The upper room at O'Leary's Undertakers on Watercourse Road played host to an IRA ammunition factory. On a cold November morning volunteers from E Company were there when an explosion occurred.
Volunteers William Mulcahy, Denis Christopher Morrissey and Donal Kelleher were all employed at the premises as carpenters making coffins. Kelleher stepped outside to light a cigarette and as he enjoyed his smoke he was suddenly blown off his feet and thrown across the road.
Watercourse Road today. The scene of the explosion.
As Volunteers Mulcahy and Morrissey were moving grenades one of them exploded. The two men were severely wounded and clinging to life when an ambulance brought them to the North Infirmary. Both men passed away shortly after arrival there.
Mulcahy was 22 and from Thomas Davis Street. Morrissey was just 17 and from the Commons Road. Mulcahy had joined the IRA in 1919 while Morrissey first joined Fianna Eireann in 1916 before joining the IRA in 1918.
Also to die in tragic circumstances on that Winters day was 24 year old Volunteer Timothy Crowley from Dublin Hill. He worked as a fireman at the Railway Station on Glanmire Road and was killed when he fell from an engine in the railway tunnel there.
All three northside men were buried together in the Republican Plot in St Finbarrs Cemetery.
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