1916 Easter Rising in Dublin Ireland: Tom Clarke Sentenced to Death and Executed: Thomas and Kathleen

When the Rising failed and the Irish soldiers surrendered Tom Clarke received the death penalty and he was executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Jail in Dublin Ireland.

His body dumped in a mass grave at Arbour Hill Prison yard in Dublin Ireland.

This is the story of Tom Clarke and his wife Kathleen.

He was fifty nine years old when he took his place at one of the windows of the GPO waiting for the British soldiers to attack as the Easter Rising started in 1916.

He and his wife Kathleen had returned a few years earlier from America and opened a tobacconist in Dublin together.

The 1916 Easter Rising began in Dublin at noon on Bank Holiday Monday on 24 April.

Britain had ruled Ireland for over seven hundred years. There had been other attempts of freedom in the past but they had failed.

As the fighting began Tom Clarke noticed how many of the Irish soldiers were very young so he turned to two of the young lads who stood beside him. He said to them

‘I have lived to see the greatest hour in Irish history.’

The fighting in the Irish Rising continued in the GPO and other garrisons around Dublin on Monday and Tuesday.

During a lull in the fighting on Wednesday he went to see Jim Ryan in the make shift hospital upstairs in the GPO. Jim Ryan was a medical student and soon to qualify as a doctor.

Tom Clarke spoke of his torture in English prisons

Tom Clarke told him he had been a Fenian since he was sixteen years old. He spoke to him of his time in America and the terrible years he endured in English prisons.

He explained why the Easter Rising went ahead even though they knew there was not much hope of success. Jim Ryan listened in silence for two hours.

When Tom Clarke was finished he said to Jim, ' I suppose you know why I am telling you all this. It's because you're wearing the Red Cross Arm band.

In the final bayonet charge, they may spare you. If they do, if you survive, I hope you'll try to make people understand the seven of us who signed the Proclamation.’

Tom Clarke was born at Hurst Castle, the Isle of Wight on March 11 1857

He spent the first ten years of his childhood in South Africa, and then he returned to Tyrone, Ireland with his family.

His father was a retired British Officer and did not like Tom's activities in the fight for Irish freedom. His father eventually kicked him out of the house. Clarke went to America in 1882.

Two years later he was in England and was arrested for his activities as an Irish Fenian. Feelings were running high against the Irish prisoners.

They were tortured with starvation and sleep deprivation and continued harassment.

Many of them lost their minds and went mad. Tom Clarke kept his sanity by copying the bible in shorthand, twice. He had been starved for forty days and was reduced to chewing rags in his cell.

Tom Clarke was released under a general amnesty for Fenian prisoners in 1898 and returned to Ireland. Also with him in prison had been the Fenian leader John Daly.

Tom visited John Daly who lived in Limerick. There he met John Daly’s niece Kathleen Daly. He went to New York with Kathleen; they married and stayed in America for the next seven years.

When they returned to Dublin they opened a tobacconist shop at the corner of Parnell Street and O'Connell Street.

Tom and Kathleen became involved in making plans for the Easter Rising in 1916 with their shop being used as a meeting place.

Because of the treatment that Tom Clarke had received in prison in England his health was a concern. When the Proclamation of the IrishRepublic had been written just before the 1916 Easter Rising and was ready for signing he was asked by the other signatories to be the first to do so. The leaders of the Easter Rising believed he deserved this honour.

His Court Martial was held in Richmond Barracks on Tuesday the 2 May. That evening he was transferred to Kilmainham Jail. He later heard he had received the death sentence. His wife, Kathleen had been arrested on 1^st May and was a prisoner at DublinCastle. When she was told she could visit him, she said to her cell mates ' I suppose they are going to shoot Tom.’ She arrived just after midnight and spent about an hour with her husband.

She did not tell him that she was pregnant with their fourth child.

There was a soldier in the cell the whole time, holding a candle. Tom Clarke told his wife that he was relieved he was to be shot, he was glad it was to a soldiers death, he'd had enough of prison. He asked her to give this message.

Message to the Irish People, 3^rd May 1916.

‘I and my fellow signatories believe we have struck the first successful blow for Irish freedom. The next blow, which we have no doubt Ireland will strike, will win through.

In this belief, we die happy. '

Thomas J Clarke. Kilmainham Jail, 3^rd May 1916.

Kathleen was not sent back to her cell, but released and went home. Soon after the Rising she became ill and had a miscarriage.

She wanted to die herself and years later wrote about the near death experience she had.

During the miscarriage the doctor and nurse were at her bedside when the room went dark blue. She knew it was the end and told the doctor goodbye.

She heard the doctor say to the nurse that she had gone. Then she felt herself drifting through clouds until she could hear men's voices, including her brother Ned, Edward Daly who had also been executed after the Easter Rising.

She saw her husband Tom and Sean McDermott. She heard Sean say ' She must go back, Tom, she must.' Tom said, ' God, Sean, we can't send her back, it is too cruel.'

Sean said, ' You know Tom, she must go back, she has to do the work that we left her to do.' They were both very sad.

Then she was back in her bedroom, with the doctor and nurse standing over her. The doctor told her he was sure she was dead as her heart had stopped for a few minutes.

Kathleen Clarke had been given the job, before the Rising, of looking after the dependants of the dead and imprisoned men.

Through the Dependants Fund, she also kept the scattered men together once they got out of prison or hospital.

Her work was vital in preparing for the Irish War of Independence, which eventually saw Ireland free itself and become a an Irish Republic.

Tom Clarke was shot dead at dawn on 3^rd May 1916 in Kilmainham Jail yard. His body was dumped in the pit in Arbour Hill and covered in quick lime.

The Easter Rising began at noon on Easter Monday on 24 April 1916. It lasted for seven days until 30 April. Most of the Irish men and women who survived the battle during that week were arrested and transported to England and Wales to prisons and detention camps.

The men and women who took part in the 1916 Easter Rising were unable to free Ireland from British Rule that week. But what they did manage to do through their courage and sacrifice was ignite the desire for Irish freedom once again in the heart and soul of the Irish people.

This led to the Irish War of Independence in 1919 and finally freedom from British Rule in January 1922 when Ireland became a Free State.

Tom Clarke fought in the GPO during the 1916 Easter Rising and he was executed at Kilmainham Jail for his part in the Rising along with thirteen other men in the following week. Their bodies were disposed of by the British Government in a mass grave at Arbour Hill Prison yard.

He and the other men who lay buried at Arbour Hill Memorial Park are remembered for their part in Irish history.

They are: James Connolly, Joseph Plunkett, Con Colbert, Sean Heuston, Sean MacDermott, Thomas MacDonagh, Michael O'Hanrahan, John McBride, Eamonn Ceannt, Michael Mallin, William Pearse, Patrick Pearse and Edward Daly.

© Copyright 2010. L.M.Reid