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r • \

V V -» ■ " - .t .•

\ \ . W-.
\

KiLMAINH AM M EMORIES

THE STORY OF THE G RE ATE SI

POLITICAL CRIME OF

THE CENTURY

WiSil Wm. ^m m)i txfxsmUxffi S^b

TIGHE HOPKINS

LONDON

WARD, LOCK, & BOWDEN, LIMITED

WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.

NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE

THENEW YORK

PUBLICLIBRARY

72908

ASTOR, LENOX AND

TILDEN FOUNDATIONS,

1897.

JOHN MALLON, ESQ., J.P.

My dear Sir,^

I take leave to inscribe these '* Kilmain-
ham Memories'' to you, who, in Hamlet's
words, "with as much modesty as cunning,"
brought to justice and their doom these
unhappy conspirators, whose hirers had aban-
doned, and whose fellows had betrayed them,
but whose blood was surely none the less a
just, inevitable forfeit.

Faithfully yours,

TiGHE Hopkins.

PREFACE

^T^HIS guilty chapter in the history of
-*■ Kilmainham Prison, written in the
autumn of last year for the Windsor Magazine,
appeared in the April and May numbers of
this present year, and was published in America
in the Cosmopolitan. The interest stirred by
it was immediate, and so considerable as to
justify its republication in this new shape. The
tragedy of the Phoenix Park, which, I believe,
is told here with a more varied detail than has
been given to it before, has a dismal potency
of its own ; but I welcome this opportunity
of acknowledging how greatly the narrative
gained in colour and in force by the illustra-
tions which I was able to secure for it. Most

8 PREFACE

of these were, and are, reproduced from photo-
graphs taken for me by Messrs. J. Robinson
& Sons, of Grafton Street. The portraits of
the Invincibles, identical with the original
set in Kilmainham Prison, were kindly given
me "by a gentleman whose name I am not
at liberty to disclose. For permission to
introduce the camera (for the first time) within
the historic walls of Kilmainham, I was in-
debted to the extreme courtesy of the General
Prisons Board of Ireland. The two articles
from the Windsor Magazine are reprinted with
slight emendations ; the supplementary chapter,
headed "Appendix," has not been printed
until now.

T. H.

Inniscorrig,
Herne Bay,

June 1896.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. THE PRISON II

II. MR. PARNELL AND THE SUSPECTS . I4

III. A NOTE ON CRIME IN IRELAND ... 29

IV. THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS • • • 34

V. SUNDAY 55

VI. THE ARRESTS, THE INVESTIGATION, THE

TRIALS 60

VII. MARWOOD . 78

APPENDIX 85

From a photo by} [ W, Lawrence, Dublin

THE LATE CHARLES STEWART PARNELL, »I.P.

(Bom June 28, 1845, died suddenly October 6, 1891.)

Peuc UBRAw/

KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

THE PRISON,

'T^HE prison which has gained such a
-*- curious and extended celebrity through
its associations with latter-day Irish politics
and Irish political crime is in the outlying
township of Kilmainham, in Dublin. The place
is not great, but it has a great air. Of its
external features the lofty gray wall of Irish
limestone, about one-third of a mile in circum-
ference, is the most imposing. It is evidence
also of a certain antiquity, since walls of
this height are not given to modern prisons.
Except for its strength, the small main gate-
way is quite unpretentious : over it are the
" Five Devils of Kilniainham " — five writhing
scorpions, symbolical of no one knows what.

KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

Kilmainham was originally the County of
Dublin Gaol for males and females, but in the
turbulent times of 1881 the necessity of provid-
ing accommodation for persons confined under
the "Act for the Better Protection of Persons
and Property in Ireland" determined the
General Prisons Board to remove the females
and constitute the prison one exclusively for
males. It is now used for the reception of
untried prisoners from the county and city of
Dublin, for convicted prisoners from the county
of Dublin, and for remanded and convicted
prisoners from parts of several adjoining
counties. It is a local, not a convict prison.

When the gate is passed the prison divides
itself at once into two parts, the old and the
new. The old side (which was the women's
side in former days) has no very salient defects,
and the cells, if less completely ventilated than
those on the newer side, are spacious and well
lighted. The modem side is about thirty-five
years old, and has a remarkably fine central
hall, where the cells, one hundred and six in
number, rise in three opposing tiers. A better
built hall than this is probably not to be found

/PUBLIC UBRaRy/

THE PRISON.

in any prison in the United Kingdom. In a
quiet season discipline is easily maintained in
Kilmainham. The staff of warders at present
numbers only sixteen, and this serves for a full
complement of prisoners.

•rp

II.

MR. PARNELL AND THE SUSPECTS.

BUT Kilmainham underwent a very strange
transformation about fourteen years ago.
The period in Ireland was without a parallel
in modern history, and equally without a
parallel was the internal condition of Kilmain-
ham. The great central hall, where scarcely a
sound is heard but the measured voice of the
warder, was noisy — and very cheerfully so —
from morning until night. A long table down
the centre of the hall was littered with the
newspapers, magazines, and books of the day ;
draught-boards, chess-boards, backgammon-
boards, and packs of cards. The same table
at the dinner-hour bore a cloth of snowy linen,
was decorated with fruit, flowers, and cut glass,
and upheld a weight of excellent hot dishes
and wines of many kinds. It might have been

KILMAINHAM MEMORIES

i>JN„

Fr^^ a photo f>fj} [^^»«^ Sien^^^pu: Co.

TUB 1.AJE JIICHT HON, LORD FREDERIClt CAVKNOISH, TW.f*

(^Atiotainated in I'hmni^ raik, Duhtin, May 8* 1882^

MR, PARNELL AND THE SUSPECTS.

a succession of Horse Show weeks in Dublin,
and her Majesty's gaol of Kilmainham turned
over to some enterprising caterer who had
converted it for the nonce into an elegant
hotel. It might have been, but it was not.
Kilmainham prison was Kilmainham prison
still, but with a rather considerable diflference.
The persons for whom games and the news-
papers of the day were provided, and who
fared thus sumptuously every day, were the
political suspects whom a hostile Press (in
England as in Ireland) represented as " pining
in British dungeons."

It was an extraordinary time in Kilmainham.
The prison had been emptied of its usual occu-
pants — a few excepted, who were retained as
cleaners and orderlies — ^and month after month
it was crowded by the motliest assortment of
native politicians and political agitators, many
of whom were in the foremost ranks of the
Land League, while of many others it could
scarcely be said that they enjoyed even a local
notoriety. They became great men, however,
when they had "languished" for a month or
two in the " dungeons " of Kilmainham ; and

i6 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

not a few of them, I believe, would very willingly
have languished there for the remainder of their
lives. There were amongst them members of
Parliament, priests, solicitors, medical men,
journalists, clerks, farmers, cattle dealers, trades-
men of all sorts, peasants, down to the humblest ;
in a word, no class of persons connected with
the Irish political movement of that time was
unrepresented amongst the "victims of British
tyranny " who were lodged for longer or
shorter periods in Kilmainham. They must
have been a good deal amused by what their
friends outside were writing about them,
and many a joke on the subject must have
circulated in the prison; for it is very certain
that scores of these "suffering patriots" were
better off in Kilmainham than they had
ever been before. The Ladies' Land League
kept their table furnished with the best, and
no reasonable indulgence or recreation was
denied them by their "brutal gaolers." The
cells were changed into neat little bedrooms,
a shelter was built in the large exercise
yard, and another yard was laid with concrete
to serve as a ball alley. Presents of books.

1^*^

THE NEW YORK

• UDLIC LIBRARY

/^TOR, LCNOX AND

^i' :'4N' FVJUNDAT10N8.

From a photo 6y] [Robinson^ Dublin.

THE informers' CORRIDOR, KILMAINHAM.

Prom a photo hy} IRc^iruon, Dublin.

EXTERIOR OF KILMAINHAM PRISON.

MR, PARNELL AND THE SUSPECTS. 17

bedding, food, wines, spirits, and divers other
pleasant things were forwarded by sym-
pathetic and sorrowing admirers from the
outer world, and it is even whispered that the
patriots did not always go sober to bed — but
this I take for fiction. The situation as a
whole was nevertheless just such an one as
Mr. Gilbert might have invented for a comic
opera.

Imagine a governor and his staff of warders,
accustomed to the routine and the rigid rule
of prison life, brought to such a pass as this !
The "brutal gaolers," indeed, had a far less
easy time of it than those who were nominally
their prisoners. Precedents there were none,
and counsel and advice were scarce. The
suspects, though in custody, were never in close
confinement ; association between them was
unrestricted, and they passed their time almost
as it pleased them. Those of them who chose
to give trouble to their guardians could do so
to any extent, and there were patriots who
seemed to think that the whole governing body
of the prison, and the doctor more especially,
were waiters in attendance on them. There

i8 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

were of course gallant exceptions in plenty ;
but the patriots were a heterogeneous party,
and with the great power of the Land League
behind them they were well aware that their
position in Kilmainham was not an ordinary
one. At this distance of time there can be
little harm in saying that the actual state of
affairs inside the famous prison was not exactly
what it was represented as being, and that the
authorities, so far from exercising a " tyrannous
control" over the "victims who were helpless
in their hands," were often all but nonplussed
by the extreme novelty and awkwardness of
the situation, and in general only too willing
to leave the "victims" to their own devices.
The prison — which was a not uncomfortable
asylum for the humble and hungry patriot —
was during the whole of this period a place of
some danger for the governor and his subordi-
nates. The possibility of assault from without
was an ever-present source of anxiety, in pre-
paredness for which a force of police was lodged
within the walls, while a strong military guard
was in reserve outside. No one at that time
felt very certain of his life who was conspicuously

MR, PARNELL AND THE SUSPECTS, 19

associated with Government, or who had any
part in the administration of landed property ;
and when the prisons began to be used for the
reception of political suspects, those who were
in charge of them entered at once into the
common danger.

