ON THIS DATE (1ST MARCH) 42 YEARS AGO : BOBBY SANDS BEGAN HIS HUNGER STRIKE IN LONG KESH PRISON.
The 1981 hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during this on-going struggle by Irish republican prisoners.
A 'blanket protest' began in 1976 when the British government withdrew 'Special Category Status' for political prisoners and, in 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to 'slop out', the protest escalated into the 'dirty protest', where prisoners refused to leave their cells to wash and covered the walls of their cells with excrement.
In 1980, seven prisoners participated in the first hunger strike, which ended after 53 days then, on Sunday, 1st March 1981 - 42 years ago on this date - (P)IRA POW Bobby Sands began his hunger strike.
He received widespread media attention for his protest and more so when, on the 9th April 1981, he was elected as an abstentionist member in a Leinster House (Free State 'parliament') election, after being nominated to contest the seat by Dáithí Ó Conaill, the then vice president of the then Sinn Féin organisation.
Bobby Sands was, as far as Irish republicans are concerned, a 'Teachta Dála' (TD) who was elected to take a seat in a 32-county Irish parliament, unlike the Free State representatives who sit in an institution in Kildare Street in Dublin today and claim to be 'TD's in the Irish parliament' and, indeed, Bobby's motives and those of Dáithí and the other then Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle members who nominated him to contest the election were pure, unlike the motives of the self-serving time-keepers who sit in that Kildare Street premises today : the motives of the former involved a principled unwillingness to allow themselves and the struggle they were part of to be criminalised and to highlight to the world that they were fighting a political struggle against Westminster and its allies in this country.
Bobby Sands was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for his alleged part in a fire-bombing campaign which, as part of an economic war against the British presence in Ireland, targeted business premises (in this instance, the Balmoral Furniture Company) with the intention of making it financially unviable for Britain to maintain its grip on that part of Ireland, a fact which present-day Provisional Sinn Féin and other Leinster House members seek to ignore or gloss over when referencing what they call 'the ineffectual/grubby deeds' of those who continue that struggle today.
On the 9th April, 1981, Bobby Sands was elected by 30,492 of those that voted in the Fermanagh/South Tyrone district, prompting, years later, this thesis from a republican leader -
"Contrary to allegations made in the news media, there was not a straight line from the election of Bobby Sands in 1981 to the Stormont Agreement of 1998. Rather was the line from March, April and May 1981 to the same months in 1998 disfigured and distorted by an internal power-struggle for the leadership of Sinn Féin accompanied and followed by deceit and artifice as the ideals of Bobby Sands were steadily perverted and a section of the then powerful revolutionary Republican Movement turned into a constitutional party.." (from here). Bobby Sands, 9th March 1954 – 5th May 1981. RIP.
'TRIBUTE TO DEAD REPUBLICAN...'
From 'The United Irishman' newspaper, April 1955.
Oration given by Tomas MacCurtain at the grave of Domhnall Mac Suibhne, Ahane, Cullen, County Cork, who was laid to rest on March 7th 1955 -
"Never in the thirty-odd years that have passed has the voice or pen of Domhnall Mac Suibhne been still when a wrong was to be condemned or a right to be upheld.
All through those bitter years when he saw old friends and comrades turning away from him because he was too honourable to bow the knee to political expediency he remained true to the old cause and preached the old doctrine.
It is sad to think that, having endured the long years of political cynicism, he should die when the tide is about to turn and that he should not be here to witness in the near future the miracle of which Pearse spoke over the grave of another courageous and noble soul -
"That miracle which ripens in the heart of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation."
I do not think it unfitting that, standing at his grave, I should say the words which he would say if he were alive..."
(MORE LATER.)
ON THIS DATE (1ST MARCH) 175 YEARS AGO : 'STARVATION FEVER' ARTICLE PUBLISHED.
An article entitled 'Starvation Fever of 1847' was published in the 'Dublin Medical Press' periodical on this date - 1st March - 175 years ago (1848). The author was a Dr. Daniel Donovan, Skibbereen, Cork, and that article helped to focus world attention on the attempted genocide ('An Gorta Mór/The Great Hunger') that was obliterating the Irish people at that time -
'Dr. Donovan...emerges as one of the most heroic figures of An Gorta Mór...a bold and successful surgeon, an oculist and a general practitioner, a talented and prolific author and a champion of the oppressed and destitute Irish people..(he) was unambitious and unselfish and chose to remain in Skibbereen where patients came to consult him not only from other parts of Ireland but from England and Scotland, some even taking
the long Atlantic crossing from America..'
