Tomás Mac Curtain
Tomás Mac Curtain (20 March 1884 – 20 March 1920) was a Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Ireland. He was elected in January 1920.
Tomás Mac Curtain | |
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Born | Thomas Curtin 20 March 1884 Mourne Abbey, Ireland |
Died | 20 March 1920 36) Cork, Ireland | (aged
Nationality | Irish |
Occupation | Lord Mayor of Cork |
Known for | Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork (assassinated) |
Background
Thomas Curtin was born at Ballyknockane, Mourne Abbey, County Cork, on 20 March 1884, the son of Patrick Curtin, a farmer, and Julia Sheehan.[1] He attended Burnfort National School. In 1897 the family moved to Cork City, where he attended the North Monastery School.[2]
Mac Curtain, as he would later be known, was active in a number of cultural and political movements beginning around the turn of the 20th century. He joined the Blackpool, Cork branch of Conradh na Gaeilge (the Gaelic League), becoming its secretary in 1902.[3] He had interests in music, poetry, history, archaeology and Irish history. He worked in his early career as a clerk, and in his free time taught Irish. In 1911 he joined Fianna Éireann, and was a member of the Irish Volunteers.[3]
He met Elizabeth Walsh (Eibhlís Breathnach) at a Gaelic League meeting and they married on 28 June 1908.[4] They had six children, five of whom survived into adulthood. The family lived over number 40 Thomas Davis Street, where Mac Curtain ran a small clothing and rainwear factory.
Easter Rising and military career
In April 1916 at the outset of the Easter Rising Mac Curtain commanded a force of up to 1,000 men of the Irish Volunteers who assembled at various locations around County Cork. From the volunteer's headquarters at Sheares Street in the city, Mac Curtain and his officers awaited orders from the volunteer leadership in Dublin but conflicting instructions and confusion prevailed and as a result, the Cork volunteers never entered the fray. A tense stand-off developed when British forces surrounded the volunteer hall and continued for a week until an agreement negotiated with Captain F. W. Dickie, aide-de-camp to Brigadier General W. F. H. Stafford, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) in Cork,[5][6] led to the surrender of the volunteers' arms to the then Lord Mayor of Cork, Thomas C. Butterfield on the understanding that they would be returned at a later date. This did not happen however and Mac Curtain was jailed in Wakefield, in the former Frongoch Prisoner of War camp in Wales, and in Reading.[7] After the general amnesty of participants in the Rising 18 months later Mac Curtain returned to active duty as a Commandant of what was now the Irish Republican Army.[8]
By 1918 Mac Curtain was a brigade commander - the highest and most important rank in the IRA. GHQ carried out a radical restructuring. In County Cork, for example, three brigades were created with set boundaries. Frank Hynes battalion, was an example of a whole unit being dissolved to be divided into smaller ranks, as two staffs were elected.[9] During the Conscription Crisis in autumn 1918, he actively encouraged the hiring of the women of Cumann na mBan to cater for Volunteers.[10] He was personally involved with The Squad that with a Cork battalion attempted to assassinate Lord French, whose car was missed as the convoy passed through the ambush positions. Despite the setback he remained brigadier of No.1 Cork when he was elected Lord Mayor. He was elected in the January 1920 council elections as the Sinn Féin councillor for NW Ward No. 3 of Cork, and was chosen by his fellow councillors to be the Lord Mayor. He began a process of political reform within the city.[11]
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Assassination
On 20 March 1920, his 36th birthday, Mac Curtain was shot dead[12] in front of his wife and son by a group of men with blackened faces, who were found to be members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) by the official inquest into the event.[13] In the wake of the killing Mac Curtain's house in Blackpool was ransacked.
The killing caused widespread public outrage.[14] The coroner's inquest passed a verdict of willful murder against British Prime Minister Lloyd George and against certain members of the RIC.[13] Michael Collins later ordered his squad of assassins to uncover and assassinate the police officers involved in the attack. RIC District Inspector Oswald Swanzy, who had ordered the attack, was fatally shot, with Mac Curtain's own revolver, while leaving a Protestant church in Lisburn, County Antrim, on 22 August 1920, sparking what was described by Tim Pat Coogan as a "pogrom" against the Catholic residents of the town.[15][16] Mac Curtain is buried in St. Finbarr's Cemetery, Cork.
His successor to the position of Lord Mayor, Terence MacSwiney, died while on hunger strike in Brixton prison, London.[17]
Tomás Óg Mac Curtain
Mac Curtain's son, Tomás Óg (junior) (1915–1994) later became a leading republican and member of the IRA Executive (whose main purpose was to elect the Chief of Staff of the IRA).[18] In 1940, he was sentenced to death for shooting Garda Síochána Detective Roche. Roche from Union Quay Barracks was one of three detectives who were attempting to arrest MacCurtain. MacCurtain pulled a gun and Detective Roche was shot and mortally wounded at the end of St Patrick's Street Cork city centre on 3 January 1940. However, he was granted clemency and released after seven years. He later served on the IRA executive during the Border Campaign.[19]
References
- "General Registrar's Office". IrishGenealogy.ie. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
- "Council celebrates 200th anniversary of North Monastery school's founding". Irish Times. 7 April 2011.
- R F Foster (2014). "Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923". Penguin. ISBN 9780241954249.
- "General Registrar's Office". IrishGenealogy.ie. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
- White, Gerry; O’Shea, Brendan (2007). "Easter 1916 in Cork – Order, Counter-Order, and Disorder" (PDF). Defence Forces Review: 63–64. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
- White, Gerry (21 March 2016). "The standoff on Sheares St: Cork's 'Pain of Easter Week'". Irish Examiner. Retrieved 4 July 2020.
- "Tomas MacCURTAIN ©". fermoyireland.50megs.com.
- "Exhibitions at Cork Public Museum 2006 - 1916 Exhibition". Cork City Council. Archived from the original on 7 March 2012.
- Bureau of Military History WS 446 (Frank Hynes). F. O'Donoghue, "Guerrilla Warfare in Ireland 1919-1921", An Cosantóir XXIII (May 1963), pg. 294.
- National Library of Ireland, # MS 31198.
- C Townshend, "The Republic: The Fight For Irish Independence", (London 2014), pp. 179, 193.
- "General Registrar's Office". IrishGenealogy.ie. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
- Coogan, Tim Pat (1991). Michael Collins. Arrow Books. pp. 123–24. ISBN 0-09-968580-9.
- O'Sullivan, Donal J. (1999). The Irish constabularies, 1822-1922: a century of policing in Ireland. Brandon. p. 303. ISBN 978-0-86322-257-3.
- Coogan, p. 149.
- O'Kelly, Emer (August 24, 2008). "When the killing starts do you defend God or family?". Irish Independent. Retrieved 15 December 2009.
- Coogan, p. 155.
- Cronin, Seán. Frank Ryan, pg. 178, Repsol-Skellig, 1980; ISBN 0-86064-018-3
- Burke, Edward (September 1, 2018). An Army of Tribes: British Army Cohesion, Deviancy and Murder in Northern Ireland. Oxford University Press – via Google Books.
Bibliography
- Fitzpatrick, David, Harry Boland's Irish Revolution (Cork 2003)
- Harrington, Michael, The Munster Republic: The Civil War in North Cork (Cork 2009)
- Irish Labour and Trade Union Congress, Who burnt Cork City? A Tale of Arson, Loot and Murder: The Evidence of over seventy Witnesses (Dublin 1921)
Civic offices | ||
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Preceded by William F. O'Connor |
Lord Mayor of Cork 1920 |
Succeeded by Terence MacSwiney |