TONE’S DEATH

Sir,—In his article ‘The death of Theobald Wolfe Tone—suicide or murder?’ (HI 32.5, Sept./Oct. 2024), Paddy Cullivan reveals the circumstances of his personal research on the death of Wolfe Tone, leading to his speculation that Tone could have been murdered rather than committing suicide. He is not the first to so postulate. A much more detailed and sourced article on the same topic, ‘Wolfe Tone’s death: suicide or assassination?’, appeared in the Irish Journal of Medical Science, Vol. 166, No. 1 (ISSN0021-12 65), for January–March 1997, written by my late father, Comdt Patrick D. O’Donnell. Addressing a geopolitical angle, he wrote of Lentaigne that if

‘… stitching had been done Tone would probably have lived until they could bring him before the next sitting civil court or be exchanged, if such could have been arranged, by General Bonaparte, for a French prisoner of equal rank. It is interesting to recall that Bonaparte said to Tone in his last of three interviews, when Tone humbly said he was untrained militarily, “Mais tu es courageux [But you are brave]”.’  

Benjamin Lentaigne was a royalist exile from revolutionary France, with no medical qualification until 1801 (as my father later noted), and his intervention on Tone was in his capacity as an apprentice or assistant surgeon recruited to the 5th Dragoon Guards in 1795, when he joined the British army:

‘He resigned from the Dragoons in 1799 a year after Tone died, and married Marie Therese O’Neill of Athboy, Co. Meath. Lentaigne’s father was Count Pierre François Lentaigne de Logiviere who had been also a Lieutenant of Dragoons (GO MS 179). Benjamin Lentaigne’s son was Sir John (1803–86). Another of his sons Joseph became Permanent Secretary to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, while son Gerald was placed as assistant secretary to the Indian Government (Catholic’s Who’s Who and Year Books, 1875, 1910, 1913, and Medical Who’s Who 1914). Another son, Sir John Lentaigne, Benjamin’s grandson, was born on 19 July 1855 and educated at Clongowes and Trinity College, Dublin. He was surgeon to the Mater Hospital and wrote on a variety of subjects. He married Phillis Cobbey and they had eight children. Sir John Lentaigne was elected president of the RCSI in 1908 and died from coronary heart disease on 20 March 1915.’

My father’s research pointed to two scenarios for the possible assassination of Wolfe Tone. But he moots further, referring to Benjamin Lentaigne’s Latin treatise ‘Testamen de Causis Morborum’ (1812), written under his nom de plume Medicus Dubliniensis, about the neck wound, presumed to refer to Tone’s, that:

‘Something might be made of the suddenness of Lentaigne’s [own] death after writing the Latin treatise. It could be that he knew his life would not last much longer and wished to correct matters. He had kept his secret if such it was until 1812 and even then drew the veil only slightly aside doing it anonymously and in Latin. It would be likely that feeling his health decline he decided to make at least an oblique reference to the neck wound before his early death at the age of 43.’

—Yours etc.,

FRANCIS M. O’DONNELL

Vienna