Phoenix Park Murders

The Invincibles failed numerous times to kill Chief Secretary "Buckshot" Forster before he resigned his office in protest at the Kilmainham Treaty.[2] The group then settled on a plan to kill the Permanent Under Secretary Thomas Henry Burke at the Irish Office. Newly installed Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish, on the very day of his arrival to Ireland, was walking with Burke to the Viceregal Lodge, the "out of season" residence of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

The first assassination was committed by Joe Brady, who stabbed Burke with a 12-inch knife, followed in short order by Tim Kelly, who stabbed Cavendish. Both men used surgical knives, delivered by Mary Ann Byrne,[3] in order to avoid making a lot of noise while carrying out the killings. Cavendish was not a target and his presence was happenstance. Thomas Myles, resident surgeon at the nearby Dr Steevens' Hospital, was summoned to render medical assistance to the victims.[4]

The Lord Lieutenant, Lord Spencer, described hearing screams before witnessing a man running to the Lodge grounds shouting "Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke are killed."[5] The assailants were driven away in a cab by James Fitzharris (nicknamed "Skin the Goat") who served as a getaway driver.[6]

The hunt for the perpetrators was led by Superintendent John Mallon, a Catholic who came from Armagh. Mallon had a pretty shrewd idea of who was involved. He suspected a number of former Fenian activists. A large number of suspects were arrested and kept in prison by claiming they were connected with other crimes. By playing off one suspect against another Mallon got several of them to reveal what they knew.[7]

The case was successfully prosecuted by the Attorney General, Solicitor General, James Murphy, Q.C. (later Justice Murphy), and Peter O’Brien, before Justice William O’Brien.[8][9] Invincibles' leader James Carey, Michael Kavanagh and Joe Hanlon agreed to testify against the others. Joe Brady, Michael Fagan, Thomas Caffrey, Dan Curley and Tim Kelly were convicted of the murder,[10] and were hanged by William Marwood in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin between 14 May and 9 June 1883. Others, convicted as accessories to the crime, were sentenced to serve long prison terms. The getaway driver, James Fitzharris, was acquitted of murder but retried as an accessory and convicted.[10]

Only the case of Tim Kelly gave any real difficulty. He was 19 and generally said to look much younger, and by referring to him as "a child" his defence counsel created enough unease for two juries to disagree. Only after an unprecedented third trial was he found guilty.[10]

Punch magazine depicts the Fenian movement as Frankenstein's monster to Charles Parnell's Frankenstein, in the wake of the Phoenix Park Murders.

Charles Stewart Parnell's policy of allying his party to Gladstone's Liberal Party in 1886 to enable Home Rule was also ultimately defeated by the murders. Gladstone's Minister Lord Hartington was the elder brother of Lord Frederick Cavendish. Infuriated by the manner of his brother's early death, Hartington split with Gladstone on the Home Rule bills[11] of 1886 and 1893 and led the breakaway Liberal Unionist Association which allied itself to Lord Salisbury's conservative governments. In the ensuing 1886 general election the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists swept the board. This delayed Home Rule by 28 years, until the Third Irish Home Rule Bill which was passed technically in 1914, but which was never effected.

Charles Stewart Parnell made a speech condemning the murders in 1882. This increased his already huge popularity in both Britain and Ireland. He had just enabled some reforms under the Kilmainham Treaty four days before the murders. Parnell's reputation increased in Ireland, being seen as a more moderate reformer who would never excuse such tactics.[12]

In March 1887, The Times printed letters purportedly from Parnell claiming sympathy with the murderers and that his public denunciation of them was insincere. It emerged that the letters were forgeries written by journalist Richard Pigott,[13] and Parnell was personally vindicated by the Parnell Commission in 1888–89.[14]

Memorial Cross

There is a cross cut in to the grass at the location of the killings. It is 60 centimetres (24 in) long, filled with a small amount of gravel and cut thinly.[15]

In the summer of 1938 James T. Farrell visited Ireland and recalled:[16]

James Larkin showed me something in Ireland that few people in Dublin know about....At the spot across from the vice-regal lodge in Phoenix Park, where the [assassinations] were committed, there is a patch of earth alongside of the park walk. No matter how often grass is planted over this spot the grass is torn up by the roots, and this spot of earth is left, and always, there is a cross marked into the dirt in commemoration of the Invincibles. Every week, someone – principally, I believe, one of Larkin’s boys – goes there and marks that cross. This has been going on for a long time.

• Molony, Senan (2006). The Phoenix Park Murders: Conspiracy, Betrayal and Retribution. Dublin: Mercier Press. ISBN 1-85635-511-X.
• Corfe, Tom (1968). The Phoenix Park Murders: Conflict, Compromise and Tragedy in Ireland, 1879–1882. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-34002-624-3.
• Lyons, F. S. L. (1977). Charles Stewart Parnell. Great Britain: Fontana. ISBN 0-00-635324-X.

• Podcast about the Irish National Invincibles and the Fenian Dynamite Campaign with Dr. Shane Kenna.
• Description of the Phoenix Park Murders by author Senan Molony.