Beschreibung:

A 1919 Constabulary Medal (Ireland) awarded to Sergeant J. Curtin, Royal Irish Constabulary, for his gallantry during the defence of the Inch Police Post, Clare, on 20 July 1919: ‘We did our duty to the best of our ability, and without fear, we will continue to do so’. Eighteen months later, Curtin was mortally wounded in an I.R.A. ambush, led by Michael Breen, at Cratloe on 13 January 1921 Constabulary Medal (Ireland), 2nd type, ‘Reward of Merit Royal Irish Constabulary’ (Sergeant Jeremiah Curtin 60459. 1919) with integral top silver riband bar, minor edge bruising, good very fine £3,000-£4,000 Footnote Provenance: Medal illustrated in British Gallantry Awards, by P. E. Abbott and J. M. A. Tamplin Jeremiah Curtin was a Catholic, born in co. Cork in July 1877, who worked as a farmer before he joined the Royal Irish Constabulary on 16 October 1901. He served as a Constable (normally referred to by local Irish people as a ‘Peeler’) with the Clare Police from 23 April 1902. He was transferred to co. Roscommon in 1907, and in 1913 married Margaret, a local Roscommon girl 12 years younger than him, despite having been moved back to co. Clare in 1908. He was promoted Sergeant on 1 October 1918. The majority of Curtin’s seventeen years police experience at that time had been built up during the Edwardian era, when there was comparatively little crime in the rural areas of Ireland, and the R.I.C. did most of its work unarmed, except in the major ports and logistics hubs or the great industrial city of Belfast (Dublin was the responsibility of an entirely separate force, the Dublin Municipal Police). The government economised by allowing Curtin and his fellow Peelers to fire a grand total of 21 practise rounds a year, using miniature .22 calibre ammunition. At just under 10,000 men in 1913, the R.I.C. was large for a police force but small for an armed garrison. As close to 2,000 men were located at its central depot or tied up in Belfast, less than 8,000 R.I.C. men were scattered across rural Ireland in about 1,300 small detachments. These detachments lived in and worked out of police stations or posts. In large towns these buildings were often purpose-built and equipped with holding cells &c., but in the countryside many were small, simple row houses or country cottages rented by the government. In 1919 few were fortified, or had their windows and doors protected with steel shutters and loopholes. Fewer still were sited with defence in mind, but regardless of this they were all officially called Barracks, or Huts in the case of the smallest. In 1913, 87% of R.I.C. Barracks housed fewer than ten policemen, 41% held fewer than five. The Attack on Inch R.I.C. hut In early 1919, Sergeant Curtin commanded the Inch Police Hut, in co. Clare, where he and three constables lived and worked. At that time, six Peelers had been killed by republicans since the Sinn Fein Members of Parliament had made a unilateral declaration of Irish independence in January 1919 and an escalating pattern of violent attacks on the police and on Crown property began. By 13 January 1921, almost two years after that declaration, Curtin would become the 185th R.I.C. man to die as a result of republican attacks. The Clare Champion gave the following account of the July 1919 attack at Inch: ‘Inch and Connolly Police Huts were attacked by men armed with guns and revolvers on last Sunday morning (20 July 1919). At Inch it is stated that the Sergeant and four constables were awakened at 3:30 a.m. by the explosion of a bomb which had been thrown through a front window. [To note, the reporter mixed up the total number of police and the total number of constables – later, more accurate reports confirm that a total of four R.I.C. were in the hut when it was attacked. Also, at this stage of the war the republicans were generally using homemade blast bombs, improvised from gelignite sticks and fuses stolen from farms and quarries, rather than military hand grenades.] Two more bo