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Jerry O'Sullivan (1845 - 1922)
Jerry O'Sullivan provides an illustrative prologue
to this book. The actions of this South Kerry Fenian
in 1867 had unintended and horrific consequences.
However, they also changed the course of Anglo-Irish
relations and caused the British government to
attempt for the first time to find a political
solution to 'The Irish Problem'.
For decades afterwards, often to curry popular
support at political rallies, Irish constitutional
politicians would refer to the Clerkenwell explosion
and how it changed the attitudes of many in the
British Establishment in carefully chosen words.
When politicians of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP)
addressed gatherings of their electorate, their
words of disapproval were so faint that they seemed
almost designed to be interpreted as support. For
example, on 22 October 1893 the then leader of the
pro-IPP Irish National League, John Redmond,
addressed a large crowd in Cork's Corn Exchange. He
was speaking at a rally to support the granting of
amnesty to Irish Republican prisoners held in
British prisons as a result of the Dynamite Campaign
of the 1880s, a series of bombings mainly in London
that had been directed from America by the Fenian
Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa. Redmond told the large
crowd that:
Mr. Gladstone stated it was only in 1869-70 that the
English Parliament commenced even to consider the
demands of Ireland for justice, and he reminded them
of his [Gladstone's] words when he said that what
convinced him of the reality of the Irish Question
was the intensity of Fenianism, and what passed the
Land Act of 1870 was the chapel bell that rung [sic]
in Clerkenwell. (Cheers) It was easy to denounce the
methods of these men. He [Redmond] had never
approved of the methods of those who had used any
explosives in their effort to get justice for
Ireland ... But, after all, they knew what the
motives of these men were, and they had the
testimony of Mr Gladstone himself that it was
through the effect of action of this kind that he
and the English people had their ears opened to the
demands of the Irish Nationalists.1
Those funeral bells that tolled in Clerkenwell in
1867 may have been an unintended consequence of the
actions of Jeremiah O'Sullivan of Caherdaniel, but
their ringing ensured that this district near
central London would forever be enshrined in British
political and judicial history. The 'Irish War' had
come to London's streets.
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O'Sullivan was born in the parish of Caherdaniel in
south-west Kerry in 1845. His father was a national
schoolteacher, who had come from Valentia Island to
teach in a school opened by Daniel O'Connell, The
Liberator, on his estate at Caherdaniel for the
children of his tenants. Jerry O'Sullivan, as he was
known, received a good education and at the age of
sixteen travelled to London for employment, probably
in the civil service. His father may have been dead
at this stage as his mother lived with him in
London. It was in his adopted city that O'Sullivan
joined the IRB, and by 1867 he was the head of the
Fenian circle in the High Holborn and Clerkenwell
districts.
In February 1867, the Fenians from Cahersiveen
briefly rose in rebellion and the following month
there were other small but unsuccessful risings in
several areas of Ireland. However, any hope of a
coordinated, successful rebellion had gone by the
time the executive of the IRB gathered in Manchester
in September of that year to consider the
organisation's future actions. The presence of an
informer, John Joseph Corydon, who was brought to
the city by the police, resulted in the arrest of
Thomas Kelly,
the leader of the IRB, and his deputy
Timothy Deasy.
Under the command of
Ricard O'Sullivan Burke, an
American Civil War veteran, and the senior
procurement officer for the Fenians, a plan was
implemented to have Kelly and Deasy rescued as they
travelled to court from prison. While Kelly and
Deasy were freed when the prison van was attacked, a
policeman, Sergeant Charles Brett, was shot dead.
Three of the rescue party - William Allen, Michael
Larkin, and
Michael O'Brien - were arrested,
convicted, and subsequently executed for his
killing, becoming known as the Manchester Martyrs.
Burke returned to Birmingham, where he was living at
the time, and sought to buy a consignment of
weapons, but his actions aroused the authorities'
suspicions. On 20 November 1867 he and another
Fenian, Colonel Joseph Theobald Casey, were arrested
in London and consigned to Clerkenwell Prison to
await trial in connection with the attempted
purchase of weapons. The importance of both men to
the organisation was such that the local IRB
im-mediately began to plan their escape.
