Like the ordinary police , the Auxiliaries sometimes took reprisals in the wake of attacks by the IRA . On the evening of Bloody Sunday , for example , Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy were killed by their Auxiliary captors under very suspicious circumstances : the official explanation , that the two insurgents tried to escape , is widely disbelieved . But perhaps the most notorious reprisal involving the Auxiliary Division was the burning of Cork on 11 December 1920 . At 7:30 p.m. that evening , a truckload of Auxiliaries from newly formed K Company was ambushed at Dillons Cross : a grenade was thrown onto their truck , wounding ten Auxiliaries and killing one , Temporary Cadet Spencer Chapman . Later that night , police and Auxiliaries took revenge by setting fire to the city 's commercial centre , preventing the fire service from attending the blaze , and shooting seven people . Two IRA men , Cornelius and Jerimiah Delaney , were killed in their beds at home in Dublin Hill ( though Con Delaney survived to December 18 ) . Five civilians were shot on the streets . Damage amounting to $ 20 million was inflicted . The Cork Fire Brigade did not have the resources to deal with the fires : law and order , it seemed , had completely broken down . The British Government at first claimed the citizens were responsible for the arson , but a military court of inquiry known as the Strickland Report later found that the fires had been started by the Auxiliaries . Its findings were suppressed by the government , but K Company was disbanded . Allegedly , some Auxiliaries took to wearing pieces of burnt cork on their caps afterwards , to celebrate the occasion . A few days later , near Dunmanway , an Auxiliary called Vernon Hart killed a young man and a seventy-year-old priest , whom the Auxiliary patrol met on the road . A third civilian , a local magistrate , escaped by approaching the other Auxiliaries before fleeing across nearby fields . Hart was arrested and court-martialled . At his trial , it was revealed that he had been a " particular friend " of TC Chapman , and had been drinking heavily since 11 December . Concerned that parallels would be made between this case and the killing of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington , the British Cabinet directed that Hart should be examined by at least two medical experts , a highly unusual intervention . These medical witnesses testified that Hart was insane at the time of the murders and the court-martial concluded that he " was guilty of the offenses with which he was charged , but was insane at the time of their commission " . Although Hamar Greenwood announced to the House of Commons that he would be detained at His Majesty 's pleasure , Hart was briefly held at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum before release the following year
Bloody Sunday
Bloody Sunday (1920)
Auxiliary Division