Anne Devlin
In 1842 when Dr. Madden was engaged in his researches for his memoir of Robert Emmet, he was directed to a certain old washerwoman, called Campbell, then living in great poverty and obscurity in a stable-yard off John’s Lane. This old woman, he was told, was the only one then living, in all probability, who could give an authentic account of what happened on the night of July the 23rd, 1803, after the flight of the leaders and the rout of their followers.
How did she come to have this information? For the reason that she had helped Rosie Hope to cook and keep house for Robert Emmet and his companions in the establishment he had leased (in the name of Robert Ellis) in Butterfield Lane, Rathfarnham, during the months of active preparation for the Rising. Her father was a well-to-do dairyman, of the neighbourhood, and both he and his sons, as well as their kinsmen, Michael Dwyer, the Wicklow “outlaw,” and Arthur Devlin, were deep in Robert Emmet’s plans. His daughter’s housewifely skill had been devoted to the Cause in the same spirit as her male relatives’ soldier-service. Her maiden name, which Dr. Madden’s informant had previously omitted to mention, was—Anne Devlin.
Anne Devlin! Can anyone living to-day, with a drop of Irish blood in his or her veins, hear that name without a great stirring of the heart? It stands for a heroism, a fortitude, a devotion, a fidelity, a loyalty, which even to have conceived, honours all human nature—and which to have produced, ennobles Irish womanhood for all time. Anne Devlin! Amid the great names of our race which thrill each Irish heart as with a trumpet note, what name has power to move us as does that?
We owe it to Dr. Madden that the name means so much to us. Had he not sought her out, and drawn her story from her lips, and raised her body from its pauper burial place to lay it, in its rightful place amid the noblest in Glasnevin, that name might have meant as little to us as it did to the generation, which Dr. Madden’s appeal for her (in the first edition of his “United Irishmen”) left unmoved, and which, during his absence, from Ireland, left her to die of cold and hunger in a tenement house, and be buried in a pauper’s grave.
“In the summer of 1843,” writes Dr. Madden, “accompanied by Anne Devlin, I proceeded to Butterfield Lane, to ascertain the fact of the existence or non-existence of the house in which Robert Emmet had resided in 1803. For a length of time our search was fruitless. The recollection of a locality at the expiration of forty years is a very dim sort of reminiscence. There was no house in the lane the exterior of which reminded my conductress of her old scene of suffering. At length her eye caught an old range of buildings at some distance, like the offices of a farmhouse. This she at once recognised as part of the premises of her father, and she was soon able to point out the well-known fields around it, which had once been in her father’s possession. The house, alongside of which we were standing, on the right-hand side of the lane going from Rathfarnham road, she said must be the house of Mr. Emmet, though the entrance was entirely altered; however, the position of an adjoining house left little doubt in her mind. We knocked at the door, and I found the house was inhabited by a lady of my acquaintance, the daughter of a Protestant clergyman, who had been, strange to say, the college friend and most intimate acquaintance of Robert Emmet, the late Dr. Hayden, of Rathcoole.
“The lady of the house, in whom I discovered an acquaintance, left us in no doubt on the subject of the locality—we were in the house that had been tenanted by Robert Emmet. The scene that ensued is one more easily conceived than described. We were conducted over the house—my aged companion at first in silence, and then as if slowly awakening from a dream, rubbing her dim eyes, and here and there pausing for some moments when she came to some recognised spot. On the ground floor she pointed out a small room, on the left-hand of the entrance—‘That’s the room where Mr. Dowdall and Mr. Hamilton used to sleep.’ The entrance has been changed from about the centre to the right-hand end; the window of a small room there has been converted into the door-way, and the room itself into the hall. ‘This,’ said Anne Devlin, ‘was my room; I know it well—my mattress used to be in that corner.’ There was one place, every corner and cranny of which she seemed to have a familiar acquaintance with, and that was the kitchen. On the upper floor, the principal bed-room at the present time attracted her particular attention; she stood for some time gazing into the room from the door-way; I asked her whose room it had been. It was a good while before I got an answer in words, but her trembling hands, and the few tears which came from a deep source, and spoke of sorrow of an old date, left no necessity to repeat that question—it was the room of Robert Emmet.
“Another on the same floor was that of Russell. They slept on mattresses on the floor—there was scarcely any furniture in the house; they often went out after dark, seldom or never in the day-time. They were always in good spirits, and Mr. Hamilton used often to sing—he was a very good singer; Mr. Robert sometimes hummed a tune, but he was no great singer, but he was the best and kindest-hearted of all the persons she had ever known; he was too good for many of those who were about him. Of Russell she spoke in terms hardly less favourable than those in which she expressed her opinions of Emmet.... At the rear of the house, in the courtyard, she pointed out the spot where she had undergone the punishment of half-hanging, and while she did so there was no appearance of emotions, such at least as one might expect recalled terror might produce, but there were very evident manifestations of another kind, of as lively a remembrance of the wrongs and outrages that had been inflicted on her, as if they had been endured but the day before, and of as keen a sense of those indignities and cruelties, as if her cowardly assailants had been before her, and those withered hands of hers had power to grapple with them.”
