Cavendish, Lord Frederick Charles (1836–1882)

British administrator, second son of the 7th Duke of Devonshire. He was appointed by Gladstone as chief secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1882. On the evening of his arrival in Dublin, he and Thomas Burke, the permanent Irish undersecretary, were murdered in Phoenix Park by members of the Irish Invincibles, a secret group of Fenian extremists founded the previous year. The murder had far-reaching political consequences for Ireland.

Cavendish was born at Eastbourne, Sussex, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Following his assassination, the perpetrators of the outrage were caught when James Carey, a member of the Dublin corporation, turned informer. Twenty conspirators were arrested, of whom five were executed, and the rest sentenced to long prison terms. It emerged that the assassins did not know Cavendish; their principal target was Burke.