Poet, Madman, Scoundrel Read online

  When his drunken rebels dragged Lord Kilwarden, Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench for Ireland, and his nephew from their carriage and flick-piked them to death, Emmet gave up the polite rebellion and fled to the Wicklow Mountains. Lord Kilwarden, Arthur Wolfe, was regarded as an agreeable chap because he had signed the stay of execution for Wolfe Tone in 1798. His murder was viewed as the single most shocking event in Emmet’s shockingly awful rebellion.

  Following a period of depression-inspired poetry in the mountains, Emmet returned to Dublin, renting a room under an assumed name in Harold’s Cross so that he could be near his girlfriend. Major Sirr searched the house as part of a routine hunt for the rebels. I assume Emmet wasn’t wearing the green uniform at this point but with him it is difficult to know for sure. In any case, Emmet panicked during the rummage around and started to act suspiciously. Not able to take the stress of it anymore, he knocked out a guard and ran from the house. He was chased and caught by Sirr, who apologised for roughing him up because this was a polite rebellion. Emmet told him that it was okay because “all was fair in war”.

  Emmet was taken for questioning to Dublin Castle, where the farce continued. On arrival, he tried to bribe a gaoler, who he thought might be sympathetic to him, to help him escape. The gaoler immediately reported him to Sirr. Emmet wouldn’t talk until finally the authorities showed him two love letters from Sarah Curran. Sirr thought that these two maudlin compositions must have been coded messages from his co-conspirators. He couldn’t imagine that two people would actually communicate in this way. Emmet thought that they were going to arrest Sarah, so, wishing to protect her, he promised to talk and pleaded for a deal. Sirr was surprised by his sudden change of heart. He was probably disappointed that they were actual love letters and not secret documents. Ah, love in a time of rebellion.

  Back in his cell, Emmet wrote a letter of apology to Sarah and handed it to the same gaoler whom he trusted, asking him to secretly deliver it to his lover. The gaoler duly handed it to Sirr. Next day, Sirr and his men raided the Curran house. When Sirr arrived, he found Sarah alone in her bedroom, in bed. Some historians believe that he allowed her to burn her love letters, or that he even burned them himself because by now Sarah had had convulsions and had collapsed. A soldier raiding the bedroom of an unmarried woman while she was actually in bed constituted a scandal significantly greater than the rebellion itself. Sarah’s father was so angry that he refused to represent Emmet, not even for money. Following his usual way of dealing with all his domestic crises, he kicked Sarah out of the house.

  Curran’s reaction meant that Emmet had to hire his own defence team. He chose Peter Burrows and Leonard MacNally, the latter being one of Sirr’s secret informers. To rescue his rebellion from disaster, Emmet decided to go back to what he was competent at – making speeches. He decided to vindicate his efforts rather than defend them. His trial took place at Green St Court. He refused to offer any defence, though I imagine that a plea of insanity would have had a sympathetic hearing from the judge. Before the death sentence was pronounced, he was invited to speak from the dock. His speech gained international recognition as one of the all-time exceptional speeches from a dock. It is for this, rather than his organisational skills, that Emmet is remembered today. No definitive version of the speech exists; however, we are assured it was an awesome one. Judge Norbury even had to tell him to shut up several times.

  On his way to the gallows, Emmet discussed politics and theology with two clergymen. He arrived at 2.00 p.m. at Saint Catherine’s Church on Thomas St, where the scaffold had been erected. This was gratuitous torture because we can imagine that Emmet never wanted to see Thomas St, again. The authorities, perhaps fearing a resurgence of his rhetorical powers, only allowed him to say, “My friends, I die in peace and with sentiments of universal love and kindness towards all men.” He shook hands with his guards and helped to put the noose around his own neck. But, being back in student mode, he hesitated three times when the hangman asked him if he was ready. Finally, the hangman kicked the plank from under his feet. He was then beheaded and his head shown to the huge crowd. No one knows where he is buried because his relatives were too afraid to claim his body.

