Roger Casement

By:Yegor And Erik

Young Life

Casement was born near Dublin, living his very early childhood at Doyle's Cottage, Lawson Terrace, Sandycove. His Protestant father Captain Roger Casement of Regiment of Dragoons, was the son of a bankrupt Belfast shipping merchant Hugh Casement, who later moved to Australia. Captain Casement had served in the 1842 Afghan campaign and went to fight as a volunteer in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 but arrived after the Surrender at Vilgos

Young Life

Casement's mother, Anne Jephson of Dublin , had him rebaptised secretly as a Catholic when he reached the age of three, in Rhyl. According to an 1892 letter, Casement believed that she was descended from the Jephson family of Mallow, County Cork. However, the Jephson family's historian provides no evidence of this. She died in Worthing when her son was nine. By the time Casement was 13 years old his father was also dead, having ended his days in Ballymena dependent on the charity of relatives.

More on Young Life

After his father's death he was looked after by Protestant paternal relatives in Ulster, the Youngs of Galgorm Castle in Ballymena and the Casements of Magherintemple, and was educated at the Diocesan School, Ballymena, later the Ballymena Academy. He left school at the age of 16 and took up a clerical job with Elder Dempster, a Liverpool shipping company headed by Alfred Lewis Jones, later an enemy on the Congo issue.

Fact File

Name:Roger Casement

D.O.B:1 Sep 1864

A.O.D:51(3 Aug 1916)

Groups:Irish Volunteers,British Foreign Office,IRB(Partly)

P.O.B:SandyCove Dublin

Monuments:Banna Strand

Life as an Adult

In Ireland on leave from Africa in 1904-05, in 1904 Casement joined the Gaelic League established in 1893 to preserve the Irish language. He also met the leaders of the Home Rule IPP to lobby for his work in the Congo, but did not support them as he felt that the House of Lords would always veto their efforts. He was more impressed by Arthur Griffith's new Sinn Fin party which called for Irish independence by using a non-violent series of strikes and boycotts, modelled on the policy of Ferenc Dek in Hungary, and he joined it in 1905.

Life as an Adult

Hobson, who was a member of the Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), Casement established connections with exiled Irish nationalists, particularly in Clan na Gael.

Elements of the Clan did not trust him completely, as he was not a member of the IRB and held views considered by many to be too moderate, although others such as John Quinn regarded him as extreme. John Devoy, who was initially hostile to Casement for his part in conceding control of the Irish Volunteers to Redmond.

Life as an Adult

While the more extreme Clan leader Joseph McGarrity became and remained devoted to Casement. The Howth gun-running in late July 1914 which he had helped to organise and finance further enhanced Casement's reputation.

JohnDevoy

EoinMacNeill

JohnQuinn

How Roger Died

In the early hours of 21 April 1916, three days before the rising began, Casement was put ashore at Banna Strand in Tralee Bay, County Kerry. Too weak to travel, he was discovered at McKenna's Fort (an ancient ring fort now called Casement's Fort) in Rathoneen, Ardfert, and subsequently arrested on charges of treason, sabotage and espionage against the Crown. He was taken straight to the Tower of London where he was imprisoned,[28] but not before he was able to send word to Dublin about the inadequate German assistance.

How Roger Died

The Kerry Brigade of the Irish Volunteers might have tried to rescue him over the next three days.Casement was received into the Catholic Church while awaiting execution and was attended by a Catholic priest, Father James McCarroll, who said of Casement that he was "a saint ... we should be praying to him [Casement] instead of for him". Casement was hanged by John Ellis and his assistants at Pentonville Prison in London on 3 August 1916, at the age of 51

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