In the article, Dr. Donovan wrote - "Although the fever which committed such frightful ravages during the entire of 1847 has in a great degree subsided, yet we cannot, I fear, hope that the enemy is altogether subdued, more particularly as want and misery (to an extreme degree) are likely to be the lot of the majority of our population for the ensuing spring and summer ; and the privations of the poor, as regards food (and) clothes seemed last year to generate that epidemic which, like the rod of Aaron, has swallowed up the memory of its predecessors, and compared with which the pestilence of 1741 (proverbially known as the 'year of slaughter') scarcely deserves notice.
Golden corn for the stranger.
What sow ye?
Human corpses that wait for the avenger.
Fainting forms, hunger-stricken, what see you in the offing?
Stately ships to bear our food away, amid the stranger's scoffing.
They guard our masters' granaries from the thin hands of the poor.
Pale mothers, wherefore weeping?
Would to God that we were dead.
Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread ...we are wretches, famished, scorned, human tools to build your pride,
But God will yet take vengeance for the souls for whom Christ died.
Now is your hour of pleasure
bask ye in the world's caress;
But our whitening bones against ye will rise as witnesses,
From the cabins and the ditches, in their charred, uncoffin'd masses,
For the Angel of the Trumpet will know them as he passes.
A ghastly, spectral army, before the great God we'll stand,
And arraign ye as our murderers, the spoilers of our land.
That good woman sums-up the despair and anger felt then, and still felt to this day.
As it should be.
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON...
From 'Magill' Annual, 2002.
The solution?
Why, elect him President of Ireland.
'Wigmore' senses your reaction and begs you to persist as the argument unfolds.
Firstly, niggling constitutional issues regarding our favourite President's right to a nomination could be swept aside by a referendum of the type we as a nation (sic) seem somewhat addicted to ; in the clause which demands that the President be a citizen of the republic of Ireland (sic) we need only insert the caveat 'unless the President's name is William Jefferson Clinton'. That motion would be passed with record approval.
We could, while we are at it, make him exempt from any other Irish laws which he might deem unsavoury or unwarranted so that he might enjoy a smoother presidential ride on this side of the Atlantic than he has done heretofore...
(MORE LATER.)
ON THIS DATE (1ST MARCH) 26 YEARS AGO : A NON-SLEEPING EGG CURRIE SPEAKS...
"We didn't sleep.." - the reply given by Tory politician Edwina Currie to a 'Twitter' user who stated she had slept with John Major. In the same year that she had put all her eggs in one basket, she was named as runner-up to Margaret Thatcher in BBC Radio 4's 'Women of the Year' poll but it is for her snide remark about the Irish that she is best remembered for here : she was quoted in 'The Sun' newspaper on the 1st March 1997 - 26 years ago on this date - giving her views on Irish people - "They're so intelligent, the Irish. Give them an education and they can do anything. I remember the first time I met an Irish accountant. I laughed because I couldn't believe it : an Irish accountant...!"
Oh but we're good with figures, Edwina : 1+1+6+9 = 854 and 26+6 = 1.
And you can count on that.
ON THIS DATE (1ST MARCH) 58 YEARS AGO : IRISH PATRIOT RE-INTERRED IN GLASNEVIN CEMETERY, DUBLIN.
Pictured - Roger Casement's body being re-interred (on Monday, 1st March 1965 - 58 years ago on this date) in the Republican Plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, having been released by the British from Pentonville Prison in Islington, North London.
He was born on the 1st September, 1864, in Sandycove, County Dublin, the son of Captain Roger Casement of the 3rd Dragoon Guards of the British Army and Anne Jephson from Mallow, County Cork. His mother had him secretly baptised in her own religion, Roman Catholic, but he was raised in the Protestant faith of his father. As both his parents died young, Roger was taken in by an uncle, near Ballycastle, County Antrim, and educated as a boarder at the diocesan school in Ballymena.
From 1895 onwards he held consular appointments at various locations in Africa, including Boma in the Congo (1904) where, for the British Foreign Office, he investigated Belgian human rights abuses of the indigenous people. Later, in Peru, he was commissioned to undertake a report on the reported abuse of workers in the rubber industry in the Putumayo basin, which earned him a knighthood after his findings were published as a parliamentary paper (1911). He had been a member of the Gaelic League and became increasingly radicalised by the opposition of the Ulster unionists to Home Rule from 1912 onwards and wrote nationalist articles under the pseudonym 'Seán Bhean Bhocht'.
