Edward O'Meagher Condon

The Manchester Martyrs – William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O'Brien – were three men executed for the murder of a police officer in Manchester, England, in 1867, during an incident that became known as the Manchester Outrages. The three were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood—also known as the Fenians—an organisation dedicated to ending British rule in Ireland, and were among of a group of 30–40 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 as the attackers attempted to force the van open by blowing the lock. Kelly and Deasy were released after another prisoner in the van took the keys from Brett's body and passed them to the group outside through a ventilation grill; the pair were never recaptured, despite an extensive search.

Two others were also charged and found guilty of Brett's murder, Thomas Maguire and Edward O'Meagher Condon, but their death sentences were overturned: O'Meagher Condon through the intercession of the United States government – he was an American citizen – and Maguire because the evidence given against him was considered unsatisfactory. Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were publicly hanged on a temporary structure built on the wall of Salford Gaol, on 23 November 1867, in front of a crowd of 8,000–10,000.

Brett was the first Manchester City Police officer to be killed on duty, and he is memorialised in a monument in St Ann's Church. Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien are also memorialised, both in Manchester – where the Irish community made up more than 10 percent of the population – and in Ireland, where they were regarded by many as inspirational heroes.

The whole of Ireland had been under British rule since the end of the Nine Years' War in 1603. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) was founded on 17 March 1858 by James Stephens, with the aim of establishing an independent democratic republic in Ireland. The IRB was a revolutionary fraternal organisation, rather than an insurrectionary conspiracy; Stephens believed that a "thorough social revolution" was required in Ireland before the people could become republicans. The Fenian Brotherhood was founded in New York in 1858 by John O'Mahony, ostensibly the IRB's American wing. By 1865 the IRB had an estimated 100,000 members, and was carrying out frequent acts of violence in metropolitan Britain. The Irish community in Manchester accounted for more than 10 per cent of the population, and one contemporary estimate put the number of Fenians and Fenian sympathisers living within 50 miles (80 km) of the city at 50,000.

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