Military study made Ned Daly a shrewd tactician

Ned Daly always wanted to be a soldier so when the Irish Volunteers were founded he seized his chance, says Helen Litton

EDWARD (Ned) Daly was born in Limerick on 25 February 1891, the only son of nine children. His father had died five months earlier; he had been a Fenian in 1866, and his brother John had been in the 1867 Rising, escaping to America. The large family was left almost destitute until James Daly, who had emigrated in the 1850s, returned to Limerick a prosperous man, to look after his brother’s family.

Young Ned grew up in a very political atmosphere. His uncle John, joining Clan na Gael in New York, had been sent to England as a dynamiter. Arrested, he spent 12 years in prison and was released in 1896.