- Pierce McCan
Pierce McCancite web |url=http://oireachtas.ie/members-hist/default.asp?housetype=0&HouseNum=1&MemberID=699&ConstID=168|title=Pierce McCan|work=Oireachtas Members Database |accessdate=2008-03-29] (2 August 1882 – 6 March 1919) was an Irish
Sinn Féin politician.Career
He was born in
County Wexford . He was a founder member of Sinn Féin in 1905. He joined the Gaelic League in 1909 and was a member of theIrish Volunteers from 1914 onwards. He was arrested after theEaster Rising and imprisoned in Reading gaol. He was selected as aSinn Féin candidate for the Tipperary East constituency in the forthcoming 1918 general election. He was arrested in May 1918 under the premise of the so-called German Plot and while incarcerated was elected as a Sinn Féin MP for Tipperary East. [cite web |url=http://electionsireland.org/candidate.cfm?ID=1073|title=Pierce McCan|work=ElectionsIreland.org |accessdate=2008-02-01] In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs refused to recognise theParliament of the United Kingdom and instead assembled in theMansion House, Dublin as a revolutionary parliament called Dáil Éireann. McCan never sat in Dáil Éireann and died in prison in 1919, a victim of the influenza epidemic of that year.Tribute on death
On 10 April 1919,
Cathal Brugha told theFirst Dáil : "Before I formally move the motion, as I have mentioned the name of Pierce McCan, I would ask the Members of the Dáil to stand up as a mark of our respect to the first man of our body to die for Ireland, and of our sympathy with his relatives. We are sure that their sorrow is lightened by the fact that his death was for the cause for which he would have lived, and that his memory will ever be cherished in the hearts of the comrades who knew him, and will be honoured by succeeding generations of his countrymen with that of the other martyrs of our holy cause." [ [http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/DT/D.F.O.191904100004.html Debates 10 April 1919] ]References
ources
* Robert Brennan (1950), "Allegiance".
* "Memoirs of Senator Joseph Connolly: A Founder of Modern Ireland", J. Anthony Gaughan (ed), 1996.
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