if he had the right to speak to his fellow prisoners. This offer was declined, despite the fact that his name had been used in their trials and allegations were made against him. Postponing the case, O’Donovan Rossa was taken back to Kilmainham on remand. Returning back to Green Street Courthouse, he announced he would defend himself and did not require a legal team. He grounded this in the fact that he believed the court remained a charade and the jury had been packed to secure a conviction. Despite continued calls from Keogh that he was out of order, he announced that: ‘I believe that this trial is a legal farce and I won’t be a party to it by being represented by counsel.’44
O’Donovan Rossa, true to his earlier intention of making his trial a political theatre, began cross-examining witnesses, including Pierce Nagle. Throughout the course of the Irish People trials, Nagle had kept his back to the defendants – his former comrades. This had angered O’Donovan Rossa, who insisted that Nagle should face him as he questioned the erstwhile Fenian. Nagle and the prosecution had objected to this, and as a compromise, he was placed sitting with only the left side of his face directed at O’Donovan Rossa. From the dock, O’Donovan Rossa incessantly goaded Nagle. He had asked him if he had ever seen him administering oaths to anyone – Nagle could not confirm. He had asked him if he had seen anything in The Irish People offices which he believed constituted a threat to British rule in Ireland. Nagle responded as to how he had not seen anything but believed that they were engaged in dangerous conspiracy.45 The prisoner next questioned Nagle as to handwriting and sought clarification as to entries allegedly sighed by O’Donovan Rossa that he had earlier confirmed. Questioning the character and attitude of Nagle, O’Donovan Rossa next asked the informer if he had any guilt as to his role in the imprisonment of men he had known. Nagle refused to answer. O’Donovan Rossa took this as a sign of guilt and asked him about Dowling Mulcahy, whom had got him the job at The Irish People, and Thomas Clarke Luby who fought to have him reinstated in his position when he had been discharged by James O’Connor. Judge Keogh interrupted O’Donovan Rossa and called his line of questioning out of order and asserted he was ‘wasting the public’s time’.46 Sparring with Judge Keogh, O’Donovan Rossa retorted how ‘twenty years is a long time and I want to use these few days as best I can’.47 Keogh would increasingly become a figure of odium for O’Donovan Rossa throughout the duration of his trial. Levying accusations at Keogh, O’Donovan Rossa compared him to Lord Norbury, the infamous Hanging Judge of the early nineteenth century who had sentenced the Irish rebel, Robert Emmet, to death in 1803.
O’Donovan Rossa next demanded to be allowed to look through all documents and publications that had been put against him. Initially, he examined a pamphlet produced by the Chicago Convention of the Fenian Brotherhood. In total the pamphlet consisted of eighty pages of small print, including the constitution of the Fenian Brotherhood. He did so to prove that it was irrelevant to his trial and it did not concern him. Judge Keogh was becoming more irritated with Rossa and accused him of wasting time, and that he would not tolerate much more. The Jury had equally pleaded with O’Donovan Rossa to allow them to deliberate on the pamphlet in private. To much laughter in the Court, one juror, breaking ranks, shouted up ‘occupying so much time in reading what does not concern this case is enough to stir up an armed insurrection among the persons in court’.48
Having laboriously finished reading the Fenian pamphlet to the Jury, O’Donovan Rossa, as business manager of The Irish People, charged with publishing the newspaper, noted he had a right to read the newspaper to the Jury. This involved a file including every edition of The Irish People ever published between 1863-65. One contemporary recalled ‘horror set upon the faces of the Judges, Jurymen, Sheriffs, Lawyers [and] turnkeys’.49 As a compromise he agreed that he would not read the advertisements. Shifting through the Irish People, O’Donovan Rossa had sought to obstruct the court case. Judge Keogh continuously intervened in his readings of articles, many of which he forbade from being read to the Court as he believed it was a dissemination of treasonable ideals. He also directed any reporters in the Courtroom not to transcribe or paraphrase any of the articles which O’Donovan Rossa had read. With the trial continuing until six o’clock in the evening, O’Donovan Rossa, having spoken for eight hours at length, asked Judge Keogh to postpone the case until the following day. Keogh, knowing that O’Donovan Rossa was growing tired, refused to postpone, and directed that the trial continue throughout the evening. Nearing the end of his appeal to the Jury, O’Donovan Rossa closed the file containing the editions of The Irish People, and holding it in his hands; he animatedly made a final appeal to the Jury:
And now, gentlemen, a few words. I say that indictment has been brought against me; and that man [pointing to Judge Keogh] has been placed on that bench to try me; and if there is one among you with a spark of honesty in his breast, he will resent such injustice. The article has been brought against me in the indictment; and do you all believe that man on the bench is the proper man to try me? He has been placed there to convict me.50
Dramatically, O’Donovan Rossa flung the file containing The Irish People onto a nearby table, and announced: ‘there, let the law take its dirty course’.51
On Wednesday 13 December 1865, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa was found guilty of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment. In summing up his case, Judge Keogh had pointed out that he had been arrested and imprisoned for conspiracy in 1859 and was regularly in contact with James Stephens and John O’Mahony. O’Donovan Rossa interrupted the Judge, announcing: ‘I am an Irishman since I was born.’52 Keogh had evidently had enough of O’Donovan Rossa and breaking from his speech, he addressed the prisoner personally, holding: ‘He would not now waste words, by trying to bring your word to any sense of the crime of which you have been found guilty.’ O’Donovan Rossa retorted ‘You need not! It would be useless for you to try!’53 Taken from the courtroom and down towards an underground passage, O’Donovan Rossa was recorded to have smiled at his sympathisers ‘and walked with a light step from the dock’.54 Shortly afterwards he wrote to his wife:
On the whole, Mollis, I am satisfied with the course I took. I hope you are too. With a view to public good I considered it a good one to adopt, and I believe that all who would sacrifice anything for the cause of country will approve of it… May God guard and strengthen you till we meet again…55
5
A PRISONER OF THE QUEEN
Despite the bravado of his trial, the thought of the sentence of life imprisonment weighed heavily on O’Donovan Rossa’s mind. Not only was he separated from his heavily pregnant wife and family, he also understood the severe nature of the British Prison system under which he would have to comply. It was a militaristically disciplined system underlined by silence, supervision and separation. It also operated on a system of discipline devised in the 1840s by the prison reformer, Alexander Maconochie. Known as the Marks System, it had been established to ‘uniformly subjugate all brought under its influences’,1 and undermined fixed sentences in favour of the potential for reduced punishment. This could be achieved through the accumulation of marks for good, disciplined behaviour and hard work. When a prisoner had accumulated enough marks, relative to the crime he had been imprisoned for, he could be released. Yet if the prisoner broke prison regulation, his marks were to be taken from him, and his sentence would revert to its original status with extra time. Within Victorian parlance, this was a currency of sorts which the prison authorities could use to penalise offenders and reward those who sought moral reform.
Mountjoy Prison was also organised on a strict system of silence and separation. This was grounded in the Victorian belief in the power of contemplation and repetitive thought about one’s previous actions. It was hoped that through silence, the prisoner’s resolve could be broken, and he would be forced to think about the crime which he had committed, ultimately facilitating his redemption through silent contemplation. In deference to this rule, prisoners were kept separated at all times; this included religious services where prisoners were placed into compartments within the Prison Chapel, allowing them to see only the Chaplain, rather than each other.
As a political
