Thomas Traynor

Thomas Traynor (27 May 1882 – 25 April 1921) was a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) hanged in Mountjoy Prison during the Irish War of Independence.[1]

Thomas Traynor
Born(1882-05-27)27 May 1882
Tullow, County Carlow
Ireland
Died25 April 1921(1921-04-25) (aged 39)
Mountjoy Jail, Dublin
Ireland
NationalityIrish
OccupationCobbler
Known forExecuted IRA volunteer : One of The Forgotten Ten

Background

Traynor was born on 27 May 1882 in Tullow in County Carlow, Ireland,[2] and was 38 at the time of his death.[1] He was an experienced soldier having been a member of the Boland's Mill garrison during the Easter Rising, 1916. After the Rising he was interned in Frongoch, Wakefield Jail and Mountjoy Jail where he shared a cell with Seán Mac Eoin.[1]

He worked as a boot maker and was married with ten children. At the time of his death the eldest was 18 years and the youngest 5 months.[1] The eldest son, Frank, represented Ireland at the 1928 Summer Olympics, competing as a bantamweight boxer.[3]

Capture and execution

Traynor was captured during an ambush on Auxiliaries in Brunswick Street, Dublin, on 14 March 1921, and tried on 5 April at City Hall.[1] He was part of a party of IRA volunteers keeping watch outside a meeting at 144 Brunswick Street that included Seán MacBride. During the fight an IRA volunteer, Leo Fitzgerald, was killed, as were Constable James O'Farrell and Cadet Bernard Beard of the Dublin Metropolitan Police.[4] Traynor was reportedly badly beaten by members of the Igoe Gang.[1]

Mark Sturgis wrote:

Traynor, captured red handed with an attacking party when Auxiliaries were killed in Brnswick Street, was executed this morning. I don't think they will make much fuss as there is no sort of 'alibi' business this time - nor is he the usual 'youth', dear to 'The Freeman', as he is over 40 and has a pack of children, the poor deluded idiot.[5]

On the day following his death, Gilbert Potter, a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) District Inspector based in Cahir, County Tipperary, and being held for Traynor's safe treatment was executed in reprisal by members of the Third Tipperary Brigade. Another IRA volunteer, Jack Donnelly, captured with Traynor was sentenced to death but reprieved by the declaration of an impending truce in June 1921.[6]

  • In 1965 a statue was erected to Traynor in his native town of Tullow.[7]
  • The Ballad of Thomas Traynor was written in his memory.[7]

Reinterment

Traynor was one of a group of men hanged in Mountjoy Prison from 1920–21, commonly referred to as The Forgotten Ten. In 2001 he and the other nine, including Kevin Barry, were exhumed from their graves in the prison and given a full State Funeral. He is now buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in the capital city of Dublin.

gollark: See, that's very not ideal.
gollark: You don't have an accurate map, though, and you have devices which might randomly be moving around, or ones which drop out unexpectedly, or ones which can't hold much of a routing table due to limited RAM, or ones which are doing evil things.
gollark: It's not *just* a graph thing. If you had an accurate map of all the network connections it would be a relatively easy thing to route between nodes.
gollark: I heard that general mesh-network routing was extremely hard, so I ignored it and implemented something really stupid instead.
gollark: Without the ID thing, though.

References
  1. "Department of the Taoiseach: reinterment of 10 volunteers executed". Archived from the original on 2 December 2007. Retrieved 11 January 2017.
  2. "General Registrar's Office". IrishGenealogy.ie. Retrieved 24 April 2017.
  3. "Amateur Boxing - Frank Traynor". The-sports.org. Retrieved 15 April 2017.
  4. The Irish Times, Monday, 25 April 1921.
  5. The Last Days of Dublin Castle - The Diaries of Mark Sturgis. p. 162. ISBN 978-0-7165-2626-1.
  6. "Diarmuid Lynch weekly" (PDF). diarmuidlynch.weebly.com. Retrieved 15 April 2017.
  7. Tullow Museum website, tullowmuseum.com; accessed 15 April 2017.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.