A group of IRA men knocked on the door of a house in Bloemfontein Road, Shepherd’s Bush, London, and announced they were looking for a man who was a serving policeman in Ireland. They had come to kill him, but the door was opened by the policeman’s father-in-law, Horace McNeil. There seems to have been some doorstep discussion, then one of the men fired a revolver, and they fled.

Four days later, on Thursday, May 19th, 1921, McNeil died in hospital, victim of a murder by mistake.