On this day in 1931, Superintendent Sean Curtin was shot and killed outside his home at Friarsfield, just outside Tipperary Town.
Denis G. Marnane claims that there was no doubt in people’s minds that the assassination was related to Curtin’s attempts to put an end to illegal IRA drilling in the area.
Superintendent Curtin was the highest-ranking member of An Garda Síochána to be murdered in the line of duty during the one hundred years of the force.
Superintendent Curtain, 29, was a farmer’s son from near Newmarket, Co. Cork. He joined the guards in April 1922 and was soon after promoted to sergeant and then inspector. In 1926, he became a superintendent and served in Killarney prior to his transfer to Tipperary in April 1930. At the time of his murder, Curtin and his wife were expecting their first child.
In late 1930, the “Solohead Company” of the IRA had been meeting, drilling and taking part in target practice. The guards were tipped off to this some time in early 1931 and on the evening of Friday, 6 February, they arrived at an isolated farmhouse where the drilling was taking place. Three arrests were made and subsequently a fourth man was charged. These were John Ryan, Con O’Brien, John Harding and Thomas Ryan. At a special court before a Peace Commissioner on Saturday evening (7 February), Superintendent Curtin sought to have these four men remanded to the next sitting of the district court. Curtin explained the circumstances of the arrest and stated that guns and ammunition had been found at the scene. Charges were brought under section 6 of the 1925 Treasonable Offences Act.
The trial opened in the Circuit Court in Clonmel on Wednesday 18 March 1931. The four defendants were tried before a jury. Such was the pressure on the six witnesses for the prosecution that the story presented by them was a great deal weaker than what they had outlined in the original statements. After just twenty minutes, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty on all counts.
Just days after the court case ended, Superintendent Curtin was dead. He arrived at the gates to his Friarsfield home about 10.15pm on the night of 21 March 1931. Curtin got out of his Morris Cowley car to open the gates at which point, about five shots were fired at the unarmed superintendent. He lay on the ground dying for two hours before his sister-in-law went to investigate the car lights at the bottom of the drive. With the help of neighbours, they got Curtin into the house but he never regained consciousness and died at about 1 a.m.
On 23 March, Curtin’s body was brought to Clonfert cemetery, near Newmarket in county Cork. The Nation newspaper described the murder as an ‘act of utter cowardice’. No arrests were made after the murder but Denis G. Marnane claims that ‘there was no doubt in people’s minds that Curtin’s assassination was connected with the illegal drilling case.
Sources:
Denis G. Marnane, “The IRA in West Tipperary in 1931: The Assassination of Superintendent Sean Curtin”, in Tipperary Historical Journal 1992 pp 9-22.
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