National Army Soldier Thomas Conway

National Army Soldier Thomas Conway (aged 30) of 38 St Augustine Street, Usher’s Quay, Dublin (Grand Parade, Cork city)

Date of incident: 2 Sept. 1922

Sources: CE, 4, 6 Sept. 1922; Evening Herald, 4, 5, 6 Sept. 1922; FJ, 4, 7 Sept. 1922; FSS Cork Civil War Deaths; MSPC/2D172 (Military Archives); Boyne (2015), 177; Keane (2017), 302-3, 417; http://www.irishmedals.ie/National-Army-Killed.php (accessed 5 July 2017).

Note: Private Thomas Conway was one of two National Army Soldiers killed on Saturday, 2 September 1922, when members of the anti-Treaty IRA, using machine guns and rifles, opened fire from Sullivan’s Quay on Free State forces stationed at the Cork City Club on the Grand Parade. Fourteen National Army Soldiers were wounded in this attack. All the killed and wounded were said to be members of the Curragh Reserve of the National Army. The National Army Soldiers ‘had been sitting or standing in groups on the Grand Parade, outside the club premises, when the officer in charge came out and told them to fall in and go inside to draw their pay’. It was while they were on parade without arms between the club and the National Monument that they were fired upon. See CE, 4 Sept. 1922. 

‘Immediately at the first burst of firing’, declared a special Cork correspondent of the Freeman’s Journal, Volunteer Conway was shot dead, having received bullets through the head and heart. The other [wounded] men were lying around in all directions. One of those I saw, and his thigh was practically severed. All the others were wounded about the legs and bodies.’ See FJ, 4 Sept. 1922. Two of the wounded soldiers—Privates James McCann and James Conway—died later. (See the entries for them below.)  

Private Conway was interred in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin on Tuesday, 5 September, along with the bodies of Privates Nicholas Ward and Joseph Hudson. See Evening Herald, 5 Sept. 1922; CE, 6 Sept. 1922.

Private Conway had served in the British army during the Great War. According to his brother Robert, he had received a pension or ‘war gratuity’ after he was demobilised at its end. Following his wartime service, he lived with his older brother Robert, his sister-in-law Elizabeth, and their family of eight children, who ranged in age from 4 months to 14 years old in February 1924. Robert Conway was a slater and tiler by trade and earned an average of £3 a week. He had also employed his brother Thomas, who in turn had contributed 30s. per week towards board and lodging until he joined the National Army. Though it was admitted that Robert Conway was in poor financial condition, DMP Inspector Denis Long maintained that his circumstances were ‘no worse than people of his class generally who reside in tenements. He was only partially dependent on [the] deceased, and I am of opinion that the degree of dependency was slight.’ See Dublin Metropolitan Police Report to Army Pensions Department, 24 Feb. 1924, MSPC/2D172 (Military Archives). No pension award was made to Robert Conway.

In 1901 Thomas Conway was one of the seven co-resident children of the ‘house slater’ Robert Conway and his wife Bridget of house 10.7 in Francis Street off Merchants Quay in Dublin. They were then the parents of five sons and two daughters still at home and ranging in age from 2 to 15. Thomas, their fourth son, was then aged 9. His brother Robert had already left the family home. He was probably the eldest of six sons.