Lieutenant George Bennett of Special List and Royal Army Service Corps killed 21/11/1920
Buried in a CWGC grave at Kensal Green (St Marys Roman Catholic Cemetery. Temp Capt George Bennett was the son of J W Bennet of Bournemouth
Educated at Sherborne and Magdalan College, Oxford, where he took an honours in Law. At the outbreak of war he joined Motor Transport for a few weeks. And afterwards served with the intellegence department in Holland. After the war he was asked to rejoin the intellegence department for service in Ireland.
Two members of the Cairo Gang, Lt. Peter Ashmun Ames and Captain George Bennett were shot and killed, following a short gun battle, after a sympathetic maid let their attackers into 38 Upper Mount Street.
The following IRA men appear to have been involved here:-
Vinny Byrne asked to see Lieutenant Peter Ames and Lieutenant George Bennett at the door of 38 Upper Mount Street. The maid was obliging, pointing out the rooms where both men slept. Byrne sent Tom Ennis with some men to the back room and he went to the front parlour himself.
As I opened the folding-doors, the officer, who was in bed, was in the act of going for his gun under his pillow. Doyle and myself dashed into the room, at the same time ordering him to put up his hands, which he did. Doyle dashed around by the side of the bed, and pulled a Colt .45 from beneath the pillow. Right behind us came Frank Saurin and he started collecting from papers etc., which was his job. I remember looking into a drawer and seeing a Sinn Fein tie there and, if I am not mistaken, photographs of the 1916 leaders. I ordered the British officer to get out of bed. He asked me what was going to happen and I replied : ‘Ah, nothing.’ I then ordered him to march in front of me… I marched my officer down to the back room where the other officer was. He was standing up in the bed, facing the wall. I ordered mine to do likewise. When the two of them were together I thought to myself ‘The Lord have mercy on your souls ! ’ I then opened fire with my Peter. They both fell dead.
Bennett was found with a small wound at the top and a larger wound at the back of the head, one on the front of the chest, three in the back and two wounds onthe right forearm.
The inquest did not specify which were entry and which were exit wounds. Vinny Byrnes account is at odds with other men's accounts at this address. Frank Saurin claimed he did the talking at the front door, not Byrne. Tom Ennis was said to have shot one of the officers. And he did so as the man still lay beside his wife in bed.
Hansard reports 38, Upper Mount-street. Two murders This house was entered at 9.10 a.m. by twenty armed, unmasked men who were let in by a servant, Catherine Farrell, who unwillingly and under constraint pointed out the rooms occupied by Lieutenant Aimes, of the Grenadier Guards, and Lieutenant Bennett, of the R.A.S.C., Motor Transport. The maid rushed upstairs and warned an officer who was sleeping on the upper floor, and another male lodger, that murder was being done downstairs. A fusilade of shots was heard. When they came down-stairs they found two bodies in a pool of blood in Aimes's bedroom. Bennett had evidently been dragged from the bedroom in his bedclothes into his brother officer's room where both were shot together, their bodies lying side by side.
Patrick Moran was hanged for Bennett's murder on 14th March 1921. It is difficult to know how guilty he was.