Ten Volunteers to be reinterred
By Aengus O Snodaigh
With most attention being focused on the exhumation of Volunteer Tom Williams this week, the likelihood of a successful conclusion to a longer campaign to have the bodies of ten Volunteers reinterred along with their comrades has not received the same publicity.
The National Graves Association (NGA) has for decades, along with relatives, comrades and other republican groupings, lobbied for the exhumation and reburial of the bodies of the ten Tan War Volunteers who'd been hanged or executed by the British and buried in the grounds of Mountjoy Jail. The NGA is upbeat on progress in recent weeks and is confident the 26-County Department of Justice will authorise a move on the reburial soon.
The most famous of the Volunteers was the youthful Kevin Barry, who at the age of 18 was hanged on 1 November 1920 for his part in the ambush and shooting dead of six British soldiers in Dublin's Church Street.
Thomas Bryan was arrested after an aborted raid on an RIC tender in Drumcondra in Dublin and was hanged along with five others in Mountjoy Jail in official British government reprisals on 14 March 1921. Two other Volunteers, Frank Flood from Summerhill Parade in Dublin and another Dubliner, Bernard Ryan, were hanged for their part in that IRA operation. Three others were also hanged that day by English hangman John Ellis. One of them was Patrick Doyle, another Dubliner from St. Mary's Place. The other two were Thomas Whelan from Galway and Roscommon man Paddy Moran. Despite having an alibi, Moran, a member of the 1916 Jacob's garrison, and Whelan were sentenced to death for their role in the execution of the British Intelligence unit, the Cairo Gang in November 1920. Moran was so sure that he would be found not guilty, he refused a place on the escape from Mountjoy which occurred days before the hanging.
The next person hanged and buried in Mountjoy was Carlow man Thomas Traynor, who was tried and sentenced to death for shooting an auxiliary in Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street) in Dublin on 26 April 1921. Two months later, Tipperary men Patrick Maher and Edward Foley who had been sentenced to death for the shooting of an RIC sergeant during the rescue of Sean Hogan in Knocklong in 1919 were executed on 7 June 1921.
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