The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
This October marks the one hundredth anniversary of the re-internments of five young men from County Clare who were executed by the Irish Free State for their part in anti-Treaty activities during the Irish Civil War. Cornelius McMahon and Patrick Hennessy from Clooney had been executed in Limerick Gaol on January 20, 1923 and their remains buried in the grounds of Castle Barracks, Limerick. Patrick Mahoney, Christopher Quinn and William Shaughnessy, from Ennis, had been executed on May 2, 1923 at the Home Barracks in Ennis and buried there. In the early autumn of 1924, The Free State government finally decided to release the bodies of executed anti-Treaty activists for re-burial in consecrated ground. Families were required to make a formal application for the return of their loved ones and the bodies were eventually released on October 28. The Saturday Record of November 1, 1924 states that the bodies of the Ennis volunteers were re-claimed by their families on the …
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