Jerry O'Sullivan's High Holborn district of London
would be the area through which the two prisoners
would be brought when going to their preliminary
hearing in Bow Street Police Station and later to
their trial at Newgate. His circle met to discuss
possible action but were divided on how to proceed.
The meeting was adjourned and resumed the following
night, but while some agreed with O'Sullivan's
proposal to rescue the men, others disagreed. A
third meeting was arranged and at this O'Sullivan
secured the assistance of seven men to hold up the
police van carrying the two Fenian prisoners as they
went to court through the crowded streets of London.
On further consideration this plan was judged
foolhardy and dangerous, so it was then decided to
spring the prisoners from Clerkenwell Gaol. The
prison was of typical Victorian design and was
surrounded by a twenty-foot-high wall.
O'Sullivan was fortunate to have within his
confidence Anne Justice, a tailor's wife who was
sympathetic to the Fenian cause. She brought Burke
and Casey their dinner each day in prison, as was
often the practice at the time. This allowed her to
converse with Burke. He had gained considerable
experience of explosives while serving in the Union
Army during the American Civil War and later worked
as an engineer. Burke calculated for Justice the
amount of gunpowder required to blow a hole in the
prison's wall. O'Sullivan subsequently purchased
548lbs of gunpowder with money collected from
sympathisers, including a local parish priest, who
contributed on the basis that the prisoners had
every right to be set free but on condition that no
damage be done to the neighbourhood of the prison.
The explosives were packed in a barrel used for
kerosene and a fuse was attached. Deferring to
Colonel Burke's knowledge of explosives, Jerry
O'Sullivan followed the orders passed to him, though
he considered the amount of gunpowder 'to be
excessive and dangerous'. Later he recorded that
while 'they detested the English Tory government
then in power, that was no reason why we should
entertain any ill will to the masses of the English
people.'5
At certain times of the day, the prisoners in
Clerkenwell Gaol were permitted to exercise in a
yard close to the prison wall. The throwing of a
rubber ball over the wall was to be the signal that
the explosive was about to be detonated and, in the
chaos caused by the explosion, Burke and Casey were
to escape through the hole blown in the wall. On the
appointed day, the ball was thrown but the fuse
failed to detonate the explosive and so the
attempted rescue was abandoned. However, one of the
conspirators, a former soldier, went to the police
and informed them of the plot. Consequently,
Scotland Yard sent a number of armed detectives to
the precincts of the prison to thwart any further
escape attempt. The prison authorities also took the
precaution of not permitting Burke and Casey to go
to the exercise yard.
Remarkably, on 13 December 1867 the detectives
assigned to the vicinity of Clerkenwell Prison
failed to notice a handcart, covered in a black,
old-fashioned tablecloth, and containing the barrel
of explosives, being wheeled up to the wall. Jerry
O'Sullivan lit the fuse and quickly left. The
powerful explosion succeeded in blowing down a
120-foot section of the wall, but the force of the
blast also caused tenements on the street to
collapse. This resulted in the deaths of twelve
people, with many more being injured. With the
prisoners still locked in their cells, the escape
attempt was a failure, while outside the detectives
converged on a scene of devastation as the smoke
cleared.
As O'Sullivan fled the scene, heading southwards
towards Blackfriars Bridge armed with two American
revolvers and wearing a heavy coat, he was aided by
the short, extremely foggy December evening. Chasing
him were six detectives carrying pistols, one of
whom opened fire, wounding O'Sullivan on the right
elbow. He ran for several miles and managed to cross
Blackfriars Bridge with the police still following
and shouting 'Stop, thief' A man on a dray heeded
their call and grabbed O'Sullivan by the left arm.
With the pistol in his right hand, he hit the man on
the side of the head, knocking him unconscious. The
chasing police were now very close, but O'Sullivan
again outpaced them. On reaching the Surrey Canal,
he made a determined effort and jumped across it,
leaving his pursuers behind as he merged into the
crowds and Victorian London's notorious fog. He made
his way to a friend's house while the policemen were
being pulled from the canal by local bargemen.