He rarely receives a mention when it comes to the writers and poets of 1916 ("Of unmatched skill to lead by pathways rife/With danger and dark doubt, where slander's knife/Gleamed ever bare to wound, yet over all/He pressed triumphant on-lo, thus to fall" - 'Parnell', by Roger Casement) yet his reports from the Putumayo and from the Congo show a writer of great talent.
His descriptions of the horrendous brutality inflicted on innocent and perfectly peaceful native inhabitants was enough to force a change of policy with regard to the treatment of workers and slaves on the rubber plantations. Casement wrote in 1911 that "..the robbery of Ireland since the Union has been so colossal, carried out on such a scale, that if the true account current between the two countries were ever submitted to any impartial tribunal, England would be clapped in jail..".
For his part in trying to stop that robbery he was convicted of treason by the British and sentenced to death after a three-day 'trial' (held at the Old Bailey in London between the 26th and the 29th of June 1916, where he was prosecuted by 'Sir' Edward Carson, the Orange Order bigot).
His speech from the dock is not as appreciated as it should be - "With all respect I assert this Court is to me, an Irishman, not a jury of my peers to try me in this vital issue for it is patent to every man of conscience that I have a right, an indefeasible right, if tried at all, under this Statute of high treason, to be tried in Ireland, before an Irish Court and by an Irish jury. This Court, this jury, the public opinion of this country, England, cannot but be prejudiced in varying degree against me, most of all in time of war.
I did not land in England ; I landed in Ireland. It was to Ireland I came; to Ireland I wanted to come; and the last place I desired to land in was England. But for the Attorney General of England there is only "England"— there is no Ireland, there is only the law of England — no right of Ireland; the liberty of Ireland and of the Irish is to be judged by the power of England. Yet for me, the Irish outlaw, there is a land of Ireland, a right of Ireland, and a charter for all Irishmen to appeal to, in the last resort, a charter that even the very statutes of England itself cannot deprive us of — nay, more, a charter that Englishmen themselves assert as the fundamental bond of law that connects the two kingdoms.." (...more here).
I say that Roger Casement
did what he had to do.
He died upon the gallows,
but that is nothing new.
Afraid they might be beaten
before the bench of Time,
they turned a trick by forgery
and blackened his good name.
A perjurer stood ready
to prove their forgery true ;
they gave it out to all the world,
and that is something new.
For Spring Rice had to whisper it,
being their Ambassador,
and then the speakers got it
and writers by the score.
Come Tom and Dick, come all the troop
that cried it far and wide,
come from the forger and his desk,
desert the perjurer's side.
Come speak your bit in public
that some amends be made
to this most gallant gentleman
that is in quicklime laid. (From here.)
Roger Casement was sentenced to "death by rope" on the 29th June 1916 and was executed by the British on the 3rd of August that year in London, England. On the 1st March 1965 - 58 years ago on this date - his remains were re-interred in the Republican Plot of Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
FUNDS AND FINE GAEL'S LEADER...
Michael Lowry has so far been the focus of media attention about Fine Gael fundraising.
But the party's current leader, Enda Kenny (pictured), hosted a £1,000-a-plate dinner two days before the second mobile phone licence was awarded. And other guests say that one of the bidders for that licence was in attendance.
By Mairead Carey.
From 'Magill' magazine, January 2003.
"Obviously, the people going to such an event aren't going for the meal..." Michael Keating added, "..there would have been no promises made, but at least they feel afterwards that they have a nodding acquaintance with the guy."
A few days before he was to announce the winners of the 'National Conference Centre' bid, Enda Kenny controversially aborted the competition and entered negotiations with the 'Royal Dublin Society' (RDS) to build the centre - even though the RDS had been one of the competitors!
The 'Carlton Consortium' complained to the European Commission about his handling of the affair, and when Fianna Fáil returned to power, (State) Tourism Minister Jim McDaid set up another competition which was eventually won by 'Treasury Holdings'.
But that version of the project also floundered and to this day the centre has not been built...
(MORE LATER.)
PLANNING FOR A BREAK TO RECOVER FROM THE BREAK...!
...and we're back from our holliers, as you probably already noticed!
