National Army Soldier Thomas Mooney

National Army Soldier Thomas Mooney (aged 19) of 1 Spring Garden Street, Mountjoy, Dublin (North Mall, Cork city)

Date of incident: 12 Dec. 1922

Sources: Death Certificate (Cork Urban District No. 6, Union of Cork), 13 Dec. 1922; CE, 13, 14 Dec. 1922; FSS Cork Civil War Deaths; MSPC/2D296 (Military Archives); Keane (2017), 338, 420; http://www.irishmedals.ie/National-Army-Killed.php (accessed 28 July 2017).  

Note: The Cork Examiner of 13 December 1922 reported: ‘Late last night, as a military lorry was proceeding along the North Mall [in Cork], it was halted by a picket on duty in the district. Believing that he should have been recognised as a soldier, the driver did not pull up sufficiently quickly, with the result that the picket, seemingly having mistaken the occupants of the car, fired and wounded the driver of the lorry, a soldier named Kelly of Cobh, as well as another of the car’s occupants named Mooney, of Dublin. Both were wounded in the thigh and were promptly removed to the Mercy Hospital.’ Suffering from shock and haemorrhage, Thomas Mooney died of his wounds at the Mercy Hospital on 13 December. The other National Army soldier wounded in the same incident was in recovery. See CE, 14 Dec. 1922. Private Mooney was interred in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin on 15 December. See FSS Cork Civil War Deaths. 

Thomas Mooney was in 1911 one of the four children (two daughters and two sons) of the ‘car proprietor’ Patrick Mooney and his wife Mary, who lived in house 1.3 on Spring Garden Street (Mountjoy) in Dublin. All four of the children, ranging in age from 2 to 10, co-resided with their parents in that year. Thomas (then aged 8) was the second child and first son. 

Thomas Mooney joined the National Army at the beginning of August 1922. Aged about 19 by then, he served with the Mechanical Transport Corps in Cork city. He was traveling on the Cork quays when the mistaken shooting occurred. According to documents in his pension file, Mooney had been fatally wounded by a sentry after the driver of the lorry in which he and other soldiers were riding had ignored the sentry’s command to halt. In civilian life Mooney had been a hackney-car driver. His father Patrick was a ‘vanman’. His mother Mary Mooney was an invalid. She received a dependant’s allowance of 14s. a week from 1 August 1922 to 8 March 1924. She was then awarded a gratuity of £50. She and her husband had three surviving children. See MSPC/2D296 (Military Archives).