As tedious and exacting a duty as any that
fell to the lot of the governor and his deputy
was the supervision and control of the suspects'
correspondence. A convict undergoing a sen-
tence of penal servitude is permitted to write
a letter once in three, four or six months,
according to the class he has attained in prison ;
but the suspects, needless to say, knew no such
restrictions, and enjoyed the free use of their
pens. It was no more than fair that the pro-
fessional men, men of business and others, who
were in prison on a mere suspicion of disloyalty,
should be allowed the privilege of correspon-
dence, but it was a privilege which imposed
an immense amount of labour on the governor
and his deputy. No prisoner, whatever the
cause of his imprisonment, can send or receive
a letter until it has passed under the eyes of
the governor or his immediate representative,

KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

and since many of the suspects had a large
correspondence the duty of checking it was no
light one. Often, indeed, the governor or the
deputy, or both, sat through the night at this
task, and in one prison or another during this
period there were officials whose eyesight
suffered a certain permanent injury.

It was on October 13th, 1881, that the great
man of the movement joined in Kilmainham
the colleagues for whom he entertained such a
very moderate respect Mr. Parnell's was the
two hundred and twenty-fourth arrest that had
been effected under Mr. Forster's Act since
the beginning of March 1881. Suspect number

225 was Mr. James J. O'Kelly, M.P. ; number

226 was Mr. Thomas Sexton, M.P. ; and
number 227 was Mr. William O'Brien.

It may or may not be remembered that on
the afternoon of October 13th in that year
Mr. Gladstone made a speech on Irish affairs
at the Guildhall. With him were several
members of his Government, and at an inter-
esting and highly appropriate moment a telegram
was handed to the Premier, who was in the
act of speaking. It contained of course the

1/^

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PUBLIC LIBRARY,

ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

)

From apunto bjf}

THE LAl'E RIGHT HON. W, K,. PORSrER, M,P.
(Secrciary qfStat^/Qr Irtland leao-lBSa.)

IHUEUll.

MR, PARNELL AND THE SUSPECTS. 21

news of Mr. Parneirs arrest, and Mr. Gladstone,
as may be imagined, made a fine point for the
gallery. The incident had all the appearance
of a well-contrived effect — I happened to be
one of the gallery — and this in truth it was,
for Mr. Parnell w£is arrested, not at two or three
o'clock in the afternoon, but at seven in the
morning, and the Government must have had
their information many hours before that little
telegraph boy was brought so effectively upon
the scene.

The details of Mr. Parnell's arrest have not,
I believe, been published. He was staying at
Morrison's Hotel in Dawson Street, and it was
there that he was asked for, at seven on the
morning named, by a trusted officer of the
Dublin detective force. The waiter who was
first interviewed declared that Mr. Parnell had
" gone out for a bath." It seemed improbable,
and the offic sr, disclosing his identity, gave the
number of Mr. Parnell's room (No. 20, for the
next curious visitor at Morrison's) and requested
to be shown up there. He was begged to wait
"just four or five minutes." "Not a minute, if
you please," was the officer's reply. It is very

22 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

unlikely that Mr. Pamell, had he been warned,
would have taken advantage of the warning,
but in "four or five minutes" a sympathetic
waiter might easily have drawn together a
sympathetic crowd in the street, and the officer
was single-handed.

However, he was shown up at once to No.
20. Mr. Parnell, who was still between the
sheets, presented himself at his door in a
moment in nether garment and slippers. The
situation being explained to him he inspected
the warrant, and said he must have time to
write two or three letters. For fifteen minutes
the officer paced the corridor, and then, as
the crowd which he had feared was beginning
to gather in the street, he requested Mr.
Parnell to make a hurried toilet.

Hurried or not, when he came out of his
room five minutes later he was as scrupu-
lously dressed as always. The officer led him
out boldly by the front door ; there was no
disturbance (to the chagrin, doubtless, of the
sympathetic waiter), and they entered the cab
which was in waiting. Mr. Parnell behaved
throughout with admirable dignity and com-

MR, PARNELL AND THE SUSPECTS.

posure, only for one moment showing signs
of annoyance. He had written three letters,
which he asked to be allowed to post with
his own hand, a request which was repeated
several times. " Presently, sir," said the officer,
biding his time. For the officer it was a
journey of some nervousness. He was carry-
ing to prison, under the fiat of a Government
detested by the strongest party in Ireland,
the most powerful and most popular man in
Ireland, and he was unsupported by any kind
of escort. The whole "national" element in
Dublin was vehemently against the law and
its representatives, and as vehemently on the
side of Mr. Pamell and the Land League.
A word from Parnell as he was being taken
through the streets and it would have been a
hard matter to arrive with him at Kilmainham.
There were a number of persons gathered about
the Kingsbridge station, and had he merely
shown his face and said, " I am under arrest,"
the cab would have been wrecked. He said
nothing, and sitting well back in the vehicle
seemed anxious that no one should recognise
him.

24 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

Just beyond this point a company of the
Guards turned out of the Royal Hospital and
marched behind the cab. It was here that
the prisoner, for the first time, vented a word
or two of temper. "You said that I should
post my letters," he said to the officer beside
him ; " you are deceiving me." " You shall
post them in a moment, Mr. Parnell," was
the answer. Kilmainham was reached almost
immediately, and in the pillar-box against the
prison Mr. Parnell dropped his letters.

Some dozen or twenty hawkers, labourers,
and car-drivers recognised him here, and seeing
that he was under arrest pressed forward to
touch and speak to him. He drew back, and
would give his hand to no one as he passed
into the courtyard of the prison. With no
less hauteur he entered the prison itself, and
standing erect in the outer hall scarcely con-
descended to recognise those of his acquain-
tances amongst the suspects who advanced
respectfully to greet him.

Indeed, from the first day to the last the
" Chief" was as unapproachable in Kilmainham
by the rank and file of his party imprisoned

THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILOEN FOUNOATIOMt

Frtim a photo ity] UiuhituoAt DuUitu

MH. FABS5ELL a BOOH. KlIMAINHAM

IBobifiMOJti DubMfi.

MR. PARNELL AND THE SUSPECTS. 25

with him as he had always been in the lobby
or dining-room of the House of Commons.
Within a few days of his arrival, in fact, there
came to be an " Upper " and a " Lower
House" in the prison. The Upper House
was the portion in which Mr. Parnell and
his few associates met and took their exercise,
and rarely indeed did one from the Lower
House venture unbidden within this privileged
confine.

Mr. J. J. O'Kelly was the comrade whose
society Mr. Parnell most affected, but he
spent a great part of his time in his own
room, and wrote much. It is almost super-
fluous to say that no rule of the prison was
ever infringed by him, and that his conduct
was never less than exemplary. The majority
of the suspects were lodged in the central
hall, but to Mr. Parnell was allotted a good-
sized room in a quiet corridor of the prison,
the two arched windows of which give on to
one of the smaller exercise yards. Facing
this room, by the way, is the cell in which
the informer Carey was afterwards confined.
The " Parnell Room," which was never a cell.

26 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

has been quite changed since that distin-
guished occupation, and is now used as an
office of the prison and for consultations
between prisoners and their legal advisers.
Here it was that Mr. Parnell wrote the letter
to Captain 0*Shea, which was to become
famous under the name of the Kilmainham
Treaty.

Parnell himself in Kilmainham loomed larger
than ever in the popular imagination ; his
celebrity grew with the days of his confine-
ment ; his name became trebly heroic. Gifts
poured in upon him : flowers from London ;
fruits, game, and cases of champagne; books,
bedding, slippers, dressing-^owns and coverlets
of satin and eiderdown. His post-bag was
enormous : letters of condolence, sympathy,
admiration, adulation, indignation, and vitu-
peration. Some of his correspondents praised,
exhorted or abused him in verse ; and there
was one tirade commencing —

O Mr. Parnell, O Mr. Parnell,

Cease to do evil, and learn to do well !

4 .

A pseudonymous? well -wisher, thinking per-

i i

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PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AKD
TILDEN FOUNDATIOKS.

MR. PARNELL AND THE SUSPECTS. 27

haps that the seclusion of prison might conduce
to a change of faith, sent him a very pretty
little Roman Catholic manual of devotion, in
ivory covers, with a copy of verses on the
fly-leaf signed "Merva." It was shown me
by the gentleman, an ex-governor of Kil-
mainham, with whom Mr. Parnell left it as a
souvenir.

From first to last his behaviour in con-
finement was beyond reproach. He was
patient of such restraints as his imprison-
ment involved, courteous and considerate to
the least of the officials. To the majority of
his companions in durance he was the sphinx
that they had known before, unaltered and
unmoved in that novel environment, and
neither more nor less conciliatory than it
was at all times and in all places his wont
to be.

This singular chapter in the history of
Kilmainham being closed, one may venture
the remark that this particular phase of the
policy of the Government towards the cam-
paigners of the Land League was on the
whole a mistake. It is easy talking fourteen

KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

years after the event, but one may look back
upon it at this day and ask whether all
those arrests in all parts of Ireland — many
of them, no doubt, rather arbitrary and ill-
considered — had any appreciable result in
weakening the power of the League ; whether,
on the contrary, they had not a much more
considerable result in strengthening it. The
situation, however, will probably not repeat
itself in our time.

III.

A NOTE ON CRIME IN IRELAND.

BY way of preface to the dark story that
is to follow, a word may be said upon
the general aspects of crime in Ireland.
There is hardly any crime in Ireland. The
entire convict population of the country, male
and female, numbers fewer than five hundred
persons. More than 82 per cent, of the con-
victed prisoners in Ireland are sentenced for
terms of imprisonment not exceeding one
month, while about 5 per cent, are sentenced •
to terms of imprisonment not exceeding three
months. Drunkenness, larceny, and assault are
the commonest charges in the calendar, and
drunkenness is accountable for at least 50
per cent, of the convictions. In the whole of
Ireland last year only a hundred and seven
males and eight females were sent into penal

KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

servitude, and the largest number of sentences
were for the shortest term of penal servitude,
namely, three years. These facts are not in-
significant

It is in truth a grateful and refreshing
experience to pass from the casual study of
crime and criminals in England to the casual
study of crime and criminals in Ireland.
There are no penal institutions in Ireland to
compare with the superb prison at Wormwood
Scrubbs (which the traveller to Dublin passes
between Euston and Willesden) or with the
great convict establishment at Portland ; but
the fact in explanation is that while we can-
not do without these places in England they
are not wanted in Ireland; and the further
fact in explanation is that crime, as we know
it in England, is practically, non-existent in
Ireland. Our great guilds of crime — the bands
of professional burglars and robbers, the finan-
cial conspirator^, the adept forgers, the trained
thieves, the habitual leviers of blackmail, the
bogus noblemen, parsons, and ladies of family,
the "long-firm** practitioners, the hotel and
railway sharps, the "magsmen," "hooks," and

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ASTOR, LENOX AND
T11.DEN FOUNDATIONS.

