WHYTE'S THE ECLECTIC COLLECTOR SATURDAY & SUNDAY 25 & 26 July 2020

92 History 137 1916 Rising Service Medal to Commandant Thomas Ashe, Fingal Battalion, Irish Volunteers. Posthumous award with official inscription 235/THOMAS ASHE. In box of issue. A sought after decoration to the commander responsible for the only Irish Volunteers victory in the Rising. Presented in 1941 to Nora Ashe, sister of Thomas Ashe; Thence by descent to the previous owner; Whyte’s, 14 November 2009, lot 205; Private collection. ‘Birth of a Nation-the Evolution of Irish Nationhood, 1641-1916’, County Louth Museum, Dundalk, March 2015 to December 2016. Condition: Very good. All posthumously awarded medals were numbered and officially inscribed with name and number. Next in importance only to the 1916 medals awarded to the Proclamation signatories. Thomas Patrick Ashe was born in 1885 at Lispole, Co. Kerry. He became a teacher and an active member of the Gaelic League and the Irish Republican Brotherhood and was a founding member of the Irish Volunteers. In the 1916 Rising he commanded the I.V. Fingal Battalion which he led into battle with British forces at Ashbourne, Co. Meath, where he gained a significant victory over a superior force. On the surrender of the Irish Volunteers Ashe was imprisoned in England but was not released under the general amnesty in June 1917. On return to Ireland he immediately became involved in the new struggle for independence. In August Thomas Ashe was arrested for sedition and at a court martial in September, which his friend Michael Collins described as ‘farcical’ (see lot 215), he was sentenced to one year’s hard labour. He was sent to Mountjoy prison where he and other prisoners started a hunger strike as part of a campaign to be treated as prisoners of war rather than as common criminals. The authorities reacted, as they had against the pre war Suffragettes, by force feeding the hunger strikers. Tragically the force feeding was badly administered to Ashe and he died from its effects on 25 September 1917. He was the first Irish political prisoner to die on hunger strike.” Estimate €30000-€50000 (approx £27,270-£45,450) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot 137