The Phoenix Park Murders were the fatal stabbings of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland, on 6 May 1882. Cavendish was the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Burke was the Permanent Under-Secretary, the most senior Irish civil servant. The assassination was carried out by members of the rebel group Irish National Invincibles, a more radical breakaway from the Irish Republican Brotherhood.



Thomas Henry Burke (29 May 1829 – 6 May 1882) was an Irish civil servant who served as Permanent Under Secretary at the Irish Office for many years before being killed during the Phoenix Park Murders on Saturday 6 May 1882. The killing was carried out by an Irish republican organisation called the Irish National Invincibles. The newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish, although not the intended victim, was assassinated alongside him while they walked through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The victims were stabbed in the neck and chest with surgical blades.

Thomas Burke was the Invincibles' intended target because he had been working for the British establishment as head of the Civil Service for many years and was associated with the British coercion policy during the Land War, 1879–82. Irish nationalists referred to Burke as the "Castle rat".