Timothy Deasy was born in 1839 and was therefore old enough to experience, alongside his family and community, the devastating impact of the Great Famine in Ireland, which ravaged the land between 1845 and 1852. At the height of the famine in 1847, following the death of Timothy's younger sister Hanora, the Deasy family elected to immigrate to the United States in order to escape. They would eventually settle in Lawrence, Massachusetts.[2][1]
Deasy's experience of the Great famine left him with a deep-seated resentment against British rule in Ireland. Another influence that pointed Deasy towards Irish Nationalism was that his own father, Michael, had been a part of the Young Ireland movement before leaving Ireland. Although the Deasy family had left before it started, the Young Irelanders had launched a rebellion against the British in 1848, a revolt sometimes referred to as the "Famine Rebellion". Timothy's younger brother Cornelius was likewise influenced towards Irish Nationalism, and while in the United States became involved in numerous Irish-American political and civic societies.[2]
In 1857 both Timothy and Cornelius were sworn into the Fenian Brotherhood, the American wing of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Both organisations, collectively referred to as "Fenians", were secret societies which sought to bring about the forcible overthrown of British rule in Ireland and bring about a democratic Irish Republic. Following his swearing-in, Timothy was assigned to recruiting and expanding the influence of the Fenians in Lawrence.[2]
American Civil War
Both Deasy brothers were wounded in the desperate fighting that occurred during the Battle of the Wilderness
Upon the outbreak of the American Civil War, both Timothy and Cornelius were amongst the many thousands of Irish to volunteer for the Union Army. Timothy and Cornelius enlisted in June 1861 in Boston and were enrolled into Company I (“McLellan Rifles”) of the 9th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. In time, the regiment would become known as the "Fighting Ninth" and the Deasy brothers would see 32 engagements over the course of the war with the regiment. During the Battle of Gaines' Mill on 27 June 1862 the entirety of I Company's officers were killed. In response, Timothy was given a battlefield commission and made a captain, as well as being appointed company commander. Both Timothy and Cornelius ("Connie") were wounded in action during the Battle of the Wilderness in early May 1864, Connie on 5 May and Captain Deasy on 8 May. Timothy's injury was a severe head wound, however, as a company commander, he insisted on continuing to fight until the end of the day. It was only then that he received aid from the regimental doctor. The wound would develop into a scar Deasy would carry for the rest of his life.[2]
The Deasy brothers mustered out of the Union Army on 21 June 1864.[2]
Fenian activities
Deasy returned to his Fenian activities almost immediately. He attended a mass convention of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Cincinnati, Ohio in January 1865 and in August was one of 300 delegates to be selected by the organisation to be sent to Ireland to prepare the country for a rebellion. However, upon Deasy's arrival in Ireland, he was arrested in Skibereen in his home county of Cork, where he was found to be in possession of military-grade documents. Deasy was whisked away to a jail in England to be further integrated. Deasy was later released from custody on the condition he return to the United States. Deasy promptly ignored that order and returned to Ireland post haste, and sent home to Clonakilty. There Deasy received orders from Thomas J. Kelly, functionally the head organiser of the forthcoming rebellion. Kelly asked Deasy to report to Dublin. However, while there, Deasy was almost arrested again.[2]
Kelly seemed suitably impressed enough with Deasy that he elected to bring him into the "Secret Circle", a cell within the IRB dedicated to the eradication of spies, informers and traitors within the movement. The "Secret Circle" was, predictably, despised by British authorities in Ireland, who were aware of its existence and derisively referred to as the "Irish American Assassination Company" or "the Shooting Circle". The capture of the Secret Circle was a top priority amongst the British.[2]
On 4 November 1865 Deasy, alongside Kelly and John Devoy, was amongst a rescue party who broke the leader of the IRB, James Stephens, out of Richmond Gaol. Following that rescue, Deasy accompanied Kelly and Stephens over to France (where the Fenians had built a considerable support network) and then onwards back to the United States to rendezvous with the American Fenians in New York to report on their progress. From there they once more travelled back to Ireland.[2]
By June 1866, the globetrotting Deasy (alongside his brother once more) was now on the Canadian border, where he participated in the Battle of Fort Erie. The raid was part of the Fenian Raids; a plan had emerged amongst one faction of the American Fenians that they should, rather than seeking to capture Ireland directly, they should muster as many veterans of the American Civil War as quickly as they could and seize the lightly defended Canada, which would then be exchanged back to the British for Ireland. The Battle of Fort Erie was a success, as was the following Battle of Ridgeway, with battle-hardened Fenian troops overcoming novice Canadian militias. Ridgeway saw the first-ever usage of the term "Irish Republican Army" as well as the first display of the Irish Tricolour flag. Despite these successes, the Fenians were soon forced to return to the United States after U.S. PresidentAndrew Jackson issued a proclamation declaring that the US would oppose the Fenians in order to prevent the raids escalating into a war between the United States and the British Empire.[2]
In January 1867 Deasy once more returned to Ireland alongside American Civil War veterans Colonel Ricard O'Sullivan Burke of the 154th New York Engineers, Captain Michael O’Brien of the 13th New Jersey Light Artillery, and Captain John McCafferty of Morgan’s Raiders, Confederate Cavalry.
