15-year-old Fianna scout shot dead in Clare

Irish national cultural and political organisations suppressed

Ennistymon, 15 August 1919 - The funeral has taken place of 15-year-old Francis Murphy, who was shot dead at his home near Ennistymon in Co. Clare on the night of 13 August.

No motive for the attack can be discerned but the blame has been directed towards the military, which is likely be the focus of the forthcoming inquest.

Murphy arrived home before 9 pm on the night he was shot, his father John told reporters, and joined with the family in reciting the rosary at about 10.30 pm. Afterwards he sat down in the kitchen to read. Shots were fired at the house between midnight and 1 am; a subsequent inspection found eight to nine bullet marks on the house. Three appeared to have passed through the window with one entering the young man’s body. Murphy was found on the kitchen floor, lying in a pool of blood.

Francis Murphy was a popular child from a well-known and large local family. He worked as a hardware assistant and was a member of Fianna Éireann, the republican scouting organisation. His father is a prominent Gaelic Leaguer.

Murphy’s funeral took place earlier today. A procession a mile long – comprising motor cars, pedestrians, men on horseback and boys wearing mourning badges – formed to accompany his body to the family burial ground at Ennistymon.

Clampdown in Clare

Last night, Sinn Féin, the Gaelic League, the Irish Volunteers and Cumann na mBan have been proclaimed as ‘dangerous’ and suppressed in Co. Clare by order of the Chief Secretary and Lord Chancellor.

Justifying the action, the Chief Secretary, Ian Macpherson issued a memorandum in which he outlined how, in 1917, a state of open lawlessness had rapidly developed in Co. Clare. The condition of the county had sufficiently improved by August 1918 to allow for a withdrawal of restrictions in the county, but the climate had worsened since January this year.

There has, the Chief Secretary explained, been a ‘recrudescence of crime manifesting itself mainly in overt acts of violence against the police and persons associating with or working for them. There have been nine separate attacks on the police since the beginning of the year.’

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]