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Manchester Martyrs

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The Manchester Martyrs, also known as the Three Fenians, were Irish nationalists who were executed for killing a policeman during a prison escape. William O'Mera Allen, Michael Larkin, and William Goold (also known as William O'Brien) were hanged in Manchester, England on November 23, 1867. These men were caught having participated in the rescue of two officers in the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Colonel Thomas J. Kelly and Captain Timothy Deasy. The rescue took place on the borders of West Gorton and Ardwick, to the immediate southeast of Manchester City Centre.

Background

Kelly and Deasy were both Fenians who played important roles in the failed Fenian Rising of 1867. Kelly had been declared the chief executive of the Irish Republic at a secret republican convention, and Deasy commanded a Fenian brigade in County Cork. Wanted men throughout Britain and Ireland, both were arrested on a vagrancy charge in September.

On September 18, 1867, both men were being transferred from the courthouse to the county jail on Hyde Road, Manchester. They were handcuffed and locked in two separate compartments inside a police van escorted by a squad of 12 mounted policemen. As the van passed under a railway arch, a man darted into the middle of the road, pointed a pistol at the driver and called on him to stop. At the same time, a party of about 30 men leapt over a wall at the side of the road and surrounded the van and seized the horses, one of which they shot. The unarmed police offered little resistance and soon fled.

The rescuers (after a vain attempt to burst open the van with hatchets, sledgehammers and crowbars) called upon Police Sergeant Brett, who was inside the van with the prisoners, to open the door. Brett refused. One of the rescuers placed his revolver at the keyhole of the van and fired at the moment that Brett had put his eye to the keyhole to see what was going on outside. The bullet passed through his eye into his brain and killed him. The door was opened from the inside by a woman who took the key from Brett's pocket, and Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasy escaped, never to be recaptured.

The killing of Brett seems to have been accidental, in that the shot was intended to break the lock on the door and Brett had the misfortune to peer through the keyhole at the wrong moment. The fact that it was a policeman who had been killed and that it occurred in the context of an act of rebellion may have elevated the crime from manslaughter to murder in the eyes of the law, considering that the required malice aforethought appears to have been absent. However, none of the three convicted actually shot Brett - they may have been convicted as participants in a crime (freeing the prisoners and firing guns) leading to killing, under the law of felony murder. This law was repealed in 1957.

After a chase, the police made 29 arrests, including, they claimed, the three men who had fired the revolvers. William O'Mera Allen, Michael Larkin, William [Gould] O'Brien, Thomas Maguire and Edward Stone, were found guilty and sentenced to death. Maguire was pardoned and discharged and Stone's sentence was commuted on the eve before the day fixed for his execution, but O'Brien, Larkin, and Allen were publicly hanged.

On the day of their execution, a crowd of 12,000 people gathered (although whether for support of Irish nationalism or in protest against capital punishment is unclear ) which caused the city officials to call in the military shortly before the scheduled execution.

Monuments erected in their honour stand in Limerick, Kilrush, County Clare, Tipperary Town, Birr, County Offaly, Ennis, County Clare, Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, and St Joseph's Cemetery, Moston, Manchester. There is a monument to Sergeant Brett in St Ann's Church, Manchester.

The monument in St Joseph's Catholic Cemetery in Moston, North Manchester was designed by J.Geraghty and unveiled in November 1898. The work was commissioned by the Manchester Martyrs Central Memorial Committee. The Stone monument stands just over 6 metres high and takes the form of a Celtic cross Celtic cross.The corners are decorated with figures symbolical of Unity, Justice, Literature, and Art. (Literature and Art have been removed from their plinths and are now on the grass at the rear of the monument). On three sides of the pedestal are medallion portraits of Allen, Larkin and O'Brien (the Manchester Martyrs). These were originally surmounted by figures of the Irish wolfhound, but these have also been removed. The fourth space is filled in with an Irish harp, and on the front of the cross is a figure of Erin, armed with sword and shield. On the reverse is an Irish round tower. Rusticated base with Irish coats of arms at each corner. The site of this monument has been the scene of several disturbances as it has been the tradition for Republican symathisers to parade here at the anniversary of the deaths of those hanged. The monument has unfortunately suffered from several attacks to its structure as well as acts of vandalism and is now in a poor condition. It is listed as "at risk" by The Public Monument and Sculpture Association National Recording Project.

Effects

This daring rescue inspired many people to join the Irish cause for independence. It also inspired the song "God Save Ireland", which was the unofficial national anthem for a short time, before being replaced with "Amhrán na bhFiann" ("The Soldier's Song"). The events were important in shaping Physical force Irish republicanism, the strand of Irish nationalism today represented by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. However the events also - several years later - served to bring the parliamentary nationalists of the Irish Parliamentary Party under new leader Charles Stewart Parnell closer to the physical force men - Parnell told the Commons "there was no murder" - and so helped create the conditions for the New Departure and the Irish National Land League and the subsequent "Land War" struggle against landlordism.

Further reading

References

  • Robert Kee, The Green Flag Vol. II: The Bold Fenian Men, Penguin Books, 1972

External links



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