All 34 of us - actually, 38 of us left Dublin on the 13th February but a couple and their two children decided to stay on for another few days, during which time they'll (probably!) drive around offering apologises and begging for forgiveness on our behalf...!
We didn't completely wreck any of the places we visited but, as we tried to explain to the cops and the various judges we encountered (!), we were a group of Dubs free from the normal constraints of work, house, children, grandchildren and all other responsibilities and...well...eh....Sergeant/Yer Honour, we maybe occasionally lost the run of ourselves...!
Ah no. Only jokin'...
Mostly...!
And myself and the rest of the Girl Gang will be losing the run of ourselves again later on this month 'cause we're going back ; in between our childminding duties and the feeding times (!) we had the craic and have made arrangements to do it again, especially so considering that we won't be getting to New York this year, mostly because of 'Covid Passports', which we haven't got, but also due to the crappy exchange rate. So, yeah, readers - we'll be taking another short break later on, but don't fret, pet - sure we'll give ya at least a week's notice!
Thanks for the visit, and for reading,
Sharon and the team.
See yis all next Wednesday, 8th March, 2023.
ON THIS DATE (30TH NOVEMBER) 122 YEARS AGO : DEATH OF THE IRISH 'GALLEY SLAVE / GOLDEN CHAINS' AUTHOR : OSCAR WILDE.
On the 16th October, 1854, a boy was born to a middle-class family who lived at Westland Row, Dublin : the child's father, 'Sir' William Wilde, was a doctor, and his wife, who was known to be 'unconventional' for the times that were in it - Jane Francesca Agnes (née Elgee aka 'Lady' Wilde) - was a poet who mixed in artistic and intellectual circles, and was left-leaning in her political beliefs.
The child was christened 'Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde' : Oscar Wilde (pictured).
Oscar was educated in Trinity College in Dublin and then in Magdalen College in Oxford, England, and won a 'double-first' in 'Mods' (one of the hardest examinations ever devised!) and the Newdigate Prize for Poetry but, nonetheless, had to revert to lecturing and freelancing for periodicals to make a living.
However, he persevered and, in his mid-30's, made a name for himself with 'The Happy Prince', followed three years later with 'Lord Arthur Savile's Crime' and, in that same year, 'A House of Pomegranates'.
He then took the world by storm and ensured for himself a place at the top table of literary giants with his works Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of being Earnest.
But 'life' intervened - being, as Oscar Wilde was, a gay man in the Victorian era brought with it even more dangers than for a heterosexual who 'played the field' : his affair (and letters) to his boyfriend lead to him serving two years in prison, after which he wrote 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' - "Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel." ('The Ballad of Reading Gaol', by Oscar Wilde, written after his release from Reading prison on 19 May 1897.) When he was released (at 43 years of age, in 1897) he went into exile and died, three years later, in Paris, on the 30th November 1900 - 122 years ago on this date.
Oscar was born on October 16th, 1854, in Westland Row, Dublin, and he died (at 2pm) on November 30th, 1900, in Paris, France. He was broke, financially - the last roof he lived under was a rented room in a '10th category hotel' (the Hôtel d'Alsace in Paris's Rue des BeauxArts).
He was permanently in debt and his boyfriend, 'Lord' Alfred Bruce Douglas ('Bosie'), when asked to help him out with a few bob, refused, and stated that Oscar was "wheedling at me like an old whore".
A few weeks before he died he had confided in a friend that he was "ill and without a penny", and was in debt to the amount of £400 at the time of his death.
"And now, I am dying beyond my means."
'TOMÁS MacCURTAIN COMMEMORATION...'
From 'The United Irishman' newspaper, April 1955.
In his oration, Domhnall O Cathain said -
"There is work there for us all. One of the clearest things in Irish history is that history repeats itself and runs in cycles. There have been periods of resurgence, periods of quietness. Maybe Tomás MacCurtain was lucky in his time, he was born into a resurgent Ireland, but he was ready and waiting to harness the tide and direct it into the right channel.
There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune ; maybe the signs are showing again. Let us watch and be ready when the cycle has made complete revolution, when the heart of the nation throbs with new life, let us be ready.
Let the Republican Movement be there as the spearhead of a nation marching to freedom. When the great upsurge of public opinion will sweep into oblivion the unnatural barrier that divides our country, it will come only by honest endeavour on our part."