A NOTE ON CRIME IN IRELAND,

" bounces "—these are almost entirely unrepre-
sented in Ireland. In a word, so far as
habitual and professional crime is concerned,
there is not as decent a country in Europe.
I have cited Portland as a typical English
convict prison. I may name Mountjoy, on
the outskirts of Dublin, as a typical convict
prison of Ireland. I have been through and
through both of them, and with strangely
different feelings. In Portland I saw many
hundreds of lean, bronzed and rather hungry-
looking men in knickerbockers and worsted
stockings, handling the pick, filling barrows,
and harnessed with ropes to carts — armed
warders over them — of whom many had made
speeches in Parliament, preached from pulpits,
sat in the seats of directors at company
meetings, given dinners or talked in the name
of charity at Exeter Hall. In Mountjoy I
looked and asked in vain for gallant delin-
quents such as these. There is rarely an
"interesting" prisoner in any local or convict
prison in Ireland ; if there be he is probably
an Englishman. They are all quite fifth-rate
offenders there, of poor and mean estate.

I L

KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

The educated and upper classes in Ireland
do not take to crime, and there are really no
professors of the criminal fine arts.

I gathered from many conversations on the
subject with officials and ex-officials that
discipline is easily maintained in the prisons
of tliat " unruly and obstreperous " isle. There
is doubtless a pattern "cat" in all those
prisons, but I will venture the assertion that
in every prison its lashes are clean of blood,
inasmuch ^3 floggings are almost unheard of.
The deputy governor of Mountjoy could not
recall for me an instance of corporal punish-
ment

It was necessary to be explicit on these
matters. Ireland's crimes have nearly always
been in a manner peculiar to herself, and those
that have stained the pages of her history most
deeply have been, almost without exception,
crimes arising out of agrarian evils or deep-
seated political discontent. Crimes such as
these have been recorded against communities
in which the general standard of morality was
high, and in which all ordinary breaches of law
were of extreme infrequency.

I _

■ •

3>'

A NOTE ON CRIME IN IRELAND.

The extraordinary crime, the murder of a
Secretary of State and his principal coadjutor
(the story of which is to be told at some length),
falls partly within the second of the categories
just named, but is also in a measure, and even
as regards Ireland, sui generis.

By the audacity of its conception and the
ruthless manner of its perpetration, by the fine
ingenuity which unravelled it all and brought
justice to be avenged on the assassins, the
tragedy of the Phoenix Park claims a great if
not a solitary place in the annals of its kind.

IV.

THE FHCENIX PARK MURDERS.
CONSPIRATORS AND THE

SPIRACY,

THE
CON-

IT was in December 1881 that the plot was
hatched. The prime movers in it formed
a small inner circle of the I.R.B., or Irish
Republican Brotherhood. Several of them were
old Fenians, and all were rebels. These men
may be dismissed briefly and with a contempt
which halts in the utterance. A viler set of
craven conspirators never escaped the halter.
It was they who in secret laid the first plans
and found other creatures who were to have
the working of them. When all was done they
crawled one by one out of the country and left
their victims to pay the score on the gallows
or in the convict's cell. Of money there was
abundance while the deed was scheming, but
when the wretched murderers stood herded in

I 1

k d

l'^ ^

ASTOFt

^i^^^^o^Vo-

IONS.

JOSEl-H SMTTrt. JAMES FITZHARRIS

{A woT}rma.n at Oai^hn CtsstU ("SkIn-the-Goat"\
..fta poini^ ««i jir, Bu.kn.) ^Sentenced to penal servitude

forlifeA

JOE MULLETT.

{Sentenced to penal servitudi
for life.)

MYLEa KAVAHAOH.
th&rtly e^ttr Ait triai.}

EDWARD m'CAFFREY.

(Sentenced to ten year^
penal servitude.)

JAMES MULLETT.

(Sentenced to ten yecrt*
penal servitttde.')

THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS,

the dock, to make what fight they could for
their lives, the villains who had bribed and
terrorised them to it threw them never a
sixpence for their defence. The atrocity of
the crime itself was fitly matched by the con-
summate poltroonery and treachery of the
original plotters, not one of whom, unhappily,
was ever brought to justice. Some of them
are living, and America shelters — not very
willingly, I daresay — the meanest, most pigeon-
livered rascal of the gang. He has set his
infamous name to an infamous volume, which
calls itself a history of the Irish Invincibles,
and which is a history of nothing but his own
stupendous and cowardly ineptitude.

The physical force party in Ireland had been
growing jealous and more jealous of the great
power of the Land League. When the League
was proclaimed certain members of this party
put themselves in communication with a famous
ex-Fenian, who was then exiled in Belgium.
His counsel was to the effect that it was
"useless to oppose the Land League." This
was little to tjie taste of the physical force
men, and another move was decided on. The

36 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

scene shifts, and we come at once upon the
principal actors in the tragedy that was shortly
to follow. Behind them, safely squatted in the
centre of the web, were the real setters-on of
the affair ; but they have no further place in
this story.

In the house, No. 41, York Street, Dublin,
now a workmen's club, the scheme was brought
to a head. It was here that the committee
of the Invincibles held their first meetings.
Two other houses knew them better a little
later on — Wrenn's tavern (now O'Brien's) in
Dame Street, exactly opposite Lower Castle
Yard, which was the scene of the general
meetings, and Little's in North King Street,
where the secret meetings were held. The
committee were a quartet: James Carey, Dan
Curley, Edward McCaffrey, and James Mullett,
chairman.

The society numbered abc/at 'orty men in
all, and, after the commiti e. che most notable
members were: Joe B / Mi».hr,el Fagan,
Bob Farrell, Patrick De 1 Delaney,

M. Kavanagh, T. Martin, jo Dwyer, L.
Hanlon, J. Hanlon, Jan^ y.v.r»ris ("Skin-

THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS. 37

the-Goat"), Peter Doyle, Wm. Maroney, G.
Smith, Joe Smith, Peter Carey (James's brother),
Ed. O'Brien, Tom Caffrey, Henry Rolles, Joe
Mullett the hunchback, and the lad Tim Kelly.
No secret was made touching the business
of the society ; it was a murder society simply.
Yet (to glance back a moment on the previous
chapter) these were all "respectable" men.
McCaffrey, I believe, had served a sentence of
six months' imprisonment under the Whiteboy
Act in 1867, but he was the only man of the
Invincibles who had ever been in the hands
of or known to the police, They had a clean
record, and were free of all criminal associations.
Of the committee, for example, Mullett, the
chairman, was a thriving publican ; Carey, a
member of the Town Council of Dublin, was
a contractor and builder by trade ; Curley was
a contractor and carpenter ; and McCaffrey
had been a shopkeeper in a small way. I
might run through the list were it worth while.
Kavanagh and Fitzharris were regular car-
drivers in Dublin ; Brady and Tim Kelly
were both in steady employment, and vied
with the informer Carey in their attention to

38 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

their religious duties, for they were official alms
collectors in their respective churches.

But, having banded themselves in a murder
society, these honest tradesmen were prepared
to justify, and did justify, the society's ex-
istence,

Tliere are strong reasons for the belief that
the two murders which gave the Invincibles
their dreadful notoriety, and which alone were
brought to light, were not the only ones com-
mitted by them. Several deaths occurred in
circumstances gravely suspicious. Two bodies
were found in the LifTey, one of them being
that of a youth with whom James Carey was
known to have been in communication. Carey
got himself appointed foreman of the coroner's
jury, and a verdict of accidental death was
returned. There were mysterious disappear-
ances. Persons who were approached by the
Invincibles, but who rejected the proposals
made by them, vanished suddenly, and their
homes knew them no more.

Was there any help for this ? A society of
murderers is in a parlous way whc r. it has
disclosed its objects to persons wh< are un-

MICHAEL FAGAltf,

^.iilmienctd to be kaftgtd.)

THOMAS CAFFKEV.

{Sentenced to be hanged.)

TI3IOTHT KELLY.

(Sentenced to he hanged.)

IiASTlET. CURI.RT, PATRICK DELANET. JOE BRADT.

(Smteneid to Imj hanged.) (SenUnced to be hanged ; but after- (Sentenced to be hanged.)
wards the sentence was commuted
to penal servitude/or l\fe.)

THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS. 39

willing to share them. Such persons must be
silenced, and is there other than one way of
silencing them?

Meanwhile the Invincibles, in secret conclave

in North King Street, openly discussed murder

on the grand scale. Some three or four of

the highest personages in England were first

to be disposed of, and these "executions," to

adopt the style of the committee, were to be

followed by an imposing series in Ireland.

Certain rumours reached the ears of the Dublin

I police, and warnings were sent to Scotland

Yard. One man, traitor to the traitors with

whom he was leagued, gave private information

I at the Castle, and a report was drawn up for

Mr. Burke, the Under Secretary. He wrote

i across it: "These men may talk this and

I that, but they have not the courage of their

I words."

' But the plot went forward. The English

I part of it was early abandoned, and the In-

vincibles thenceforth centred their attention
I . upon the Executive in Ireland. What weapons

I should be used? Carey suggested knives, and

I knives were agreed upon as the principal

40 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

weapons. A dozen surgeon's knives, six small
ones, and six of the largest pattern of ampu-
tating knives, were purchased at a shop in
the Strand, in London, by a renegade Irish
doctor. Twelve revolvers were bought at a
shop ill Oxford Street, and two Winchester
rifles from a Bond Street gunmaker. These
weaponsj after being lodged for a time in an
office in Westminster, were carried to Dublin
by a woman in the confidence of the party,
who made with them several trips across the
Channel

There was an air of business in this, and
still the plot advanced unchecked. One chief
officer of the Dublin police, seriously alarmed
by secret intelligence of various sorts, actually
applied for warrants for the arrest of nineteen
men ; but the application was refused. The
Government in Ireland, bending all their
powers to the question of the Land League,
were not at all troubled about the obscure
conspirators spouting murder in North King
Street

The next step was the selection of a victim,
and Mr, W. E. Forster, then Chief Secretary

THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS, 41

for Ireland, was the first marked down for
death.

