Manchester Martyrs
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Image:Manchestermartyrs.jpg
The Manchester Martyrs, were Irish nationalists who were executed for the murder of a policeman during a prison break. William O'Mera Allen, Michael Larkin, and William Goold (aka O'Brien) were hanged in Manchester, England November 23, 1867. These men were caught and convicted for their rescue of Colonel Thomas J. Kelly and Captain Timothy Deasy. The rescue took place on the borders of West Gorton and Ardwick.
Kelly and Deasy were both Fenians who played important roles in the failed Fenian Rising that year. Kelly had been declared the chief executive of the Irish Republic at a secret Republican convention, and Deasy commanded a Fenian brigade in County Cork. Wanted men throughout Britain and Ireland, both were arrested on a vagrancy charge in September.
On 18 September, both men were to be escorted to the County gaol on Hyde Road. They were handcuffed and locked in two separate compartments inside the police van with a squad of twelve mounted policemen to escort them. As the van passed under a railway arch, a man darted into the middle of the road, pointed a pistol at the driver and called on him to stop. At the same time, a party of about thirty men leapt over a wall at the side of the road and surrounded the van and seized the horses, one of which they shot. The police being unarmed offered little resistance, and were soon put to flight.
The rescuers after a vain attempt to burst open the van with hatchets, sledge hammers and crowbars, called upon Police Sergeant Brett, who was inside the van with the prisoners, to open the door. Sergeant Brett refused, thereupon one of the rescuers placed his revolver at the keyhole of the van and fired, at that moment Sergeant Brett had put his eye to the keyhole to see what was going on outside, the bullet passed through his eye into his brain and killed him. The door was opened from the inside and Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasy escaped, never to be recaptured.
After a chase, the police made 29 arrests, including, they claimed, the three men who had fired the revolvers. William O'Mera Allen, Michael Larking, William Goold, Thomas Maguire and Edward Stone, were found guilty and sentenced to death. Maguire was pardoned and discharged, Stone's sentence was commuted on the eve before the day fixed for his execution, but Goold, Larking, and Allen were publicly hanged.
Monuments erected in their honour stand in Limerick, Kilrush, County Clare and Tipperary Town.
[edit] Effects
This daring rescues inspired many people to join up the Irish cause for independence. It also inspired the song "God Save Ireland", which was the unofficial National Anthem for a short time, before being replaced with Amhrán na bhFiann (or The Soldier's Song). These men who pulled off the rescue were unique for their time, when many preached caution, prudence, and restraint. A Memorial was erected to their memory in Moston Cemetery to serve as a memory of the men who inspired Ireland.
[edit] References
- Robert Kee, The Green Flag Vol. II: The Bold Fenian Men, Penguin Books, 1972
