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INTRODUCTION

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;

Although his eyes saw not his country’s glory,

The service of his day shall make our morrow:

His name shall be a watchword in our story.

Him England for his love of Ireland hates:

This flesh we bury England’s chains have bitten:

That is enough; for our deed he waits;

With Emmet’s let his epitaph be written.9

It is clear from this that O’Donovan Rossa’s life and death play an important part in the understanding of the Easter 1916 Rising. In many respects his death can be seen as the precursor to the great Revolutionary Epoch in Irish history. O’Donovan Rossa’s final wish was to be buried in Ireland; he was desirous to be taken home to his home in Roscarbery, West Cork, where he would be buried in a humble Famine graveyard alongside his father and other victims of the Great Hunger. With the permission of his family, however, Clan na Gael and the IRB, through John Devoy and Thomas James Clarke, buried O’Donovan Rossa in Ireland’s national graveyard: Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. Both men had realised that the return of O’Donovan Rossa to Ireland, and his burial in Dublin, could act as a precursor to rebellion and a show of strength for advanced Irish nationalism. They predicted that the funeral of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa could re-awaken a national spirit in the Irish people, whom they feared were becoming more British than the British themselves. It was at this funeral that Thomas James Clarke instructed Patrick Pearse to deliver the graveside oration over O’Donovan Rossa’s remains. In a reference to the assembled crowd and the British authorities, Clarke instructed Pearse to make it ‘as hot as hell’. Staying true to Clarke’s instructions at the funeral, Pearse famously declared:

Life Springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The defenders of this realm have worked well in secret and the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! – they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.

O’Donovan Rossa had lived a full and varied life. He had witnessed the Irish Famine at first hand. He had been a founding figure in Fenianism in both Ireland and America and had overseen the emergence of the Fenian newspaper, The Irish People. He had been arrested and imprisoned, thus experiencing the harsh realities of the Victorian prison system. After being amnestied, he had been forced into a conditional exile in America for the duration of his prison sentence. Embracing life within America, O’Donovan Rossa initiated the first modern bombing campaign in Britain and remained an active Fenian until his death. He had doggedly stood by the Fenian principle of an Irish Republic, never veering from his principles and his great desire to break the political connection between Britain and Ireland. O’Donovan Rossa was also much more than a political man; he was also a family man and was regarded as warm, intimate, big hearted and jolly by his family and friends. His daughter, Eileen, described him as ‘a gentleman in every sense of the word’,10 who possessed ‘a great love for Ireland, his religion and his family… In the opinion of all his many sons and daughters he was just perfect and we adored him.’11 This persona of O’Donovan Rossa, as a kind-hearted and warm individual, is often lost in the study of his character, with most historians focusing strictly on the revolutionary rather than the man.

This book marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and is the first biography of the Irish rebel to be written in the English language. The intention of this book is to commemorate O’Donovan Rossa as the man he was – a greatly complicated individual who was both a family and political man. This book will tell his story from his earliest years to his death and funeral, bringing to life a man whose entire life’s work was dedicated to the establishment of an Irish Republic.