If at this or any later point in the story
the question be asked, What were the true
motives that embarked these Dublin trades-
men, warehouse lads, and car-drivers in this
desperately callous undertaking ? no satisfactory
answer can be furnished. None ever was
furnished. Carey, interrogated in his cell in
Kilmainham said, " It was to make history,"
and this piece of quite characteristic bombast
was all that could be drawn from him. That
there were a few fanatics amongst them is
perhaps true (Brady, I think, had some touch
. of fervour, and perhaps even young Kelly) ;
but, from what he will presently be shown of
their conduct in Kilmainham prison while the
trials were in progress, the reader will find it
hard to believe that these men had in them
the stuff that patriotism is made of One
sordid motive asserts itself. The men in the
front of the business were finding it a rather
profitable one. Money was flowing in (from
what main sources it were better not at this
day to inquire too curiously), and the com-

KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

mittee-men in particular seem always to have
been well supplied. The astute Carey was
buying houses and furniture, and driving a
very neat turn-out worth from sixty to seventy
pounds. For the rest it may be inferred with-
out much hesitation that the committee and
the sub-members alike, being once entangled
in the plot they had assisted to weave, were
practically powerless to free themselves. Behind
them sat perpetually the spiders in the centre
of the web. The plotters must go forward
with their murder business, or take their
chances of being murdered.

The abortive attempts on Mr. Forster —
attempts in which I can detect no real sin-
cerity of purpose, and which certainly showed
no pluck — need detain us but a moment.
Parties of Invincibles went out on several
occasions to shoot him ; went out and went
home again. On one occasion an old man,
who was to have given the signal to fire as
the Chief Secretary drove past a store on the
Quays, failed through sheer fright. It was
almost always the same story. The sturd;
old statesman was easily levelled any day i'

THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS. 43

the streets of Dublin if but one whey-face
amongst them had the nerve to level him.
On the day that he left Ireland to resign
office, some twenty Invincibles waited for him
on the platform of the Westland Row station,
but he had taken an early train to Kingstown
to dine with the members of the Yacht Club,
and the conspirators withdrew to a public-
house and told one another what they would
have done if "old Buckshot" had stayed for
the mail.

A fresh victim had his name pricked. " Order
of execution " was issued against Mr. Thomas
Henry Burke, the permanent Under Secretary,
to whom reference has been made, a devoted
and most fearless servant of the Crown, of
long service, and with a lofty ideal of duty.
He had no administrative powers. He could
not send anybody to prison, or evict anybody,
or cause anybody to be proclaimed ; he could
not do anything to any one. He was a man
of fine nature and extreme ability.

The choice of Mr. Burke by the Invincibles
to meet the fate which Mr. Forster had
escaped was a little hurried on their part.

44 ' KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

i ^-

Something must^ be done, somebody worth
killing must be killed, or the supplies of
money would cease. An article had appeared
in a Dublin paper on the text that "the Castle
rats must be exterminated." The permanent
Under Secretary was regarded as a typical
" Castle rat." He must be exterminated to
make a beginning. The lots were cast, and
they fell upon Joe Brady, Tim Kelly, Pat
Delaney, and Tom Caffrey.

For dramatic effect the day was well chosen.
It was the day of Earl Spencer's public entry
into Dublin as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
With him was Lord Frederick Cavendish, Mr.
Forstcr's successor in the office of Chief Secretary.

The reception was over, and the new Viceroy
had been handsomely greeted. A story goes
that, after the ceremony at the Castle, Lord
Spencer, attended by his valet, was riding home
to the Viceregal Lodge in the Phcenix Park,
and passing a posse of police officers, one of
them remarked to a brother, "This is a great
day for Ireland," and the officer's reply was,
" I hope so, but it is not yet twelve o'clock."

THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS. 45

This was the day on which Joe Brady, Tim
Kelly, Pat Delaney, and Tom Caffrey were
under orders to take the life of Mr. Burke.

The murder had been carefully and most
minutely planned, and the Phoenix Park had
been selected as the scene. The Under Secretary
has his official residence in the park, a little
more than a mile from the main entrance.
The Invincibles were to wait in the park for
Mr. Burke, who usually walked or took a
hackney car to his house on leaving his office
in the Castle.

Eleven of them in all were under orders for
the park, but the actual business of the assassi-
nation was in the hands of the four whom
Kavanagh was to drive on his outside car.
Since midday they had been heartening them-
selves with whisky, and were all more or less
drunk at the hour of starting. They got on the
car in Palace Street, drove past the Castle, and
turned out of Parliament Street into a long,
narrow lane, which debouches on the Liffey at
Wood Quay. Crossing the river by the next
bridge they drove along the quay to Park
Gate Street, wh^'i"^-n — the little Royal Oak

•♦

46 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

tavern, they alighted to screw their courage to
the sticking point Five minutes later they
had entered the park.

All the car party were armed with knives.

Following the car was the cab driven by
Fitzharris (" Skin-the-Goat "), in which were Dan
Curley, M. Fagan, and Joe Hanlon, each furnished
with a loaded revolver.

Carey and James Smith, who completed the
band, were already on the scene. Carey was
to give the signal, and he and Smith were
seated on the first bench beyond the Gough
monument, on the right-hand side of the road.
Siiiith's presence was necessary for a singular
reason. He, and he alone of the party, was
able to identify Mr. Burke. These men, it is
to be remarked, had nothing in the nature of
a private wrong to avenge. Not a man amongst
them had ever in his lifetime suffered, directly
or indirectly, the very smallest injustice at the
hands of Mr. Burke. To one and all of them
he was a name and nothing more.

The park was quiet. There had been a
polo match, and the last of the spectators were
strolling from the ^ *""' ' Farther off some

THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS. 47

members of the staff of a Dublin paper were
finishing a game of cricket. By a fitting and
fateful mischance there was not a single police-
man on duty in the park, nor in the streets
which they had traversed had the Invincibles
passed one man in uniform.

It was nearing seven ; a fine warm evening.

Kavanagh, a simple, merry-featured fellow,
was driving his car slowly up and down the
main road. The car was shadowed by the cab,
the business of " Skin-the-Goat's " trio being to
assist the attacking party, if necessary, during
or after the attack.

At about five minutes past seven a man was
seen to alight from an outside car just within
the park gates.

" Tis Burke," Smith said to Carey.

" Which of them ? " asked Carey, for the one
who had quitted the car had stopped to speak
with another man on the footpath.

" Him that's afther gettin' down," said Smith.
" The man in gray^ Mr. Burke, recognising
Lord Frederick Cavendish, who was going on
foot to his new home in the park, had dismissed
his car, and the two men— the sands in the glass

48 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

SO nearly spent for each — set out to walk together.
It was within a moment or two of sunset.

Mr. Burke always walked splendidly erect,
and carried his cane sword-fashion on his right
shoulder.

Carey signalled^ Kavanagh with his hand-
kerchief, and as the car came up gave the word
to Brady, the Hercules of the party, who, it
was well understood, was to do the deed alone.

" Mind the man in gray ! " said Carey. None
of them knew Lord Frederick Cavendish.

Carey and Smith set out across the park at
once in the direction of the Island Bridge gate.
Brady and the three with him slipped from
the car and advanced to meet Mr. Burke and
Lord Frederick, Brady walking on the inside
of the path opposite to Mr. Burke.

At the instant of meeting, Brady stooped as

if to tie his shoe ; then, rising suddenly, gripped

Mr. Burke by the waist, swung him round, and

dealt him one terrific blow in the back. Carey,

some distance \from the scene, heard the

\
murdered man's single groan, and imitated it

on the witness-taole months afterwards. As

Mr. Purke fell, Kelly bent over him and gashed

^jr^

c ^

rmm-

*-:_.-

^^^rf^--

i»«|^'^>*-^

THE SPOT WHERE THE CAR WAITED.

M|fl

pF-*

• r-i^*..:v ,j:^-^r*-

T"-

—

-_ *

■

■^

■

fVoiii a photo hy\ {Rohinton^ DuhlUu

A GLIMPSE OF THE WINDOW IN THE yiCEREGilL LODGE FROM WHICH

LORD SPENCER SAW THE SCUFFLE.

THE NEW YORK

PuP;.IC LL3RARY

ASTCR, LENOX AND
TILi^EN FOUNDATIONS.

. THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS. 49

him across the throat. The herculean Brady
did his work well and quickly, for Lord
Frederick was in the death throes now. His
death he owed to the fine blue blood in him.
It was not intended to kill him, but he had
turned instantly to defend his companion (^yith
an umbrella), and Brady, Burke being down,
grappled with Lord Frederick and struck him
deep in the breast under the left clavicle. One
blow apiece sufficed.*

Through an opening in the trees Lord
Spencer, standing with his secretary in a window
of the Viceregal Lodge, had watched the scuffle
on the path and sent the secretary to inquire
what it was.

Kavanagh, waiting quietly with the car
turned in the direction in which the flight was
to be, kept flicking his little brown mare with
the whip to heat her for the start. The four
sprang on the car, Kavanagh let out the reins
and the mare went away at the gallop. Let
us share this flight, which was one of the
mysteries of the affair.

* Sufficed to kill ; but many blows were dealt in the
struggle. See Appendix.

50 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

(" Skin-the-Goat " meanwhile had driven his
men out by the North Circular Road gate.)

Kavanagh took the first turn to the left —
the well-known road that leads across the
Fifteen Acres. At the hill just beyond the
Hibernian School there are two sharp curves,
forming together a letter S, and George
Godden, a park ranger, standing here as the
car made the double turn, noted Brady and
Caffrey, who were seated on opposite sides,
and was able afterwards to identify them in
court Out at the Chapelizod gate and round
to the right, and Kavanagh swept through
the village of Chapelizod, nearly killing a
child on the bridge crossing the Liffey.
Another turn to the left brought the car on
a road parallel to the one just traversed, and
in a few moments, glancing across towards
the Chapelizod gate, the murderers were able
to see that they were not yet followed. But
Kavanagh kept the whip going, and the brown
mare was flying with her heavy burden ten
miles an hour. Time was not so much in
question as the length of ground to be
covered.

THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS, 51

As yet the men were silent. They were now
on the Inchicore Road, and as they went
ventre d terre^ through the township of that
name, the five might have glimpsed in the
distance the stark walls of Kilmainham, which
were presently to receive them all, and within
which three were to lie in one grave.

Here Kavanagh made another detour, edging
always farther and farther from Dublin ; and
gaining the Naas Road, he put the mare's
head for the open country. Chance was
furthering the flight. They were unpursued,
and the night began to cover them. The
dusky highway was their own, and the little
mare was still racing up to her bit in the
gamest fashion. In front the Dublin and
Wicklow hills were fading in the clear-
obscure.

It must have been at about this point that
the tension passed and the men began to find
their tongues, for at the next stage on the
journey — the cross-roads beyond Bluebell Mill
— they were passed by a car, the driver of
which, in his information to the police at a
later dafe, said they were " laughing and talking

52 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

like mad," and he took them for "a tipsy
party returning from a Saturday spree."

From the cross-roads they might have driven
straight into South Dublin, but Kavanagh, in
accordance with the plan, swerved again on
to the Tallaght Road, still farther into the
country. They were safe enough now, and
at a milestone on the right of the road a
halt was called, and Kavanagh drew rein.
Brady and Kelly, who had a slight toilet to
perform, got off the car. So cleverly had
Brady despatched his victims that there was
not a stain upon his clothes ; but \As hands
were covered with blood, and Kelly's super-
fluous service on Mr. Burke had left a smear
on his. In the long moist grass against the
milestone they cleaned their hands and scoured
the blood from the knives.

But their goal was still to win, and the
halt was brief Rattling the mare along once
more, the pace a touch easier, Kavc.riagh pre-
sently turned off the Tallaght Eoad and took
the straight road for Terenure, through the
village of Crumlfe. It was death to anything
that let the browi^ mare*s hoofs that night, and

THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS. 53

a dog which sprang barking at her in Crumlin
had its brains kicked out. In then to Terenure,
where at length town life began again, for the
car was now spanking over the stones of a
Dublin suburb. It is at Terenure that the
tramway service ends, and at the terminus of
the Palmerston Park tramway Kelly was set
down and went home by tram to his mother's
house. The car, now at a sober jog, continued
along the tram-line through Palmerston Park
and Ranelagh, where Kavanagh made a final
bend to the right to fetch Leeson Park.

At Leeson Park the flight was over.
Kavanagh had accomplished his object by
bringing his men into Dublin at the point
remotest from that at which the start had
been made in the afternoon.

Folk going home late that evening from
Saturday's marketing might have seen a car,
with a brown mare (14J hands, wiry hair)
reeking between the shafts, outside the door of
Davy's tavern, iii, Upper Leeson Street.
Inside, four men, returned from a very success-
ful expedition of murder, were clinking their
glasses. It was the parting cup.

54 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

Kavanagh took the mare home softly to his
house in Townsend Street — man and mare on
their last legs — led her into the stable without
removing the harness, threw himself beside her
in the straw, and slept.

Brady, Delaney, and Caffrey walked to
Westland Row, where, in the shadow of the
chapel, they met Carey by appointment, and
gave him assurance that all was well.

On the following morning, Sunday, Carey
went to early mass with his wife and children,
and took the sacrament.

SUNDA Y.

'T^HE bodies of the murdered men were
-■- first seen by a young telegraphist,
McGuire by name, riding home on his bicycle.
Scarcely stopping, he sped on in search of a
policeman. "There are two. men lying in pools
of blood on the path near the Phoenix monu-
ment," he said.

I believe the struggle had actually been
watched at a little distance by an officer in a
cavalry regiment quartered in the town, but
so paralysed was he by the horror of it that
he could render no assistance ; nor was he even
able, when visited in his quarters by the police,
two hours afterwards, to give a coherent account
of what he had seen.

Some hours later it was being vaguely
bruited in Dublin that the Phoenix Park had

56 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

been the scene of a nameless tragedy. A
rumour that the new Chief Secretary had been
murdered reached the theatre, and the opera
was finished in a hurry. Pressmen and other
inquirers chased one another to the Castle.
Dublin in general, however, passed the night of
Saturday in ignorance of the crime. Several
hours of that night were spent by a chief
officer of police in writing a despatch to the
Queen, which was carried by Captain Ross the
next morning.

For the first time in the history of the
Irish Press, Sunday editions were issued of
the three Dublin papers. Mention of one
circumstance was omitted deliberately by all
of them. A black-edged card had been
dropped into their letter-boxes on Saturday
evening, which bore this legend —

"THI8 DEED WAS DONE BY THE
IRISH INVINCIBLES."

By each of the journals which received
this missive it was regarded as a gross and
ghastly jest, and none of them would put it

SUNDAY. 57

into print. But the cards were genuine, and
the inscriptions were the writing of Dan
Curley.

The first verbal announcements of the crime
were made in the Roman Catholic churches.
Mr. Burke was a member of that faith, and
at high mass on Sunday morning prayers for
the repose of his soul were asked in every
Roman Catholic church in Dublin. These
solemn utterances from the altar must have
been impressive in the highest degree where
no previous knowledge of the tragedy existed
amongst the congregation. In two churches
the duty devolved upon priests bearing the
name of the murdered man ; and one of them,
Father Burke of St. Kevin's, Heytesbury Street,
fell dead at the altar in the act of speaking.

By midday the deed was known to all
Dublin. From that on to nightfall the popular
feeling of amazed indignation and horror in-
creased hourly. There were curious evidences
of the temporary suppression of private and
personal sorrows: funeral processions passing
through Sackville Street on their way to the
Glasnevin Cemetery stopped at the newspaper

58 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

offices, and copies of the newspapers were
bought and read aloud in the mourning coaches.
In the afternoon the whole town poured into
the Phoenix Park, and by four o'clock the
people in thousands were struggling to ad-
vance a pace along the mile and more of
road between the Phoenix gate and the Phoenix
monument.

It was on this Sunday afternoon that justice
began already to get upon the trail. In the
private room, in Castle Yard, of the officer
who had been entrusted with the case, the
scent was first picked up. While the town
was given over to the dimmest speculations
as to the possible authors of the crime, and
rumour assailed the general ear with as many
names as she had tongues, a quiet person, who
was neither an Invincible nor a spy of the
police, was unfolding an interesting history
to the chief detective. This person was never
brought forward in connection with the case.
He made no appearance in court at the pre-
liminary examinations or at the trials, and
the formal evidence which he tendered while
the case was in its infancy was taken under

SUNDAY. 59

conditions of the strictest privacy. His secret
has been well preserved; he is going about
his business in Dublin at this day, unmolested
and unsuspected. It was from this unex-
pected quarter that the first useful clue was
received.

VI.

THE ARRESTS, THE INVESTIGATION,
IHE TRIALS.

ON Monday morning Dublin was placarded
with Lord Spencer's proclamation, offer-
ing a reward of ten thousand pounds. Side
by side with it appeared the proclamation of
Mr. Parnell and the leading members of the
Land League, denouncing the murders in fit
language.

The summoning of the four thousand and
odd car-drivers of Dublin, to account for their
time on the afternoon and evening of Satur-
day, was the first step taken by the Castle
in a criminal investigation the most elaborate,
minute, and skilful on record. It showed that
the police were already aware by what means
the murderers had escaped from the park,
for the earliest impression had been that they

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THE UOOM Jif DUBLIN CASTLE HX \V HlCH SI It. AD YE
CCTERAN CaNDL-CTED THK INVESTIGATION.

JAMES CARElf,

US- JOiLV GALLON J.i*,

ini; LATii juit. uliiu;ii^

ARRESTS, INVESTIGATION, TRIALS. 6i

had walked to the Kingsbridge station and
taken train thence to the south. Each "jarvey "
in turn was closely interrogated, and Kavanagh
alone was unable to give a satisfactory account
of himself. As yet, however, there was nothing
to justify his arrest.

Arrests significant enough were neverthe-
less not long delayed. Carey himself, Dan
Curley, Chairman Mullett, the two Hanlons,
and McCaffrey (not to be confused with the
Tom Caffrey who occupied a seat on the
car) were all laid hold of. They were lodged
in Kilmainham, and kept there under the
Crimes Act until the month of September,
when, as the legal evidence was still to pro-
cure, they were liberated.

It was six months since the murders, and
the belief was that a baffled police had
abandoned the case. It was forgotten that
Ireland was under a reign of terror. Long
before the six men first arrested were let out,
to be shadowed by the police till they were
wanted again, their parts in the crime were
known, and every man who was afterwards
placed in the dock was already under watch.

2g^P!'fi>^f*'>\'«r/*.>-7;:

62 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

The public proofs against them were what
was lacking all these tedious months. No
one would risk the chance of an open testi-
mony. At every stage throughout the in-
quiry, it was this that gave check to the
police. When, for instance, they had learned,
eight or nine months after the act, the route
by which Kavanagh had taken his men from
the scene of the murder, inquiries made at
every house and cabin on the road failed to
bring into court one word of evidence as to
the flight of the car.

But the Invincibles played unwittingly into
the hands of their enemy. They made two
foolish moves in November. The first of these
was Pat Delaney's attempt on Judge Lawson.
Delaney made a feint of shooting the judge
as he was entering the Kildare Street Club,
and was at once arrested. At about the same
time Mr. Field, foreman of the common jury,
which had recently brought in a verdict of
guilty against a man charged with murder,
was attacked on the steps of his house. The
arrests which followed were important. Certain
evidence was drawn from Delaney which had

ARIiESTS, INVESTIGATION, TRIALS. 63

Its bearing on the larger case, and a further
inquiry under the Crimes Act was commenced
in the first week of December.