O'Sullivan spent several weeks in hiding in London
and then, despite a massive manhunt for him, boarded
a ship for France and made his way to Paris, which
had a sizeable sympathetic emigre population from
Ireland. With the attempt to free him from prison
having failed, Ricard O'Sullivan Burke was tried and
convicted of procuring arms on 30 April 1868. He was
sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment but,
feigning insanity, was released in 1871 and
continued his eventful life in America. Joseph
Casey, the other Clerkenwell prisoner, was not
convicted and lived the remainder of his life in
Paris as a newspaper typesetter. He was a friend of
James Joyce in later life and was the model for the
character of Kevin Egan in Ulysses. He died in 1907.
Some of Jerry O'Sullivan's co-conspirators were
tried for their part in the explosion. Only one man,
Michael Barrett of Fermanagh, was convicted, though
it appeared he was not actually in London on the day
of the explosion. The trial was controversial and,
in Westminster, John Bright, MP, called for a
retrial. Other MPs also had doubts about the
verdict. They pointed to the inconsistencies in the
prosecution witnesses' evidence and the fact that
the chief crown witness, Patrick Mullany, an Irish
tailor arrested after the explosion, had been given
£100 and a passage to Australia for agreeing to sign
a statement declaring that Barrett was responsible
for the explosion. Gladstone's government agreed to
examine the case further and postponed the
execution. However, the pressure for an immediate
execution, exerted by Queen Victoria and
Conservative MPs, prevailed and Barrett was hanged.
On 26 May 1868 he became the last man to be
publicly executed in Britain.
From Paris, Jerry O'Sullivan crossed the Atlantic to
New York. On arrival, he again became active in
Irish Republican activities. He joined Clan na Gael,
the Irish Republican organisation based in the USA,
and was a supporter of the 'New Departure', in which
the physical-force movement of Clan na Gael sought
common ground with the constitutional nationalists
of the IPP, led by Charles Stewart Parnell. With the
death of Parnell in 1891, however, he lost faith in
constitutional nationalist politics. But he did
remain a supporter of Clan na Gael and became a
member of The Friends of Irish Freedom when it was
founded in America in March 1916 to support the
Republican cause in Ireland. His grand-niece,
Kathleen O'Connell, who lived in Chicago, was also
associated with Clan na Gael and acted as a courier
for its leader
John Devoy. When de Valera toured the
United States in 1919, she became his private
secretary, a position she held until her death in
1956.
Jerry O'Sullivan was no 'wide-eyed extremist'; he
was well-read and enthusiastic about the Irish
language. He regretted the loss of innocent lives
in the Clerkenwell explosion and placed the blame on
Burke. He later wrote:
The quantity of powder he [Burke] ordered us to use,
I considered excessive and dangerous to the
adjoining houses. We carried out his orders too
faithfully by putting 548 pounds of refined powder
into a common kerosene barrel and sent 120 feet of
the wall with the angle of the prison sky high. But
Oh, horror, eight [sic] people lost their lives in
the adjoining district and 120 [sic] were maimed for
life. Such was the result of an order issued by a
man who acted in the capacity of captain of military
engineers for four years in the American Civil War
and who should have a better knowledge of the
capacity of explosives. There was no person
concerned in the affair who was not horror-stricken
by the unfortunate occurrence. For O'Sullivan, his
actions at Clerkenwell changed his world forever,
forced him into a life of exile and today he is all
but forgotten. Until his death, he bore the burden
of regret for the loss of innocent lives that he
caused, though he remained true to his cause. Many
others in the subsequent decades would go on to face
similar burdens and mental torment -all arising from
their contribution to Ireland's fight for freedom.
Jeremiah O'Sullivan never returned to Ireland and
died in New York on 6 November 1922 at the age of
seventy-seven, six months after Ricard O'Sullivan
Burke died in Chicago.
Reprinted
by kind permission of the author, Tim Horgan
Note:
According to John Devoy in his 'Recollections of an
Irish Rebel' page 250 --- Jeremiah O'Sullivan
who "died on Monday, 6, 1922 was interred in
Calvary Cemetery". Calvary Cemetery is
located in Flushing, Queens, New York.
Jerry
O'Sullivan's
biography is one 22 biographies included in Tim Horgan's book "FIGHTING FOR THE CAUSE' Kerry's
Republican Fighters.
To
purchase a copy of the book click on the link below.
Fighting for the Cause | Kerry's Republican Fighters
| Dr Tim Horgan (mercierpress.ie
Note:
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