Help with 1916 project

patsman07

I am researching Peter Clifford, an Irish Volunteer who made it to the GPO during Easter Week. After receiving orders there he tried to leave Dublin on Wednesday. At some point between on or near the Howth Road, he witnessed a boy being shot dead and helped to move the body off the street. I am trying to ascertain the identity of the fatality by using this list: http://static.rasset.ie/documents/radio1/joe-duffys-list-of-children-killed-in-1916-rising.pdf
We know that this event happened on Wednesday and that the victim was male, so we can rule out most of the list and are left with numbers 2, 17, 20, 26, 29 and 36. I know it will probably be impossible to find out for certain who the boy in question was, but I feel my using the address' we can say to a reasonable level of probability who the victim was. Numbers 2 and 17 for example are from the area around Stephens Green and more than likely were killed in that area.

Peter Clifford mentions that this incident happened at a bandstand, does anyone know where exactly this may have been?

Peter Clifford's testimony can be found here, relevant paragraph is on pg9:
http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS0231.pdf#page=1

pinkypinky

Have you looked at Joe Duffy's book on the children killed in the rising? He may have done the work for you already.

tabbey

Reading Clifford's witness statement, the places and routes he says he travelled on foot do not add up. As he was sixteen (or fifteen) at the time, and from Dundalk, he probably did not know Dublin, and had not a clue where he was.
Making a statement thirty or forty years later, his memory would have played tricks with him. While the death of a boy would be a more vivid memory, I suspect that locations were less reliable.
I cannot think of any public bandstand in the vicinity of the Howth Road, Fairview park was only reclaimed over subsequent decades. I perused the early 1900s 25" map for the area, and did not notice any bandstand. Perhaps there was some monument that he remembered as a bandstand, the five lamps seems improbable, but memory fades over the decades.

tabbey

Incidently, we have no evidence that the boy who was shot, died at the time.

Clifford only said he was asked to help carry the boy to the Chemist's shop. He did not say body or remains, so the boy may well have been alive at the time.
That does not preclude the possibility of death in the following hours or days.

kildarejohn

tabbey wrote: »

I cannot think of any public bandstand in the vicinity of the Howth Road, Fairview park was only reclaimed over subsequent decades. I perused the early 1900s 25" map for the area, and did not notice any bandstand.

I looked at the 25" map and see the initials BS on the road on city side of Ballybough Bridge at junction with Poplar Row. So this is a possible location (cant think what else BS could stand for)

kildarejohn

kildarejohn wrote: »

I looked at the 25" map and see the initials BS on the road on city side of Ballybough Bridge at junction with Poplar Row. So this is a possible location (cant think what else BS could stand for)

Correcting my previous post - on list of OS abbreviations, BS stands for "Boundary Stone", and the map shows the Ward Boundary here, so BS is a stone marker, not a band stand. Sorry if I sent anyone on wrong track.

BoltzmannBrain

Interesting stuff!