It was a process reminiscent of the Star
Chamber, conducted with great ability by the
magistrate, Mr. Adye Curran, who had the
invaluable assistance of Mr. John Mallon, then
chief of the detective department. The first
under examination was Dan Delanqy, an active
Invincible, and brother of the Patrick just
named. For five hours on one day and six on
the following day he underwent a searching in-
terrogation. Kelly, Caffrey, Brady, and James
Mullett followed. The men were charged with
nothing, but their brains were picked and sifted,
and the catechism was severe enough to shake
the hearts of the guilty ones.

This process extended far. All manner of
persons considered likely to be able in any
way to assist the case were politely asked to
present themselves before Mr. Curran, in his
private room at the Castle. Sometimes a single
question sufficed ; sometimes the visitor was
under examination the greater portion of the
day. Each day the net was drawn a little

64 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

closer about the prospective victims, although
many of those who were afterwards put upon
their trial were never called on to face Mr.
Curran.

The private investigation under the Crimes
Act occupied the whole of December and the
first part of January, and then the grand
coup was made. Twenty-six Invincibles were
seized one night under warrant in various parts
of Dublin, and placed in the dock of the Inns
of Quay police court on January 13th, 1883.
Up to this point the course of justice had
been hidden, but the appearance of the twenty-
six in the dock was a startling and effective
answer to the charge of failure that had been
laid against the police. The men were re-
manded for a week, and their next appear-
ance was in Kilmainham Court-house, a change
of scene which the dangers of the street
rendered necessary. Kilmainham Court-house
adjoins the prison, and from the latter to
the former the men were safely conducted
by a covered passage through a double file
of police.

For a time the caged Invincibles maintained

__i

From a photo by] [Bobituon, Dublin,

THE FIBST HALT: UILE8T0KB ON THE TALLAGHT BO AD.

Jf'rom a photo by] [Robituont Dtiblin

SCENE OF THE MUBDEB.

■^-^'''' York'
-IBRARY

ASroR, UNOX AND

---~:!i!lSl:}^ATioHi>.

ARRESTS, INVESTIGATION, TRIALS. 65

a front which was not merely cool but defiant
Their jocularity in the dock one morning
drew from Mr. Murphy, Q.C., the leading
counsel for the Crown, a dry word to the
effect that they would "possibly be a little
less merry before he had finished with them."
Some of the group displayed a contemptuous
and others a lively interest in the proceedings
against them. Brady, who occupied a front
corner of the dock, was always good-humouredly
on the alert, and brisk in signalling the
messenger of one of the Dublin dailies, when
the reporter had his "copy" ready. It was
curious to observe, however, with what care
the prisoners counted their numbers when
they were placed in the dock in the morning
— the dread of betrayal by an informer, which
is the poison in the heart of every Irish con-
spirator.

One morning the count fell short. The
conspirators were fewer by one comrade than
they had been on the previous day. While
they were still in the pains of suspense as to
the cause of his absence from the dock, he
was led in by another door, and, shamefaced

66 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

and quaking, he mounted to the chair on the
witness-table. It was Bob Farrell, the first
of the informers.

The dock was dumb but for an unphrased
murmur, and it never joked again. Mr.
Murphy was about to put the cup to the lips
of the jesters.

One informer was not enough to undo the
whole batch in the dock, but in Irish crime
informers come not singly. Kavanagh, a
week or two later, took Farrell's place on the
table. There had been remand after remand,
but with Kavanagh's translation from the
dock to the witness-table, the case against the
prisoners began to be narrowed to its final issue.
It was not until Kavanagh turned Queen's
evidence that they were able to be charged in
set terms with the murders. " Conspiring to
murder certain Government officials and others,"
was the charge formulated against them when
they were first placed in the dock. Brady,
Kelly, Pat Delaney, and Tom Caffrey were
charged with the murders; and Fitzharris,
Fagan, Curley, Joe Hanlon, and James Carey
with being accessories.

ARRESTS, INVESTIGATION, TRIALS. 67

But it was not in Kilmainham Court-house
all this time that the case against the In-
vincibles was being most subtilely developed
Rather more was being done within the walls
of Kilmainham prison. The stake for which
justice was playing in this affair was so
great that not a ruse known to modern
detective science was neglected. The object
was to bring the prisoners to implicate one
another, and their fears and their suspicions
of treachery were most cunningly played upon.
They were exercised in a small yard apart,
and meetings were arranged between particular
comrades, in circumstances which allowed their
talk to be overheard. A possible witness against
them, who was supposed to be in safe hiding
across the Channel, was pushed for a moment
through the door of the exercise yard, and
as suddenly withdrawn. By word and sugges-
tion they were made to feel that they had
been betrayed on every side, and above all,
that the chief traitors were of their own number.
Amongst the six-and-twenty who had been
placed in the dock not all were worth prose-
cuting, but it was fixedly resolved to bring

68 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

the ringleaders to justice, and, if possible, to
send the actual murderers to the gallows upon
the testimony of their own companions. It
was easily done in the end. Before the actual
trial was commenced, there was haidly a man
in his cell in Kilmainham who had not begged
for an opportunity to state all he knew,
appealirig to the officer who had charge of
the case : " For the love o* God, sir, why won't
ye take my evidence?" Amongst the scenes
in Kilmainham, when it becomes possible to
tell the story in detail, that of the panel in
the door of the infirmary ward, and what was
heard on the other side, will be classed as an
instance of detective skill with the adroitest
in the criminal annals of France. Amongst
the prison officials Dr. Carte and the late
Governor Gildea are considered to have
rendered signal assistance in bringing the case
to a head. It has been little known how im-
portant a part certain women played towards
the same end. Here a wife and there a
mother, seeking to save a husband or a son,
helpe ' \:.\ secret promptings to bring justice
near*^ : 'ts end.

ARRESTS, INVESTIGATION, TRIALS. 69

Towards the close of the investigation the
position of the Invincibles had become so nearly
hopeless that but one thing was needed to
make a ruin of it : it was the defection of
James Carey, and the dock was not to escape
this worst blow of all. It has been supposed
that Carey was willing if not eager from the
outset to be the Judas of the party, but the
facts were otherwise. He was less a hero, I
think, than any of his associates in the plot,
but he had in him a kind of stubborn pride
and all the Irishman's instinctive horror of the
rd/e of informer. He refused to speak until he
felt the rope at his throat. It was the damning
evidence of Kavanagh that finally unnerved
him, and forced his lips to save his neck. But
even then it was hard to fetch the truth from
him. The first statement which he drew up
in his cell in Kilmainham was torn up and
returned to him. " This is ancient history,
Carey," said his examiner. Up to the last
moment it was extremely difficult to get him to
face the court, an ordeal to which his physical
nerve was as little equal as his moral. In a
room at the back of the court he had to be

70 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

primed with brandy before he could be per-
suaded to mount to the chair on the witness-
table.

For the unhappy creatures at the bar the
case had been a series of the most disquieting
surprises; but when they saw that Carey too
had slipped from the storm which was raining
on the dock, surprise was swallowed up in rage.
Brady made an effort to seize him by the neck
as he passed, and maledictions audible enough
went up from the pen where the betrayed men
were imprisoned. Carey, once he had taken
his seat, regained his nerve, and never faltered
in the narrative which was to set the final seal
upon the fate of the friends he had abandoned.

For when the trial, over which Judge O'Brien
presided, was commenced in Green Street, the
ship was already on the rocks. The sole
remaining hope of the Invincibles lay in the
eloquence of the counsel whom the Crown had
provided for the defence ; but all the forensic
skill in the world could avail them little.

What fate but the worst could Joe Brady
look 1 t Of those who had been sent for
trial, W \ .V. the first to be arraigned, and he

ARRESTS, INVESTIGATION, TRIALS. 71

took his stand in the dock of the Green Street
Court-house on Wednesday, April nth, 1883,
just within a year of the day on which he had
sent Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke
to their account Two patient days and a half
the court gave him, though the issue could
never at any moment have been in doubt.
When called upon to show reason why sentence
of death should not be passed on him, he
sprang up in the dock, pale, but full of passion,
his huge frame quivering, and swore huskily in
the broadest Irish that his life had been taken
from him by the lying oaths of informers. The
death sentence calmed him. He took it bravely
and without bravado, and thanked his counsel
before he was led out.

This young fellow, the real murderer, was
the most sympathetic personality in the group.
As the man who had struck the blows, he
could not have hoped to escape by informing,
and he was never of course invited to turn
Queen's evidence. But I believe that, had he
been approached for that purpose, he would
still have kept his tongue. In every Irish
crime of this sort there are more traitors than

72 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

are named, but not so many as are whispered.
It was not possible to name Brady as a traitor ;
but what is more, the intent of treachery was
never whispered against him. I believe, too,
that but for Brady there would have been no
Phoenix Park murders. If there were no
legerdemain in the assigning of the lots, the
Invincibles were fortunate on the day that Brady
drew his. Had the chance fallen on Carey, for
example. Lord Frederick and Mr. Burke would
have come off as lightly as Judge Lawson
and Mr. Field. Brady, in a word, was the one
man who had courage for the part which was,
I feel sure, deliberately imposed upon him by
a trick of the ballot.

I must be brief over the trials that followed
Brady's. Dan Curley*s, three days later, was
the second. Curley was the handsomest of the
band, a young-looking man of thirty-two.
There were considerations which made it hard
to sentence him, and his wife and children
were in court. He clung to the rail of the
dock as he stood up to receive his doom. He
was the only man who melted the court into
tears, though he scarcely spoke a word. There

ARRESTS, INVESTIGATION, TRIALS. 73

were tears at the reporter's table and tears in
the eyes of the Judge when, at the third essay,
he put on the black cap. Timothy Kelly, a
slim, long-faced youth of nineteen, with a thick,
pendulous lip and a cold, blue, shifty eye, was
the third to stand in the dock. Timothy was
tried three times. There were slight dis-
crepancies in the evidence, and the "packed
British jury" were not willing to send a mere
lad to the gallows except upon the strongest
confirmation of his guilt. Michael Fagan was
the fourth and Tom Caffrey the fifth upon
whom the death sentence was passed. Pat
Delaney received the same award, but he had
turned informer after Carey, and his death
sentence, commuted almost immediately to
penal servitude for life, was subsequently re-
duced to one of ten years. Chairman Mullett
escaped with ten years. Life sentences of
penal servitude (not quite so terrible a penalty
in Ireland as in England) are still in course
of expiation by the other Mullett — Joe, the
hunchback — Laurence Hanlon, and " Skin-the-
Goat"
Of the informers, not all of whom have been

74 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES,

named, one has made a comfortable fortune in
a corner of the globe where he is never likely
to be traced, and others are not too badly
housed elsewhere. Carey, who was kept longest
in Kilmainham, for his own undeserved security,
was liberated at ten o'clock one night, and con-
veyed to Kingstown by three stages in three
separate cabs. The surviving Invincibles have
always made the boast that the man O'Donnell,
by whom he was shot at Port Elizabeth, was
sent after him by them. But O'Donnell, who
had no connections with any revolutionary
party in Ireland, had taken his pasi^age in the
Cape steamer a month before the Government
had decided to what part of the world they
would despatch Carey. Kavanagh, shipped to
Sydney, was refused a landing there, and was
shipped back to England. He died at twenty-
three, poisoned by drink, in a lunatic asylum
in London.

