The English Government and the Fenian Prisoners

L’Internationale.  
No. 59, 27 February 1870

The English Government and  
the Fenian Prisoners.

London, 21 February 1870.

The silence maintained in the European press on the infamies commit-  
ted by this oligarchic-bourgeois government is due to various reasons. In the  
first place, the English government is rich, and the press, as you  
know, is immaculate. Furthermore, the English government is the model  
government, recognised as such by the landlords, by the capitalists of the  
Continent and even by Garibaldi (see his book): therefore one must not  
speak ill of this ideal government. Finally, the French republicans are  
narrow-minded and selfish enough to reserve all their wrath for  
the Empire. It would be a crime of lèse-phrases to inform their com-  
patriots that in the land of bourgeois freedom people are punished with 20 years’  
hard labour for what, in the land of barracks, is punished with 6 months’  
imprisonment. Appended are a few details extracted from the English newspapers, on the  
treatment inflicted on the Fenian prisoners:

MULCAHY, sub-editor of the newspaper *The Irish People*,  
condemned for having taken part in the Fenian conspiracy, was  
yoked at Dartmoor to a cart loaded with stones, with an iron  
collar round his neck.

O’DONOVAN ROSSA, proprietor of the *Irish People*, was, for  
35 days, plunged into a black dungeon, with his hands chained behind  
his back, night and day. He was not even unbound to take his nourish-  
ment, a thin soup that was left for him on the prison floor.

KICKHAM, one of the editors of the *Irish People*, although he could not  
use his right arm owing to an abscess, was forced to sit  
with his fellow prisoners on a heap of rubbish, and, amidst the  

fogs and the November cold, to break stones and bricks  
with his left hand. He returned at night to his cell and had for all  
nourishment only 6 ounces of bread and a pint of hot water.

O’LEARY, an old man of between sixty and seventy years of age, being in prison,  
was put on bread and water for three weeks because he would not  
renounce paganism (that, it appears, is how a gaoler designates free-  
thought) and become either papist, or protestant, or presbyterian, or  
even quaker, or finally embrace one of the many religions from among which  
the governor of the prison gave the Irish pagan the choice.

MARTIN H. CAREY is incarcerated in a lunatic asylum, at Mill-  
bank. The silence and the other ill-treatment inflicted on him  
have driven him out of his mind.

Colonel RICHARD BURKE is in no better condition. One of his  
friends writes that his reason is affected, his memory gone, and that his  
bearing, his manners and his language denote a madman.

The political prisoners are dragged from one prison to another, as  
if they were wild beasts. They are forced into the company of the vilest  
rogues; they are compelled to clean the utensils that have been used by these wretches;  
to wear the shirts and flannels of these criminals, many of  
whom are afflicted with the most disgusting diseases, and to bathe in  
the water that has been used by them. All these criminals could converse with visi-  
tors until the arrival of the Fenians at Portland. The visiting cage was insti-  
tuted for the Fenian prisoners. It consists of three compartments  
separated by thick iron gratings; the gaoler occupies the central  
compartment, and the prisoner and his friends can only see each other through this  
double row of bars.

In the docks, there are prisoners who eat all the slugs, and  
frogs are considered delicacies at Chatham. General Thomas  
Burke declares that he was not surprised to see a dead mouse  
floating in the soup. The convicts say that it was an unfortunate  
day for them when the Fenians were sent into the prisons.  
(This regime has become much harsher.)

I shall add a few words to the appended extracts:

Last year, Mr Bruce, the Home Secretary, a great liberal, a great  
policeman, a great mine-owner in Wales, a fierce  
exploiter of labour, was interpellated on the ill-treatment inflicted  
on the Fenian prisoners, and especially on O’Donovan Rossa. At first, he  
denied everything; then he was forced to confess. Whereupon Mr Moore, the Irish member

The English Government and the Fenian Prisoners 177

of the House of Commons, demanded an inquiry into these facts. It was  
flatly refused by this radical ministry, whose demi-saint (he has been  
publicly compared to Jesus Christ), Mr Gladstone, is the chief, and the  
old bourgeois demagogue, John Bright, one of its most influential  
members.

