IRISH REPUBLICAN BROTHERHOOD.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Trial, Sentence and Execution of Michael Barret for the Murder of Mrs. Hodkinson at Clerkenwell. An illustrated broadside describing the misadventures and final moments of Michael Barrett, rare. Together with other members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), Barrett was accused of carrying out a botched rescue attempt at Clerkenwell Prison which resulted in the deaths of 12 civilians. Sensational, illustrated publications of this kind could be purchased shortly after executions as souvenirs. In early 1867, the IRB attempted an uprising in Ireland. The plot was foiled, but tensions remained high. In November that year, IRB member Ricard O'Sullivan Burke was arrested in London, charged with treason, and held on remand in Clerkenwell Prison. His IRB colleagues attempted to free him by blowing a hole in the prison wall; the resultant blast damaged several nearby tenement houses and caused mass civilian casualties, but no prisoners escaped. The bombing horrified and fascinated Victorian England. Karl Marx, who was living in London at the time, wrote in a letter to Friedrich Engels that "The London masses, who have shown much sympathy for Ireland, will be enraged by it and driven into the arms of the government party" (Marx, vol. 42, p. 501). Despite maintaining his innocence at his trial, Barrettt was found guilty, and his execution was set for 27 May 1868. The broadside dramatizes the event, describing Barrett's "melancholy procession" towards the "fatal apparatus of death

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.