Let us be true to the heritage left us by Tomás MacCurtain, let us follow in his noble footsteps and help to realise what he lived for and what he died for.
(END of 'Tomás MacCurtain Commemoration' ; NEXT - 'The Late Patrick Henry, Sligo', from the same source.)
ON THIS DATE (30TH NOVEMBER) 187 YEARS AGO : BIRTH OF A WORDSMITH.
'On November 30th, 1835 (187 years ago on this date) the small town of Florida in Missouri witnessed the birth of its most famous son.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (pictured) was welcomed into the world as the sixth child of John Marshall and Jane Lampton Clemens...approximately four years after his birth, in 1839, the Clemens family moved 35 miles east to the town of Hannibal. A growing port city that lay along the banks of the Mississippi, Hannibal was a frequent stop for steam boats arriving by both day and night from St. Louis and New Orleans.
Samuel's father was a judge, and he built a two-story frame house at 206 Hill Street in 1844. As a youngster, Samuel was kept indoors because of poor health. However, by age nine, he seemed to recover from his ailments and joined the rest of the town's children outside.
He then attended a private school in Hannibal. When Samuel was 12, his father died of pneumonia and, at 13, Samuel left school to become a printer's apprentice. After two short years, he joined his brother Orion's newspaper as a printer and editorial assistant. It was here that young Samuel found he enjoyed writing...' (From here.)
And, since then, millions of people have enjoyed his writings - "Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it." "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." And an Irish connection - 'Croker (NOT this one!) earned the undying wrath of (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) who in a mock eulogy to the Irish emmigrant got his facts wrong, but maybe not the tone, when he said -
"Yes, farewell to Croker forever, the Baron of Wantage, the last, and I dare say the least desirable, addition to English nobility...an all-round blatherskite and chief pillager of the municipal till..." ' This is the wordsmith in question...!
Born : November 30th, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, United States.Died : April 21st, 1910, in Stormfield, Redding, Connecticut, United States (...and don't ya just love the descriptive power of the term 'all-round blatherskite and chief pillager of the municipal till' ; I'll be robbin' that!)
"I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead, and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and they would be honest so much earlier."
ON THIS DATE (30TH NOVEMBER) 148 YEARS AGO : BIRTH OF A BOOZY 'BULLDOG'.
'...he had drunk an estimated 42,000 bottles of Pol Roger champagne through his life ; he thought nothing of starting the morning with cold game and a glass of hock and ending it at 3am with the best part of a bottle of cognac..' (from here) .
'Sir' Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, RA, was born in Oxfordshire, England, on this date, 30th November 1874 - 148 years ago on this date - and evolved from a little pup into a pugnace britannicii, becoming top dog in British politics twice (1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955).
During the 1921 'Treaty of Surrender' discussions it was the then British 'Colonial Secretary to Ireland', Winston Churchill, who maneuvered a friend of his, South African Judge Richard Feetham into the position of 'Chairman' of said meetings, even though Churchill himself described that particular 'talking shop' as a "toothless body". Still - no harm to have its 'Chairman' in your pocket, an old British custom, practiced to this day.
But, drunk or sober, when he was on 'empire business', he himself was anything but 'toothless' '..a man who swilled on champagne while 4 million men, women and children in Bengal starved due to his racist colonial policies...a white supremacist whose hatred for Indians led to four million starving to death - "all who resist will be killed without quarter" because the Pashtuns need "recognise the superiority of race" - the man who loathed Irish people so much he conceived different ways to terrorise them, the racist thug who waged war on black people across Africa and in Britain...he found his love for war during the time he spent in Afghanistan ("we proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation..."(from here).
Yes, indeed - men like Churchill made Britain 'Great', as in that that country has done (and continues to do) some 'great' harm on the world stage.
"We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English." - Winston Churchill. And we Irish have always found the English ruling political class and its 'royalty' to be a bit odd. They refuse to be civilised.
'THE BRITISH STORY...'
Roy Foster (pictured) in the British media.
By Barra Ó Séaghdha.
From 'Magill' Annual, 2002.
But no, the Professor is probably not referring to Conor Cruise O'Brien's book 'Ancestral Voices'. After all, reviewing the book for 'The Sunday Tribune', he found it as "stylish, mordant and discomfiting" as anything O'Brien had ever written, and he read "the historical sections of the book (including those dealing with very recent history) with unstinting admiration."
