The case was successfully prosecuted by the Attorney General, Solicitor General James Murphy QC (later Mr Justice Murphy), and Peter O’Brien, before Justice William O’Brien. [8] [9] Invincibles' leader James Carey, Michael Kavanagh and Joe Hanlon agreed to testify against the others. Joe Brady, Michael Fagan, Thomas Caffrey, Dan Curley and Tim Kelly were convicted of the murders, [10] and were hanged by William Marwood in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin between 14 May and 9 June 1883. Others, convicted as accessories to the crime, were sentenced to serve long prison terms. Fitzharris was acquitted of murder but retried as an accessory and convicted. [10]

Quinn, James (2009). "Mary Ann Byrne In Byrne, Frank". In McGuire, James; Quinn, James (eds.). Dictionary of Irish Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parnell made a speech condemning the murders in 1882, increasing his already huge popularity in both Britain and Ireland. He had just enabled some reforms under the Kilmainham Treaty four days before the murders. Parnell's reputation increased in Ireland, being seen as a more moderate reformer who would never excuse such tactics. [12] Joseph Brady’s head was cut off after his hanging and kept for medical purposes. John Mallon Dublin Mtropolitan Police chief, kept part of his spine as a souvenir But who were, the Invincibles really? And how did they come to adopt such ruthless methods in the cause of Irish independence? Context; Coercion of the Land League As a result of these trials and the information secured in Kilmainham Gaol, five of the Invincibles were executed by the famous hangman William Marwood. Marwood, the state executioner, had been specially transported from Britain to Dublin to carry out the executions in Kilmainham. The five executed men were:The approach certainly yields benefits, but it comes at a price, principally in crowding out the analysis of historians. This is a problem chiefly in relation to the treatment of the fraught issue of physical force movements in late 19th-century Ireland, especially in their relation to the Land League and Parnell, which has been the subject of meticulous scholarly analysis for decades. Broadly Kavanagh gets this right but is not always sure-footed: one can, for example, be quite certain that Joseph Biggar, Parnell’s plain-spoken ally in obstructionism, did not meet emissaries from America to discuss the formation of a murder society in London in October 1881, as a source informed Insp John Mallon, and Kavanagh appears to accept. The Invincibles' leader James Carey, Michael Kavanagh and Joe Hanlon agreed to testify against the others. Joe Brady, Michael Fagan, Thomas Caffrey, Dan Curley and Tim Kelly were convicted of the murder. [6] They were hanged in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin between 14 May and 4 June 1883. Others were sentenced to serve long prison terms. THE IRISH FRANKENSTEIN. “The baneful and blood-stained Monster * * * yet was it not my master to the very extent that it was my creature . . . Had I not breathed into it my own spirit?” * * * (Extracts from the Works of C.S. P-rn-ll, M.P.).’ Punch (20 May 1882) quotes from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to link Charles Stewart Parnell (left) with the murders. (British Library) There has never been a movement more misunderstood than and as controversial as the Invincibles in Irish history. Corfe, Tom (1968). The Phoenix Park Murders: Conflict, Compromise and Tragedy in Ireland, 1879–1882. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-34002-624-3.

James Carey was one of the leading figures of the Dublin Invincible leadership. In Kilmainham he underwent extensive psychological manipulation; Mallon telling him that Daniel Curley had revealed all about Carey’s involvement in the Invincibles, and meeting his wife outside of the Gaol, he told a similar story. He also allowed Carey’s wife to send letters to Carey, repeating what Mallon had said of Curley’s treachery. This was all a lie, Curley had not talked and had refused to speak about his role or anyone else’s role in the Invincible conspiracy. Joseph Brady, hanged and decapitated for his role in the killing of Chief Secretary Cavendish. This disaster in the harvest was combined with the unpredictability of capitalism, as the value of Irish agricultural produce in the British market fell against cheaper imports from South America and New Zealand. Many tenant farmers, particularly in the west, could not now afford to pay rent, resulting in an increasing number of evictions – rising from 406 in 1877, to 1098 in one year, and levels of emigration not witnessed since the famine. With the famine less than a generation beforehand, tenant farmers were not prepared to allow tragedy to strike for a second time, many determining to organise as a social movement seeking fairer rights on their farms and lands led by an effective tenant leadership. Forster vigorously championed and applied coercion in Ireland, which was administered by his permanent Undersecretary, Thomas Henry Burke. Once put into operation, some nine hundred members of the Land league were arrested and interned in various prisons across Ireland, culminating in the arrest of Charles Stewart Parnell in October 1881 and his imprisonment in Kilmainham Gaol Dublin.Andrew Roberts; "Salisbury Victorian Titan" (Phoenix Press, London 1999) p. 454. ISBN 0-7538-1091-3 Charles Stewart Parnell's policy of allying his Irish Parliamentary Party to Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone's Liberal Party in 1886 to enable Home Rule was undone by the murders. Gladstone's Minister Lord Hartington, the elder brother of Lord Cavendish, split with Gladstone on the Home Rule bills [11] of 1886 and 1893 and led the breakaway Liberal Unionist Association, which allied itself to Lord Salisbury's Conservative governments. In the ensuing 1886 general election the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists swept the board. This delayed Home Rule by twenty-eight years until the Government of Ireland Act 1914, which was technically passed but was never effected. [ citation needed] Reaction [ edit ] A Short Account of the Discovery and Conviction of the 'Invincibles'", by George Bolton, Esq., Dantonien Journal, 1887. Retrieved 15 November 2019.

Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). "Pigott, Richard". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol.35. London: Smith, Elder & Co. The hitherto unknown group left a card into all the major newspapers identifying themselves as the Irish National Invincibles. For the first time in Irish history there would be Sunday editions of the major newspapers. Only the case of Kelly gave any real difficulty. He was 19 and generally said to look much younger, and by referring to him as "a child" his defence counsel created enough unease for two juries to disagree. Only after an unprecedented third trial was he found guilty. [10] Implications [ edit ] Punch magazine depicts the Fenian movement as Frankenstein's monster to Charles Parnell's Frankenstein, in the wake of the Phoenix Park Murders. Burke is himself an interesting figure, a scion of the Catholic landed gentry of County Galway and a grand-nephew of Cardinal Wiseman, the first Catholic archbishop of Westminster, in the wake of the re-establishment of a Catholic hier-archy for England and Wales in 1850. He had served in the office of the chief secretary in Dublin Castle since 1847, and was appointed under-secretary in 1869. He was a conscientious and hard-working official, and W.E. Forster—Cavendish’s predecessor—said of him that he was ‘the most efficient permanent official I ever came across, and my only fear about him is that he will literally work himself to death’. He was closely identified with and involved in the coercion policies espoused by Forster in response to the first Land War from 1879 onwards, and no doubt this explains why the Invincibles targeted him for assassination. It is notable that, to quote from the entry on Burke in the Dictionary of Irish biography,

Epilogue

In March 1887, The Times printed letters that said they were written by Parnell. The letters said that he agreed with the murderers of the English politicians, and that his speech saying otherwise was not true. It later came to light that the letters were not written by Parnell. They were forgeries written by journalist Richard Pigott. Parnell was personally shown to be innocent by the Parnell Commission in 1888-89. Irish politician Charles Stewart Parnell made a speech condemning the murders in 1882. This increased his popularity in both Britain and Ireland. [7] In the aftermath of the Phoenix Park assassinations Coercion was again introduced in Ireland, a provision of which, Section 16 allowed for what became known as the Star Chamber inquiry, allowing the state summon a suspect for interrogation under oath, and without legal representation, each witness compelled to give evidence in any subsequent trial facing imprisonment if he refused to do so. One can be quite certain that Joseph Biggar, Parnell's plain-spoken ally in obstructionism, did not meet emissaries from America to discuss the formation of a murder society If I had a thousand lives to lose, I would rather lose them sooner then bring to my grave the name of informer’, Daniel Curley.

In Finnegans Wake Joyce writes of: “ignorant invincibles, innocents immutant”. Perhaps he was recalling the sweet youth of Tim Kelly, apprentice coachmaker, who was extinguished in Kilmainham on June 9th, 1883. Carey testified that the Invincibles were formed in 1881 wiht the intention of assassinating high ranking British administrators in Ireland

the Land League was a movement of tenant farmers led by Irish nationalists. It was seen as a challenge to British rule in Ireland Taken to Kilmainham Gaol, they were extensively interrogated by John Mallon and Adye Curran, who would ‘turn’ several into informers, including Kavanagh (who had driven four Invincibles from the Phoenix Park after the assassination), Joseph Smith and most importantly, James Carey.