Details of the period of the Rebellion.

Mr. Macready’s Statement.

[After we had received from Mr Macready a verbal statement of the facts recited (Chapter 5), he was good enough to commit to writing the subjoined further details, which graphically illustrate the calamitous period of the Rebellion.]

Prior to the outburst of the insurrection in 1798, and while espionage was active in its pursuit of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, stimulated by the reward of £1,000 for his apprehension, he was stopping in my grandfather’s house, No. 124 Thomas Street, and passing as my mother’s French tutor. She was not long home from France, having left it in consequence of the Revolution. She was a woman of much strength of character, and carried the different letters between Lord Edward and the other United Irishmen. While acting in this capacity, she usually went as a patient in Dr Adrien’s carriage, with her arm bandaged up, and her clothes marked with blood. While Lord Edward was at James Moore’s, the only person he saw, exclusive of Lawless and a few other trusted political friends, was his stepfather, Mr Ogilvie, who had been a tutor in the Leinster family, and the duchess married him … Lady Fitzgerald never visited him at Moore’s, as it was supposed every move of hers was closely watched, but my mother brought his little daughter to see him. She was a seven months’ child, and was afterwards married to Sir Guy Campbell, who was head of the Constabulary of Ireland. [Here the anecdote of Tuite, given earlier appears]

I had this from my grandfather and Tuite. The former promised to bury Tuite, but he outlived him by many years. It was considered unsafe for Lord Edward to remain concealed at our house, and my grandmother went down to Magan, a barrister, and friend of hers, who lived on Usher’s Island, and arranged with him that to-morrow evening Lord Edward would go down at seven or eight o’clock to his place, and, to avoid being seen entering the front door, the stable in Island Street was to be open to admit him. At eight o’clock Mrs Moore and Pat Gallagher, a clerk of ours, walked out arm-in-arm, and my mother and Lord Edward behind, They went along Thomas Street to Watling Street, and turned down at the end of Watling Street, and just at Island Street, near Magan’s stable, Major Sirr stopped Lord Edward. My mother screamed out to Gallagher, who was a very powerful man.

He at once upset Major Sirr; and only the Major had a coat of mail on him, his career was ended on that occasion, for Gallagher tried his dagger on him. Major Sirr was also a powerful man, wielded his dagger, and, although under Gallagher, contrived to drive it through the calf of his leg.

Finding himself wounded, and fearing he would not be able to make his escape, and perceiving that he could not wound Major Sirr, he made the best of his way off, having first knocked the Major down with a box, using the butt of the dagger to assist his blow.

My mother and Lord Edward fled at the first part of the fray, and as Murphy’s (now Graham and Dunhill’s wool-crane) was the nearest friend’s place, they went into it. Mrs Moore got home as she best could; of Gallagher I will speak hereafter.

The accuracy of the carpenter Tuite’s information to Moore was soon confirmed. The next day my grandfather Moore’s house was taken possession of. The famous Dr Gahan, the Augustinian friar, was visiting my mother, and she was seeing him to the door when the double knock came. The old priest in his humility stood partly behind the door to allow whoever it was to enter. A captain, a sergeant, and a large number of soldiers rushed in. They seized the poor old priest, and by the queue or pigtail, the then mode of wearing the hair, tied him up to a beam in the wareroom off the shop. My mother cut him down.

She then remembered that the committee or council of the United Irishmen were sitting at a house in James’s Gate, (the one now occupied by Mr M’Nulty.) While the soldiers were taking possession and rifling the house, she ran up to James’s Gate, and informed the parties there that her father’s house was full of soldiers. The father of the Rev. George Canavan, late P. P. of St James’s, had a tan-yard outside the house wherein the Directory met. Into this yard they descended through a window, and escaped down Watling Street. My mother, when returning, met some of the soldiers; one of them recognised her, and said ‘There’s that croppy b---h again,’ making a drive at her with his bayonet, which was screwed to the top of his musket. She stooped and escaped, but the bayonet cut her across the shoulders. There were some good shots on the qui vive.

