Anti-Treaty Soldier Eugene Crowley

Anti-Treaty Soldier Eugene Crowley of Ballyvourney (Grand Parade, Cork city)

Date of incident: 7 April 1923

Sources: Evening Herald, 9 April 1923; CE, 10, 14 April 1923, 11, 14 April 1924; II, 10 April 1923; FJ, 10 April 1923.

Note: ‘On the 7th inst. [7 April 1922] two civilians attempted to disarm an officer [of the National Army] in a shop on the [Grand] Parade, Cork. The officer wounded and captured one of his assailants named Crowley. The other man escaped.’ See II, 10 April 1923. This brief account also appeared verbatim in the Cork Examiner, the Evening Herald, and the Freeman’s Journal. A week after the incident, the Cork Examiner announced the death of Eugene Crowley on 13 April 1922 at St Patrick’s Hospital in Cork city. The victim was the son of the late Timothy Crowley and his wife Bridget Crowley ‘of Ballyvourney’. Eugene Crowley was interred in Ballyvourney on Sunday, 15 April 1922. See CE, 14 April 1922. Crowley had served as the intelligence officer of the Eighth Battalion of the (anti-Treaty) Cork No. 1 Brigade, according to memorial notices published to mark the first anniversary of his death. See CE, 11, 14 April 1924.

Eugene Crowley was in 1901 one of the eight children of the tailor Timothy Crowley and his wife Bridget. These eight children (five sons and three daughters, ranging in age from only several months to 10 years old) co-resided in that year with their parents in house 13 at Shevereagh in Slievereagh parish in the Ballyvourney district. Eugene Crowley (then aged 6) was the fourth of the five sons and had three younger sisters. Also living in the household in that year was another tailor named Denis O’Shea, described as a servant and aged 18.