  Sarah Curran was devastated after Emmet was executed. Homeless, she moved to Cork where she met Captain Robert Henry Sturgeon of the Royal Staff Corps. He would have had colourful fancy uniforms like Emmet. They married in 1805 and travelled together to Italy. Their son died soon after birth, and Sarah herself died in 1808. Her father refused to bury her beside her sister Gertrude, who had fallen out of the window.

  The Vincible Invincibles

  One of the most sensational trials in nineteenth century Ireland was that of sixteen members of the Irish National Invincibles, who were a secret society of Fenian assassins. This society was a splinter group of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). The IRB was itself a secret oath-bound organisation whose affiliates were dedicated to the establishment of an independent democratic republic in Ireland. The members of both groups were commonly referred to as Fenians.

  In 1883, a number of Invincibles were tried for the infamous Phoenix Park Murders. The previous year, an Invincible, James Carey (1845–1883), had decided to assassinate the Under Secretary of Ireland, Thomas Henry Burke. Carey came up with the idea of using knives as weapons. He imported these from London and hid them in his own house. As Burke walked in the Phoenix Park with the newly appointed Chief Secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish, Carey identified him to the waiting assassins wielding the knives. They stabbed Burke and Cavendish to death, making Cavendish surely the unluckiest new arrival in Ireland since Bishop Palladian.17

  Joseph Brady was first of the accused into the dock. Brady was taken from Kilmainham Gaol by car to Green St Court under heavy armed guard. In a second car, also heavily guarded, was James Carey, who had just become the main witness for the prosecution. Judge William O’Brien, popularly known as “Hatchet Face”, presided.

  James Carey had joined the IRB in 1861 and took part in the Fenian uprising of 1867. He had inside information on the art of informing because at one time he acted as head of the vigilance committee of the IRB to detect and eliminate informers. He split from the IRB in 1878, disillusioned with infighting and splits. In 1881, he was sworn into the Invincibles.

  By January 1883 the police had enough on Carey to arrest him and sixteen others, including his brother Peter, in connection with the murders. Carey’s arrest as a leading Invincible caused a public sensation because he was a town councillor. In those days being a councillor meant that he was generally regarded as a virtuous citizen. He was also highly respected for his piety. Carey was persuaded that some of his fellow conspirators were about to spill the beans, so he decided to get in first with the bean spilling. He agreed to inform on the others in return for a reprieve. Carey told the jury at Brady’s trial all about the meticulous preparations for the murders. Brady, who was godfather to one of Carey’s children, was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

  The English hangman William Marwood18 hanged Joseph Brady at Kilmainham Gaol. The trials of Tim Kelly, Michael Fagan and James Fitzharris followed that of Brady. According to Carey, Kelly was active in the murders but the jury were confounded because he was so young and innocent looking. At one time he had sung in the church choir so he was, literally, a choirboy. He had to be tried three times before a jury could be assembled who could agree on his guilt. The night before Marwood hanged him, Kelly sang “The Memory of the Past” in his prison cell. A cousin of the murder victim Mr Burke was a nun, and she came to the gaol to listen to him sing and to comfort the ex-choirboy. It would have been interesting to be a fly on that cell wall.

  For Michael Fagan’s trial, two journalist artists who could identify him in connection with the murders had to be threatened with twelve months in gaol in order to force them to give evidence. Busy Marwood also hanged Fagan.

  James Fitzharris was next int
o the dock. He was known as “Skin the Goat” because at one stage he owned a fine goat, and, desperate to raise funds for drink, he killed the goat and sold the skin. Fitzharris winked at everyone in the courtroom who caught his eye: witnesses, the judge and members of the jury alike. An English court reporter wrote that he had the appearance of having been “badly battered by contact with a traction engine”. He was sentenced to penal servitude for life. Marwood must have been disappointed. He was released after a few years and we learn that he led a saintly life from then on.

  Carey came to be regarded with contempt by both his fellow Fenians and the police. His tenants refused to pay their rent and he was removed from Dublin Corporation. He quickly became the most hated man in Ireland. The authorities decided to send him away for his own safety. He was the first Irishman to go into a prototype witness protection programme. These were the early days when the authorities would experiment with aspects of such programmes, often with fatal consequences. He was shipped off to Natal in South-East Africa. He sailed on July 1883 on the Kilfauns Castle under the name “James Power”.

