Thomas Henry Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish are stabbed to death by Fenian assassins in Phoenix Park, Dublin.

Thomas Henry Burke was an Irish civil servant who served as Permanent Under Secretary at the Irish Office for many years before being assassinated during the Phoenix Park Murders on Saturday 6 May 1882. The assassination was carried out by an Irish republican organisation known as the Irish National Invincibles.

Lord Frederick Charles Cavendish was an English Liberal politician and protégé of the Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone. Cavendish was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland in May 1882 but was killed along with Thomas Henry Burke in what came to be known as the Phoenix Park Murders only hours after his arrival in Dublin, a victim of the Irish National Invincibles organisation.

The word Fenian served as an umbrella term for the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and their affiliate in the United States, the Fenian Brotherhood. They were secret political organisations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. In 1867, they sought to coordinate raids into Canada from the United States with a rising in Ireland. In the 1916 Easter Rising and the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence, the IRB led the republican struggle.

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 a republican organisation known as the Irish National Invincibles, a more radical breakaway from the Irish Republican Brotherhood.