Six Co. Clare Fenians (I.R.B.) remembered by John Devoy
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 2:27 pm
Among those members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (Fenians) who are remembered by John Devoy in his Recollections of an Irish Rebel, are six men from Co. Clare: Thomas McCarthy Fennell, John Clune, Patrick Keating, Penn, Tierney and Curry (I'm not absolutely sure that Curry is from Co. Clare).
None of these are as famous as Stephen Joseph Meaney (c1825-1888), of course: http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... _meany.htm. Or as famous as John Philip Holland, who is associated with the Fenians because Clan na Gael funded his research into the possibility of an under-water vessel, and his first submarine was called Fenian Ram, but as far as I know he was never sworn into membership. He later broke with the Fenians over the issue of payment. There is a good biographical piece on him on clarelibary.ie: http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... olland.htm
Mentions of Co. Clare and Claremen can be found by doing a word-search of the book: https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland//imag ... _Devoy.pdf, but I’ve transcribed some of the mentions so that they will be searchable:
(1) Thomas McCarthy Fennell: (p 230) “Thomas McCarthy Fennell, who led at Kilbaha, had no military training or experience, but was a man of fine character. He was sentenced to a term of penal servitude, most of which he served in Western Australia, and was released, with all civilian prisoners, through Gladstone’s Partial Amnesty of 1869. The first time I met him was when he came to New York to lay before me his plan for the rescue of the Fenian soldier prisoners whom he had left behind him in Western Australia.
Had the Fenians in Clare been given the opportunity they would have acquitted themselves well in the Rising and would have bagged more than two little Coastguard stations. But Kilbaha and Carrigaholt were victories and they had no failures. That is a record made by no other county in the Rising of 1867.”
(p 253) “Thomas McCarthy Fennell, who had been released from Australia several years previously with the civilian prisoners, was the first man in America to suggest a practical idea, which was to send an American vessel, loaded with granin or some other cargo and later pick up the prisoners”.
(2) John Clune: (p 32) “Clare was one of the best Fenian counties in Ireland – due to the initiative of Edmund O’Donovan, and John Clune, whom he swore in. Clune was arrested early in 1866, but was released on bail because he made himself sick by eating soap in Mountjoy Prison, so that he might not have to go to America – as most of the prisoners were then compelled to do, if they were to secure their freedom. It nearly killed him, as there was arsenic in the soap”.
(p 228) “The Rising in Clare would have been more formidable, but for the arrest of John Clune, with Lieutenant-Coloney John G. Healy and David Murphy of Limerick as they were passing through Clare in February, as Colonel O’Connor had just started his insurrection in Kerry. They had apparently got the original order to start the fight on February 11, but had not heard of the postponement. Had they reached Clare there would undoubtedly have been a good fight in old Corcabaiscin and it would very probably have led to a general Rising throughout the country. Of course, it could not have succeeded, owing to the lack of arms, but it would have been of a more serious character than the fiasco of March 5 and to some extent would have saved the credit of the movement”.
(3) Patrick Keating: (p 143) “Patrick Keating, a handsome six feet two Clareman, as “Centre” of the Fifth Dragoon Guards. When a much younger man Keating had enlisted in the Sixth Carbineers, and his family had “bought him out”. During that enlistment he was on John Mitchel’s secort when they took him away to the ship in 1848, and again, in his second term, he was on the Luby escort. The thought of it was too much for him, and as he saw Luby taken from the van and into Mountjoy Prison he burst into tears. The sight of the helmeted dragoon, sword in hand, with tears streaming down his cheeks, made him a marked man, and he was one of the first soldiers arrested in 1866. He died of heart disease, a prisoner in Western Australia”.
