Ireland's "forgotten" hunger striker, Joe Murphy, honored 106 years on in US

The Cork republican, born in Massachusetts in 1895, has been remembered in his birthplace, over a century after his death. A commemorative tree has been planted by Cork's Lord Mayor, Fergal Dennehy, beside Lynn City Hall, in Massachusetts, marking an effort to restore his place in the history of Ireland’s independence struggle.

Joe Murphy was born Joseph Patrick Murphy in Lynn, Massachusetts, on May 10, 1895, to Irish parents Timothy Murphy and Nora O’Brien. The family returned to Cork when he was a young child and settled in Pouladuff, where he attended Togher National School, played with St. Finbarr’s, worked for Cork Corporation, and helped with the family market garden.

As a young man, Murphy became active in the Irish republican movement. He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1917 and served with H Company, 2nd Battalion, Cork No. 1 Brigade, taking part in the conflict that followed the rise of Sinn Féin and the War of Independence in Cork. He was arrested in July 1920 on a charge of possessing a bomb and was jailed in Cork Gaol.

Overshadowed death

Like other republican prisoners of the period, Murphy joined the mass hunger strike after the British authorities removed political status from republican prisoners. He stayed on hunger strike for 76 days and died in Cork Gaol on October 25, 1920, aged 25.

The same day as Terence MacSwiney’s death in Brixton Prison. Murphy’s death was long overshadowed, even though he was one of 22 Irish Republicans to die on hunger strike in the 20th century.

"Forgotten local hero"

At this week’s ceremony in Lynn, Cork Lord Mayor Fergal Dennehy said, “It was a poignant and deeply meaningful moment,” while later adding that it was “a huge honor” to see Murphy recognized in the city of his birth.

In earlier recognition at home, Cork Lord Mayor Mick Finn described him as “almost a forgotten local hero,” and Murphy’s grand-niece Shirley Kelleher said he was “an ordinary man who made an extraordinary sacrifice.”

Murphy’s sacrifice has been marked repeatedly in Cork over the years, including the naming of Joe Murphy House, the unveiling of a memorial plaque in Pouladuff, and the posthumous award of a Service Medal in 2019.

The Lynn tree now adds a transatlantic tribute to a man whose life began in Massachusetts, was shaped in Cork, and ended in the struggle for Irish freedom.