Tag Archives: John Philpot Curran

On This Day – 14 July 1798 The Sheares brothers are hanged in Dublin

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Irish rebellions should probably all come equipped with something we could call an IQ. That’s an Informer Quotient. This is a scientific measure of how many British agents from among the ranks of the rebels it took to betray the insurrection.

The scale would go all the way from ‘Genius’ at one hundred and fifty, to Witless Imbecile at zero. Let’s take a couple of examples. Obviously the 1798 rebellion was so riddled with spies and informers that if it had been a boat it would have sunk in a calm and windless cup of tea. So, we’ll call that one hundred and fifty. Then, right at the other end of the scale, there’s the 1916 Rising. Here the rebels desperately tried to tip their hand repeatedly, even to the extent of calling the whole thing off in a newspaper advertisement, but the exceptionally dim British authorities had no idea what was going on under their noses. We’ll call that an IQ of zero.

Totally off the scale of course is the War of Independence where Michael Collins’s own spies and informers were tripping over each other in Dublin Castle. That would be a minus IQ of about fifty for the rebels.

But the prize for individual revolutionaries most beset by informers has to go to the United Irishmen, the Sheares brothers. It took not one, not two, but three spies to bring them down. Given the going rate for intelligence information in 1798 it must have cost the authorities almost as much as the bribes paid to pass the Act of Union two years later.

The brothers Sheares, John and Henry, from Cork were both lawyers who had witnessed the French revolution and the frequent use of the guillotine. On the boat back home from Calais they met an utterly disillusioned Daniel O’Connell, pledged to non-violent political action, based on the bloodthirsty slaughter he had observed in Paris. The Sheares brothers were not so easily put off. When they got back to Dublin in 1793 they joined the United Irshmen. Both began organizing in their native Cork.

Enter Spy Number 1. His name was Conway and he kept the Castle well informed of the activities of the brothers, while passing himself off as an enthusiastic supporter.  He gets the bronze medal.

While busying themselves in Cork the brothers were also part of the Dublin Society of the United Irishmen. Here their nemesis was Thomas Collins, another apparent republican fanatic but, in reality, a well-embedded British spy. Because he ratted on so many other prominent revolutionaries he gets the silver medal.

But the gold unquestionably goes to Captain Warnesford Armstrong. You’d think his name would have given him away. How could you be called Warnesford and not be a British spy? After the capture of most of the members of the United Irishmen’s Directory (note the French influence) in March 1798, John Sheares took over and ordained the date of 23 May for a nationwide uprising. Armstrong insinuated himself into the confidence of the brothers, to the point where he was a regular visitor to their house on Baggot street, and dandled the children of Henry Sheares on his treacherous knee. He recorded that he didn’t even have to take an oath in order to become a member of the United Irishman. Not that he would have let something as silly as an oath get in the way. John Sheares himself actually warned Armstrong not to come to the house on one occasion, because certain activists believed him to be in the act of betraying the movement, and were intent on murdering him!

Two days before the planned rising John and Henry Sheares were arrested, on information supplied by Armstrong, and put on trial. Armstrong himself, clearly pleased at his handiwork, testified against them. Despite being defended by the great advocate John Philpot Curran, it took the jury a mere seventeen minutes to convict.

John and Henry Sheares, victims of three separate informers, were hanged, drawn and quartered, two hundred and nineteen years ago, on this day.

 

 

 

 

 

On This Day November 25th 
1764  – Birth of Henry Sirr

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Turncoat, informer, abuser of power, or dedicated public servant – it all depends on your political perspective when it comes to Major Henry Sirr. Let’s face it, if you were a member of the United Irishmen you probably wouldn’t have liked him very much. He was to that revolutionary organisation what Eliot Ness was to Al Capone.

Henry Sirr was a police chief extraordinaire. He dedicated his life to catching bad guys for two decades at the turn of the 18th century. Well, a lot of his life anyway. He was also a wine merchant. That would be a bit like Garda Commissioner Noreen O’Sullivan owning a few pubs on the side.

Sirr served in the British Army from 1778-1791 where one of his military acquaintances was a certain Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Hold that particular thought for just a few minutes.

In 1796 he became Acting Town Major of the city of Dublin – effectively Chief of the City’s police force. He became a member of the Orange Order and was permanently appointed to his new role in 1798 – a significant year I’m sure you’ll agree. It was certainly significant for Sirr and for his relentless pursuit of the revolutionary element of the Society of United Irishmen, who were planning a rebellion for that year. Sirr appears to have been well-informed by a network of spies about the activities of the leading lights of the United Irishmen. So much so that he caught almost the entire committee of the Leinster Branch at a covert meeting on 12 March 1798 in the house of the woollen merchant Oliver Bond. The only man he missed was his old Army colleague Lord Edward Fitzgerald, but he atoned for that oversight on 19 May when he shot and killed Fitzgerald after the aristocrat had tried to stab him to avoid arrest. A few days later he also caught the radical Sheares brothers in two different houses on the same day, this may have given rise to his reputation for bi-location.

Five years later Sirr added to his lustre – assuming you were a major fan of Dublin Castle – by apprehending the young rebel leader Robert Emmet, a month after his ill-starred Dublin rising. He also burst into the home of the eminent barrister John Philpott Curran in a frustrated attempt to locate correspondence between Emmet and Curran’s daughter Sarah.

