Francis Xavier Flood, known as Frank Flood, a 1st Lieutenant in the Dublin Active Service Brigade during the Irish War of Independence, is born at 6 Emmet Street, Dublin on December 1, 1901. He is executed by the British authorities in Mountjoy Prison and is one of the ten members of the Irish Republican Army commonly referred to as the Forgotten Ten.

Flood is the son of policeman John Flood and Sarah Murphy. The 1911 census lists the family living at 15 Emmet Street. He is one of ten children consisting of nine brothers and one sister, most of whom are heavily involved in the Independence movement. He attends secondary school at O’Connell School in Dublin and wins a scholarship to study engineering at University College Dublin (UCD) where he is an active member of UCD’s famous debating forum, the Literary and Historical Society. He passes his first and second year engineering exams with distinction. At the time of his arrest he is living with his family at 30 Summerhill Parade, Dublin.

Flood is captured, together with Thomas Bryan, Patrick Doyle, Bernard Ryan and Dermot O’Sullivan, while attacking a lorry-load of Dublin Metropolitan Police at Drumcondra on January 21, 1921. All of the men are found in possession of arms and a grenade is discovered in Flood’s pocket. On February 24, 1921 he is charged by court-martial, with high treason/levying war against the King, and is one of six men executed by hanging on March 14, 1921 in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. At nineteen years of age, he is the youngest of the six. His younger brother Patrick is the only member of the family to make an appearance on day of his execution.

Flood is a close personal friend of Kevin Barry, and asks that he be buried as close as possible to him. He had taken part in the September 1920 ambush during which Barry had been arrested and had been involved in the planning of several aborted attempts to rescue him. He remains buried at Mountjoy Prison, together with nine other executed members of the Irish Republican Army known as The Forgotten Ten, until he is given a state funeral and reburied at Glasnevin Cemetery on October 14, 2001 after an intense campaign led by the National Graves Association.

Students of University College Dublin establish the Frank Flood Shield, an annual debating competition, in his memory. Flood and the other five men executed on March 14, 1921 are commemorated in Thomas MacGreevy‘s poem “The Six who were Hanged.”

The bridge over the River Tolka in Drumcondra at Millmount Avenue/Botanic Avenue is named Droichead Frank Flood on March 14, 2018.