RIC Auxiliary Cadet Lionel Ralph Mitchell

RIC Auxiliary Cadet Lionel Ralph Mitchell (aged 23) from Somerset (The Rea, near Cork city)

Date of incident: 16 Nov. 1920 (abducted at Emmet Place in Cork, executed, and disappeared as intelligence officer by IRA)

Sources: II, 23 Nov. 1920; IT, 22 Aug. 1921; CC, 5, 20 Nov. 1921; CCE, 12 nov. 1921; HO 184/50 (TNA); British Forces Missing (Military Archives, A/0909); Interview with Michael (Mick) Murphy, Ernie O’Malley Notebooks, P17b/112 (UCDA); WS 558 of Mark Wickham et al., 3 (BMH); Fitzgerald (1977, 2005), 157; Abbott (2000), 311, 313; Borgonovo (2007), 21; McCall (2010), 158; Murphy (2010), 222; http://www.theauxiliaries.com/men-alphabetical/men-m/mitchell-lr/mitchell.html (accessed 27 Sept. 2015); http://theauxiliaries.com/companies/c-coy/c-coy.html (accessed 28 April 2016). 

Note: Mitchell and Agnew were both ‘intelligence officers who were travelling from Macroom to Cork, when they were kidnapped [at Emmet Place in Cork city on 16 November 1920], interrogated, and killed. The bodies were secretly buried by the IRA’. Mitchell, like his fellow abductee Agnew, had been an Auxiliary only since mid-August 1920. He had fought in the Great War as a lieutenant in the Royal Berkshire Regiment and had earned the Distinguished Conduct Medal. See Abbott (2000), 311, 313. IRA sources claimed to have abducted Mitchell and Agnew in Cork city and to have executed them. See Interview with Michael (Mick) Murphy, Ernie O’Malley Notebooks, P17b/112 (UCDA); WS 558 of Mark Wickham et al., 3 (BMH).