Tipperary In The Decade Of Revolution: Alderman Joseph Macdonagh - Tipperary's Forgotten Revolutionary Politician?

Like his well-known older brother Thomas, who was executed after the 1916 Rising, Joe MacDonagh left a widow and three young children when he died of medical complications following surgery on Christmas Day 1922.

The only Anti-Treaty TD elected in the Tipperary constituency in the June 1922 election, he developed a number of medical conditions after he was detained in Mountjoy prison in September 1922. He was no stranger to prison, having been imprisoned by the Dublin Castle authorities on four separate occasions during the previous five years of conflict. Elected as Sinn Féin TD for North Tipperary in December 1918, 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 book traces his trajectory from being a comfortable, newly married civil servant based in Thurles pre-1916 to one where he was a leader of the revolutionary Sinn Féin movement in both Tipperary as well as being a central figure on the national stage until his tragic and untimely death.