The occurrence just took place on the site of Roe’s distillery, and a shot was forthwith fired from a house at the corner of Crane Lane, which closed the loyal career of the soldier who wounded my mother. He was shot dead. The official report in the newspapers next day stated that they were so near capturing the Committee or Directory of the United Irishmen that in their flight they left the taper lighting, and the wax was soft with which they had been sealing their letters and documents. I should have mentioned that Magan went up the next morning to know had anything happened, as he was quite uneasy at not seeing Lord Edward and Mrs Moore, and that he had stopped up until midnight expecting them.

While on this point I may as well finish it. When Dr Madden was getting information from my mother, he asked who she thought had betrayed Lord Edward. Whether she said this to him or not I cannot say; but just as he left, she said to me, ‘Dr Madden asked me who I thought betrayed Lord Edward, and only fearing I should sin against charity, I would have said it was Magan, for no one but my mother and he knew that Lord Edward was to go down to his (Magan’s) house on Usher’s Island the night his lordship was stopped by Major Sirr. Poor Lord Edward himself did not know we were going to Magan’s house till we set out for it.

We told Magan next day what a narrow escape we had that night, and how Lord Edward had to take refuge in Murphy’s. Lord Edward was arrested on the following day in Murphy’s house. [It is more than probable that Mrs Macready did not avow during that interview her suspicion of Magan. It took place, as we learn from the Lives of the United Irishmen, (vol. ii., p.406,) in the year 1842. Magan was then alive. Reminiscences contributed by Mrs Macready appear, but Magan’s name does not occur in them.]

Gallagher, of whom I have already spoken, was brought out for execution; but he put on a freemason’s apron, having received an intimation that the captain of the guard was a member of the craft. By some rule of their faith, one brother cannot see another hanged. Be this as it may, the captain ordered his men away, and Gallagher was taken back to the Provost Prison until some non-masonic hangman could be got.

After, or about this time, the executions at the corner of Bridgefoot Street, in Thomas Street, were going on, and the blood ftowing from the block whereon the poor rebels were quartered clogged up the sewers, and some dogs were licking it up. The Lady Lieutenant was driving past, and got such a fright from this horrible scene that she fainted in the carriage. Having arrived home, she wrote to her brother, who was high in the then Government, for God’s sake to stop this wholesale massacre of the defenceless. Her humane appeal had the desired effect; an order came to stem all further executions; enough blood had been shed.

The rest of the prisoners were ordered to be transported, arid vessels for that purpose were sent over. In one of these poor Gallagher was placed, heavily ironed. The night before the transport sailed, his young wife was permitted to see him, when his manacles, for that occasion, were taken off. His wife brought a coil of sash cord under her dress; night came on before she left, and Gallagher held one end while she took the other ashore. The captain, as soon as he thought the wife was out of sight of the ship, ordered the prisoner to be put in irons again. When they went to him for that purpose he said, ‘Can you not wait one minute?’ They paused, and he leaped overboard, and was towed by the rope safely ashore, before the sailors (who told the captain the man had leaped in) had time to overtake him in a boat. He was put aboard a smuggling lugger that conveyed salt to France, and in years afterwards James Moore, his former master, met him in London. He told him he was a wealthy hotel-keeper in Bordeaux, and the handsome landlady, of course, was the person who pulled the cord with him aboard the transport ship.

“My mother took £500 to the doctor who attended the prisoners in Birmingham Tower, Dublin Castle, where my grandfather was detained, and he certified my grandfather was mad! Whether he arrived at this conclusion from his professional skill or my mother’s persuasive powers, deponent further knoweth not; but I even heard, in the event of my grandfather’s escape, he was to be further convinced that my grandsire was mad. Major Sirr bad not implicit faith in the doctor’s word, for he went to the Tower to judge for himself. The prisoner must have acted the maniac to life, for he made Major Sirr run for his life after severely biting him. He then passed out of the Tower and escaped up Castle Street. The Government never re-arrested him, believing him insane.

Major Sirr and Jemmy O’Brien, the informer, were looking for pikes at the rear of my grandfather’s stores in a field that is now occupied by Messrs Fitzsimmons, timber-merchants, Bridgeford Street. A croppy, named Clayton, saw them, and had them covered with his carbine; but, as he could only hit one, he feared the other might escape, and that he himself would be captured. He told this to Casey, who said each of them were fully worth a charge of powder. This, perhaps, was the narrowest escape Major Sirr had, for he it was that was covered, and covered moreover by a man of unerring aim - the same who hit the soldier at Costigan’s Gate.”

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