National Army Soldier Henry Quinn Jr

National Army Soldier Henry Quinn Jr (aged 17) of 43 Upper Wellington Street, Dublin (Passage West) [confused with ‘Thomas Lynch’ or ‘P. Lynch’] 

Date of incident: 8 Aug. 1922

Sources: CE, 17 Aug. 1922; MSPC/2D450 (Military Archives); Borgonovo (2011), 147, fn. 28; Keane (2017), 292-94, 416; http://www.irishmedals.ie/National-Army-Killed.php (accessed 30 June 2017).  

Note: A member of the 1st Cork Expeditionary Column of the National Army, Private Henry Quinn Jr (unmarried) had enlisted on 12 July 1922 and was sent to County Cork on the SS. Arvonia on 7 August. Upon landing at Passage West the following day, the party of troops to which Quinn was attached came under attack from the anti-Treaty IRA, and nine National Army Soldiers were killed, according to one report of 27 June 1924 in Quinn’s pension file. This same report indicated that there had been some confusion over the identification of Private Quinn’s body, and that by mistake he had been interred as ‘Private Thomas Lynch’. See MSPC/2D450 (Military Archives). This confusion may explain why the Cork Examiner of 17 August 1922 had reported that one ‘P. Lynch’, a member of the Dublin Guards Reserve, was among a group of National Army Soldiers ‘killed at Cork’ who had been buried on Monday, 14 August, in the National Army Plot at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. See CE, 17 Aug. 1922. It was Henry Quinn who was in fact buried with his comrades in Glasnevin. See http://www.irishmedals.ie/National-Army-Killed.php (accessed 30 June 2017).  

His mother Esther Quinn was awarded a gratuity or dependant’s allowance of £50 under the 1923 Army Pensions Act. Prior to joining the National Army, Quinn had been employed as a labourer and had contributed £1 per week ‘towards the upkeep of the home’. His mother was not in paid employment but cared for her three other children (ranging in age from 4 to 10 years old) in one room in a tenement house at 43 Upper Wellington Street in Dublin. Her husband Henry Quinn Sr ‘was out of employment through slackness of work for a considerable time, but recently got a post in the Army and Navy Veterans’ Club, Mountjoy Sq[uare], and now contributes £2 per week towards the support of the family’. See Esther Quinn’s Claim, undated, MSPC/2D450 (Military Archives).

At the time of the 1911 census Henry and Esther Quinn resided at house 169.2 Great Britain Street in the Rotunda district of Dublin. They were then the parents of three living children (four born); their eldest child Henry Jr. was then only 6 years old.