Richard Coleman was captain of the Swords Company in the 5th Battalion of the Dublin Brigade in the Irish Volunteers. After mobilising in Saucerstown, Co. Dublin, at the beginning of the Easter Rising, he was detailed to the GPO and later to the Mendicity Institute. He served with the 1st Battalion under Sean Heuston until their surrender on Wednesday, 26th April. After a period of internment in Dartmoor and Lewes, he travelled to Co. Clare to assist in Éamon de Valera’s by-election campaign. Whilst there he took part in a Volunteers drill and was arrested. Along with Thomas Ashe, he participated in a hunger strike in Mountjoy prison and was released shortly after Ashe’s death. He was imprisoned again in relation to the “German plot” and sent to Usk prison in Wales, where he contracted pneumonia and died in December 1918.
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