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Auction: 323 - The Numismatic Collector's Series Sale
Lot: 746

A 1916 'Casualty' Medal to Edward Keegan, Dublin Brigade, Irish Volunteers, Who Served During the 1916 Easter Rising with the South Dublin Union Garrison, and was Shot in the Lung Whilst Defending the Union Against the Sherwood Foresters
1916 Medal, reverse officially named '131 Edward L. Keegan.', with integral top riband bar, extremely fine

Edward L. Keegan, a clerk at The Irish Times, served during the 1916 Easter Rising with the 4th Battalion, Dublin Brigade, Irish Volunteers, in the South Dublin Union Garrison. He was wounded, shot in the lung, in the fighting whilst defending the Union against the 2/8th Sherwood Foresters, and spent months in hospital recovering. He was subsequently dismissed from The Irish Times for 'disloyalty'.

The Irish Times, a generally pro-Unionist publication, subsequently produced a book entitled the Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook detailing the events of the 1916 Easter Rising. In the words of Keegans's great-nephew, Declan Kiberd, who wrote the introduction to the 1998 reprint, 'my great-uncle Edward Keegan must have been highly amused to think of his former colleagues producing a handbook in memory of the event.' (see Lot ***)

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$4,250