IRA Soldier (Lieutenant) Sean Deasy

IRA Soldier (Lieutenant) Sean Deasy of Carrigtwohill (Killacloyne Bridge near Carrigtwohill)

Date of incident: 6 Feb. 1922

Sources: Military Inquests (WO 35/89, TNA); Cork One Brigade (1963), Roll of Honour; Henchion (2009), 73-74; Gravestone Inscription, St Mary’s Cemetery, Carrigtwhohill. 

Note: A military record of this episode stated that Colonel-Commandant H. W. Higginson and two other British officers returning from Queenstown had been held up by two armed men at a broken-down railway bridge 2 miles west of Carrigtwohill on 6 February 1922. Shots had been exchanged and the armed civilians had run away. The civilian Michael Savage of Glounthaune had been fatally wounded, but he was not believed to have been implicated in the episode. See Military Inquests (WO 35/89, TNA). Also mortally wounded was IRA soldier Sean Deasy. He survived for a little more than a week but finally succumbed to his injuries on 15 February 1922. He was a member of the Fourth Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade. See Cork One Brigade (1963), Roll of Honour. A gravestone inscription on the Deasy family grave in St Mary’s Cemetery in Carrigtwohill records that he was interred in Midleton—at the St John the Baptist Cemetery there. See Henchion (2009), 73-74. The inscription on the family gravestone in Carrigtwohill indicates that Lieutenant Sean Deasy was a member of D Company of the Fourth (Midleton) Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade and died of wounds received while in action. This inscription also records that Deasy was interred in Midleton. See the previous entry.