On 11 February 1867 Deasy and Captain McCafferty were part of a Fenian raid on Chester Castle in England, which had the objective of securing weapons for a rebellion in Ireland. However, the raid had to be called off as the authorities had been tipped off. It soon emerged that the plan had been betrayed by an informer, John Joseph Corydon. Tensions were rising amongst the Fenians as the failure to secure weapons meant that plans to launch a rebellion in Ireland by February had to be pushed back to March.[2]
Preceded by some skirmishes in February, the Fenian Rising had "properly" begun in March 1867, which Deasy sent to Millstreet in County Cork, where he was told to gather recruits and attack military and police buildings. He did this in parallel to Fenian commanders doing so across the country as well. However, the rising never truly "took off" as the British had long been aware of the coming danger and responded quickly to suppress it. By end of March, any semblance of a Fenian rebellion had already been snuffed out.[2]
Second-in-Command of the IRB
Following the crushing of the rebellion, Deasy like many other Fenians would have gone to ground to avoid capture and waited for their next move. Thomas Kelly was not long in attempting to reorganise the Fenians after their defeat. Kelly envisioned that the next phrase of Fenian resistance to British rule should come from within England itself, and ordered his remaining officers to meet him there. Amongst other roles doled out, Deasy was named Commander of Manchester and Liverpool, two cities with significant Irish populations. In September 1867 Kelly held a Fenian conference in Manchester to discuss the future of the Fenian movement and its new campaign in England. Amongst other events at that conference, Kelly was named the clear leader of the IRB (in succession to James Stephens). Kelly also made clear he wanted to move the IRB away from the Fenian Brotherhood, which he viewed as having become too divided by infighting, and towards Clan na Gael, a new organisation also based in New York City. Finally, besides Kelly becoming the clear number one within the IRB, Kelly named Deasy as his aide-de-camp and deputy, effectively naming him second-in-command of the organisation.[2] The historical author Joseph O’Neill wrote of the situation “Deasy was Kelly’s ideal second in command, and the Fenian leader was delighted with his appointment. They shared the same formative experiences and inhabited the same mental world. They could sit in silence knowing exactly what the other was thinking.”[3]
On 11 September 1867 Deasy and Kelly were travelling to another meeting in Manchester City when it became apparent the pair were being followed by the British authorities. They were eventually arrested and charged with loitering so that they could be held for a prolonged amount of time. Kelly and Deasy gave their names as "Mr. Wright" and "Mr. Williams" but they were eventually identified after a number of days, at which point they were charged with their involvement with the Fenian Rising. However, their delay tactics had brought them time and their arrest was known amongst the Irish community in Manchester.[2]
A plan to rescue them was made by Edward O'Meagher Condon with other Manchester Fenians. On 18 September 1867, while Kelly and Deasy were being driven through the city from the courthouse with four other prisoners, Fenians armed with revolvers attacked the prison van. During the scuffle, police sergeant Charles Brett, who was seated inside the van, was accidentally shot dead – the leaders of the 30-plus Fenian force called on him to open the door and he refused. He then looked through the keyhole just as one of the rescuers blew the lock off; the shot killed him. One of the women prisoners in the van then took the keys from his belt and passed them to the Fenians, who unlocked the van and rushed Deasy and Kelly away.[2]
A reward of £300 (£24,000 as of 2015)[4] was offered, without result.
