Easter Rising Stories

ON THIS DAY

25 October

1920. Terence MacSwiney dies in Brixton

Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, 1920.

At 5.40 a.m. on 25 October 1920 Terence MacSwiney died in Brixton Prison. He was 41. It was the seventy-fourth day of his hunger strike. His brother Seán and his chaplain, Fr Dominic O’Connor, were at the bed. He had been Lord Mayor of Cork since the killing of Tomás Mac Curtain in March, arrested on 12 August in City Hall, and sentenced on 16 August to two years.

The government had refused release. The Dictionary of Irish Biography records that even King George V privately favoured mercy. The press in Ireland, Britain, Europe and America had followed the case for weeks. The Irish Independent later bordered its columns in black. The coffin lay at St George’s Cathedral, Southwark. Crown forces took it at Holyhead and sent it by sea to Cork, not through Dublin. He was buried in the republican plot at St Finbarr’s.

Two other deaths fall on the same date.

1920. Joseph Murphy dies in Cork Gaol

Mary MacSwiney. She kept the Brixton vigil with Annie and Muriel.

At 8.35 p.m. the same day Joseph Murphy died in Cork Gaol after 76 days without food. UCC’s Cork Fatality Register gives his age as 24. Contemporary papers called him a boy of seventeen. A military court of inquiry corrected that. He was unmarried, of Pouladuff Road, Cork, born in Boston in March 1895, a County Council clerk. He had been arrested on 15 July 1920. He was one of eleven men who began the Cork Gaol strike on 11 August. Michael Fitzgerald had died there on 17 October after 67 days.

His parents were at the bed, with Fr Duggan, four Bon Secours sisters, and others. He was not told that MacSwiney was already dead. The Cork strike ran on until 12 November. Murphy was buried on 27 October from St Finbarr’s Church.

1920. Ambush at Moneygold

About 11 a.m. Sergeant Patrick Perry led nine RIC men on bicycles out of Cliffoney barracks, County Sligo, to look into reported damage at Magherow. The Military Archives list the Moneygold ambush that day as a Sligo Brigade operation. Liam Pilkington and Seamus Devins were among those in charge. Positions had been dug the night before near Ahamlish cemetery.

About 11.30 a.m. the patrol reached the ground. Fire was opened. Sergeant Perry and Constables Patrick Keown and Patrick Laffey were killed. Constable Patrick Lynch was mortally wounded and died two days later. Other constables were wounded. The rest surrendered. Arms were taken.

Perry was 51 and left a large family. Laffey, from Galway, was 41 and had five children. A later account records a banner on the vehicles that took the bodies: “A Sinn Féin Victory: three widows and seventeen orphans.” Houses, a Sinn Féin hall and Ballintrillick creamery were burned in the days after. On 31 October arms from the ambush were found in a car with Seamus Devins, Eugene Gilbride, Andrew Conway and the driver Linda Kearns. The Record of the Rebellion listed ten service rifles, six revolvers and 420 rounds. Kearns was sentenced to ten years.

5.40 a.m., London. About 11.30 a.m., Sligo. 8.35 p.m., Cork.

References

Maume, P. (2009) ‘MacSwiney, Terence James’, Dictionary of Irish Biography.

Century Ireland, ‘Terence MacSwiney dies after 74 days on hunger strike’; ‘Second Cork Gaol hunger striker, Joseph Murphy, dies surrounded by family’.

University College Cork, Cork Fatality Register, ‘Volunteer (Patrick) Joseph Murphy’, 1920-95. Age 24; 76 days; Pouladuff Road; born Boston, March 1895.

Military Archives, Brigade Activity Reports, 1 Sligo Brigade, Moneygold, 25 October 1920.

DIB, ‘Pilkington, William (Liam, Billy)’. Four RIC dead at Moneygold.