Constable Charles Mc Gee a young man in his early twenties from Inishbofin Island who was a member of the Royal Irish Costabulary (RIC) and who was killed at Castlebellingham, County Louth on Easter Monday 1916 on the first day of the Easter Rising.
He cycled into the village of Castlebellingham that day where he found a group of Irish Volunteers under the command of Belfast Engineer, Seán Mac Entee who was later a T.D. and a Government Minister in a number of Fianna Fáil governments. A number of cars had been commandeered and the Irish Volunteers were about to move off in those cars.
There were a few policemen held prisoner by this group of Irish Volunteers. Mac Entee was getting into one of the cars and as he did so at least two shots rang out. Lieutenant Dunville was shot but not fatally. Charles Mc Gee was shot and died at the scene. Mc Entee should have not got into the car until the others were already in the car.
The group he was in charge of had already proved to be undisciplined and had discharged a gun that almost shot one of their own. Seán Mc Entees daughter, Maire Mac An tSaoi, who was an Irish language poet of great reputation, said in an interview she gave towards the end of her life that the killing of Charles Mc Gee was something that troubled her father all of his life. Both Charles Mc Gee and Lieutenant Robert Dunville were prisoners and unarmed. Lieutenant Dunville, of the Dunville Whiskey family in Belfast, died in his late 20s and his death may have been hastened by the injury he received at Castlebellingham.
Séan Boner from our Field Day to Inisboffin Island, 2023