Within little more than a twelvemonth the
crime was expiated, and the conspiracy itself
was then barely eighteen months old. Con-
sidering the magnitude of the affair and the
innumerable difficulties in the path of the

ARRESTS, INVESTIGATION, TRIALS. 75

inquirers, the execution of justice was almost
as rapid as it was complete. The ranks of the
Invincibles were decimated, their constitution
was broken all to pieces. Five of their number
sent to the gallows (and chiefly by the treachery
of comrades), others into life-long imprisonment,
and others again involved, with their families,
in ruin and irremediable disgrace — this, and no
less, was their portion. But for such a deed
as theirs ^

.... all vengeance comes too short
Which can pursue the offender.

A plot and crime of this nature, and in a
country circumstanced as Ireland then was,
are not unravelled without a master mind. The
brilliant agent of the law in this instance was
Mr. Mallon, who had the case in hand from the
first, and who, at the constant peril of his life,
may be said to have carried it through alone.
Judge O'Brien spoke no idle compliment from
the bench in his description of this prince of
detectives as " a man whose courage was
equalled only by his sagacity." Not less
deserved was the encomium of Mr. Murphy,

76 KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

Q.C., that "while the world was of opinion
that nothing was being done the police were
quietly getting together the threads of the
evidence ; and it was very significant that
the officer who had charge of the case, with a
knowledge peculiar to himself, had the four
members of the committee in custody almost
immediately after the crime was committed."
Not only this, indeed, but within a very few
weeks the plot with its maze-like windings was
known to him, and but for the incredible diffi-
culty of procuring clean testimony in support
of the evidence of the informers, the final blow
would have fallen long ere it did. It will never
be known, until he chooses to tell it himself, by
what means Mr. Mallon got at the very heart
of the plot at the earliest stage of the inquiry,
but it is still a tradition of Kilmainham with
what terror he inspired the Invincibles whom
he first examined privately in the governor's
office. "There's really no sayin' what you
don't know, Misther Mallon," said one of them,
in whose deposition certain notable deficiencies
had been pointed out He had a memory that
never slept, patience without end, a terrible

ARRESTS, INVESTIGATION, TRIALS. 77

skill in piecing evidence together, and a com-
plete disregard of danger. Of all the men
whom he brought to justice Carey alone bore
him any real ill-feeling, and those who were
to hang shook him by the hand on the eve
of execution. Mr. Mallon is now a Justice of
the Peace and Commissioner of Police, and it
may be hoped that he will one day sit down
to tell the story of his life.

Mr. M'Manus, who did for me with the
utmost kindness all that the governor of a
prison could do for an unofficial visitor, is
one of the most experienced officers in this
service. For thirty years he has been con-
cerned in the administration of Irish prisons,
and bears a high character as a just and
humane governor. In no prison in the United
Kingdom is a high standard of discipline main-
tained with less harshness of treatment than
in Kilmainham.

VII.
MARTVOOD.

FROM the middle of April to near the
middle of June, 1883, the venerable
chaplain of Kilmainham (who diec in his eighty-
fifth year on Christmas Eve last) was busy with
the consolations of the Church. For five of
the condemned men there was no hope in this
world, and they knew it. All of them are
said to have been attentive to the priest, and
for that matter many of the Invincibles did
the duties of their faith in the most exemplary
manner. Carey, who was a member of the
Sodality of the Sacred Heart, hung the medal
and ribbon of the Order over the bed in his
cell. On the night of his release from Kilmain-
ham, while he was faring by quiet ways to
Kingstown, the arch-informer chanced to look
out of the cab as it passed the little tobacco

MARWOOD. 79

shop kept by Curley's widow. Crossing him-
self, he exclaimed, " God save the soul of Dan
Curley!" "Why, you villain," returned his
conductor, "you're after helping to hang
the man ! "

The five men cast for the gallows were of
quiet and seemly behaviour, though one piece
of bravado is told of Kelly. The governor
happening to enter the lad's cell at the dinner -
hour the day before he was to die, Kelly lifted
the pot of porter with which he had been
regaled and flourished it at him. "Your
honour's health, an' a long life ! " said he. Of
the five, Curley and Tom Caffrey showed them-
selves the most sincerely penitent Caffrey
suffered more than the others at the near
envisaging of death. He became very thin
and pallid towards the last

Within a few hours before the first of the
fatal mornings the authorities of the prison
found themselves in something of a predica-
ment There was no gallows standing in
Kilmainham,* and no person within the pre-

• There is none at the present day. The execution
yard of the Invincibles, when I was shown into it,

8o KILMAINHAM MEMORIES.

cincts of the gaol who could be entrusted
with the building of one. Nay, there was not
a morsel of timber in the place which could
be used for the purpose. In this strait, a party
of Royal Engineers were fetched in from one
of the barracks, and the necessary timber
(which had been bought as "wanted for or-
dinary prison repairs") was smuggled in after
them. The very spot at which the gallows
was to be set up was kept as privy as possible,
lest the dynamiters should get wind of it

On the morning of May 14th, soldiers and
police guarded Kilmainham within and with-
out. The whole neighbourhood was thronged,
and the crowd was densest on the bridge and
in the cherry orchard beneath the rear walls of
the prison. These werej'jhe places of vantage,
commanding a view of the water-tank reared
high between two chinineys. Suddenly all
heads here were bared as the flutter of the

was stacked with timber, and of the gallows from which
the five murderers were launched no trace was visible
except the two holes in the whitewashed walls where
one of the beams supporting the platf.;rrr! had been
fixed.— T. H.

From apkoto by} IRdbintotit Dublin.

THE CONDEMNED CELL.

Fnjm a photo by"] IRdbinwn, Dublin.

SMALL EXERCISE YARD, WITH VIEW OF EXECUTION
YARD BEYOND.

THE NEW YORK

PUPMC LIBRARY

ASrOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

MARWOOD. 8i

flag above the tank told that Marwood had
loosed the bolt for Joe Brady. The stanchest
A the Invincibles died without a tremor. His
•:heek had the colour of life, and his huge frame
lad not diminished by the weight of an ounce.

Four days later, handsome Dan Curley
followed him into the gallows* pit. Curley's
lather — an old peasant from the west of Ire-
land — stood watching in the cherry orchard,
and as the flag was hoisted he dropped on his
knees and began a prayer in Irish. The
ueople, kneeling around him with uncovered
' eads, took up the responses, and the murmur
f their voices passed through the prison walls
nd mingled with the voice of the old chaplain
)ti the gallows, while the squab figure of the
langman was crouched over the swaying body
'f his victim.

Michael Fagan died May 28th, Caffrey on
jane 2nd, and young Tim Kelly on the 9th.
None of the men made any confession on the
gallows.

The five lie in one grave between the two
•alls which framed their gallows, and the
'; ave is nameless.

'Tn'

APPENDIX.

'T^HE editor of that pungent sheet, United
-*- Irelandy not brooking the liberty I took
in rejecting the pathetic myth of the Martyrdom
of the Suspects, expended on me in his issue
of April 4th a column or two of first-rate
indignation. At this date it would probably
afford less entertainment to him than to me
were I to confront him with a tithe of his
own amusing inaccuracies, but I must at least
present him with a specimen.

" In his description of the principal hall of
the gaol," says the editor, " the writer displays
a most mean and partisan spirit of insult to
Irishmen."

Wondering how I could have contrived, in
a mere description of the principal hall of
Kilmainham, to load Ireland with opprobrium,
I turned to the first pages of the article in

86 APPENDIX.

the Windsor and found that my account of
that hall limited itself almost to the general
statement that there was perhaps not a finer
one in any prison in the United Kingdom!
Farther on, I described the comfortable arrange-
ments made by the authorities of the prison
to house and amuse those down-trodden devoted
patriots, the Suspects ; and I hinted at the
generous outpourings of the Ladies* Land
League, to keep them fed like fighting-cocks.
Here, doubtless, was the head and front of my
offending. There is still, apparently, a desire
to have it thought that the imprisoned Suspects
who were, on the whole, in such excellent case
in Kilmainham, suffered rather worse things
than the political prisoners of Louis XL in
the dungeon of Vincennes, or those of Louis
XIV. in the oubliettes of the Bastille. May
one hazard the expression of a hope that un-
veracious futilities on this head will cease to
be circulated?

Constrained to admit that I was "unques-
tionably well informed" as to the internal
economy of Kilmainham, the editor consoled
his anger at this with the reflection that I

APPENDIX, 87

had perhaps been locked up there for wife-
beating. Thus, with an almost sobbing indig-
nation, did he implore me to tread on the
tail of his coat. It is, for certain, an ungallant
delinquency to be charged with, — but who
knows ? — and it is not beyond the limits of the
possible that my captivity in the stone-breaking
yard might have been mitigated by the com-
panionship of an editor in trouble for lightening
the till of his employer to relieve a parching
throat.

But, as fate would have it, I did not qualify
in this way to write the foregoing pages ; and,
had I done so, I am quite willing to think that
nothing but the worst extremity of thirst would
have qualified the editor of United Ireland to
share my penance.