Recently, the rumours of ill-treatment having  
been renewed, several members of Parliament asked the Home Secretary  
Bruce for permission to go and visit the prisoners so as to ascertain the  
falseness of these rumours. Mr Bruce refused permission, because, he said, the  
prison directors feared that the prisoners might be too excited by  
visits of this kind.

Last week, the Home Secretary was interpellated again. He was  
asked whether it was true that O’Donovan Rossa, since his nomination  
as member for Tipperary, had been corporally punished (that is to say, flogged);  
the Home Secretary affirmed that he had not been since 1868 (which was  
to confess, consequently, that for 2 or 3 years a  
political prisoner had been flogged).

I am also sending you extracts (we shall publish them in our  
next number) relating to Michael Terbert, a Fenian, condemned  
as such to hard labour, and undergoing his punishment in Spike Island  
Convict Prison, county of Cork, Ireland. You will see that the coroner himself  
attributes his death to the tortures inflicted on him. This  
inquest took place last week.

In the course of two years more than twenty Fenian working men have died or  
have fallen into mental alienation, thanks to the philanthropy of these good bour-  
geois, flanked by these good landlords.

You probably know that the English press professes a prudish horror  
of the abominable laws of general security that embellish  
fair France. Well, the laws of general security form – a few  
short intervals excepted – the Charter of Ireland. Since 1793, on every  
pretext, the English government regularly and periodically suspends  
in Ireland the Habeas Corpus bill (the law that guarantees personal free-  
dom), and, in reality, every law, except that of brutal force. In this  
way, thousands of men have been sequestered in Ireland, as  
suspects of intending to be suspected of Fenianism, without ever having been tried or brought  
before a tribunal, nor even accused. The English government, not  
content with depriving them of their liberty, has had them tortured in the most  
savage manner. Here is an example:

One of the prisons in which the Fenian suspects were buried is Mountjoy  
Prison, in Dublin. The inspector of this prison, Murray, is an atrocious  
scoundrel. He ill-treated the prisoners in so savage a manner that several  

of them went mad. The prison doctor, O’Donnell, an excellent  
man (who also played an honourable role in the inquest on the  
death of Michael Terbert) wrote, for several months, letters of  
protest, which he addressed first to Murray himself. As Murray  
did not reply to them, he sent letters of denunciation to the  
higher authorities; but Murray, an expert gaoler, intercepted the letters.

Finally, O’Donnell applied directly to Lord Mayo, then Viceroy  
of Ireland. It was at the time when the Tories (Derby-Disraeli) were  
in power. What was the result of his démarches? The documents relating  
to this affair were published by order of Parliament, and... Doctor  
O’Donnell was dismissed!!! As for Murray, he kept his place.

Then comes the so-called radical ministry of Gladstone, the tender,  
the unctuous, the magnanimous Gladstone, who, before all Europe, has shed  
such warm and sincere tears over the fate of Poerio and other bour-  
geois ill-treated by King Bomba. What did this idol of the progressive  
bourgeoisie do? At the same time as he insulted the Irish by his insolent  
replies to their demands for amnesty, he not only confirmed the  
monster Murray in his office, but, as a mark of his particular  
satisfaction, he added to his post of chief gaoler a fat sinecure!  
There you have the apostle of bourgeois philanthropy!

But what matters is to throw dust in the public’s eyes: one must  
appear to be doing something for Ireland, and a law for regulating  
the land question (LAND BILL) is announced with great  
fanfare. But all this is only an imposture with the ultimate aim of imposing on Europe, of  
capturing the Irish judges and lawyers by the prospect of interminable  
lawsuits between landlords and farmers, of gaining over the landlords by the  
promise of monetary subsidies from the state, and of deluding the  
richer farmers with a few half-concessions.

In the long introduction to his grandiloquent and confused speech,  
Gladstone confesses that even the ‘benovolent’ laws that liberal  
England has granted to Ireland for a hundred years have always ended in the  
deterioration of the country. And after this naive confession, the same man  
persists in torturing the men who wish to cut short this maleficent  
and imbecile legislation.