(4) Penn, Tierney and Curry (no first names): (p 148) “The twenty men of the 87th were a typical lot of Irish soldiers… one Clareman named Penn had seen eighteen years’ service. Three years more would retire him on pension. They got thirty days’ furlough each and thirty shillings for thirty days’ pay. Out of this they each paid ten shillings for their passage to Dublin on the London steamer which called at Portsmouth, Southampton, Plymouth and Falmouth on its way to Dublin. When their furlough had expired and they found that the fight had been postponed, they decided to remain and we had to provide them with civilian clothes. We had them put on 1s 6s a day subsistence money soon after their arrival, and they stood their ground ready for any emergency until, one by one, they were all arrested during the course of the next few months. As not a man of them turned informer they could only be punished for desertion and making away with their kits. They all got the longest terms the military law allowed.
Two of them were exceptions to this, Curry and another corporal named Tierney, a Clareman. Curry was convicted on the evidence of informers from other regiments … He was sentenced to two years and fifty lashes.
A report of the flogging, clipped from the Daily Express, was smuggled into Mountjoy Prison to P. J. McDonnell in a boiled potato and, as he was in the next cell to me, he passed me the clipping. It said that during the flogging Curry never winced or moved a muscle. When I met him in New York in 1871 and told him this, he said: “Be Japers, John, I had sixpence between my teeth.”… Curry went from New York to Australia in 1877 and I have never heard from him since”.
Corporal Tierney was not arrested until he made an attempt to kill Warner, the old army pensioner who had drilled the Cork Fenians and turned informer to save himself. Tierney was sentenced to imprisonment for life and after spending many years in Spike Island was released, utterly broken in health, and came to America. He died in New Haven, Conn., and the Clan-na-Gael of that city, through the efforts of Captain Larry O’Brien, erected a fine monument over his grave”.
There’s a mention on p 23-24 of two O’Clohessy brothers, John and Michael from Dublin, who were sons of an R.I.C. policeman from Clare, but no first name for that policeman.
There are, of course, many Clare Fenians not mentioned in this personal account by John Devoy. In the chapter XXXIX on the Catalpa rescue, there’s no mention of Patrick Moloney of Freemantle (mentioned as a “good Clareman” in ‘The Great Shame’ by Thomas Keneally). Very possibly, Molony was not a Fenian, but he was host to John J. Breslin during the Catalpa rescue: https://fremantlestuff.info/fhs/fs/5/Graham.html
Sheila
None of these are as famous as Stephen Joseph Meaney (c1825-1888), of course: http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... _meany.htm. Or as famous as John Philip Holland, who is associated with the Fenians because Clan na Gael funded his research into the possibility of an under-water vessel, and his first submarine was called Fenian Ram, but as far as I know he was never sworn into membership. He later broke with the Fenians over the issue of payment. There is a good biographical piece on him on clarelibary.ie: http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... olland.htm
Mentions of Co. Clare and Claremen can be found by doing a word-search of the book: https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland//imag ... _Devoy.pdf, but I’ve transcribed some of the mentions so that they will be searchable:
(1) Thomas McCarthy Fennell: (p 230) “Thomas McCarthy Fennell, who led at Kilbaha, had no military training or experience, but was a man of fine character. He was sentenced to a term of penal servitude, most of which he served in Western Australia, and was released, with all civilian prisoners, through Gladstone’s Partial Amnesty of 1869. The first time I met him was when he came to New York to lay before me his plan for the rescue of the Fenian soldier prisoners whom he had left behind him in Western Australia.
Had the Fenians in Clare been given the opportunity they would have acquitted themselves well in the Rising and would have bagged more than two little Coastguard stations. But Kilbaha and Carrigaholt were victories and they had no failures. That is a record made by no other county in the Rising of 1867.”
(p 253) “Thomas McCarthy Fennell, who had been released from Australia several years previously with the civilian prisoners, was the first man in America to suggest a practical idea, which was to send an American vessel, loaded with granin or some other cargo and later pick up the prisoners”.
(2) John Clune: (p 32) “Clare was one of the best Fenian counties in Ireland – due to the initiative of Edmund O’Donovan, and John Clune, whom he swore in. Clune was arrested early in 1866, but was released on bail because he made himself sick by eating soap in Mountjoy Prison, so that he might not have to go to America – as most of the prisoners were then compelled to do, if they were to secure their freedom. It nearly killed him, as there was arsenic in the soap”.
