By Paddy Cullivan
While researching my show ‘The Murder of Wolfe Tone’, I noticed an error in Georgina Laragy’s article ‘Wolfe Tone and the culture of suicide in eighteenth-century Ireland’ (HI 21.6, Nov./Dec. 2013, pp 20–2). She writes: ‘According to a London newspaper, the Courier, Major Sandys, who was in charge of Tone’s trial, was not “gratified by seeing a stake driven through the body of the deceased”. Viceroy Cornwallis agreed; he did “not delight in trampling on the ashes of the dead”.’
This gives the impression that Tone’s jailer, William Sandys, had no interest in seeing a stake put through Tone’s heart (the traditional punishment for the ‘crime’ of suicide) after his death on 19 November 1798. However, the Courier piece of 27 November doesn’t quite say that: ‘… Brigade Major Sandys claimed [Tone’s possessions] as his property … but he has been disappointed. Nor has he been gratified by seeing a stake driven through the body of the deceased in consequence of the verdict of the coroner’s inquest that he committed suicide. The Humane Cornwallis does not delight in trampling on the ashes of the dead.’
In other words, Sandys and Cornwallis did not agree—they were at loggerheads over Sandys’s wish to dishonour Tone’s will and impale his corpse. Cornwallis vetoed Sandys on both counts, ordering Tone’s possessions to be handed over to his father, Peter. Tone was then buried in consecrated ground at Bodenstown, against the legal and religious proscriptions of the time. By mistranscribing the words ‘nor has he been gratified’ to ‘not gratified’, Laragy has inadvertently altered the meaning. It’s an easy mistake to make. On such tiny inaccuracies are countless false Irish historical narratives constructed.
The Courier piece raises another question. On the basis of his actions, was Viceroy Cornwallis the first person to disbelieve Sandys’s suicide narrative? He wouldn’t be the last. Tone’s son William blasted the circumstances around his father’s death in his epic contribution to the Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone (1826). Most historians only quote the initial paragraphs where William agrees with the suicide narrative as the republican ideal—Tone had control of his destiny by cheating the hangman, etc.—but further on he says:
‘It cannot be denied that the character of my father’s jailers would warrant the worst conclusion. The details of my father’s death and last words only reached the public ear through their reports; no-one was allowed to approach him after his wound; no medical attendant to come near him, except the prison surgeon, a foreigner, and French immigrant [Benjamin Lentaigne] … the resistance which was opposed by the military to the warrant of the Chief Justice was indecorous and violent in the extreme; nor was it till compelled by the firmness of Lord Kilwarden to give way that they acknowledged the wound of their prisoner, though, according to their own reports, it had been inflicted during the preceding night. Was it possible that fearing the interference of the civil courts they hastened his end … that their preparations continued till interrupted by the interference of a superior authority; that the wound of their prisoner was anxiously concealed, as long as possible, and that no one, even afterwards, was allowed to approach and speak to him during his long agony, are certain facts.’
Tone’s son was fairer than many who came after him. He treated both suicide and foul play as possibilities. No one can read his words or survey the evidence (or lack thereof) and proclaim, as Frank McDermott did in 1939, ‘that Wolfe Tone cut his own throat is as sure as anything in history’. Desmond Greaves countered in 1963: ‘The very exaggeration of the statement shows its bias. As sure as anything in history? Historians are as entitled to record that Tone was murdered while in illegal custody.’
Editor Thomas Bartlett’s reference in his introduction to the 2004 edition of the Life (and his entry on Tone in the Dictionary of Irish Biography) assumes a level of trust in Sandys and Lentaigne that beggars belief: ‘Tone’s wound was undoubtedly self-inflicted: the fact he languished for a number of days afterwards without accusing anyone is proof of this, and all talk of murder should be discounted’. But how do we know that Tone didn’t accuse anyone? His only interlocutors with the outside world were the people he might accuse!
Many questions arise when it comes to the last week of Tone’s life. There is no penknife or razor, either as evidence or priceless memento, despite the fact that memorabilia-collector Sandys’s death-masks of Tone and, later, Emmet were passed down as family heirlooms. Tone is never seen after his suicide attempt except by his jailers, so we only have it on their word that he cut his throat, lived on for a week, scribbled notes (which are copies, fake or non-existent) and spoke eloquently up to his final moments with a severed windpipe.
Why are so many historians, even those sympathetic to Tone’s ideals, so taken with the government’s case? Tone’s suicide is a rare case in which evidence, common sense and sources are eschewed in favour of romantic speculation about stoicism. I see the appeal, as did many republicans who saw his self-chosen martyrdom as the ultimate republican act. It beats a grubby murder by which our hero is snuffed out before the cavalry arrives.
Tone choosing to die ‘the old Roman Way’ is attractive to scholars and poets. In earlier writings Tone mentions the nobility of suicide. I’d argue that what Tone writes over the last weekend of his life is far more indicative of his state of mind: ‘I will die as I have lived and you will have no cause to blush for me’; ‘My mind is as tranquil now than as at any point in my life’ (letters to Matilda, 10/11 November 1798); ‘I hope I shall have died like a man’ (letter to Sandys, 11 November). These statements show a Tone ready to face the hangman like his comrades, not botch a suicide with a non-existent razor left in the cell by his presumably psychic brother six weeks beforehand.
I’ll speculate without the romance. Tone’s legal team visited him after his court martial on Saturday 10 November. They informed him that they intended to apply to the civil court on Monday to have him retried. Tone was no nihilist or stoic; he’d obviously have waited to see the outcome. On Monday morning Kilwarden judged Tone’s court martial illegal and sent a writ of habeas corpus to remove him from the provost’s prison before his scheduled execution at 1pm. This was rebuffed by Sandys, and Tone’s ‘suicide attempt’ was only revealed after messengers were sent for the second time. This implies that something happened after the verdict was revealed to Sandys and Benjamin Lentaigne, the prison surgeon who attended Tone. In 1812 Lentaigne wrote a mysterious poem a year before his death (and a year after Sandys’s), making reference to a throat wound caused by a ‘bullet or ball’—the syntax of which is remarkably close to Tone’s untypical and poetic ‘dying words’ as reported by the same French surgeon. So what happened? Was there a struggle during which Tone was shot in the throat by a ‘bad anatomist’ who hit nothing vital and disguised it as a self-inflicted wound? If Tone were to die in illegal custody by anything other than his own hand his jailers would be guilty of murder, so it had to be suicide. Tone ‘lingered’ for eight days while a carefully curated story filtered through the newspapers—hence no visitors.
At a History Ireland Hedge School at last year’s Electric Picnic (https://www.historyireland.com/hedge-schools/), where we were both panellists, Fergus Whelan told us that William Jackson, who sensationally poisoned himself at his trial in 1795, is also buried in consecrated ground, so Tone’s final resting-place in Bodenstown graveyard has a curious precedent. Further research, however, found that Jackson’s inquest didn’t assign blame for his death, which means that legally it wasn’t considered a suicide.
Two Trinity scholars wrote to the Irish Times regarding my findings and pointed out that the method of Tone’s death was commonplace. I agree—self-harm was prevalent in those times, from Jackson to Castlereagh. Nevertheless, these infamous events didn’t produce a public dispute as strange and significant as that between Sandys and Cornwallis. In the end we just don’t know, which is why we can say with some justification that Tone could have been murdered.
Paddy Cullivan is the writer and performer of the historical entertainment ‘The Murder of Wolfe Tone’ (https://www.paddycullivan.com/).