#OnThisDay 1921 Bandboys John Cooper (pic), Charles Chapman & Matthew Carson of the Manchester Regiment Band were shot by the IRA in Cork. They 16, 17 & 18 respectively & the rank of ‘Boy”. They had left the Ballincollig barracks in uniform, were picked up by the IRA, taken across country to Ovens (where American Civil War Confederate General Patrick Cleburne was from) & shot. They were buried in the yard of an abandoned house. In August 1923, they were exhumed and reburied in Bandon workhouse grounds.
Again, their bodies exhumed in 1924 when Carson’s father, an Irishman who served for 20 years in the Royal Irish Rifles, finally got permission from the Irish Government to return their remains where they were buried in Ashton-under-Lyne.
