Thomas Traynor was a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) hanged in Mountjoy Gaol during the Irish War of Independence.
Traynor was born on 27 May 1882 in Tullow, Co Carlow, and was 38 at the time of his death. He was an experienced soldier having been a member of the Boland's Mill garrison during the Easter Rising. After the Rising he was interned in Frongoch, Wakefield Jail and Mountjoy Gaol where he shared a cell with Seán Mac Eoin.
He worked as a boot maker and was married with ten children. At the time of his death the eldest was 18 years and the youngest 5 months. The eldest son, Frank, represented Ireland at the 1928 Summer Olympics, competing as a bantamweight boxer.
Traynor was captured during an ambush on Auxiliaries in Brunswick Street, Dublin, on 14 March 1921, and tried on 5 April at City Hall. He and a party of IRA volunteers were keeping watch outside a meeting at 144 Brunswick Street that included Seán MacBride. During the fight an IRA volunteer, Leo Fitzgerald, was killed, as were Constable James O'Farrell and Cadet Bernard Beard of the Dublin Metropolitan Police.
Traynor was one of a group of men hanged in Mountjoy Prison in the period 1920-1921, commonly referred to as The Forgotten Ten. In 2001 he and the other nine, including Kevin Barry, were exhumed from their graves in the prison and given a full State Funeral. He is now buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
In 1965 a statue was erected to Traynor in his native town of Tullow and The Ballad of Thomas Traynor was written in his memory.
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