After the publication of the first article I
received from Mr. David Williamson, the editor
of the Windsor Magazine^ the following letter,
which might engage the attention of the
Psychical Research Society : —

" You may like to hear of a curious coincidence
respecting tlife Phoenix Park tragedy, the story of

APPENDIX,

which has been retold by you in Kilmainham
Memories. I had lately a visit from a gentleman
who, though more than eighty years of age, possessed
an alert and accurate memory. He said that two or
three days before the civilised world was startled by
the news of the assassination of Lord Frederick
Cavendish and Mr. Burke, he had a dream which
on the following morning he carefully related to his
family. In * a vision of the night ' he saw a room in
which a group of men stood on one side of a table,
while facing them was a tall man, insisting with up-
lifted hand on the commission of some deed. The
men's craven faces were so vividly impressed on the
mind of my informant that he made a picture
of the scene, which he brought to show me. The
sketch depicted some villainous countenances which,
on comparison with my portraits of the actual
murderers, certainly were fair representations. At
the end of the room, in this sketch, was a
partition of wood, which was destined to be an
important link in the evidence against the murderers.
The historic news which shocked London just as
people were leaving places of worship on Sunday
morning. May 8th, 1882, of course interested this
gentleman in an extraordinary degree. He was
walking down Fleet Street on the following day, when
he saw in front of him the very man who, in his
dream, had been speaking to the group opposite to
him ! He was so certain that this was an individual

APPENDIX, 89

connected with the murder that he followed him for
some distance, hesitating, however, to take so momen-
tous a step as giving notice of his suspicion to the
police. When the trial of the murderers was in
progress, my informant gave the Crown some details
as to the room which he had seen in his dream, and
these details suggested to the counsel some telling
questions which astonished both the witnesses and the
prisoners. He could have said in the words of Byron,
" I had a dream which was not all a dream," for the
partition, which had been removed since the murder
from the room in which the conspirators mety existed
at the time of their assembling. Whatever we may
think of dreams, whether they are only * the children
of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy,'
as Shakespeare says, I believe these facts will be
interesting to those who are reading your articles."

I had no opportunity when in Dublin of
meeting any of the gentlemen who assisted
at the post-mortem examination, but by the
kindness of Dr. H. C. Tweedy, Visiting
Physician to Steevens' Hospital, who was
present on the occasion, I have since received
some notes.

Shortly after seven on the evening of Satur-
day, May 6th, a message reached Steevens'
Hospital (the nearest hospital to Phoenix

72908

90 APPENDIX.

Park) that a murder had been committed in
the Park. The House Surgeon (Mr. Myles)
went at once, arriving three-quarters of an hour
after the murder had been committed. Mr.
Burke was dead ; he died, in fact, immediately
after being stabbed. Lord Frederick Cavendish
was still alive, but unconscious ; " he groaned
several times, but died almost immediately
after Myles reached the spot." Mr. Myles
then had the two bodies taken to Steevens*
Hospital, where they lay in a little room till
the next morning (Sunday), when they were
removed in two small hearses to the Chief
Secretary's Lodge. Here they were laid on
two large tables in the ball-room for the
post-mortem. The post-mortem lasted from
about 1 1 a.m. till 6 p.m. ; everything was
most minutely gone into. The examination
was conducted by the late Mr. Porter (after-
wards Sir George Porter), assisted by Mr.
Hamilton and Mr. Myles. Notes of the
necropsy were taken by Dr. H. C. Tweedy.
One point of interest which came out at the
post-mortem, but which was never mentioned,
was that Lord Frederick Cavendish showed

APPENDIX, 91

distinct evidence of having been threatened
with consumption, but the lung had healed.

Dr. Tweedy was good enough to send me
the authentic report of the post-mortem which
appeared in the issue of the British Medical
Journal of May 13th, 1882, and from which
I take the particulars that follow : —

"The remains of Mr. Burke, the late Under
Secretary, were first examined, and presented the
following marks of violence.

"The clothes were profusely stained with blood,
and pierced in several places, before and behind,
apparently with a sharp-pointed weapon; and the
glove belonging to the left hand had two rents on
the index finger, and a slit extending almost the
entire length of the middle finger. The face was
stained with blood, and there was a quantity of
semi-clotted blood in the mouth and fauces. The
first and most striking wound was one on the front
of the neck, to the left side. It presented the
character of a deep gash, about three inches and
and a half in length; only small vessels, however,
were wounded, for the carotid artery and jugular
vein had escaped, and the trachea was uninjured.
There was another deep wound at the right side
of the neck, immediately behind the sterno-mastoid
muscle, and at the anterior margin of the trapezius.
This wound penetrated to the spine. There were

92 APPENDIX.

two wounds on the index finger of the left hand,
corresponding to the rents in the glove, and one
on the middle finger of the same hand — ^the nail
and last phalanx of which were split down for about
half an inch. These cuts were apparently caused
by attempts at warding off the assassin's weapon.
On examining the chest, three punctured wounds
were found. One was directly over the middle bone
of the sternum, and did not penetrate the thorax.
The second was over the cartilage of the second
rib, on the left side. This, as well as the other
sterno-costal cartilages, was almost completely ossified ;
but such was the violence of the stroke that it
was completely severed, and the wound penetrated
to the apex of the left lung, severing the internal
mammary artery on that side. The third stab
was lower down on the same side, about an inch
and a half above the nipple. This also reached
the lung, and the two accounted for the profuse
haemorrhage from the mouth, as the cut in the
throat did not communicate with the air-passages
or pharynx. The last, and what must have
been the fatal stab, was in the back. It was
found just over the inferior angle of the left scapula
passing in between the ribs, opening the peri-
cardium (which was filled with blood) penetrating
the posterior wall of the left ventricle of the heart,
and opening that cavity. This wound, evidently
inflicted by a long, sharp-pointed, and probably

APPENDIX, 93

double-edged weapon, must have caused death
almost instantaneously.

" The remains of Lord Frederick Cavendish were
next examined. His clothes, like those of Mr.
Burke, were saturated with blood, and exhibited
great marks of violence. There were seven cuts in
the coat alone. The trousers were covered with
dust, particularly at the knees, and there was a
quantity of blood on the back and along the right
seam. The body presented the following wounds.
There was a deep transverse gash on the centre of the
left forearm, cutting down through the muscles to the
bones, one of which, the ulna, was fractured, and a
portion of it absolutely sliced away. It was probable
that this wound was received in an effort to ward
off a blow. There was a slight abrasion over the
right cheek-bone, and also one on the right knee.
He had received a deep stab in the centre of the back
of the neck. The weapon had passed from this
point through the muscle to the root of the neck
at the right side, injuring the spinous process of the
sixth cervical vertebra, and finally emerged an inch
over the right clavicle. There was another deep
wound at the outer edge of the inferior angle of
the right scapula, involving the bone. There was
a deep gash in the right axilla, extending upwards
and backwards, but not wounding any large vessel.
This, like the wound on the left arm, was probably
received when the limb was raised in an effort at

94 APPENDIX.

self-defence. Over the right shoulder was a deep
angular wound, penetrating to the upper edge of
the scapula, transfixing the shoulder, completely
severing the axillary vessels in the first stage just
above the lesser pectoral muscle, and emerging
anteriorly over the cartilage of the second rib. This
was probably the fatal wound.

"At the inquest, Mr. Porter deposed that the
wounds in both cases were of the same size, and had
all the same clean edges. With the exception of the
wound on Lord Frederick Cavendish's arm, which
appeared to be a gash, and the abrasion on the right
knee, due probably to his having fallen on his knees,
all the wounds were punctured wounds. The weapons
which inflicted them must have been long daggers or
sharp knives — ^nine or ten inches in length — exceed-
ingly keen and well-tempered. They were such
wounds as a bowie-knife might have inflicted."

A witness of Brady's execution has fur-
nished me with these curious particulars : —

"Whilst we were waiting for the procession from
the prison chapel, the doctor was in conversation
with Marwood. The hangman was positively y«^/Vij«/,
rubbing his hands and exclaiming, * The eyes of the
whole civilised world are upon us this morning, doctor.
This is the grandest execution of the nineteenth
century!' When the procession at last appeared,
Marwood stepped forward in a theatrical manner, and
flung out his arm to stop the condemned man, in

APPENDIX, 95

order that he might pinion him. His manacles, he
said, were a patent of his own. A broad belt of
leather went round the waist, with straps and hand-
cuffs attached on each side in front, which confined
the hands. Two more straps at the back confined
the elbows, so that the prisoner was exactly like a
trussed fowl.

" A priest on each side of Brady was reading the
service for the dead, but Brady took no notice and
never seemed to hear. The whole time he was dis-
tinctly muttering to himself, over and over again,
* Poor ould Ireland! poor ould Ireland 1 '

" When Marwood had adjusted the rope, he literally
danced round his victim ; and just before pulling the
bolt he said, * Now then, hold back your head, and
you'll die easy.' The doctor was standing on a chair
immediately under the drop, so as to examine the
body the instant it had fallen ; and he took out his
watch to note how long the pulse beat after death.
Dr. Carte himself was not present at this execution,
and his representative was an extremely cool young
fellow, who is now an army surgeon. It was thought
that the immense strength of Brady (who was a left-
handed man, by the way) might tempt him to give
trouble on the scaffold, but he behaved very quietly,
and with extreme bravery. It was odd to see in what
a free-and-easy way he mounted the stone steps lead-
ing to the gallows, first one shoulder forward, then
the other. His death was instantaneous."

96 APPENDIX.

Few members of the present staff of Kilmain-
ham remember these fateful days; indeed, I
believe that warder Beattie is the only one
who was in the prison in 1882. The Governors
during the period which has been under con-
sideration were, respectively, Captain St. George
Gray, Captain Rudolph Gildea, and Mr. J.
Leslie-Beers, J.P. The two former are dead,
and Mr.- Leslie-Beers has retired from the
service ; I had several interviews with him,
and he was kind enough to give me a great
deal of information. I believe that Mr. Pamell
was in Mr. Leslie-Beers's keeping for a while;
and amongst the better-known of his political
prisoners may be named Mr. Carew, B.L.
(the new Member for the College Green Divi-
sion of Dublin), Mr. P. O'Brien, Mr. Wilfred
Blunt, Father Keller, Father Ryan, and Father
McFadden.

Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

MAY Z 8 1943

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