McMahon Murders
Encyclopedia
The McMahon murders occurred on 24 March 1922 in Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...

, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

 when six Catholic civilians were shot dead and two injured by members of the Ulster Special Constabulary
Ulster Special Constabulary
The Ulster Special Constabulary was a reserve police force in Northern Ireland. It was set up in October 1920, shortly before the founding of Northern Ireland. It was an armed corps, organised partially on military lines and called out in times of emergency, such as war or insurgency...

 (USC) or Royal Irish Constabulary
Royal Irish Constabulary
The armed Royal Irish Constabulary was Ireland's major police force for most of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. A separate civic police force, the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police controlled the capital, and the cities of Derry and Belfast, originally with their own police...

 (RIC). The dead were aged between 15 and 50 and all but one were members of the McMahon family. The policemen broke into their house at night and shot all eight males inside. It is believed to have been a reprisal for the IRA
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...

's killing of two policemen the day before.

Northern Ireland had been created ten months beforehand. Its police forces – especially the USC, which was almost exclusively Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...

 and unionist
Unionism in Ireland
Unionism in Ireland is an ideology that favours the continuation of some form of political union between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain...

 – were implicated in a number of reprisal attacks on Catholic and nationalist
Irish nationalism
Irish nationalism manifests itself in political and social movements and in sentiment inspired by a love for Irish culture, language and history, and as a sense of pride in Ireland and in the Irish people...

 civilians in this period.

Background

The killings occurred after the acceptance of the Anglo-Irish Treaty
Anglo-Irish Treaty
The Anglo-Irish Treaty , officially called the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was a treaty between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and representatives of the secessionist Irish Republic that concluded the Irish War of...

, but with the violence of the Irish War of Independence
Irish War of Independence
The Irish War of Independence , Anglo-Irish War, Black and Tan War, or Tan War was a guerrilla war mounted by the Irish Republican Army against the British government and its forces in Ireland. It began in January 1919, following the Irish Republic's declaration of independence. Both sides agreed...

 still raging in the new political entity of Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

. The Treaty copper-fastened the Partition of Ireland
Partition of Ireland
The partition of Ireland was the division of the island of Ireland into two distinct territories, now Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland . Partition occurred when the British Parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act 1920...

 which was first established in the Government of Ireland Act (1920), but in the first half of 1922, in the words of historian, Robert Lynch, the Irish Republican Army
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...

 (IRA), "would make one final attempt to undermine the ever hardening reality of partition by launching an all out offensive on the recently established province of Northern Ireland".

To counter this, the Unionist
Unionism in Ireland
Unionism in Ireland is an ideology that favours the continuation of some form of political union between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain...

 authorities established the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC), an armed, almost exclusively Protestant reserve police force, which was first deployed in February 1921.

The USC had a generally hostile relationship with the Catholic, nationalist community in Belfast and elsewhere. Lynch writes of the USC, "some were polite and courteous, others merely arrogant and destructive whilst a small anonymous minority set out to kill"

The MacMahon killings are believed to have been a reprisal for IRA's killing of two Ulster Special Constabulary policemen in Belfast. At lunch time on March 23, two USC constables, (Thomas Cunningham and William Cairnside) were patrolling Great Victoria Street in the city centre when they were approached by a group of IRA men and shot dead.

Two Catholics, Peter Murphy (61) and Sarah McShane (15), were shot dead in a suspected reprisal attack several hours later in the Catholic Short Strand
Short Strand
The Short Strand is a mainly-nationalist area in east Belfast, surrounded by a mainly-unionist area. It is within the townland of Ballymacarret and sits on the east bank of the River Lagan in County Down.-Security issues:...

 area by unidentified gunmen.

Neither Owen McMahon nor his family had any involvement in the shooting of the policemen, nor were they involved with either Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...

 or the IRA. McMahon was in fact a supporter and personal friend of Joseph Devlin
Joseph Devlin
Joseph Devlin, also known as Joe Devlin, was an Irish journalist and influential nationalist politician...

, the Irish Parliamentary Party
Irish Parliamentary Party
The Irish Parliamentary Party was formed in 1882 by Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nationalist Members of Parliament elected to the House of Commons at...

 Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

, who rejected Irish republican violence.

McMahon was a prosperous businessman, who owned several pubs in Belfast and had at one time been chairman of the Northern Vintners' Association. His home at Kiniard Terrace, off the Antrim Road in north-central Belfast was described as a 'sprawling Victorian mansion'.

The killings

At around 1:00 am, two uniformed policemen seized a sledgehammer
Sledgehammer
A sledgehammer is a tool consisting of a large, flat head attached to a lever . The head is typically made of metal. The sledgehammer can apply more impulse than other hammers, due to its large size. Along with the mallet, it shares the ability to distribute force over a wide area...

 from a city council workman, who was guarding a building site at Carlisle Circus. At nearby Clifton Avenue they met three other policemen and the party of five proceeded to the home of Owen McMahon. They used the sledgehammer to break into the house and once inside, herded the eight males within into the living room, whilst the three women were put into a drawing room. The men were told, 'you boys say your prayers', before the police opened fire. Firing continued for five minutes, in which five of the MacMahon household were killed and two wounded, one fatally.

