Death on Hunger Strike of Volunteer Joseph Murphy

Volunteer Patrick Joseph Murphy, who died on hunger strike on October 25, 1920, was educated at Togher National School, Cork. He was an avid sportsman who played hurling for the old Plunketts club in Togher and also enjoyed a game of road bowling on most Sunday mornings.

His life changed dramatically when he, along with many of his friends, joined the local company of the Irish Republican Army in the early stages of the War of Independence. Following a raid on his home on the night of July 15, 1920 he was arrested and imprisoned at Cork County Jail.

Two months later, he was one of a group of sixty Cork republicans - including Terence MacSwiney - who embarked on hunger strike. The mass protest captured the sympathy of the general public and large crowds congregated outside the jail gates each day, many reciting the rosary. However, after a fast lasting seventy-six days, twenty four year old Joe Murphy died. Thousands attended his removal to the Lough Chapel. The funeral ceremonies were dominated by a strong British military presence and no more than a hundred people were allowed to follow the hearse to St. Finbarr’s Cemetery.

The fiftieth anniversary of Murphy’s death was marked by a simple ceremony. Two pipers, wearing the uniform of the Cork Volun­teer Pipe Band, led a colour party to his graveside followed by relatives and former comrades-in-arms

The house at Togher, Cork where Joe Murphy was born and lived in before his arrest and death on hunger strike and (inset) his burial place in the Republican plot at St. Finbarr's Cemetery in Cork city.