Time The Invincibles 'Got Out' of Kilmainham Jail!

One of the high points for me at the 2015 Celtic League AGM in Dublin was a personal trip that my good friend Tom Hanley arranged for me around the various sites of importance to the 1916 Easter Rising.

The centenary of the rising was the following year so the various places such as museums and Kilmainham jail where the leaders of the Rising were executed were under siege already from the tourism traffic but somehow Tom always managed to get us to the head of the queue.

We visited Arbour Hill where the rising leaders are buried and Collin barracks. However the keynote of the sites visited was Kilmainham Jail and as it turned out not because of the fate of Pearse or Connolly, moving as that was, but rather when Tom enquired of the guide where ‘the Invincibles’ were buried and were we going to see that. As bemused tourists looked on he said if you stay after the tour I’ll take you.

Later we went to a forgotten corner of the jail yard were the invincibles who carried out the attack and assassination of British officials in Ireland are buried. The men targeted the Chief Secretary of Ireland and his Under Secretary in what are called ‘the Phoenix Park murders’. The terminology has always interested me as when a Bosnian Serb killed Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 it was ‘an assassination’, similarly when Czech patriots killed their countries occupier in 1942 it was ‘an assassination’.

I read this recent article by a former tour guide at Kilmainham, Mícheál Ó Doibhilín, who puts their story in perspective and concludes with the question why are the Invincibles still in jail. Still buried in that anonymous corner of the jail when they should be with the other martyrs for Irish Freedom in Glasnevin cemetery:

http://www.kilmainhamtales.ie/the-invincibles.php

Recently a British soldier one of a garrison that terrorised West Clare during the War of Independence was moved from his resting place in a Bog west of Ennistymon to a British War Cemetery in Dublin.

Perhaps it's time that the same justice was afforded to the memory of the Invincibles. Surely after well over a century its time they ‘got out of jail’?

The Invincibles were Joe Brady, Michael Fagan, Thomas Caffrey, Dan Curley and Tim Kelly they were hanged at Kilmainham jail by an imported English hangman in 1883. Note: The youngest 19 year old Tim Kelly was only convicted after an unprecedented third trial.

Image: Bernard Moffatt by the plaque to the Invincibles in a forgotten corner of Kilmainham jail - 2015