(p 228) “The Rising in Clare would have been more formidable, but for the arrest of John Clune, with Lieutenant-Coloney John G. Healy and David Murphy of Limerick as they were passing through Clare in February, as Colonel O’Connor had just started his insurrection in Kerry. They had apparently got the original order to start the fight on February 11, but had not heard of the postponement. Had they reached Clare there would undoubtedly have been a good fight in old Corcabaiscin and it would very probably have led to a general Rising throughout the country. Of course, it could not have succeeded, owing to the lack of arms, but it would have been of a more serious character than the fiasco of March 5 and to some extent would have saved the credit of the movement”.
(3) Patrick Keating: (p 143) “Patrick Keating, a handsome six feet two Clareman, as “Centre” of the Fifth Dragoon Guards. When a much younger man Keating had enlisted in the Sixth Carbineers, and his family had “bought him out”. During that enlistment he was on John Mitchel’s secort when they took him away to the ship in 1848, and again, in his second term, he was on the Luby escort. The thought of it was too much for him, and as he saw Luby taken from the van and into Mountjoy Prison he burst into tears. The sight of the helmeted dragoon, sword in hand, with tears streaming down his cheeks, made him a marked man, and he was one of the first soldiers arrested in 1866. He died of heart disease, a prisoner in Western Australia”.
(4) Penn, Tierney and Curry (no first names): (p 148) “The twenty men of the 87th were a typical lot of Irish soldiers… one Clareman named Penn had seen eighteen years’ service. Three years more would retire him on pension. They got thirty days’ furlough each and thirty shillings for thirty days’ pay. Out of this they each paid ten shillings for their passage to Dublin on the London steamer which called at Portsmouth, Southampton, Plymouth and Falmouth on its way to Dublin. When their furlough had expired and they found that the fight had been postponed, they decided to remain and we had to provide them with civilian clothes. We had them put on 1s 6s a day subsistence money soon after their arrival, and they stood their ground ready for any emergency until, one by one, they were all arrested during the course of the next few months. As not a man of them turned informer they could only be punished for desertion and making away with their kits. They all got the longest terms the military law allowed.
Two of them were exceptions to this, Curry and another corporal named Tierney, a Clareman. Curry was convicted on the evidence of informers from other regiments … He was sentenced to two years and fifty lashes.
A report of the flogging, clipped from the Daily Express, was smuggled into Mountjoy Prison to P. J. McDonnell in a boiled potato and, as he was in the next cell to me, he passed me the clipping. It said that during the flogging Curry never winced or moved a muscle. When I met him in New York in 1871 and told him this, he said: “Be Japers, John, I had sixpence between my teeth.”… Curry went from New York to Australia in 1877 and I have never heard from him since”.
Corporal Tierney was not arrested until he made an attempt to kill Warner, the old army pensioner who had drilled the Cork Fenians and turned informer to save himself. Tierney was sentenced to imprisonment for life and after spending many years in Spike Island was released, utterly broken in health, and came to America. He died in New Haven, Conn., and the Clan-na-Gael of that city, through the efforts of Captain Larry O’Brien, erected a fine monument over his grave”.
There’s a mention on p 23-24 of two O’Clohessy brothers, John and Michael from Dublin, who were sons of an R.I.C. policeman from Clare, but no first name for that policeman.
There are, of course, many Clare Fenians not mentioned in this personal account by John Devoy. In the chapter XXXIX on the Catalpa rescue, there’s no mention of Patrick Moloney of Freemantle (mentioned as a “good Clareman” in ‘The Great Shame’ by Thomas Keneally). Very possibly, Molony was not a Fenian, but he was host to John J. Breslin during the Catalpa rescue: https://fremantlestuff.info/fhs/fs/5/Graham.html
Sheila