James Stephens
James Stephens
John (Jack) Lynch
Many historians agree that the roots of many modern Irish revolutionary organisations are based in the Irish Republican Brotherhood, The IRB. James Stephens, a Kilkenny man, founded it on 17th of March 1858. Around the same time John O’Mahoney founded the Fenians in New York. The aim of the IRB was to overthrow British Rule in Ireland and the Fenians financially and morally supported them in this. Over time both organisations became known as the Fenians.
James Stephens was born in Kilkenny and lived at Lilac Cottage, Blackmill Street in the city. The circumstances of his birth are disputed but Stephens himself gave his date of birth as 26 January 1825. His father, who owned some property, was an auctioneer and booksellers clerk at William Douglas Jackson, Rose Inn Street. His mothers people the Casey’s were small shopkeepers. His cousins, the Casey’s, were notable revolutionaries themselves and were implicated in Fenian activities in the 1860s in England. As a result the four Casey brothers and their mother were exiled in France where the brothers fought on the French side during the Franco-Prussian war. James Stephens attended St Kieran’s College and trained as a civil engineer. When he was 19 years of age he started work in a Kilkenny office concerned with the ongoing construction of the Limerick and Waterford Railway.
Stephens was a voracious reader and was influenced in his politics by Dr Robert Cane who was a leading member of the Irish Confederate movement. Dr Cane was mayor of Kilkenny on two occasions and was imprisoned for several months for revolutionary activities. The Famine and the decline of Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal movement encouraged many middle class people into a new revolutionary movement, The Young Irelanders.
The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland and revolutions sweeping through Europe all lead to the Young Ireland insurrection in Ballingarry in 1848. This badly armed and disorganised rebellion lead to the arrest or flight of the leaders and the Young Ireland movement very quickly died.
Both Stephens and John O’Mahoney had been involved in the failed Rebellion at Ballingarry and went to the Continent on the run. An article in the Kilkenny Moderator said that Stephens had escaped to France disguised as a lady’s maid. This was a report that Stephens vehemently disagreed with. A sham funeral for James Stephens was held in Kilkenny to throw the authorities off the scent. An empty coffin was buried in a graveyard near St Canice’s Cathedral with a headstone suitably inscribed. There even was a mock obituary in the Kilkenny Moderator a Tory paper. Presumed written by George Augustus Prim, a founder of The Kilkenny Archaeological Society. This obituary was so effusive and praised Stephens so much that years later James said that it ‘shocked my modesty’.
Stephens was exiled in Paris for seven years and attended lectures at the Sorbonne. He earned a living by teaching English, lecturing, translating and as a journalist. He set himself three tasks, to keep alive, to pursue knowledge, and to master the technique of conspiracy. Stephens was in contact with secret political societies in Europe and met many French and Italian revolutionary figures that influenced him greatly. He was preparing for his return to Ireland and his hope of armed insurrection.
In 1856 Stephens returned to Ireland and commenced his self described ‘three thousand mile walk’ across the country attempting to unite the various factions and secret societies with the aim of making Ireland an ‘independent democratic republic’. He described himself as ‘An Seabhac Siubnlach’, ‘The Wandering Hawk’.
On 17 March 1858 with monetary support from John O’Mahoney and the Fenians, who were founded in America around this time, James Stephens founded the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Lombard Street, Dublin.
The IRB were organised into cells or centres with Stephens as Head Centre. Each centre, a small group of people, with a colonel who had nine captains who each had nine sergeants who were each in charge of nine privates. No centre was to be aware of the membership of any other centre; this would hopefully ensure secrecy and the thwarting of informers, a problem which had bedevilled Irish revolutionary politics for a long time.
Stephens travelled to America on several occasions to promote the movement, gather funds and heal rifts, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. The USA did not make a great impression on him, this land of self, greed and grab. The Catholic Church including Archbishop Cullen of Dublin condemned the organisation. In 1863, back in Dublin, Stephens started a newspaper, The Irish People, with another Kilkenny man, John Haltigan, as his printer. In that year he married Jane Hopper in Dublin. Stephens organised recruitment, drilling, arms manufacturing and subversion of soldiers of the Irish regiments of the British Army.
American plans for a rising were lost at Kingstown Railway station and lead to a raid on the offices of Stephens’s paper, The Irish People, on 15 September 1865. The paper was suppressed and many of the leaders, Thomas Clarke Luby, John O’Leary and O’Donovan Rossa were arrested. Stephens escaped and evaded capture for four weeks and when caught he was incarcerated in Richmond Jail but with the help of two sympathetic warders he escaped on 24th of November. Several trips to America to resolve rows and splits ended in failure and the loss of his position as Head of the IRB with exile once again in France and Belgium in destitution. (Pressure was coming from the American Fenians for action and John O’Mahoney was losing control with splits in the American and Canadian factions. Early in 1866 Stephens travelled to America again to unite the organisation. This time matters did not proceed smoothly, Stephens was deposed as head of the IRB and vilified in print by his former comrades. He returned to Paris and endured bad health. A badly planned rising in 1867, without James Stephens, was put down and The Irish Constabulary was rewarded for its part in the suppression by the addendum of Royal, The RIC. Following the arrest of some of the leaders, a rescue attempt in Manchester and the killing of a police sergeant resulted in the hanging of Allen, Larkin and O’Brien, The Manchester Martyrs. Stephens lived in France in destitution. He continued to try to regain control of the IRB. His circumstances improved and in January 1879 he returned to New York to attempt for the final time to assume control of The Brotherhood. He campaigned for one year in America but his attempt ended in failure. He returned to France, and existed in near starvation on casual journalism and tuition.
In March 1885 a dynamiting campaign in Britain carried out by a group of Fenians known as the ‘Triangle’ resulted in James Stephens and others being expelled from France with Stephens ending up in Mons in Belgium.) In 1891 Charles Stewart Parnell organised for James and his wife Jane to return to Dublin after twenty-five years of exile. They lived in retirement in Sutton. Jane died in 1895 at the age of fifty-one. James died at his brother-in laws house in Blackrock, on 29th March 1901 aged 76. His coffin bore the Tricolour, which later in 1916 symbolised the hopes and dreams of this revolutionary.
The organisation started by James Stephens left its mark into the twentieth century. Members of the IRB gained control of many of the nationalist institutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century amongst them the G.A.A, Gaelic League, the Land League and others. It was the main impetus behind the Irish Volunteers, who later became the Irish Republican Army during the war of Independence. A small group within the Military Council of the IRB planned the Easter Rising. Six of the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in 1916 were IRB men. In Kilkenny Alderman James Nowlan, President of the GAA and leading members of the Irish Volunteers including Peter DeLoughrey, were also members of the IRB. He is remembered today in Kilkenny by the naming of the military barracks, James Stephens Military Barracks, the old swimming pool at Michael St now a boxing club, by Stephen’s St in St Mary’s Parish and a very famous GAA club, James Stephens GAA in The Village and in Co Mayo by the GAA club, The Ballina Stephenites.
James Stephens story and life deserves to be remembered by every citizen of this country.