The English Government and the Fenian Prisoners 179

L’Internationale.  
No. 60, 6 March 1870

The English Government and the Fenian Prisoners.  
(2nd Article.)

We publish below, from an English newspaper, the results of the in-  
quest on the death of Michael Terbert, a Fenian prisoner, who died in  
Spike Island prison as a result of ill-treatment.

On Thursday, 17 February, Mr John Moore, coroner, for the district of Mid-  
dleton, held an inquest at Spike Island prison, touching a  
convict named Michael Terbert, who had died in the hospital.

Peter Hay, governor of the prison, was called first. The following was  
his deposition:

The deceased Michael Terbert entered this prison in June 1866; I do not  
know what his state of health was at that time; he had been condemned on  
12 January to 7 years’ imprisonment; some time ago he seemed unwell,  
for it appears from one of the prison books that he was removed from his cell on the recom-  
mendation of the medical officers as being incapable of bearing cell-  
ular confinement. The witness then details the frequent punishments inflicted  
on the deceased for breaches of discipline; many for having used  
disrespectful language towards the medical officers.

Jeremiah Hubert Kelly. I remember when Michael Terbert ar-  
rived here, coming from Mountjoy prison; it was then established that he was inca-  
pable of bearing cellular confinement; a certificate to this effect had been  
signed by Doctor O’Donnell. I found him, however, in good health, and  
sent him to work. I remember that he was in hospital from 31 Janu-  
ary until 6 February 1869; he was then suffering from a heart complaint, and  
since that time he was no longer employed on public works, but was made  
to work indoors. From 19 to 26 March he was in hospital for his heart  
disease; from 24 April to 5 May for spitting of blood; from 19 May to  
1 June, from 21 to 22 June, from 22 July to 15 August for his  
heart disease; from 9 November to 13 December for debility; finally he remained in

Lastly, in the hospital from 20 December to 8 February 1870, where he died of dropsy. The first symptoms of this disease had appeared on 13 November, but they had disappeared.

I visit the cells every day, and I saw him from time to time in punishment; it is my duty to remit the punishment whenever I consider the prisoner incapable of bearing it: that is what I did twice for him.

179

Karl Marx

— As a doctor, do you think that five days on bread and water was an excessive punishment for him, notwithstanding his state of health at Mountjoy and here?

— I do not think so, the deceased had a good appetite, I do not think that these treatments brought on the dropsy from which he died.

Martin O’Connell, apothecary, resident at Spike Island. The witness told Dr Kelly, last July, that since Terbert suffered from a heart disease he should not have been punished; he considers that these punishments had an adverse effect on the prisoner’s health; all the more so as he had been placed in the class of invalids for the last twelve months, and he would never have thought that invalids were punished in this way, had he not had to visit the cells one day during an absence of Dr Kelly; he was certain, considering the state of health of the patient, that five days in the cell would harm his health.

The coroner then energetically denounces the conduct towards the prisoner. The latter was, he says, by turns in hospital or in the cell.

The jury returns the following verdict:

“We declare that Michael Terbert died in the hospital of Spike Island prison, on 8 February 1870, of dropsy; he was aged 36 years and unmarried. We must express in the strongest possible manner our total disapproval of the frequent punishments of several days in the cell, on bread and water, which were inflicted upon him during his stay at Spike Island, whither he was sent in June 1866, coming from Mountjoy prison, because, in the opinion of Dr O’Donnell, he could not endure the cellular regime; and we condemn these treatments.”

180

Friedrich Engels

Preparatory works and drafts for the book on the history of Ireland

Friedrich Engels
Outline of the book on the history of Ireland

1) Natural conditions.
2) Ancient Ireland
3) English conquest.
1) The first invasion
2) Pale & Irishry.
3) Subjugation & expropriation. 152–1691.
4) English rule
1) Penal Laws. 1691–1780.
2) Rebellion & Union 1780–1801.
3) Ireland in the United Kingdom.
a) The period of the small farmers 1801–1846.
b) The period of extermination. 1846–70