Murder before breakfast

April 25

• 1922 Commandant O’Neill, 3rd Cork Brigade IRA, was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area over the following four days.
• 1920 RIC Sergeant Cornelius Crean, brother of the explorer Tom Crean, was killed by the IRA in an ambush near Upton, Co. Cork.
• 1870 Daniel Maclise (64), history and portrait painter who worked for most of his life in London, died.
• 1719 The life and strange adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was published.
• 1819 Vere Foster, philanthropist and educationist, born in Copenhagen, where his Irish-born father was British minister.
• 1987 Lord Justice Gibson and his wife were killed by an IRA bomb as they crossed the border south of Newry, Co. Down.
• 1917 Ella Fitzgerald, jazz singer, born in Newport News, Virginia.
• 1922 Commandant O’Neill of the third Cork Brigade IRA was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area between 26 and 29 April.
• 1915 During the First World War, Allied troops landed on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula. The disastrous Gallipoli campaign, ending in January 1916, cost 46,000 Allied lives, including over 2,295 Irishmen.