  For disguise, he shaved off his beard. In the evenings he visited the ship’s bar and drank with Fenians and ranted against the English while drinking too much. Overall, it was a skillful disguise on his part. He became friendly with a fellow passenger, Patrick O’Donnell, who was a Fenian sympathiser. They met regularly in the bar for a drink and a rant.

  At Cape Town in South Africa, O’Donnell was shown a portrait of Carey and immediately recognised him to be his new friend Power. Carey and O’Donnell sailed on together on the Melrose to Port Elizabeth in South Africa. When they met in the bar that evening, O’Donnell drew a pistol and shot Carey three times, killing him. O’Donnell was arrested and put on trial in London, out of Marwood’s reach. He was executed in Newgate Prison in 1883, not having pleaded insanity. A marble monument was sent from New York to Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, where it was erected to his memory.

  The Wrong Place at the Right Time

  The effective revolutionary knows how to be in the right place at the right time. The ineffectual ones, like Tone, don’t. But you can also get into Irish history by being in the wrong rebellion at the right time. This is what happened to the Dublin hack reporter Frank Power (1858–1884), better known to his many friends as Ghazi.

  J.B. Hall of the Freeman’s Journal tells us that Ghazi became historically noteworthy for a short period by being the “one man who, from the lowest rung of the journalistic ladder, became in a few months the most talked of man in the whole world.”19 This was a considerable achievement in an age before reality television or the internet. Ghazi was a writer, an artist who exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy and a linguist. Above all, he was a fantasist par excellence whose dreams came true in the most grizzly fashion. A fellow journalist wrote of him, “in the history of journalism, never were so many or exciting tales of military prowess told with so much modest audacity.” Unfortunately for Ghazi, his improbable revolutionary imaginings became real.

  Ghazi was a penny-a-liner journalist who, when not scribbling for the Freeman’s Journal, was persuading himself that he had saved the life of Osman Nuri Pasha during the Franco-Russian War20 of 1877. Pasha was an Ottoman Turkish field marshal. He was also known as Gazi Osman Pasha, where gazi means hero, a title he got when he was wounded in hand-to-hand fighting at the Siege of Plevna when the Russians outnumbered the Turks by five to one. Ghazi got his nickname from claiming to have fought beside Pasha. Ghazi told everyone he met that he killed four Russians with his pistol in the act of saving Pasha’s life.

  On another occasion during the height of the Land League,21 he made his way into Morrison’s Hotel in Dublin to warn the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party,22 Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891), that he was about to be arrested. Ghazi told Parnell that he had heard of the imminent arrest directly from the indiscreet drunken Attorney General, with whom Ghazi believed he had been dining that evening. Parnell was so impressed with Ghazi’s information that he went to the offices of the Freeman’s Journal to consult with the editor Edmund Gray, Ghazi’s boss. To both embroider and authenticate his account, Ghazi claimed to have been shot and wounded in the arm while rapidly cycling to get the news to Parnell in his hotel. He rolled up his sleeve in the newspaper offices to show off a bleeding bullet hole in his arm. This wound was identified as a bloody boil by the night watchman “Old King”, who may have been working as a “doctor”23 during the day.

  After what we assume must have been a swift kick in the pants from his boss, Ghazi drifted to London where he became a pavement artist. A few weeks later, he turned up in Khartoum, Sudan just before a crisis point in that city’s history. Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah had declared a holy war against the Egyptian authorities in Sudan in 1883 and he and his Mahdist Sudanese forces surrounded Khartoum, which was a small British outpost. Just before the siege Ghazi had abandoned Khartoum with General Hicks’s army but had to return when he got dysentery. He thus avoided being massacred with Hicks.

  Recovering in Khartoum, he found himself in charge of the most perilous political and military situation on the planet at that time because everyone with political or military experience had fled. He was made both the Times correspondent and Her Majesty’s Consul at Khartoum, a role beyond even his wildest imaginings. He occupied the Government House, pending the arrival of General Gordon’s defending forces. He communicated officially with London every day. Despite the siege, transport remained open on the Nile and the telegraph worked, so Ghazi got his vital reports out. He must have been happy despite the threat of massive enemy forces outside the walls.

