district of Cork, three Irregulars, who were fully armed, attempted to cut off the small [National] post. They were called on to halt and, refusing to do so, were fired on by the outposts and shot dead. One of the Irregulars was in uniform, and on the bodies being searched, 300 rounds of ammunition were found.’ See FJ, 10 Oct. 1922. This account simply parroted the official National Army report. It was far from the truth, which was that these three anti-Treaty IRA soldiers were killed while in National custody.  

Killed along with Pierce near Upton were Daniel O’Sullivan Jr and Michael Hayes. Pierce and O’Sullivan were both reportedly residents of Barrack Street in Kinsale. They were joined in death as in life. ‘The bodies of the two Kinsale men’, reported the Cork Examiner of 10 October 1922, ‘were removed on Thursday evening [5 October] to the [Kinsale] parish church and interred in the Republican Plot at Kinsale Abbey on Friday, [with] the funeral having been attended by a large number of people from the town and district.’ See CE, 10 oct. 1922. Margaret Pierce, the mother of Patrick Pierce, was awarded a partial-dependant’s allowance or gratuity of £112 10s. in 1934 under the Army Pensions Acts. See MSPC/DP1908 (Military Archives).

The pension file of Patrick Pierce indicates that he was born on 1 January 1897. He had been a member of the Kinsale Company of the Fifth Battalion of the Cork No. 3 Brigade. He had held the rank of section commander. His Volunteer or IRA service extended from 1916 until his death on 4 October 1922.

Surprising and disturbing testimony about Pierce’s death and those of his two comrades was given by former anti-Treaty IRA Commandant Tom Barry, who in a statement dated 26 April 1933 claimed that a National Army chaplain whom Barry named as ‘Jeff O’Connell’ had been in charge of the National Army troops at Upton on 4 October 1922, and that O’Connell had been responsible for the shooting of Pierce and his two IRA comrades (Daniel O’Sullivan and Michael Hayes Jr—not named by Barry) during the raid that day. Barry added that this ex-priest was now a high official in the Land Commission. In a letter to the Minister for Defence on 17 July 1957, the T.D. Sean MacCarthy also referred to the involvement of a Father O’Connell on the day of the Upton raid. Though O’Connell had reportedly been ‘silenced’ by the Catholic bishop of Cork, he still (in 1957) occupied a civil-service position in the Department of Defence and was (according to MacCarthy) ‘most active behind the scenes and not in our interests’. See MSPC/DP1908 (Military Archives). 

Patrick Pierce was in 1911 one of the six listed children of the Kinsale labourer Bartholomew (Bat) Pierce. These children (five sons and one daughter) ranged in age from 5 to 22. Patrick Pierce (then aged 14) was the fourth child residing at home with the father at 50 Barrack Street in Kinsale. Patrick had two older brothers and one older sister. Their mother was not listed in the 1911 census.