Michael Barrett (Fenian)
| Michael Barrett | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1841 |
| Died | May 24, 1868 (aged 26–27) Newgate Prison, London |
| Cause of death | Executed by hanging |
| Resting place | City of London Cemetery |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Known for | Involvement in the Clerkenwell explosion and being the last person publicly executed in England |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
Michael Barrett (1841 – 26 May 1868) was born in Drumnagreshial in the Ederney area of County Fermanagh. In his adult years he became a member of the Fenians.
Barrett was the last man to be publicly hanged in England, for his part in the Clerkenwell explosion in December 1867. The bombing killed 12 bystanders and severely injured many more. Barrett was arrested with several others in a wide ranging sweep of sympathisers with the Irish cause and was the only one found guilty.
Michael Barrett was born in 1841. At the age of 27 he joined the Fenians, which, in the 1860s, was a political movement that dominated Irish politics and defied the Catholic Church and middle-class nationalists who advocated milder approaches. Tens of thousands of Irishmen in both Ireland and Great Britain were recruited into its ranks.
The Clerkenwell bombing was the most infamous action carried out by the Fenians in Britain. It resulted in a long-lived backlash that fomented much hostility against the Irish community in Britain.
The events that led up to the bombing started with the arrest, in November 1867, of Richard O'Sullivan-Burke, a senior Fenian arms agent who planned the "prison-van escape" in Manchester a few months earlier. O'Sullivan-Burke was subsequently imprisoned on remand in the Middlesex House of Detention, Clerkenwell. On 13 December an attempt to rescue him was made by blowing a hole in the prison wall. The explosion was seriously misjudged; it demolished not only a large section of the wall, but also a number of tenement houses opposite in Corporation Lane (now Row) resulting in 12 people being killed and over 50 suffering a range of injuries.
The bombing had a traumatic effect on British working-class opinion. Karl Marx, then living in London, observed:
The London masses, who have shown great sympathy towards Ireland, will be made wild and driven into the arms of a reactionary government. One cannot expect the London proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of Fenian emissaries.
The Radical, Charles Bradlaugh, condemned the incident in his newspaper The National Reformer as an act "calculated to destroy all sympathy, and to evoke the opposition of all classes".
...
Wikipedia