Manchester Martyrs

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Monument in Kilrush

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 by a woman who took the key from Brett's pocket, and Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasy escaped, never to be recaptured.

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 This law was repealed in 1957.

After a chase, the police made 29 arrests, including, they claimed, the three men who had fired the revolvers. William O'Mera Allen, Michael 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.