Condition of 11 hunger strikers in Cork Gaol worsens as IRA issues threat to prison doctor
Cork, 7 September 1920 - While the plight of the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, currently on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, continues to attract considerable attention at home and abroad, he is not the only Irish prisoner on hunger strike at the moment; 11 republican prisoners in Cork Gaol entered their 28th day of a hunger strike today.
Reports indicate that a number of them are at death's door. Friends claim that two of the men, Christopher Upton and Joseph Murphy, have lost their voice, while another, Peter Crowley, has collapsed. The condition of Seán Hennessy is thought to be so bad that his father was allowed to stay with him overnight. Home Office doctor, Alan Pearson, has recommended that the men be released.
The names of the other seven men are as follows: Michael Burke, Thomas Donovan, John Power, John Crowley (Peter's brother), Michael O'Reilly, Joseph Kenny and Michael Fitzgerald.
The acting medical officer at Cork Gaol has recevied a threatening letter believed to have been sent by the No. 1 brigade, IRA. It says that the medical officer’s attendance upon the 11 hunger strikers in Cork Gaol, all untried men, gave a ‘tinge of legality to the slow murder being perpetrated upon them; and was to cease, with the medical officer ordered to leave the jail. ‘Failure to comply with this will incur drastic punishment’, the letter states.
The fact that the men are untried was also raised in an editorial in the Cork Examiner today. ‘Is it in accord with the principles of justice’, the article asks, that ‘Irish youths and Irishmen can be arrested and detained in gaol, for an indefinite time without being put on trial?’
British Pathé footage of Irish republican prisoners in custody in 1920
[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.]
