Launch of biography of Tipperary TD Joe MacDonagh draws a capacity crowd

A capacity crowd attended the launch of the new biography of Alderman Joseph MacDonagh, TD, on Culture night, Friday, September 23, in the Thomas MacDonagh museum in Cloughjordan.

Joe MacDonagh’s well-known older brother Thomas was executed after the 1916 Rising, and the book traces MacDonagh’s roles in the Independence movement from 1916 until his untimely death on Christmas Day, 1922, days after he was released from Mountjoy prison for medical treatment.

Joe MacDonagh was the Sinn Féin TD for North Tipperary from the December 1918 election until his tragic death during the bleakest period of the Civil War.

The launch was the opening event of the first Joe MacDonagh weekend which was held at the Thomas MacDonagh museum in Cloughjordan.

The museum building was the home of the MacDonagh family, the building where Joe MacDonagh grew up, and a most appropriate setting for the event.

Kilruane MacDonagh’s GAA club, whose senior hurling team made it through to the county semi-finals at the weekend, is so named in honour of the MacDonaghs.

Having taken the anti-Treaty side at the beginning of 1922, Joe MacDonagh was re-elected for the Tipperary constituency in June 1922.

An able publicist for the anti-Treaty cause, he was arrested by the Provisional Government headed by his one-time business partner William T Cosgrave and detained in Mountjoy prison in September 1922 after the outbreak of the Civil War.

He had already been imprisoned by the Dublin Castle authorities on four separate occasions during the previous years of conflict.

He led high profile prison protests and participated personally in three hungers strikes – the first of which resulted in the death of Thomas Ashe in 1917.

A political figure rather than an IRA man, the contribution of Joe MacDonagh to Ireland’s struggle for independence and indeed his short life story - he was 38 when he died - are largely forgotten.

This biography traces the trajectory of the newly married civil servant based in Thurles before the 1916 Rising, to one where he was a key figure in shaping the revolutionary Sinn Féin movement and political events until his tragic and untimely death.

This first biography of Joe MacDonagh has been researched and written by Gerard Shannon, an historian from Skerries in north county Dublin. Gerard has an MA in History from the DCU School of History and Geography.

In 2017, he organised the Centenary Weekend to mark the tragic death of Muriel MacDonagh in Skerries, county Dublin. Muriel was widow of executed Easter Rising leader Thomas MacDonagh, and sister-in law of Joe. Hence his interest in and connection with the MacDonagh family, originally from Cloughjordan in Tipperary.

Gerard Shannon will deliver a lecture on Joe MacDonagh’s place in Irish history at another appropriate venue - the Pearse Museum in Rathfarnham in Dublin - on November 12 at 2.30 pm.

This book is another publication under the Tipperary in the Decade of Revolution banner and Centenary Booklet and Biography series editor Seán Hogan.

The book is available at the Thomas MacDonagh museum in Cloughjordan, at Easons and The Bookshop in Nenagh and at Bookworm and Easons in Thurles, or directly from sean.hogan.historian@gmail.com