Denis Dowling Mulcahy | |
|---|---|
 Mulcahy, c. 1880s | |
| Born | c. 1833 Redmondstown, County Tipperary, Ireland |
| Died | September 13, 1900 (aged 66–67) |
| Organization | Irish Republican Brotherhood |
Denis Dowling Mulcahy (c. 1833 - 13 September 1900) was a leading member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and a medical doctor.
He was born in Redmondstown, County Tipperary, Ireland and later lived at Powerstown, near Clonmel. His father had been a supporter of the Young Ireland rising of 1848, and later a supporter of James Stephens, one of the most prominent Fenians of the era. [1]
He joined the staff of The Irish People , which was launched by James Stephens on 28 November 1863, with financing from the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the United States. The offices were established at 12 Parliament Street in Dublin. His colleagues on the paper were Charles Kickham and Thomas Clarke Luby, while John O'Leary was in charge of the editorial department. O’Donovan Rossa and James O’Connor had charge of the business office, with John Haltigan being the printer. [2]
James Stephens entrusted to Luby a document containing secret resolutions on the Committee of Organization or Executive of the IRB. This document would later form the basis of the prosecution against the staff of the Irish People. [3]
On 15 July 1865 American-made plans for a rising in Ireland were discovered when the emissary lost them at Kingstown railway station. Superintendent Daniel Ryan, head of G Division of the DMP, with this and additional information, raided the offices of the Irish People on 15 September and arrested the staff. [4] Mulcahy was tried and sentenced to a term of penal servitude. He served his term in Portland and Millbank Prisons. Certified for hard labour, he fell ill and was diagnosed with haemoptysis, or haemorrhaging of the lungs, but was nevertheless kept at hard labour when he was transferred to Dartmoor prison in the winter of 1867. After three weeks he began haemorrhaging again and was then sent to Woking invalid prison. He did not serve his full sentence as in December 1870 Fenian prisoners were granted amnesty on condition of expatriation from the UK for the term of their original sentences. Mulcahy made a plea of mitigation from exile on the grounds that he was the sole means of support for his ageing father. [1] The plea was rejected and so Mulcahy immigrated to France for two years. [5] In January 1871 Mulcahy sailed to New York City on the SS Russia with eight other released Fenians. During his time in prison, his fiancée left him for another Fenian, Francis Frederick Millen. [1]
In New York Mulcahy set about creating a directory of Irish political exiles, hoping to unite all the various Irish organisations in the city under one united banner. On 6 February 1877 Mulcahy discovered the former head of the American Fenian Brotherhood, John O'Mahony, dying in a New York garret and despite his best efforts, he was unable to save his life. Mulcahy subsequently accomplished O'Mahony's body back to Ireland, where he was laid to rest in Glasnevin Cemetery. Mulcahy later lamented in a written piece for the Nation reporting upon the well-attended funeral that "we seem to set more value on the dead patriot's bones than on his living brains". [1]
There was much fallout from Mulcahy's returning of O'Mahoney to Ireland; Mulcahy had been told by Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa that the Fenian Brotherhood would pay him $1,000 to cover the cost of the expense of the trip, however, he only received $537. Mulcahy later sued the Fenian Brotherhood for the remainder, but they protested that they could not be held responsible for Rossa's promises. The court ruled against Mulcahy in January 1894. The case soured the opinion of the leader of Clan na Gael John Devoy on Mulcahy, but John O'Leary continued to hold him in high regards. [1]
Mulcahy opposed the "New Departure", a movement that sought to unite physical force Republicans with constitutionalists such as the Irish Parliamentary Party. Mulcahy was suspicious of Charles Stewart Parnell, who he feared had dictatorial ambitions. [1]
Mulcahy spent the last years of life prospering; he ran a successful medical practice in Newark, New Jersey and it was there he died on 13 September 1900. [5] [1]
The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish republican organisation founded in the United States in 1858 by John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny. It was a precursor to Clan na Gael, a sister organisation to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Members were commonly known as "Fenians". O'Mahony, who was a Gaelic scholar, named his organisation after the Fianna, the legendary band of Irish warriors led by Fionn mac Cumhaill.
The Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland between 1858 and 1924. Its counterpart in the United States of America was initially the Fenian Brotherhood, but from the 1870s it was Clan na Gael. The members of both wings of the movement are often referred to as "Fenians". The IRB played an important role in the history of Ireland, as the chief advocate of republicanism during the campaign for Ireland's independence from the United Kingdom, successor to movements such as the United Irishmen of the 1790s and the Young Irelanders of the 1840s.
Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa was an Irish Fenian leader and member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
James Stephens was an Irish Republican, and the founding member of an originally unnamed revolutionary organisation in Dublin. This organisation, founded on 17 March 1858, was later to become known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B).
John O'Leary was an Irish separatist and a leading Fenian. He studied both law and medicine but did not take a degree and for his involvement in the Irish Republican Brotherhood he was imprisoned in England during the nineteenth century.
Charles Joseph Kickham was an Irish revolutionary, novelist, poet, journalist and one of the most prominent members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
James Francis XavierO'Brien was an Irish nationalist Fenian revolutionary in the 1860s. He was later elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as a Member of Parliament (MP) in the Irish Parliamentary Party.
Thomas Clarke Luby was an Irish revolutionary, author, journalist and one of the founding members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
The word Fenian served as an umbrella term for the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and their affiliate in the United States, the Fenian Brotherhood. They were secret political organisations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. In 1867 they sought to coordinate raids into Canada from the United States with a rising in Ireland. In the 1916 Easter Rising and the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence, the IRB led the republican struggle.
Edward (Ned) Duffy was an Irish Fenian.
The Fenian Rising of 1867 was a rebellion against British rule in Ireland, organised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).
John Lynch was an Irish nationalist. He was a resident of the city of Cork and an alleged member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
Cornelius O'Mahony was a Gaelic scholar, teacher, Fenian and staunch supporter of Irish independence. He was tried and convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to prison, only to be later transported to Australia.
Hugh Francis Brophy was a leading Fenian and staunch supporter of Irish independence. He was convicted for his part in a plot to overthrow British rule in Ireland and establish a republic, and was sentenced to penal servitude. This sentence was later commuted to transportation to Australia.
James Mountaine (c1819-1868) was an Irish Nationalist, "Young Irelander" and Fenian who lived in Cork, Ireland. For the first twenty years of his life, he spelled his name James Mountain. He was a supporter of Daniel O’Connell and the Irish liberation movement. As an adult he resided at 72 North Main Street, Cork, which has since been demolished, and worked as a shoe-maker. He was involved in the Fenian movement and imprisoned multiple times. By the time of his death, James Mountaine was a well known nationalist.
The Irish People was a nationalist weekly newspaper first printed in Dublin in 1863 and supportive of the Fenian movement. It was suppressed by the British Government in 1865.
Charles Underwood O'Connell was a Fenian activist from County Cork, Ireland. He was part of The Cuba Five, exiled from the U.K. in 1871.
David Bell (1818–1890) was an Irish tenant-right activist who became both an Irish, and later in the United States a pro-Reconstruction, republican. A Secessionist Presbyterian minister, he was radicalised by his experience of the Great Irish Famine. Bell helped establish the Tenant League in Ulster, but increasingly despaired of constitutional methods. He was inducted into the Irish Republican Brotherhood by Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa and drawn onto its executive council. In American exile from 1865, he sought to associate physical-force Fenianism with the Radical U.S. Republican agenda of black suffrage and Reconstruction.
Thomas Francis Bourke was an Irish soldier who fought in the American Civil War on behalf of the Confederacy and who was later a member of the Fenian Brotherhood, a revolutionary organisation linked to the Irish Republican Brotherhood that sought to establish an independent Irish Republic separate from the United Kingdom. He took part in the Fenian Rising of 1867, and was initially sentenced to death for his role in it. His sentence was later commuted before he was released as part of a general amnesty, conditional on going into exile.
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