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Welcome back to This Day in Irish History. I'm your host, Raymond Welsh. Before we dive into today's story, if you’d like to explore other significant events that happened on this day in Irish history, visit thisdayirishhistory.com—the link is in the episode description. Now, let’s journey back to March 24, 1922, and one of the most harrowing and controversial episodes in Belfast’s troubled past—the McMahon murders. A brutal reprisal killing that shocked the nation, the attack laid bare the bitter sectarian divide and the grim undercurrent of violence engulfing Northern Ireland in the early 1920s.
The backdrop to this tragedy was the deeply volatile period following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. The treaty had ended the War of Independence and paved the way for the Irish Free State, but it also partitioned the island, creating Northern Ireland—a self-governing entity within the United Kingdom. Tensions in the new Northern Ireland statelet, particularly in Belfast, reached fever pitch as loyalists and republicans clashed violently. The city had already seen a wave of sectarian killings, and the police force itself, particularly the newly formed Ulster Special Constabulary, known as the "Specials," was widely perceived by Catholics as partisan and hostile.
In this fraught environment, the McMahon family lived in what should have been the safety of their own home on Kinnaird Terrace, a respectable Catholic household in north Belfast. Owen McMahon, the patriarch, was a well-known publican and a respected businessman. He was not involved in politics or the IRA. But on the night of March 24, 1922, his home was targeted in a savage act of revenge.
Just after 1 a.m., a group of armed men, dressed in police uniforms and believed to be members of the RIC or Specials, stormed the McMahon residence. They lined up the male members of the household and opened fire in cold blood. Owen McMahon was killed along with four of his sons: Bernard, aged 24; Frank, 22; Patrick, 15; and Gerard, just 11 years old. Another son, Michael, aged 12, was seriously injured but survived. A family employee, Edward McKinney, also died in the attack. The killers spared the women and younger children, but their message was chillingly clear—this was retaliation.
Earlier that day, two policemen had been killed in a suspected IRA ambush. The McMahon murders were widely interpreted as a reprisal orchestrated by elements within the police, although no one was ever held accountable. The government in Northern Ireland denied official involvement, but the incident fueled widespread suspicion and confirmed for many nationalists what they already believed: that Catholic civilians were not safe in the new state, and that sectarian violence was being tacitly encouraged or at least ignored by the authorities.
The response to the massacre was immediate and outraged. Nationalist newspapers across Ireland decried the killings as a state-sponsored atrocity. Even in Britain, the event drew condemnation, with questions raised in Westminster about the role of the Northern government and its security forces. Yet despite public outcry, no arrests were made, and the perpetrators were never brought to justice.
The McMahon murders were not an isolated event. They formed part of a grim pattern of tit-for-tat killings that plagued Belfast during this period. Between July 1920 and July 1922, more than 450 people were killed in political and sectarian violence in the city, most of them civilians. Catholics bore the brunt of the killings and expulsions, leading to what many described as a campaign of intimidation and ethnic cleansing in parts of Belfast.
In the decades that followed, the McMahon killings became emblematic of the deep mistrust and trauma that shaped Catholic experience in Northern Ireland. The memory of that night haunted not only the survivors but the entire nationalist community, and it remains a powerful symbol of the costs of political division and sectarian hatred.
Thank you for joining me on this sobering chapter of Ireland’s history. Please like and subscribe for more stories that shed light on the moments that have shaped our past. Until next time, I’m Raymond Welsh—Slán go fóill.
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