Deasy and Kelly were sheltered by the network of revolutionaries in Manchester, reputedly including Frederick Engels and his Irish partner Lizzie Burns.[5] Deasy managed to eventually board a ship which took him directly to New York City, while Kelly disguised himself as a Franciscan friar and travelled back to Galway to visit his mother, before himself taking a ship back to New York.
The escape of the Fenian leaders and the death of a police officer caused outrage and mass embarrassment amongst the British authorities, and they turned to scapegoats for retribution. Dozens of Manchester Irish were arrested and thrown into jail. Three of the Fenian rescuers, William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O'Brien, were arrested after a massive manhunt and later executed after a swift trial followed by many appeals. Their execution was badly bungled and widely reported. Their cause was taken up worldwide and was one of the foundations of Irish revolutionary success of the early 20th century. The three are remembered as the Manchester Martyrs.
Return to Massachusetts and entering electoral politics
Deasy finally returned home to Lawrence by 1870, having effectively been gone for a decade. Reunited with his brother Connie, the two set up a number of businesses such as a saloon, a liquor dealership, a hotel, and a number of rental properties. In 1872 Deasy successfully ran for Lawrence City Council and won re-election in '74. Deasy owed his success to the population of 8,200 Irish living in Lawerence by 1875, who accounted for almost half of the population. The Irish were becoming a powerful force in New England politics and the Democratic Party moved to capitalise. A group of Irish community leaders and Democrats came to Deasy to ask him to run for the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Deasy agreed and it was agreed that John Breen, who had fought with Deasy in Canada, would serve as his replacement on Lawrence city council. This gave Breen much political momentum, and Breen would later become the first Irish and first Roman Catholic to become Mayor of any city in New England.[2]
Deasy was elected to the 1874 Massachusetts legislature and would serve there the following two years as well. Only 13 members of the entire 213 member legislature were Irish in 1876, and Deasy was the only Irish Catholic to be elected from Essex County out of 33.[2]
Falling ill and death
In June 1878 the end of July 1878, Deasy was a patient at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston suffering from excruciating pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis. likely to have developed from sleeping on the cold wet ground during his service in the Civil War. His condition forced him out of the busy world of politics, although he did make one more notable public political appearance when he hosted Charles Stewart Parnell at a fundraiser at Lawerence city hall in early 1880.[2]
Deasy took ill again on 9 December 1880 and died the following day.[6][7] He was given an elaborate funeral that was attended en masse by Lawrence's Irish community, Fenians and veterans of the Union Army, with members of the 9th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment particularly in force. Deasy is buried at the Immaculate Conception Cemetery in Lawrence, Massachusetts.[1] The Irish National Graves Association, in Dublin, Ireland designated the grave of Deasy an Irish National Grave on 16 August 1990. Deasy received a new green granite headstone on his grave on 23 November 1992, the dedication organized by Bob Bateman, great-grandson of Timothy’s brother Cornelius. The principal speaker for the dedications was Derek Warfield of the Wolfe Tones.[2]
His headstone reads:
Patriot ~ Irish ~ American
Born in County Cork, Ireland, February 20, 1839. He fought oppression, tyranny, and foreign domination on the battlefields of three nations. As a member of the Lawrence City Council and Massachusetts House of Reperesentatives, he was a man to whom the Irish looked for leadership, action and direction as a soldier, statesman, businessman.
Fenian Captain Timothy Deasy served his country, homeland, state and city well.[1]
Related Research Articles
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.
Clan na Gael (CnG) (Irish: Clann na nGael, pronounced[ˈklˠaːn̪ˠn̪ˠəˈŋeːlˠ]; "family of the Gaels") is an Irish republican organization, founded in the United States in the late 19th and 20th centuries, successor to the Fenian Brotherhood and a sister organization to the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
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.
