Marking the tragic death of young men

Centenary of the passing of Joe MacDonagh and Tom Walsh

There was a deep and emotional poignancy to the gesture of newly-crowned senior hurling county champions Kilruane MacDonaghs as they paid tribute to Dillon Quirke after their replay victory over Kildangan in Thurles on October 30.

The very name of the GAA club itself, MacDonaghs, is steeped in tragedy. Joseph, the youngest of the MacDonagh family from Cloughjordan, after whom the club is named, died in tragic circumstances exactly 100 years ago this year on December 25, 1922. Aged 37, he had just been released from prison for medical treatment, but developed complications and died on Christmas Day, leaving his wife May with three young children.

Youngest brother of the more famous executed 1916 leader Thomas, Joe MacDonagh had been the Sinn Féin TD for North Tipperary since 1918. He lost his civil service job in Thurles because of his brother’s activities in 1916, but became a central figure in the development of the Sinn Féin movement and the underground Government, which challenged the British Empire for control of Ireland in those turbulent years. Arrested and imprisoned on several occasions by the Dublin Castle authorities, Joe MacDonagh was a veteran of three hunger strikes during the periods he had been in jail between 1918 and 1921.

Joe MacDonagh took the Anti-Treaty side and was arrested early in the Civil War, which broke out in June 1922. In deteriorating health, in spite of his appeals to his one-time business partner WT Cosgrave, who was President of the new Provisional Government, his release for treatment was delayed until December 1922.

Joe MacDonagh had seen first-hand the enormity of the tragic loss for his sister-in-law, Thomas’s widow, Muriel and her two children with his execution in 1916. Joe was deeply involved in the aftermath when Muriel herself died tragically in July 1917, orphaning that couple’s children.

Joe MacDonagh’s full story is told in a new biography published by the Tipperary in the Decade of Revolution Group. This was launched recently at the MacDonagh Museum in Cloughjordan and is available in the museum and the Sheila na Gig Bookshop, as well as Austin’s and Murphy’s stores in Cloughjordan and Sullivan’s in Ardcroney. It is also available at Eason and The Bookshop in Nenagh, and Eason and The Bookworm in Thurles.

REMEMBRANCE EVENTS

The author of the biography, Gerard Shannon, will present a lecture on Joe MacDonagh’s life at 2.30pm on Saturday afternoon, November 12, in St Enda’s Museum in Rathfarmham, Dublin – an appropriate venue, as Joe MacDonagh was headmaster at Patrick Pearse’s innovative school there in 1917.

Cloughjordan Heritage Group will also hold an event in Ardcroney on Friday, November 17, to mark the centenary of the tragic death of another young Kilruane man, 24-year-old Tom Walsh. He was an officer in the National Army, who died from a gunshot wound received in a brief engagement with Anti-Treaty IRA forces near Newport in November 1922.

The gesture of Kilruane MacDonaghs, the Tipperary senior hurling county champions, in marking the tragic death of one young man is entirely appropriate, and brings to mind again the tragic deaths 100 years ago of the two young Kilruane men who helped shape this country, and the need for us to mark the upcoming centenaries of Tom Walsh and Joe MacDonagh’s deaths.