Raiding Curran’s house must have given Sirr considerable pleasure as the two men had ‘previous’. In 1802 Curran had represented one John Hevey in the case of Hevey v Sirr . In 1798 Hevey, a well-known Brewer, happened to be in court at the trial of a man named McGuire, being prosecuted for insurgency at the behest of Sirr and being damned by informer evidence. Hevey was familiar with the informer, an unloved and dishonest former employee. He testified to the witness’s total lack of reliability and was believed by the jury. Sirr was suitably enraged at the collapse of his case. He threatened Hevey and three years later delivered on the threat by arresting the brewer. Hevey later sued for assault, battery and false imprisonment. Curran went to town on Sirr, and Hevey duly won damages of £150 – more than £10,000 today. Testifying to Sirr’s lack of popularity bonfires were lit all around the city and church bells were rung when the verdict was announced.

Sirr paid a personal price for his pursuit of the United Irishmen, he escaped at least three assassination attempts, and was forced to move his family home on no less that six occasions before being quartered inside Dublin Castle. A noted collector of antiques and curios he is believed to have obtained and retained copies of every broadside, cartoon or satirical article in which he featured.

Sirr, however, was not a stereotypical central casting villain. He was a deeply religious man who was involved with the wonderfully named Association for Discountenancing Vice. He must have had a low opinion of the morals of Dublin hackney drivers because he could often be found haranguing them. Though he might simply have been objecting to excessive fares or lack of availability. He was also a founder of the Irish Society for Promoting Scriptural Education in the Irish Language. Later in life he became a magistrate, was an admirer of Daniel O’Connell and supported the 1832 political Reform Act which curtailed aristocratic privilege in the House of Commons.

Despite doing the state much service he was never elevated to the peerage. Perhaps the civil authorities and the monarchs of his day felt that he was just a little too prone to the odd bit of abuse of power. Or maybe they felt that someone called Sir Henry Sirr was just too much tautology.

Major Henry Charles Sirr, Dublin Chief of Police in interesting times, was born two hundred and fifty two years ago, on this day.

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On This Day – 24.7.1750 Birth of John Philpot Curran, the man who almost became Robert Emmet’s father in law

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John Philpot Curran (24 Jul 1750 – 14 Oct 1817) Irish orator, politician and wit; Black and White Illustration;

John Philpot Curran (b.24 Jul 1750 )

On the morning of his 53rd birthday the leading Irish barrister of his day, John Philpot Curran, would have received news of serious disturbances in the city of Dublin. He would have been horrified to learn of the brutal death of his friend Lord Kilwarden, dragged from his coach along with his nephew and daughter and stabbed repeatedly with pikes.

However the violence of 23rd July 1803 was to come even closer to home for Curran. He would quickly have learned that it was no angry and leaderless mob that had murdered Kilwarden. It was the last throw of the dice of the United Irishmen, supposedly suppressed viciously five years earlier, in a rebellion led by a young Dublin Protestant, Robert Emmet. That name would come to haunt Curran.

John Philpot Curran was one of the most celebrated Irish public figures of his day. He was a politician, having been a member of the Irish parliament for three different constituencies. He was probably the most capable member of the Irish bar and had, in 1798, ably but futilely defended many of the leaders of the United Irishmen’s rebellion. His early career as a barrister had been marred by a serious stammer that had earned him the unenviable nickname ‘Stuttering Jack Curran’. But he had conquered his disability, apparently by spending hours reciting Shakespeare in front of a mirror.

He was also a duellist, having fought up to half a dozen opponents and survived.

One of those encounters highlights his penchant for ‘lost causes’ or, at least, his affiliation to the underdog. In 1780 Curran, himself a wealthy and well-connected Protestant, took on the case of an elderly Catholic priest, Father Neale, who had fallen foul of a distinctly obnoxious aristocrat, Lord Doneraile. The priest had criticized the brother of Doneraile’s mistress for maintaining an adulterous relationship and Doneraile, as you did if you were called– I kid you not – St.Leger St.Leger (his parents must have been extremely attached to the family name) had horsewhipped Father Neale for his croppy effrontery. St.Leger (squared) did not anticipate a jury of his peers deciding to punish him. But he reckoned without Curran’s powers of persuasion. The young advocate’s arguments coaxed the jury into awarding the horsewhipped priest 30 guineas and an affronted Doneraile challenged Curran to a duel. He fired and missed, Curran walked away without shooting.

While Curran may have opposed the Act of Union and defended United Irishmen his tolerance did not extend as far as permitting a relationship to form between his daughter Sarah and Robert Emmet. However, after the capture of the young rebel in the wake of his abortive coup Curran, typically, agreed to defend Emmet. He was unaware, however, of the existence of a correspondence between his client and his daughter. When the authorities came to search his house and he was apprised of the existence of letters between the young rebel and his youngest daughter he threw up the brief. Crucially he was replaced as defence counsel by the Crown’s most valuable intelligence asset in Dublin, the traitorous United Irishman Leonard McNally.

Curran was famous as a wit and phrasemaker. It may well have been he, rather than Edmund Burke, who uttered the immortal line ‘evil prospers when good men do nothing’. He said of an enemy that ‘his smile is like the silver plate on a coffin’. Marx once advised Engels to read Curran’s speeches. In an encounter with the infamous Irish hanging judge, Lord Norbury, the justice inquired of Curran if a particular piece of meat was ‘hung-beef’ to which Curran responded acidly ‘Do try it my Lord, then it is sure to be.’

In his private life he was often unhappy, he disowned his daughter Sarah and later his wife, also called Sarah and with whom he had nine children, ran off with a Protestant rector whom Curran sued for criminal conversation. But as a public figure Curran was a colossus who spanned the period between Henry Grattan and Daniel O’Connell and was, in many ways, the equal of both.

John Philpot Curran, scholar, poet, wit, barrister, politician, and humanitarian, was born 265 years ago, on this day.

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