William Randall Roberts was a Fenian Brotherhood member, United States Representative from New York (1871–1875), and a United States Ambassador to Chile. Roberts, an Irish immigrant who became a wealthy businessman, rose quickly to a position of major influence amongst the Fenian Brotherhood before eventually taking leadership. Under his direction, the Fenians in America moved to use Irish-American veterans of the American Civil War to invade Canada in the hopes that they could leverage this against the British Empire to negotiate for an Independent Irish Republic. After the first attempt to invade Canada was not successful, Roberts resigned from the leadership of the Fenians and began to transition into American politics. He served as a United States Representative from New York and Ambassador to Chile until a stroke ended his career.
The Manchester Martyrs were three Irish nationalists – William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O'Brien – who were hanged in 1867 following their conviction of murder after an attack on a police van in Manchester, England, in which a police officer was accidentally shot dead, an incident that was known at the time as the Manchester Outrages. The three men were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, also known as the Fenians, an organisation dedicated to ending British rule in Ireland, and were among a group of 30 to 40 Fenians who attacked a horse-drawn police van transporting two arrested leaders of the Brotherhood, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, to Belle Vue Gaol. Police Sergeant Charles Brett, travelling inside with the keys, was shot and killed while looking through the keyhole of the van as the attackers attempted to force the door open by shooting the lock.
Events from the year 1867 in Ireland.
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.
Thomas Joseph Kelly was an Irish revolutionary and leader of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a secret organisation with the objective of establishing an Irish republic independent from the United Kingdom. Kelly was the nominal leader of the failed Fenian Rising of 1867. He had previously also been an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War, serving mainly with the 10th Ohio Infantry "The Bloody 10th".
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.
John Daly, was an Irish republican, and a leading member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He was uncle to Kathleen Clarke, wife of Tom Clarke who was executed for his part in the 1916 Rising and who was a leading member of the IRB, and her brother Ned Daly who was also executed in 1916. Daly briefly served as a member of the British Parliament but was resented for having previously been convicted for treason against the British state. Daly also served as Mayor of Limerick for 3 years at the turn of the century.
Patrick James Smyth, also known as Nicaragua Smyth, was an Irish politician and journalist. A Young Irelander in 1848, and subsequently a journalist in American exile, from 1871 he was an Irish Home Rule Member of the United Kingdom Parliament for Westmeath and from 1880 for Tipperary.
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.
The Fenian Rising of 1867 was a rebellion against British rule in Ireland, organised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).
James Boland was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) who was linked to the Irish National Invincibles. He was the father of republican revolutionaries and politicians Harry, Gerald, Ned and Kathleen Boland.
Edward O'Meagher Condon was an Irish nationalist and Fenian who fought in the American Civil War and attempted to participate in the Fenian Rising of 1867 in Ireland. After the Fenian Rising failed, In September 1867 O'Meagher Condon led a rescue party which attempted to save Irish Republican Brotherhood leader Thomas J. Kelly from imprisonment in Manchester, England. The rescue attempt led to the death of an English police officer and the arrest of sixty Irishmen, and led directly into the Manchester Martyrs case, in which O'Meagher Condon himself was one of the five main defendants. For his role in the attempted Manchester rescue, O'Meagher Condon was sentenced to death. During the trial, O'Meagher Condon gave a memorable speech in his own defence which ended with the rallying cry "God Save Ireland!", which was immediately repeated in unison by his fellow defendants. Not only did "God Save Ireland" become a popular slogan amongst Irish nationalists, but it was also turned into a song which became the "Unofficial Irish national anthem" until 1916, and continued to enjoy popularity long after.
John Kearney was an Irish activist and a member of Clann na Gael, captured during what was called the Fenian dynamite campaign.
Charles Brett was a police sergeant from Manchester, England. In 1867, he was shot dead in an ambush on the locked police carriage transporting the Fenians Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy; he was the first police officer from Manchester to be killed on duty.
Ricard O'Sullivan Burke was an Irish nationalist, Fenian activist, Union American Civil War soldier, U.S. Republican Party campaigner, and a public-works engineer. Travelling extensively, he performed various jobs. He was involved in two prison escape attempts, in Manchester, where a policeman was shot dead, and in London, where twelve passers-by were blown up.
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.
↑ O’Neill, Joseph (March 2012). The Manchester Martyrs. Cork, Ireland: The Mercier Press.
↑ UK CPI inflation numbers based on data available from Gregory Clark (2015), "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)" MeasuringWorth.
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