Phoenix Park Murders: Murder, Betrayal and Retribution: Conspiracy, Betrayal & Retribution

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Under interrogation, James Carey, a leading Fenian, told the authorities all he knew ofthe movement, resulting in the hanging of six of his former comrades

The hitherto unknown group left a card into all the major newspapers identifying themselves as the Irish National Invincibles. For the first time in Irish history there would be Sunday editions of the major newspapers. A Short Account of the Discovery and Conviction of the 'Invincibles'", by George Bolton, Esq., Dantonien Journal, 1887. Retrieved 15 November 2019. THE IRISH FRANKENSTEIN. “The baneful and blood-stained Monster * * * yet was it not my master to the very extent that it was my creature . . . Had I not breathed into it my own spirit?” * * * (Extracts from the Works of C.S. P-rn-ll, M.P.).’ Punch (20 May 1882) quotes from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to link Charles Stewart Parnell (left) with the murders. (British Library) Charles Stewart Parnell's policy of allying his Irish Parliamentary Party to Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone's Liberal Party in 1886 to enable Home Rule was undone by the murders. Gladstone's Minister Lord Hartington, the elder brother of Lord Cavendish, split with Gladstone on the Home Rule bills [11] of 1886 and 1893 and led the breakaway Liberal Unionist Association, which allied itself to Lord Salisbury's Conservative governments. In the ensuing 1886 general election the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists swept the board. This delayed Home Rule by twenty-eight years until the Government of Ireland Act 1914, which was technically passed but was never effected. [ citation needed] Reaction [ edit ] the Land League was a movement of tenant farmers led by Irish nationalists. It was seen as a challenge to British rule in IrelandPodcast about the Irish National Invincibles and the Fenian Dynamite Campaign with Dr. Shane Kenna. In Carey’s narrative the Invincibles had been formed in the fall of 1881 by a Middlesbrough Fenian, John Walsh whose declared aim was to ‘make history’ and to establish a grouping within the Fenian network to assassinate government administrators in Ireland. Walsh had been sent to Dublin by Frank Byrne, secretary of the Land League of Great Britain, whose wife would later deliver the knives to Dublin smuggled on her person. Only the case of Kelly gave any real difficulty. He was 19 and generally said to look much younger, and by referring to him as "a child" his defence counsel created enough unease for two juries to disagree. Only after an unprecedented third trial was he found guilty. [10] Implications [ edit ] Punch magazine depicts the Fenian movement as Frankenstein's monster to Charles Parnell's Frankenstein, in the wake of the Phoenix Park Murders.

Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). "Pigott, Richard". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol.35. London: Smith, Elder & Co. Forster vigorously championed and applied coercion in Ireland, which was administered by his permanent Undersecretary, Thomas Henry Burke. Once put into operation, some nine hundred members of the Land league were arrested and interned in various prisons across Ireland, culminating in the arrest of Charles Stewart Parnell in October 1881 and his imprisonment in Kilmainham Gaol Dublin. The hunt for the murderers was led by Superintendent John Mallon, a Catholic who came from Armagh. Mallon had a pretty good idea of who was involved. He suspected a number of former Fenian activists. A large number of suspects were arrested and kept in prison by claiming they were connected with other crimes. Mallon got several of them to reveal what they knew about the murders. [5]

Parnell made a speech condemning the murders in 1882, increasing his already huge popularity in both Britain and Ireland. He had just enabled some reforms under the Kilmainham Treaty four days before the murders. Parnell's reputation increased in Ireland, being seen as a more moderate reformer who would never excuse such tactics. [12] Taken to Kilmainham Gaol, they were extensively interrogated by John Mallon and Adye Curran, who would ‘turn’ several into informers, including Kavanagh (who had driven four Invincibles from the Phoenix Park after the assassination), Joseph Smith and most importantly, James Carey. The approach certainly yields benefits, but it comes at a price, principally in crowding out the analysis of historians. This is a problem chiefly in relation to the treatment of the fraught issue of physical force movements in late 19th-century Ireland, especially in their relation to the Land League and Parnell, which has been the subject of meticulous scholarly analysis for decades. Broadly Kavanagh gets this right but is not always sure-footed: one can, for example, be quite certain that Joseph Biggar, Parnell’s plain-spoken ally in obstructionism, did not meet emissaries from America to discuss the formation of a murder society in London in October 1881, as a source informed Insp John Mallon, and Kavanagh appears to accept.

The case was successfully prosecuted by the Attorney General, Solicitor General James Murphy QC (later Mr Justice Murphy), and Peter O’Brien, before Justice William O’Brien. [8] [9] Invincibles' leader James Carey, Michael Kavanagh and Joe Hanlon agreed to testify against the others. Joe Brady, Michael Fagan, Thomas Caffrey, Dan Curley and Tim Kelly were convicted of the murders, [10] and were hanged by William Marwood in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin between 14 May and 9 June 1883. Others, convicted as accessories to the crime, were sentenced to serve long prison terms. Fitzharris was acquitted of murder but retried as an accessory and convicted. [10] Andrew Roberts; "Salisbury Victorian Titan" (Phoenix Press, London 1999) p. 454. ISBN 0-7538-1091-3 Quinn, James (2009). "Mary Ann Byrne In Byrne, Frank". In McGuire, James; Quinn, James (eds.). Dictionary of Irish Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. But who were, the Invincibles really? And how did they come to adopt such ruthless methods in the cause of Irish independence? Context; Coercion of the Land League As a means of defeating the agitation of tenant farmers the British government on 1 January 1881 made clear its intention to introduce a Coercion Act to pacify Ireland, becoming law in March. It was exceptionally draconian, suspending habeas corpus, trial by jury and facilitating the proclamation of entire districts as ‘disturbed’. This act was endorsed by the British governments most important administrator in Ireland, the Chief Secretary in Dublin Castle, William Forster MP.

Molony, Senan (2006). The Phoenix Park Murders: Conspiracy, Betrayal and Retribution. Dublin: Mercier Press. ISBN 1-85635-511-X. Joseph Brady’s head was cut off after his hanging and kept for medical purposes. John Mallon Dublin Mtropolitan Police chief, kept part of his spine as a souvenir