1917

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the deaths of the people who died in Ireland in 1917. Some of these deaths were those of the released 1916 Rising prisoners, including packaging porter Christopher Brady, who was released due to ill-health and died at home from pneumonia. Other 1916 Rising prisoners, like carpenter Bernard Ward, died from prison-related illness. Trade unionist engineer William Partridge, who died two months after release from Lewes on medical grounds and whose 'death was due to prison treatment', became a union official after losing his railway job for protesting at the preferential promotion of Protestants. Meanwhile, schoolteacher Thomas Ashe was jailed in Mountjoy for a seditious speech, during which he and others went on hunger strike for political status. Ashe died due to 'heart failure and congestion of the lungs caused by being left to lie on the cold floor for fifty hours and then subjected to forcible feeding in his weak condition after hunger strike'. Police reported that Ashe's death 'evoked demonstrations of sympathy on the part of Nationalists' across Ireland and gave a fresh impetus to the Sinn Féin movement.