National Army Soldier Jeremiah Sullivan or O’Sullivan

National Army Soldier Jeremiah Sullivan or O’Sullivan (aged about 17) of Deanrock, Bishopstown, Cork city (Cork County Gaol [Cork Female Prison], Cork city)

Date of incident: 30 Oct. 1922

Sources: CE, 31 Oct., 1 Nov. 1922, 30 Oct. 1923; MSPC/2D384 (Military Archives); Keane (2017), 319-20, 418.

Note: Private Jeremiah Sullivan died of a bullet wound accidentally inflicted on 30 October 1922 by a fellow soldier of the National Army at the Cork Female Prison. His death in this manner was confirmed at the time by a military court of inquiry. The soldier who killed Sullivan, a comrade named Donovan, was ‘exonerated from any blame’. Private Sullivan was a native of Cork city and had joined the National Army only about three weeks earlier. In civilian life he had been a creamery worker. His mother Ellen Sullivan was awarded a gratuity of £60 in consideration of her son’s death. See CE, 31 Oct., 1 Nov. 1922; MSPC/2D384 (Military Archives).

Jeremiah Sullivan was in 1911 one of the nine children of the railway labourer James Sullivan and his wife Ellen. Eight of these nine children co-resided with their parents in that year at house 19 in Deanrock in the Cork suburb of Bishopstown. The children ranged in age from 1 to 23 and included five sons and three daughters. Jeremiah Sullivan (then aged 6) was the third youngest child still at home. Jeremiah Sullivan was said in his death notice to have been the fifth son of the late James Sullivan (or O’Sullivan) of Deanrock and was interred in the North Abbey Cemetery in Bishopstown. See CE, 1 Nov. 1922.