Editing Mitchelstown (section)

===Mitchelstown massacre===
{{anchor|Massacre}}<!-- [[Mitchelstown Massacre]] and [[John Mandeville (Land Leaguer)]] redirect here-->
Between 1879 and 1881, and again between 1886 and 1888, local tenantry, led by [[John Mandeville (Land Leaguer)|John Mandeville]] and [[William O'Brien]], MP, organised a [[rent strike]] on the Mitchelstown Estate, then owned by Anna, Dowager Countess of Kingston and her second husband, William Downes Webber. On 9 September 1887, a protest was held later in the day in New Market Square outside the Market House where Mandeville and O'Brien were being tried. Neither man appeared in court. After the court ended, approximately 8,000 demonstrators paraded into New Square. As the speeches began from a wagon in the square, the police attempted to get an official police notetaker closer to the platform so that he could hear and record what was being said. Their motives were misunderstood, and they were held back by the crowd. They retreated, returning moments later with fifty reinforcements. This time, they fixed bayonets and used the butts of their rifles to hit horses that had been placed around the edge of the crowd to prevent their access to the wagon. In the melee that followed, hand-to-hand combat involving police being beaten with sticks and stones being thrown at them. The police retreated to their barracks, which was on a house that overlooked part of the square. As the last constable arrived at the barracks, he drew his revolver and fired a single shot into the air. This created confusion amongst the police inside the barracks, who by that time had been placed at the upstairs windows with carbine rifles. Several shots were fired into the crowd. Three men were killed and several more injured. The dead men were John Shinnick of [[Fermoy]], John Casey of [[Kilbehenny]] and Michael Lonergan of [[Galbally, County Limerick]].<ref>Bill Power, 'White Knights Dark Earls, the rise and fall of an Anglo-Irish dynasty,' (The Collins Press, 2000)</ref><ref>W.E. Vaughan, 'A New History of Ireland VI: Ireland Under the Union, 1870-1921'(Oxford, 2010), p. 72</ref> The incident generated considerable international attention and became known as the "Mitchelstown Massacre". The phrase "Remember Mitchelstown" (first coined by [[William Ewart Gladstone|William Gladstone]]) became a rallying cry for Irishmen at home and abroad. The memorial to Mandeville that stands in Market Square was unveiled in 1906 by [[William O'Brien]] MP. It also commemorates the names of the three men killed in 1887.{{citation needed|date=April 2024}}