Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa

Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa (; 4 September 1831 (baptised) – 29 June 1915) was an Irish Fenian leader who was one of the leading members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Born and raised in Rosscarbery, County Cork, he witnessed the Great Famine. Rossa founded the Phoenix National and Literary Society and dedicated his life to working towards the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. He joined the IRB, was arrested by the British and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1869 he was elected to the British parliament while in prison. After being exiled to the United States in 1870 as part of the Cuba Five amnesty, Rossa worked with other Irish revolutionary organisations there to oppose British rule in Ireland.

Rossa was one of the primary advocates of physical force Irish republicanism and organised the Fenian dynamite campaign, which saw Irish republican groups carry out bombing attacks in Great Britain, targeting both government and civilian targets. The campaign caused widespread outrage among the British public and Rossa was subject to a failed assassination attempt from an Englishwoman in 1885, the same year the campaign ended. Following his death in 1915, he was buried in Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery. His funeral served as a rallying point for Irish republicans and is often cited as a direct stepping stone towards the events of the Easter Rising in 1916.

Early life

Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa was born Jeremiah Donovan in the townland of Reanascreena, Rosscarbery, County Cork, to Denis Donovan and Ellen Driscol, and was baptised on 4 September 1831. His parents were Irish-speaking tenant farmers who raised him in the language. According to the scholar John O'Donovan, with whom Rossa corresponded, Rossa's ancestors belonged to the obscure but ancient sliocht of the MacEnesles or Clan Aneslis O'Donovans. His ancestors had held letters patent in Kilmeen parish in the 17th century before the confiscations, with his agnomen "Rossa" coming from the townland of Rossmore in Kilmeen.

Rossa became a shopkeeper in Skibbereen, where, in 1856, he established the Phoenix National and Literary Society, the aim of which was "the liberation of Ireland by force of arms", This organisation would later become a front for the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), founded two years later in Dublin. He was sentenced to penal servitude for life due to his previous convictions. He served his time in Pentonville, Portland, Millbank and Chatham Convict Prison in England.

Rossa was a defiant prisoner, manacled for 35 straight days for throwing a chamber pot at the prison's warden and thrown into solitary confinement on a bread-and-water diet for three days for refusing to take off his cap in front of the prison's doctor. For most of his time in prison Rossa was denied the right to correspond with his associates in the outside world because he violated prison rules. The election was declared invalid because Rossa was an imprisoned felon.

Dynamite campaign

Rossa allegedly organised the first ever bombings by Irish republicans of English and Scottish cities as part of the Fenian dynamite campaign. The campaign lasted through the 1880s and made him infamous in Great Britain. The British government demanded his extradition from America, but without success. Rossa later justified his revolutionary activities in the following manner;

Failed assassination attempt A drawn depiction of a 1885 assassination attempt by Lucille Yseult Dudley on Rossa. On 2 February 1885, Rossa was shot outside his office near Broadway by an Englishwoman, Lucille Yseult Dudley. The British government responded to the incident by stating that Dudley was mentally unstable and not acting on their behalf. Historians have argued that her motivation for the assassination attempt was anger at Rossa's role in the "skirmishing fund" which served as a fundraise for the dynamite campaign.

Final years In 1891 Rossa's ban from the United Kingdom expired, and thereafter he undertook lecture tours of Britain and Ireland. While in Ireland in 1894, he allowed himself to be nominated for the office of Dublin City Marshal by supporters, but he was heavily defeated. In 1904 he was made a "Freeman of the City of Cork", and in 1905 he was appointed to a clerkship in the office of the secretary to Cork county council. The funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery on 1 August 1915 was a huge affair, garnering substantial publicity for the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood at time when a rebellion (later to emerge as the Easter Rising) was being actively planned. The graveside oration, given by Patrick Pearse, remains one of the most famous speeches of the Irish independence movement stirring his audience to a call to arms. It ended with the lines:

They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but, the fools, the fools, the fools! – They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.

His grave was renovated in 1990 by the National Graves Association.

Personal life Rossa was married three times and had eighteen children. On 6 June 1853, he married Honora "Nora" Eager of Skibbereen, who had four sons (Denis, John, Cornelius Crom and Jeremiah). and New York City Councillor Jerome X. O'Donovan. O'Dovonan Rossa's great-great-grandson is US international rugby union player John Quill.

Legacy

Following Rossa's death, political rival Timothy Daniel Sullivan commentated that "No more determined or consistent enemy to British rule ever breathed the air of Ireland", while Patrick Pearse praised Rossa as "the most typical" of Fenian leaders who derived "courage and endurance from the Gaelic tradition".

A memorial to Rossa stands in St. Stephen's Green, and a bridge over the River Liffey was renamed in his honour. A street in Cork City bears his name, as does a street in Thurles, County Tipperary – the constituency where he was elected. A park in Skibbereen is also named after him as is the local Gaelic football team.

A memorial to Rossa stands in the village of Reenascreena, Rosscarbery County Cork where his descendants run the local village pub. The funeral casket that was used to ship him home is now on display next to the pub.

Other GAA teams throughout Ireland have also been named after him including Ard Bó Uí Dhonnabhain Rossa in the Tyrone GAA, O'Donovan Rossa GAC in Belfast, Ó Donnabháin Rosa Magherafelt in the Derry GAA and Uí Donnabháin Rosa Mullach Breac in Armagh GAA along with Ó Donnabháin Rosa est. in 2018 in Astoria, Queens, New York.

In popular culture In James Joyce's "Araby," written between 1905 and 1907, the narrator is walking across Dublin, when he hears "the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa".

Rossa appears as a character in Harry Harrison's alternate history Stars and Stripes trilogy.

Works

O'Donovan Rossa's Prison Life : Six Years in Six English Prisons (1874: New York) Rossa's Recollections. 1838 to 1898. (1898: New York). Irish Rebels in English Prisons : A Record of Prison Life (1899: New York)

Republications

Rossa's Recollections 1838 to 1898: Memoirs of an Irish Revolutionary (Globe Pequot, 2004)