20 March 1920: The Murder of the Mayor of Cork Thomas McCurtain on this day. He was a member of Sinn Fein and was thorn in the side of the British system of government in this Country. He was elected a councillor in Cork City in January 1920 and on that basis was chosen by a majority of the other councillors to be the Lord Mayor of the City of Cork.

However McCurtain was also a senior member of the IRA and was actively involved in organising and directing IRA operations against the Crown Forces. He was a life long Republican and had been in charge of the Irish Volunteers in the County of Cork at the time of the Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin. He managed to get quite a number of men to turn out across the County but the news from Dublin was patchy and confusing. Without Official sanction to strike he found himself in a terrible predicament - to hold back while the men in Dublin were fighting against the odds - or to strike and find that Dublin had not risen at all.

In the event it never went ahead in Cork, A tense stand-off developed when British forces surrounded the volunteer hall and continued for a week until a negotiated agreement led to the surrender of the volunteers' arms to the then Lord Mayor of Cork Thomas Butterfield on the understanding that they would be returned at a later date. This did not happen however and Mac Curtain was jailed in England but released 18 months later in a General Amnesty.

By 1918 Mac Curtain was a brigade commander - the highest and most important rank in the IRA. If he helped in organising the targeting of attacks on British Forces he knew that he too would become a target in turn. But it was the nature of his slaying that shocked so many - gunned down in front of his wife and one of his children in his own home. That a Lord Mayor of a city in these islands should be so brutally killed and as it turned out by serving Police Officers of the RIC stunned many of the uncommitted and motivated many others with the desire to strike back.

After the killing they ransacked the house. The shocking murder outraged public opinion and brought near universal condemnation. Cork went into mourning for its murdered first citizen. A massive crowd attended his funeral. At the coroner's inquest into the killing the jury passed a verdict of wilful murder against Lloyd George and certain inspectors of the R.I.C. One of the named inspectors, Oswald Swanzy, was shot dead in Lisburn on 22 August 1920. 

http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/history/historyofcorkcity/early20thcentury/themurderoflordmayortomasmaccurtain/

Mac Curtain is buried in St. Finbarr's Cemetery, Cork.