The family of an Irishman assassinated by Michael Collins’s “Squad” on Bloody Sunday was awarded the equivalent of €450,000 in compensation by the British government.
Capt Patrick McCormack, who served in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps (RAVC) in the first World War, was shot dead in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin city centre on the morning of Sunday, November 21st, 1920.
McCormack (47) was originally from Castlebar, Co Mayo, and was the nephew of the late Bishop of Galway Francis McCormack. He joined the RAVC in 1917 and served in Egypt. After the war he remained in Egypt and was in Ireland buying horses for the Alexandra Turf Club at the time of Bloody Sunday.
He was killed by a team led by Paddy Moran who would later be executed by the British for his role on Bloody Sunday, but not for the Gresham Hotel shooting; rather, for the shootings that took place later in Mount Street, Dublin.
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McCormack’s family was outraged by the killing and the suggestion that he was a British spy. His mother Kate said she could not bear the notion that her son had been engaged in “dishonourable conduct against his country”.
[ Bloody Sunday 1920: Who were Michael Collins’s hit team ‘The Squad’?Opens in new window ]
According to the Bloody Sunday compensation files, now released from the National Archives, McCormack’s family received £7,250 (the equivalent of £372,500 today) of which £4,500 was paid to his widow Noellie, £2,000 to the couple’s daughter Grace and £750 to his mother Kate.
The responsibility for paying the award, the amount of which was decided by the British government in June 1921, was the subject of sharp correspondence between the British and Irish Free State governments.
It was originally suggested that the compensation payments be shared equally by both, but the Irish government refused to pay, stating that documents captured by the IRA in a raid on post in Dublin showed that McCormack worked for the British.
[ Diarmaid Ferriter: Bloody Sunday 1920 changed British attitudes to IrelandOpens in new window ]
“His execution was decided on in a responsible quarter after due consideration and he was shadowed for some time before it was found possible to carry it out,” stated the letter from the Department of Finance in 1925.
The letter was sent to Alexander Reid Jamieson in the Colonial Office with a terse note: “I take it you will now accept full liability for payment of the award in this case.”
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