Deaths of Tomás Mac Curtain and Terence MacSwiney

Article by Daniel Corkery from the periodical 'Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review Vol. IX No. 36' December 1920

The assassination of the Lord Mayor Tomás Mac Curtain by disguised RIC men, in front of his wife and family in his Blackpool home in the early hours of Saturday March 20th was the most dramatic event since the 1916 Rising. The iconic soldier, musician and scholar who had just become the first Sinn Féin and republican Lord Mayor of the city was one of the most significant martyrs in the years after 1916. His funeral to St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, where he became the first to be interred at the newly inaugurated Republican Plot, drew record numbers. At the graveside, Michael Collins promised the grieving widow Elizabeth Walsh that her husband’s murder would be avenged. Two policemen connected with the atrocity were killed in Cork. In August, Inspector Oswald Swanzy who was widely believed to be the main culprit, had been transferred to Lisburn in County Antrim for his own safety. He was killed coming out of church by a Cork Volunteer using Mac Curtain’s own gun. 

Mac Curtain was succeeded in the mayoral chair by his lifelong friend and comrade-in-arms Terence MacSwiney who also took over his role in the Cork Volunteers. He had been arrested in August following a raid on Cork City Hall where seditious material was said to be discovered on him. His name is synonymous with the hunger strike. Few single events during “The Troubles” drew as much attention internationally to the cause of Irish nationalism as his death in Brixton Prison on October 25^th after 74 days without food. Joe Murphy and Michael Fitzgerald of a group of eleven in a supporting hunger strike at Cork Gaol also died. MacSwiney’s hunger strike and its aftermath drew unprecedented favourable press and public reaction throughout the world. His memory was invoked decades later by future Irish republicans and separatists from other countries including India and Vietnam.