Charlie Daly worked as a clerk in the Cork Railway Station. He was a member of the 2nd Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade and a lover of Irish sport and culture. He came from the Lough and was a familiar face at the local Fr O'Leary Hall where he attended Gaelic League classes and played with the College Rovers Hurling Club.
The railway in Cork was a hotbed of Republican activity. Some 100 railway workers were members of the Republican movement while many others were sympathetic to the cause of Irish freedom. At the stroke of midnight, March 1st 1921, Black and Tans raided Cork's main railway station with murderous intent.
Daly was with his fellow night workers in the parcel depot when a lorry of tans hurtled into the railway yard.
The crown forces smashed their way through the railway station, beating anyone who got in their way, smashing windows and upturning furniture. They rounded up the workers , including Daly, and ordered them to strip before beating them.
British troops in what is now the car park of Kent Station
Daly was singled out and taken away to the railway tunnel. There he was beaten to a pulp before he was shot dead. His body was left on the railway line for the morning mail train to destroy but when the rampaging crown forces left, Daly's co-workers went in search of him and retrieved his body from the tunnel.
The railway tunnel in 1922 with a free state solider standing on the right. And the same tunnel today.
Charlie Daly was buried in the Republican Plot at St Finbarrs Cemetery.
Daly was singled out and taken away to the railway tunnel. There he was beaten to a pulp before he was shot dead. His body was left on the railway line for the morning mail train to destroy but when the rampaging crown forces left, Daly's co-workers went in search of him and retrieved his body from the tunnel.
Charlie Daly was buried in the Republican Plot at St Finbarrs Cemetery.
Plaque at Kent Station unveiled on the centenary of his death in 2021
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