We must await clarification of the professor's change of mind, or an explanation of how self-indulgence is to be deplored only in certain writers. Reviewers of Roy Foster's book do not fall so totally under his charm ; Anne McHardy in 'The Observer' newspaper devotes most attention to the Adams/McCourt piece - her many substantial quotations from the essays leave little space for her own reactions.
She shows some awareness, however, of where Roy Foster is writing from - "But he opens himself to the charges he levels against others - of weaving his style of sea-hopping intellectual into the mainstream of Irish identity, and also lack of focus because, however much he obfuscates it with references to 'here' of Ireland, he must often have written in Oxford."
'The Spectator' characteristically offers a mixture of stereotyped thinking and candour ; thus Nicholas Harman's second sentence reads - "His Oxford professorship affirms his credentials as a serious historian, and his biography of the poer WB Yeats confirms that he can employ the accurate if unreadable details..."
(MORE LATER.)
ON THIS DATE (30TH NOVEMBER) 139 YEARS AGO : 'INVINCIBLE' COURT CASE BEGINS AT THE OLD BAILEY, LONDON.
Pat O'Donnell (pictured) was a member of the 'The Invincibles' ('Irish National Invincibles'), a 19th-century organisation which opposed, in arms, British interference in Ireland. He is best known for having assassinated the informer James Carey (aka 'James Power').
When Carey told on 'Skin the Goat',
O'Donnell caught him on the boat —
He wished he'd never been afloat,
The dirty skite!
It wasn't very sensible
To tell on the Invincibles —
They stood up for their principles
Day and night.
And you'll find them all in Monto, Monto, Monto
Standing up in Monto, lan-ge-roo,To you!
In November 1881, a group was formed in Dublin with the objective of "removing all the principal tyrants from the country" ; they called themselves 'The Irish National Invincibles' and, within a few months, they were to make world headlines.
The group, consisting mainly of former Fenians, decided to announce their presence in a dramatic fashion - on May 6th, 1882, they assassinated two of Britains top officials in Ireland : Chief Secretary Lord Frederick Cavendish and Under Secretary Thomas F. Burke in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, just yards from the Viceroy Lodge.
The British offered a reward of £1000 for information leading to the arrest of those responsible and put their top man in Dublin, Superintendent John Mallon of the 'G Division' of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (pictured), on the case. He arrested dozens of 'suspects' and repeatedly questioned those who were known to be in the Phoenix Park area that night, but to no avail.
Then, in November 1882, six months after the British lost their men, Superintendent John Mallon arrested a member of the Invincibles, Robert Farrell, and Mallon told him that they knew the identity of those that had carried-out the assassinations and advised Farrell to save himself - this was the same line that those previously arrested had been told but, unfortunately, Robert Farrell fell for it.
Within weeks, twenty-six men were arrested. The 'G' man, John Mallon, needed additional witnesses and evidence to build a substantial case against the men and reverted to form - three of the twenty-six men (Michael Kavanagh, James Carey and his brother, Peter) turned informers.
In April 1883, in Green Street Courthouse in Dublin, Judge O'Brien began to hear 'evidence' against thirteen of the men. Five of them - Joe Brady, Dan Curley, Michael Fagan, Thomas Caffrey and Tim Kelly - received the death sentence and the other eight men were sentenced to long periods of imprisonment (nineteen year-old Tim Kelly faced three 'trials' before eventually being convicted, the jury at the previous 'trials' having failed to agree on a verdict).
Joe Brady, Michael Fagan, Thomas Caffrey, Dan Curley and young Tim Kelly were hanged in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin between May 14th and June 4th, 1883.
One of the informers, James Carey, was shot dead on board 'The 'Melrose' off Cape Town, South Africa, on his way to Natal to 'begin a new life' with his wife and children, on July 29th, 1883, by Donegal-man Patrick O Donnell, who was caught and escorted back to Ireland.
His 'trial' (all two hours of it) was held at the 'Old Bailey' in London on the 30th November 1883 - 139 years ago on this date - in front of Judge George Denman, a Liberal politician known to be in favour of public executions.
Pat O'Donnell was found guilty of 'wilful murder', despite having the best defence team that money could buy - his supporters had raised and spent about fifty-five thousand dollars on legal representation for him, but then, as now, the British wanted their 'pound of flesh'.
And they got it on the 17th December 1883 when they executed Patrick O'Donnell.
