On This Day: The Manchester Marytrs, three Irish rebels were hanged in 1867

On September 18, 1867, armed men ambushed a police van traveling through Manchester, freeing two imprisoned Fenian leaders in a dramatic prison break. But when an unarmed police sergeant was shot and killed in the chaos, British authorities moved swiftly to exact vengeance, not against those who fired the fatal shot, but against any Irish rebels they could find.

That tragic day set in motion events that would transform three working-class Irishmen into enduring symbols of martyrdom for the Irish independence movement and inspire generations to come.

The rescue operation had a clear military objective. Colonel Thomas J. Kelly and Captain Timothy Deasy, both Irish American Civil War veterans, were imprisoned in Manchester after their roles in failed Irish uprisings. When Fenian leaders learned the men would be moved from the courthouse to Belle Vue Prison, they planned an ambush beneath a railway arch on Hyde Road.

The attack succeeded in freeing Kelly and Deasy, who escaped to America. However, the victory came at a terrible cost. In the confusion, an unarmed police sergeant named Charles Brett was shot through the head and died the following morning. No one could say with certainty who fired the fatal shot, and contemporary accounts suggest it may have been a tragic accident rather than a deliberate murder, but that distinction would not matter to British justice.

Enraged by the death of Manchester's first police officer killed in the line of duty, authorities arrested over forty men in the following days. Twenty-six faced trial. The three who were convicted and sentenced to death became known as the Manchester Martyrs.

William Allen was just eighteen years old, a carpenter from County Cork. Michael Larkin, thirty-two, was a tailor from County Offaly with a wife and five children waiting at home. Michael O'Brien, thirty-one and from County Cork, had served as a lieutenant in the American Civil War.

The trial itself was a travesty. Witnesses consisted largely of common criminals and women of questionable standing. Suspects were identified while handcuffed and manacled in police custody, a practice so irregular that observers called it scandalous. Defense attorney Ernest Jones, a former Chartist imprisoned for his own seditious speeches, walked out of the courtroom in protest, declaring he could not disgrace the legal profession by continuing.

Yet the evidence against them remained dubious. No one proved that Allen, Larkin, or O'Brien fired the fatal shot. Defense lawyers argued they were convicted under a "joint enterprise" theory, meaning they were responsible for whatever happened during the rescue attempt, regardless of their direct involvement in Brett's death.

From the dock, Allen delivered words that would echo through Irish history. "I will die proudly and triumphantly in defense of republican principles and the liberty of an oppressed and enslaved people," he declared.

The execution on November 23, 1867, became a horror show. The hangman's incompetence meant that Larkin and O'Brien did not die quickly. Larkin strangled slowly, forcing the executioner to jump on his back to finish the job. O'Brien hung twitching for forty-five agonizing minutes while a priest held a crucifix before his face.

Their gruesome deaths transformed them into martyrs. Funeral processions drew tens of thousands in Dublin. Edward Condon, another condemned man whose sentence had been commuted through American diplomatic intervention, had cried out in the courtroom, "God Save Ireland." The phrase became the refrain of a song that served as Ireland's unofficial national anthem for decades.