Epilogue
Published in 18th–19th - Century History, 1913, Features, Issue 3 May/June2013, Revolutionary Period 1912-23, Volume 21![A Kavanagh cartoon entitled ‘Birrell’s Bloody Bullies’—‘Lest ye forget! Murphy ordered civilian passengers out of his cars to facilitate [Chief Secretary] Birrell’s hired assassins and the police in their ignoble attempt to disarm Irishmen. These sweepings of Scotch slums shot down unarmed men, women and children.’ This refers to the incident on Bachelor’s Walk on 26 July 1914, the day of the Howth gunrunning, when the King’s Own Scottish Borderers opened fire on a hostile crowd, killing three people (a fourth died later) and wounding 38. (Irish Worker, July 1914)](https://www.historyireland.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/William-Martin-Murphy-5.png)
A Kavanagh cartoon entitled ‘Birrell’s Bloody Bullies’—‘Lest ye forget! Murphy ordered civilian passengers out of his cars to facilitate [Chief Secretary] Birrell’s hired assassins and the police in their ignoble attempt to disarm Irishmen. These sweepings of Scotch slums shot down unarmed men, women and children.’ This refers to the incident on Bachelor’s Walk on 26 July 1914, the day of the Howth gunrunning, when the King’s Own Scottish Borderers opened fire on a hostile crowd, killing three people (a fourth died later) and wounding 38. (Irish Worker, July 1914)
Murphy died on 26 June 1919, aged 74. Dublin City Council, on 27 June 1919, expressed its deepest sympathy at the passing of one ‘whom we always regarded as one of our ablest and best citizens, and whose loss—commercially, intellectually, and personal—will long be felt by the community and by our country generally’. The editorial in the main rival newspaper, the Freeman’s Journal, on Friday 27 June commented:
‘He was the leading figure and the organiser of the employers’ victory in the strike of 1913. Perhaps, his peace was too much of the victor’s peace, and a less sweeping victory might have had more satisfactory results in the years that have followed. But it is due to him to acknowledge that it was not so much the pecuniary profits of the success that interested him as his desire to safeguard those powers of independent management which he regarded as indispensable for the prosperity of Irish industry.’