My name is Pat O’Donnell I was born in Donegal
I am you know a deadly foe to traitors one and all
For the shooting of James Carey I was tried and guilty found
And now upon the scaffold high my life I must lay down.
I sailed on board the ship Melrose in August 1883
James Carey was on board the ship but still unknown to me
When I found out he was Carey we had angry words and blows
The villain swore my life to take on board the ship Melrose.
I stood a while in self defence to fight before I'd die
My loaded pistol I pulled out at Carey I let fly
I gave to him a second one which pierced him through the heart
I let him have a third volley before he did depart.
Then Mrs Carey came running up to the cabin where he lay
O'Donnell you shot my husband Mrs Carey she did say
O'Donnell you shot my husband Mrs Carey loud did cry
"I only stood in self defence kind madame", answered I.
The captain had me handcuffed and in strong irons bound
He gave me up as prisoner when we landed in Capetown
They turned me back to London my trial for to stand
And the prosecutors for the crown were Carey's wife and son.
To all the evidence they swore I said it was a lie
The jury found me guilty and the judge he did reply
"You'll never more see Erin's shore, O’Donnell, you must die"
On the 17th of December upon the scaffold high.
If I had been a free man could live another year
All traitors and informers I would make them shake with fear
Saint Patrick drove the serpents from the our holy sainted land
I'd make them run before me like the hare before the hound.
Farewell to dark old Donegal the place where I was born
And likewise to the United States which ne'er was known for scorn
And twice farewell to old Gráinne Mhaol with her fields and valleys green
For never more around Erin's shore Pat O'Donnell will be seen.
That British show trial against Patrick O'Donnell began on the 30th November 1883 - 139 years ago on this date.
FUNDS AND FINE GAEL'S LEADER...
Michael Lowry has so far been the focus of media attention about Fine Gael fundraising.
But the party's current leader, Enda Kenny (pictured), hosted a £1,000-a-plate dinner two days before the second mobile phone licence was awarded. And other guests say that one of the bidders for that licence was in attendance.
By Mairead Carey.
From 'Magill' magazine, January 2003.
Enda Kenny only last month demanded a signed pledge from past and present TD's (sic) that they did not receive any money from ESAT or Denis O'Brien.
However, he has so far not stated whether or not he knew the identity of the man who attended the fundraiser held on the 23rd October 1995. The mobile phone licence decision was announced two days later.
Stewart Kenny of Paddy Power Bookmakers, who was also present at the fundraiser, has confirmed to 'Magill' magazine that he took a bet on the outcome of the mobile licence competition from a Scandinavian businessman who said he was among those vying for the licence.
Members of a consortium which was bidding for the 'National Conference Centre' contract - the competition for which was being run by the State Department of Tourism, where Enda Kenny was minister - were also at the fundraiser...
(MORE LATER.)
ON THIS DATE (30TH NOVEMBER) 355 YEARS AGO : BIRTH OF THE MAN WHO URGED THE IRISH "TO BURN EVERYTHING ENGLISH EXCEPT THEIR COAL".
"Burn everything English but their coal" - the 'Hibernian Patriot' [from the 'Drapier's Letters' collection], Jonathan Swift (pictured), an Irish author and satirist (perhaps best known for 'Gulliver's Travels' and for his position as dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin) was born in Dublin on the 30th November 1667 - 355 years ago on this date.
His father (from whom the 'Patriot' got his first name) was an attorney, but he died before the birth of his son. As if that wasn't misfortune enough, young Jonathan suffered from Meniere's Disease and, between the bill's mounting up and her sickly son, his mother, Abigail, found that she was unable to cope and the young boy was put in the charge of her late husband's brother, Godwin, a wealthy member of the 'Gray's Inn' legal society.
His position in St. Patrick's Cathedral ensured that he had a 'pulpit' and a ready-made audience to listen to him, an opportunity he readily availed of to question English misrule in Ireland - he spoke against 'Wood's Halfpence' and in favour of 'burning everything English except their coal' and, satirically, wrote a 'modest proposal' in which he suggested that poor children should be fed to the rich ('a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled..')!
In 1742, at 75 years of age, Jonathan Swift suffered a stroke, severely affecting his ability to speak, and he died three years later, on the 19th October, 1745. He was buried next to the love of his life, Esther Johnson, in St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.
"It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind" - Jonathan Swift.
Thanks for the visit, and for reading ; we mightn't thank ya often enough, but we do appreciate it!
Sharon and the team.
