Great-grandson of RIC man asks that all 1916 dead be remembered

The great-grandson of the policeman killed in the gun battle that led to Thomas Kent’s execution has said it is important that all the victims of the Rising should be remembered.

Dubliner Ken Wolfe said he was very surprised when he first learned that his great-grandfather, RIC head constable William Rowe, had been killed in the Rising and that Kent had been executed for his murder.

“I think it is important to remember that the policemen who died in the Rising had families and that they were Irish too,” said Mr Wolfe, a professor at the UCD school of medicine and medical science.

Mr Wolfe said it was clear that Kent did not get a fair trial when he was court martialled so soon after the events at Bawnyard House, Castlelyons, in which his great-grandfather was killed.

“The policemen were obviously thrown into something far deeper than they would have expected in the normal course of duty and it was something they were not trained to deal with.”

Fermoy family home

Rowe was buried at Castlehyde near the family home at Fermoy. His widow, Sarah Jane Splaine, from Clonakilty, did not stay in Co Cork, but went to live first in Belfast and then Dublin.

The couple had five children, two boys and three girls. Mr Wolfe said his great- grandfather Willie and his brother Nels were taken into the Masonic School in Dublin as boarders. Willie spent his life in Dublin where he worked in the Royal Bank and lived in Clontarf.

Mr Wolfe said his great- grandfather was an orphan from Killanne, Co Wexford. He was a member of the Church of Ireland and the Masonic Order. Born in 1867, he joined the RIC at 20 and was assigned to the Cork East Riding district.

He was an inspector of weights and measures, based in King Street barracks in Cork city, for 10 years (1905- 1915), before being promoted to head constable and transferred to Fermoy on June 1st, 1915, less than a year before he was killed.

He married Splaine in April 1900. When he was killed in 1916, he was 49 and she was 51. Their five children were Joe (15), Dirl (13), Willie (11), Nels (10) and Daisy (8). While Splaine received a pension as a policeman’s widow, she did not receive compensation for his violent death.