First executions of the Rising's leaders

At dawn on 3 May 1916, in the yard of Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol, a firing squad shot three leaders of the Easter Rising: Patrick Pearse, Thomas Clarke and Thomas MacDonagh. All three had signed the proclamation of the Irish Republic. These were the first of the sixteen executions with which the British authorities punished the leaders of the Rising, and it was they that, within a few weeks, did most to change the attitude of the Irish towards the whole event.

After the collapse of the Rising, General Sir John Maxwell, who as commander-in-chief in Ireland had held full powers since the declaration of martial law, decided to punish the leaders swiftly and severely. They were tried not before the ordinary courts but before field general courts martial, under the Defence of the Realm Act. Pearse, Clarke and MacDonagh were tried on 2 May at Richmond Barracks, where the prisoners were being held. The court was presided over by Brigadier-General Charles Blackader. The hearings were held behind closed doors, without defence counsel, and were short. The accused were charged with taking part in an armed rebellion “for the purpose of assisting the enemy”. Pearse did not deny his role and took responsibility upon himself. Clarke called no witnesses and made no statement. All three were sentenced to death, and Maxwell confirmed the sentences the same day. During the night the condemned men were taken to Kilmainham. There Pearse wrote his last letters, among others to his mother and his brother William, and Clarke was visited in his cell by his wife Kathleen. According to her recollections, he said that Ireland would go through hell, but would never again give in until she had won full freedom. According to the most commonly cited accounts, they were shot between half past three and four in the morning. The bodies were not handed over to the families. They were buried without coffins in a common pit in the grounds of Arbour Hill military prison and covered with quicklime, so that they would not become places of pilgrimage.

The same day the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, informed the House of Commons that he had received a telegram from Dublin stating that three signatories of the proclamation had been sentenced by court martial to be shot and that the sentence had been carried out that morning. The Irish MP Laurence Ginnell then called out: “Hunnish!” Shortly afterwards the House heard the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Augustine Birrell, who announced his resignation and admitted that he had misjudged the Sinn Féin movement and underestimated the threat of an outbreak. The leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, John Redmond, who had condemned the Rising, asked the government not to show “undue severity” towards the rank-and-file participants and not to add new wounds to the “wretched memories” of the Irish, which might be kept for generations. He recalled the leniency with which the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, Louis Botha, had treated the recent Boer rebels.

The government, however, did not halt the courts martial. On 4 May four more condemned men were shot, among them Joseph Plunkett, who a few hours before his death had married Grace Gifford, the sister of MacDonagh’s wife, in the prison chapel, as well as Patrick’s younger brother William Pearse and Clarke’s brother-in-law Edward Daly, commander of the garrison in the Four Courts. On 5 May John MacBride, who had not been one of the leaders, was killed, and on 8 May Éamonn Ceannt, Michael Mallin, Seán Heuston and Con Colbert. On 9 May Thomas Kent was shot in Cork, sentenced for the death of a policeman killed during an attempt to arrest his family. The last, on 12 May, were Seán Mac Diarmada and James Connolly, badly wounded in the leg and shot sitting in a chair. The courts martial sentenced about 90 people to death, but Maxwell confirmed only fifteen of the sentences. The others, including Éamon de Valera and Constance Markievicz, had their death sentences commuted to imprisonment. The sixteenth victim was Roger Casement, hanged in London on 3 August.

The executions, spread over ten days, announced in brief communiqués and combined with mass arrests, turned opinion in Ireland around. The rebels, whom many Dubliners had received with hostility in April, began to be seen as martyrs. On 11 May John Dillon, Redmond’s deputy, who had been in Dublin during the fighting, accused the government in the House of Commons of “washing out in a sea of blood” the life’s work of the moderate nationalists. The next day Asquith came to Dublin, and after Connolly’s execution further executions were halted. The damage, however, had already been done. Growing support for the republicans brought Sinn Féin victory in the 1918 election, displacing Redmond’s moderate party.