The Annual Prize-Giving, High School, Monday, 27 November 1916.

Mr Thompson, High School headmaster 1916.

The annual distribution of prizes at the High School, Dublin, took place on Monday afternoon – Mr. J. A. Maconchy, Chairman of the Board of Erasmus Smith, presiding.  Most of the boys gave up the value of their prizes to the British Red Cross funds for wounded soldiers, and received certificates instead.

The report of the headmaster Mr. J. Thompson, M.A., showed that at Easter time, during the rebellion, at the request of the military authorities, the school was a short time turned into a Red Cross, and the vacation was in consequence prolonged by a week.  

The list of old boys serving either with commissions or in the ranks reaches to nearly 400 names.  In addition to Mr Ellwood, Lieutenant in the North Lancashire and Mr Slade, Lieutenant in the 6^th Essex Regiment, who joined in December 1914, Mr Wyon,  our senior Modern language master, joined the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at the end of last term, and before the holidays were over he was fighting in France, where the Intelligence Department have found his knowledge of French and German so useful that they have attached him to the General’s Staff.  

It would take too long to go through all the names of those who, since last year, have distinguished themselves or been promoted, or of those who have been wounded in action.  But we cannot omit to mention the names of two who, in the latest lists of the distinctions, have been awarded the Military Cross – G. L. Moss, Second Lieutenant, Leinster Regiment, and E.J.P. Holland, Second Lieutenant, Royal Irish Rifles.  

We have also to mourn the increasing list of old boys who have died on active service.  In the 1914 report I gave the names of two, last year twelve more were added, and this year there are eight more who have fallen in the war, beside three others who are missing; and two more, who, being killed on duty in the rebellion, may, I think, be rightly counted as giving their lives for their country.  

The first eight are as follows:  - C. J. Dodds, Captain 6^th  Royal Munster Fusiliers :  E.E. Glorney , Lieutenant, Royal Flying Corps; C.A. Kinnear, Lieutenant, Royal Field Artillery; P. Manderville, Captain West Yorkshire Regiment; R.S. Swan, Sergeant, Royal Dublin Fusiliers; R.L. Valentine, Lieutenant, Royal Dublin Fusiliers; H.W.C. Weldon, Lieutenant, East Surrey Regiment; J.H. Wisdom, 2^nd Dragoon Guards.  

The three missing are: - L. Barron, Lieutenant, Border Regiment: N.F.Curral, Lieutenant, 10^th East Lancashires; F.A. Harrison, Lieutenant, 3^rd Leinster Regiment.  

The two killed in the rebellion were – W.J.Rice, clerk in Guinness’s Brewery, and Holden Stodart, of the St. John Ambulance, who was shot dead in Pembroke lane while picking up the wounded. 

Published in The Irish Times – Saturday, December 2, 1916, Page 3.