Owen McMahon.(Father) (50) Gerard McMahon (15) Frank McMahon (24) Patrick McMahon (22) Edward McKinney (25) were killed outright, Bernard McMahon (26) died later. The youngest McMahon son, Michael, aged 12, survived the attack by hiding behind some furniture and pretending to be hit. Another son, John (30), survived despite serious gunshot wounds

Eliza McMahon, Owen's wife, raised the alarm by opening the drawing room window and shouting ,'Murder! Murder!' A matron at an adjoining nursing home was alerted and phoned the police and an ambulance.

The killers were identified by John MacMahon as police, "Four of the five men were dressed in the uniform of the RIC but, from their appearance, I know they are Specials, not regular RIC." It has been alleged that a police inspector, Detective Inspector John Nixon, and a group of policemen operating out of Brown Square barracks in the Shankill Road area, was behind the killings, but this has not been proved. An inquiry was carried out by the Defense Ministry of the Irish Free State
Irish Free State
The Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...

, but not by the Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

 authorities. Twelve policemen, including Nixon, were named in the Free State's 1924 report as having carried out the murders, as well as several other attacks on Catholics.

Aftermath

The attacks caused outrage among Belfast's Catholic population and over 10,000 people attended the funerals of those killed. At the funeral Mass
Mass
Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...

 for the victims at St Patrick's Church, Reverend Bernard Laverty told the congregation that even the Black and Tans
Black and Tans
The Black and Tans was one of two newly recruited bodies, composed largely of British World War I veterans, employed by the Royal Irish Constabulary as Temporary Constables from 1920 to 1921 to suppress revolution in Ireland...

, 'had not been guilty of anything approaching this [crime] in its unspeakable barbarity'. The McMahons had been, 'done to death merely because they were Catholics' but he told the mourners to practise 'patience and forbearance' and not to seek revenge.

Joe Devlin, the nationalist Party MP, told the British Parliament, 'If Catholics have no revolver
Revolver
A revolver is a repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. The first revolver ever made was built by Elisha Collier in 1818. The percussion cap revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. This weapon became known as the Colt Paterson...

s to protect themselves they are murdered. If they have revolvers they are flogged and sentenced to death'.

David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...

 and Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

, concerned that the violence would cause the collapse of the new Northern Ireland administration, organised a meeting in London between southern nationalist leader Michael Collins
Michael Collins (Irish leader)
Michael "Mick" Collins was an Irish revolutionary leader, Minister for Finance and Teachta Dála for Cork South in the First Dáil of 1919, Director of Intelligence for the IRA, and member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. Subsequently, he was both Chairman of the...

 and James Craig
James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon
James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, PC, PC , was a prominent Irish unionist politician, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland...

, premier of Northern Ireland, both to try to stop IRA attacks (tacitly supported by Collins) and to pressure Craig to provide more protection for Catholics.

Craig denied the nationalist assertion that the McMahon killings were part of an anti-Catholic pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...

 on behalf of state forces, telling the Northern Ireland parliament that, "no such thing has ever been the policy of Protestants here...The Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...

 men are up against, not Catholics but ... up against rebels, that they are up against murder, Bolshevism and up against those enemies not only of Ulster but of the [British] Empire".
No one was prosecuted for the killings but DI Nixon was expelled from the Royal Ulster Constabulary
Royal Ulster Constabulary
The Royal Ulster Constabulary was the name of the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2000. Following the awarding of the George Cross in 2000, it was subsequently known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary GC. It was founded on 1 June 1922 out of the Royal Irish Constabulary...

, albeit on full pension, in 1924 for giving, in breach of police regulations a political speech to an Orange Order meeting saying that, 'not an inch of Ulster should be yielded' to the Free State.

The attacks were part of a series of reprisals on Catholics in general for IRA attacks in Belfast and elsewhere. The following week saw an incident known as the "Arnon Street Massacre
Arnon Street Massacre
The Arnon Street killings, also referred to as the Arnon Street murders or Arnon Street massacre, took place on 1 April 1922 in Belfast, Northern Ireland...

", in which five Catholics were killed by uniformed police in revenge for the killing of a policeman on the Old Lodge Road the previous day. In total, 452 people would be killed in Belfast in the conflict between June 1920 and July 1922 - 267 Catholics and 185 Protestants.

Sources

  • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1376480/Murders-that-shocked-the-world.html
  • http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/8975
  • http://books.google.ie/books?id=9VUDvb-bKqgC&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=mcmahon+murders+march+1922&source=web&ots=iGbUDUAN_F&sig=csB7yt_uo1k5deUnLDng2Z--WT8&hl=en&ei=EAWWSbvfH6KHjAe7ovW7Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result
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