The river was named in 1882 by John Hay in commemoration of Lord Frederick Cavendish, who earlier that year was murdered in Dublin's Phoenix Park.
Newly installed Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish, on the very day of his arrival to Ireland, was walking with Burke when the assassins struck, in Phoenix Park, in Dublin, at 17:30 Saturday, 6 May 1882, in what were to become known as the Phoenix Park Murders.
In 1882, a breakaway IRB faction calling itself the Irish National Invincibles assassinated the British Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish and his secretary, in an incident known as the Phoenix Park Murders.
A ceremony was then held which included the town's MP Sir James Stansfeld, Lord Frederick Cavendish, Colonel Akroyd, the mayors of Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield, the Master Cutler of Sheffield, the Town Clerk of Leeds and the bridge engineers.
On 6 May 1882 two leading members of the British Government in Ireland, Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish and the Permanent Under-Secretary for Ireland T.H. Burke were stabbed to death in Phoenix Park, Dublin by the Irish National Invincibles (see Phoenix Park Murders).
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6 May - Phoenix Park Murders: Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Henry Burke, his Permanent Undersecretary, are fatally stabbed in Phoenix Park, Dublin, by members of the "Irish National Invincibles".
Joe Brady and four other members of the Irish National Invincibles gang who murdered Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Henry Burke, the Permanent Under-Secretary for Ireland, with surgical knives in Dublin's Phoenix Park; they were hanged at Kilmainham Jail in Dublin in 1883.