National Army Soldier (Sergeant) James Marum Jr

National Army Soldier (Sergeant) James Marum Jr (aged 29) of Waltham Terrace, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Moneycleare near Ballinakill, Queen’s County, and 12 Prince of Wales Terrace, Bray, Co. Wicklow (Charleville)

Date of incident: 21 Oct. 1922

Sources: Death Certificate (Cork Urban District No. 6, Union of Cork), 23 Oct. 1922 (registered 14 Dec. 1922); Evening Herald, 27 Oct. 1922; FJ, 28 Oct. 1922; MSPC/2D218 (Military Archives); Keane (2017), 317,426; http://www.irishmedals.ie/National-Army-Killed.php (accessed 2 Aug. 2017); Langton (2019), 236.

Note: Sergeant James Marum Jr was mortally wounded in an encounter between National troops and Irregulars at Charleville on 21 October 1922. According to one account, he was shot through the heart and lived for only three hours. See MSPC/2D218 (Military Archives). But his death certificate makes clear that Marum was not killed instantaneously and survived for two days before succumbing to his injuries (fracture of femure, internal haemorrhage, and finally cardiac failure) at the Mercy Hospital in Cork city on 23 October. See Death Certificate (Cork Urban District No. 6, Union of Cork), 23 Oct. 1922 (registered 14 Dec. 1922). 

Pension forms signed by the Pensions Department of the Ministry of Defence on 20 March 1924 recorded that Sergeant Marum had ‘died as a result of gunshot wounds rec[eiv]ed at Charleville’. See MSPC/2D218 (Military Archives).

Prior to joining the National Army in May 1922 (one report put his enlistment as late as August 1922), Marum had been a gardener and an agricultural labourer in civilian life. But according to his mother Ellen Marum, he had also spent a long period (eleven-and-a-half years) serving in the British army, for part of the time as a sergeant in the Machine Gun Corps. He was also a gunner in the National Army. He was buried with military honours on 27 October 1922 in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. ‘I got his shroud of honour’, his mother declared in her claim of 23 April 1925. ‘I mean the Flag.’ See MSPC/2D218. For his burial in Glasnevin, see also Evening Herald, 27 Oct. 1922; FJ, 28 Oct. 1922 

James Marum Jr was in 1911 one of the seven living children (ten born) of the agricultural labourer James Marum Sr and his wife Ellen. Only three of these children (two sons and a daughter) still co-resided with their parents in that year at Moneycleare near Ballinakill, and James Jr was no longer living at home.

But his mother’s residence there was later clearly identified in her application to the Army Pensions Board after his death. She had been heavily dependent on her deceased son, who before joining the National Army had contributed £1 a week from his weekly wages of 30s. as a farm labourer to supporting his mother and father. She was awarded a gratuity of £40. To judge from the Civic Guard report of 18 May 1925, she was highly deserving of this sum. She was then over 60 years old (her husband was over 70); she lived in a labourer’s cottage (with 1 acre of land attached), was an invalid, and was thus unable to work. Her husband’s condition was no better—perhaps even worse. Of their children still living, one daughter was a domestic servant in Dublin, and one son was a casual agricultural labourer. Sergeant Marum also left a wife, Isabella (Bella) Marum, resident in 1924 at 12 Prince of Wales Terrace in Bray, Co. Wicklow. There were two children born to the couple but tragically both had died by 1924. Bella Marum was receiving a weekly widow’s pension of 17s. 6d. in April 1925. She claimed to have suffered a ‘nervous break down’ from the shock sustained over her husband’s death. See MSPC/2D218.