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| Type | weekly newspaper |
|---|---|
| Founded | 28 November 1863 |
| Political alignment | Irish nationalism |
| Language | English |
| Headquarters | Dublin |
| Part of a series on |
| Irish republicanism |
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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.
Other republican newspapers namely, the United Irishman , The Irish Tribune , The Irish Felon , and then the Repeal Association-supporting paper, The Nation , had been suppressed in 1848 after their writers - Young Irelanders and members of the Irish Confederation - were accused of promoting sedition. James Stephens was a Young Irelander and part of the rebellion of 1848 that followed these newspaper closures. He fled to France after the rebellion's failure. In 1856, he returned to Ireland and made connexions with former rebels. Two years later, he founded the Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.). [1] [2]
In 1863, he told friends he was to start a newspaper. With funds through John O'Mahony, founder of the Fenian Brotherhood in the U.S., he set up an office at 12 Parliament Street. John O'Leary became the editor, with Thomas Luby, Charles Kickham, and Denis Mulcahy as editorial staff and Luby as a proprietor. Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa was the business manager and James O'Connor his assistant and bookkeeper. It was printed by John Haltigan. Most of the articles were written by O'Leary and Kickham. The first issue came out on Saturday 28 November. Its sympathies were clear: a front-page advertisement offered to ship old copies of the United Irishman and The Irish Felon to any address in the U.K. and editorial content was critical of the political status quo. Superintendent Daniel Ryan of Dublin police's G division (largely concerned with Fenianism), noted the new publication's birth and commented on its low circulation. [3] [4] [5] [6]
Plans for a rising in Ireland, hatched in the US, were found at Kingstown station in July 1865: in an envelope was a £500 New York bankers' draft payable to Stephens' brother-in-law. This was handed to Dublin Castle and the link proved to be decisive for what followed. Later, a letter to the Tipperary I.R.B. calling for a nationalist uprising was found by a police informer working for the People, one Pierce Nagle (Nagle had visited British officials while in New York in 1864 and offered his services after being upset by Stephens' manner. He secured his employment at The People from New York). After he provided the information, the offices of the People were raided on 15 September. The last issue came out the following day. The paper was suppressed by the Lord Lieutenant, John Wodehouse; Luby, O’Leary, O’Donovan Rossa and O'Connor were arrested and held at Richmond Bridewell prison. Stephens and Kickham joined them a month later; Stephens escaped from prison on 24 November. A Special Commission was opened on 27th. 41 people were charged: Luby, O'Leary, O'Connor, O'Donovan Rossa and Kickham were charged with the most serious crime of treason felony, first used against the republicans of 1848. [7] Evidence used for the prosecution included the letter found by Nagel and his testimony about Fenian connexions, articles from the People as far back as the first issue, in which Irish Catholic judges including one of the presiding judges, the current Attorney-General and Privy Councillor William Keogh, had been strongly criticised, and a devastating secret document from 1864 written by Stephens and entrusted to Luby granting Luby, O'Leary and Kickham executive powers over the I.R.B.; Kickham was unaware of the document. [8] The conflicts of interest, also with the other judge, (John) David FitzGerald who was involved in the defendants' arrest, were highlighted by the defending counsel, former Tory M.P. Isaac Butt Q.C. Also noted was the striking - if not unusual - jury-packing (in a mostly-Catholic land, some of the juries involved were entirely Protestant). [5]
Luby, O'Leary and O'Connor received sentences of 20 years. O'Donovan Rossa was sentenced to life imprisonment, because of his previous convictions. The frail Kickham, lifelong near-blind and deaf, got 12 years; Judge Keogh praised his intellect and expressed sympathy with his plight, despite having refused his request for a writ of corpus to bring Luby and Charles Underwood O'Connell to his trial concerning his ignorance of the 'executive document', as Luby had already begun his sentence in Pentonville. [5] [9]
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 who was one of the leading members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Born and raised in Rosscarbery, County Cork, he witnessed the Great Famine. Rossa founded the Phoenix National and Literary Society and dedicated his life to working towards the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. He joined the IRB, was arrested by the British and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1869 he was elected to the British parliament while in prison. After being exiled to the United States in 1870 as part of the Cuba Five amnesty, Rossa worked with other Irish revolutionary organisations there to oppose British rule in Ireland.
John Devoy was an Irish republican rebel and journalist who owned and edited The Gaelic American, a New York weekly newspaper, from 1903 to 1928.
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.
John Francis O'Mahony was an Irish scholar and the founding member of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States, sister organisation to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Despite coming from a reasonably wealthy family and being well educated, the primary pursuit of O'Mahoney's life was that of Irish Independence from the United Kingdom, a calling that ultimately left him in poverty. O'Mahony fought in the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 as well as the American Civil War, and was involved organisationally in the Fenian Rising of 1867 in Ireland and the Fenian Raids on Canada.
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 Phoenix National and Literary Society was an 1856–1859 Irish nationalist organisation based in West Cork. It was established in Skibbereen in December 1856 by Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, as a revival of the Young Ireland movement suppressed after its 1848 rebellion. Its aim was to encourage intellectuals to become nationalists and vice versa as well as to encourage a Gaelic revival. It was suppressed as seditious in 1859.
James O'Connor was an Irish journalist and nationalist politician who sat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1892 to 1910, first for the anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation and then for the re-united Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP).
The Irish People was the title of a number of mostly political newspapers in Ireland and the United States.
Denis Dowling Mulcahy was a leading member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and a medical doctor.
The Fenian Rising of 1867 was a rebellion against British rule in Ireland, organised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).
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.
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.
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.
