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On 29 June 1915 Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa died in St Vincent’s Hospital, Staten Island. The following day the pro-British Irish Times newspaper announced his death, stating that ‘there was a time in Ireland when his death would have created a sensation, but it is no exaggeration to say that today there are many who had almost forgotten his existence’.1 Dying aged 84, throughout his long life, O’Donovan Rossa was perhaps one of the most famous Fenians of his generation. John Devoy described O’Donovan Rossa’s life as ‘an epitome of the history of Fenianism’.2 Devoy was also confident that historians of future generations examining the history of Fenianism would come to regard O’Donovan Rossa as ‘the very incarnation of its spirit’.3 James Connolly, perhaps one of the most famousfigures in the the great pantheon of Irish Revolutionaries, similarly agreed, believing O’Donovan Rossa to be ‘an unconquerable fighter’.4 Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Féin and a future signatory to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, eulogised O’Donovan Rossa as a man ‘whose spirit was the free spirit of the Irish Nation’.5 His daughter, Eileen, regarded her father as ‘unconquerable’.6 Finally, Patrick Pearse, a name forever associated with the Easter Rising of 1916, regarded O’Donovan Rossa as a revolutionary chieftain, as ‘a man that to the masses of his countrymen then and since stood most starkly and plainly for the Fenian ideal’.7 Pearse also celebrated O’Donovan Rossa as an ‘unrepentant Fenian’.8 While his entire life was the very personification of the Fenian struggle, paradoxically, his death was similarly so. The death of O’Donovan Rossa in June 1915, despite what The Irish Times had suggested, had transformed his life of unyielding resistance to British rule in Ireland into a symbol of resistance for Irish nationalism. His death was almost prophetic and symbolised the beginnings of great change in Ireland. Thomas MacDonagh, himself a future leader of the Easter Rising, eulogised him with a poetic prophesy:
Grieve not for him: speak not a word of sorrow;
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A family friend, Tom O’Shea, had been staying in the house that evening and with O’Donovan Rossa was arrested on suspicion of being involved with the Phoenix Society. O’Shea had no involvement with the Phoenix Society, but was incredibly superstitious and held a great fear of fairies; he had been too afraid to go home that evening, for fear of a fairy puck at nearby Steam Mill Cross and so O’Donovan Rossa had allowed him to stay at his house for the night. O’Shea and Rossa were taken to the local police barracks where they were greeted by several Phoenix men including, John Stack, P. J. Dowling, Timothy Duggan, Morty Dowling, William O’Shea and Dan McCartie. McCartie had been due to leave Skibbereen the following day to start a new job in a brewery in Galway.35 Held in Skibbereen Barracks until mid-morning, they were then escorted by individual policemen through Roscarbery and Clonakilty to Bandon, County Cork. The Freeman’s Journal reported that on leaving Skibbereen by three train coaches, and under heavy police escort, the prisoners were cheered and applauded by spectators, with the prisoners themselves joining in the cheering and calling upon the crowd to be louder.36 Arriving in Bandon at 7 p.m., O’Donovan Rossa met Jerrie and Pat Cullinane, William O’Shea and Denis O’Sullivan, who had all been arrested at Bantry as part of the investigations into the Phoenix Society.37 O’Donovan Rossa despondently recalled how the conditions at Bantry, prior to their removal to Cork, were horrendous, and ‘arriving at nine in the evening we were huddled into cells flooded with water. Having travelled all day under rain, and having received neither food nor drink, we now would get neither bread nor a bed. Next morning we found ourselves in Cork Jail, awaiting prosecution on charges of conspiracy’.38 Following on from the Cork arrests, police raided the homes of several advanced nationalists in Killarney, arresting Denis O’Shea, Patrick Hennessy, Jeremiah Sullivan, Patrick Sullivan, Valentine Browne, Thomas Neary, Timothy Leary, Thomas Leahy and Thomas Sullivan. Two additional men in Killarney, Daniel O’Sullivan, a schoolteacher in possession of an incriminating letter, and Florence O’Sullivan, later consolidated these arrests. In Belfast a great stir was occasioned as a final batch of arrests was made against several Ribbonmen, whom the media wrongly believed were implicated in the Phoenix society.
In Cork Jail each of the Phoenix men were separated and treated as ordinary prisoners by being given menial tasks common to Victorian prison life. This included oakum picking, the rather laborious chore of unravelling old tarred rope in fibre. What made this work more odious to the Phoenix men was that they were not convicted prisoners. O’Donovan Rossa and his co-conspirators had been detained without trial and were yet to receive one. For two weeks of their imprisonment there had been no charges against any of the men and protesting to the prison authorities, their pronouncements were ignored – they were bluntly told that unless they could pay for their own maintenance within the prison, they would have to work. O’Donovan Rossa resolved to work and endure the rigours of life in Cork jail. Increasingly, however, as the mundane and lethargic hours of jail life crept by, he was growing evermore despondent and his resolution to ‘suffer and be strong’39 was weakening:
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