  Every night in Westminster Parliament, Prime Minister Gladstone would provide the House with updates from Ghazi, the consul of Khartoum. Political position papers would be enlivened with accounts of his shooting a thousand “fuzzy-wuzzies” off the walls of the city with his pistol. “Fuzzy-wuzzy” was the nickname given to a member of the Hadendoa tribe, one of Ahmad bin Abd Allah’s allies, by British forces in Sudan. It was based on their traditional hairstyle, which was, well, fuzzy. The members of Parliament would anxiously ask, “What does Mr Power say?” and, “What does Mr Power think we should do?” The city eventually fell to the Mahdists on 28 January 1885 when General Gordon was killed fighting to lift the siege. Fuzzy-wuzzies killed Ghazi on the banks of the Nile when his boat hit a rock. I imagine that he died happy, already having reached a fantasist’s heaven.

  The 1916 Battle for the Biscuits

  The IRB organised the next major rebellion in Ireland, the 1916 Rising. This began, as was usual for Irish rebellions, behind schedule – on Easter Monday at midday. Every Irish rebellion demands a split or falling out amongst the rebels before it can properly commence. The 1916 split didn’t occur until the last minute. It was a close thing; for a while it seemed there might have been no split, but I imagine the rebels would have delayed until such time as a split had taken place.

  In order to offset any impression of unity, the splitters ran a notice in the Sunday Independent paper that seemingly countermanded the order for three days of “Easter manoeuvres” that were originally planned for the Sunday. “Easter manoeuvres” was the term chosen as a cover for the Rising. Therefore, many of the rebels went to the annual Easter horse races at Fairyhouse. The rebels who were not actually at the races made their way to their appointed targets or strategic strongholds in Dublin on the Monday. The rebellion got underway just one day late. One platoon of rebels, with their guns and ammunition in tow, boarded a tram into the city. Their officer insisted on buying valid tickets for all those in his charge, because this was to be another conscientious revolution in the style established by Emmet.

  The first clashes occurred in the Phoenix Park with a failed attempt to blow up the Magazine Fort. An Irish Citizen Army24 raiding party then stormed Dublin Castle. On the north side of the city, the rebels seized the Four Courts and the General Post Office. On the
south side, the South Dublin Union and St Stephen’s Green were taken.

  At exactly midday, Major John MacBride (1865–1916), strolling with a cane and smoking a cigar, accompanied Thomas MacDonagh (1878–1916) and his brother John to Jacob’s biscuit factory on Bishop St, which was their assigned target. A large crowd of mostly local women, who had gathered to see what was happening, were pushed back at bayonet-point as a rebel force of 150 men and women occupied the factory. The door to the factory was locked so some rebels climbed in through a window to open the door from the inside. One rebel discharged his shotgun by accident, blasting a hole in the ceiling and almost blowing MacBride’s mustache off. MacBride asked the man to be more careful.

  The local women outside in the street shouted abuse at the rebels as they marched into the biscuit factory, encouraging them to “Go out and fight the Germans.”25 Some policemen and detectives refused to leave the street, so Thomas MacDonagh thought that it might be necessary to shoot a few of them as proof positive that hostilities had commenced for possession of the biscuit factory.

  John MacBride had fought with the Boers in the Irish Commando (brigade) during the Second Boer War (1899–1902). After the war he travelled to Paris and became involved with a group of nationalist ex-patriots who were under the influence of Maud Gonne (1866–1953).26 He married Maud in 1903, despite advice from everyone he knew not to marry her. At the time she said that she thought she was marrying Ireland. Gonne was soon accusing MacBride of drunkenness, molesting her daughter, cruelty and infidelity. They separated in 1906. During the divorce proceedings he was accused of having been drunk on one occasion during the marriage. This seems petty from someone who, in her own words, had “married Ireland”. William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) described him as “a drunken vainglorious lout”.