And then, amidst the very scenes which had been hallowed by Robert Emmet’s presence and Anne Devlin’s sufferings Dr. Madden heard from her lips the high, heroic tale once more.
“On July the 23rd at about eleven o’clock at night,” Anne Devlin told Dr. Madden, “Robert Emmet, Nicholas Stafford, Michael Quigley, Thomas Wylde, John Mahon, John Hevey, and the two Perrotts from Naas came to the house at Butterfield Lane. She first saw them outside of the house, in the yard; she was at that moment sending off a man on horseback with ammunition in a sack, and bottles filled with powder. She called out, ‘Who’s there?’ Robert answered, ‘It’s me, Anne.’ She said, ‘Oh, bad welcome to you, is the world lost by you, you cowards that you are, to lead the people to destruction, and then to leave them.’ Robert Emmet said, ‘Don’t blame me, the fault is not mine.’ They then came in; Quigley was present, but they did not upbraid him. Emmet and the others told her afterwards that Quigley was the cause of the failure....
“They stopped at Butterfield lane that night and next day, and at night about ten o’clock, fled to the mountains, when they got information that the house was to be searched. Her father, who kept a dairy close by, got horses for three of them, and went with them.
“Rose Hope, the wife of James Hope, had been there keeping the house also. The reason of their stopping there that night was, that Emmet expected Dwyer and the mountaineers down in the morning by break of day, but Dwyer had not got Emmet’s previous letter, and had heard of Emmet’s defeat only the next day, and therefore did not come. Mr. Emmet and his companions first went to Doyle’s in the mountains, and thence to the widow Bagenell’s. Anne Devlin and Miss Wylde, the sister of Mrs. Mahon, two or three days after, went up to the mountains in a jingle with letters for them. They found Robert Emmet and his associates at the Widow Bagenell’s, sitting on the side of the hill; some of them were in their uniform, for they had no other clothes.
“Robert Emmet insisted on coming back with her and her companion, he parted with them before they came to Rathfarnham, but she knows not where he went that night, but in a day or two after he sent her to take a letter to Miss Curran; he was then staying at Mrs. Palmer’s, at Harold’s Cross.
“The day after ... a troop of yeomen came with a magistrate, and searched the house. Every place was ransacked from top to bottom. As for herself she was seized on when they first rushed in, as if they were going to tear down the house. She was kept below by three or four of the yeomen with their fixed bayonets pointed at her, and so close to her body that she could feel their points. When the others came down she was examined. She said she knew nothing in the world about the gentlemen, except that she was the servant maid; where they came from, where they went to, she knew nothing about; and so long as her wages were paid she cared to know nothing else about them.
“The magistrate pressed her to tell the truth—he threatened her with death if she did not tell; she persisted in asserting her total ignorance of Mr. Ellis’s acts and movements, and of those of the other gentlemen. At length the magistrate gave the word to hang her, and she was dragged into the courtyard to be executed. There was a common car there—they tilted up the shafts and fixed a rope from the backband that goes across the shafts, and while these preparations were making for her execution, the yeomen kept her standing against the wall of the house, prodding her with their bayonets in the arms and shoulders till she was all covered with blood, and saying to her at every thrust of the bayonet, ‘Will you confess now; will you tell now where is Mr. Ellis?’ Her constant answer was, ‘I have nothing to tell, I will tell nothing.’
“The rope was at length put about her neck; she was dragged to the place where the car was converted into a gallows; she was placed under it, and the end of the rope was passed over the backband. The question was put to her for the last time, ‘Will you confess where Mr. Ellis is?’ Her answer was, ‘You may murder me, you villains, but not one word about him will you ever get from me.’ She had just time to say, ‘The Lord Jesus have mercy on my soul,’ when a tremendous shout was raised by the yeomen; the rope was pulled by all of them except those who held down the back part of the car, and in an instant she was suspended by the neck. After she had been thus suspended for two or three minutes her feet touched the ground, and a savage yell of laughter recalled her to her senses. The rope round her neck was loosened, and her life was spared—she was let off with half-hanging. She was then sent to town, and brought before Major Sirr.
“No sooner was she brought before Major Sirr, than he, in the most civil and coaxing manner, endeavoured to prevail on her to give information respecting Robert Emmet’s place of concealment. The question continually put to her was, ‘Well, Anne, all we want to know is, where did he go to from Butterfield lane?’ He said he would undertake to obtain for her the sum (he did not call it reward) of £500, which he added, ‘was a fine fortune for a young woman,’ only to tell against persons who were not her relations; that all the others had confessed the truth—which was not true—and that they were sent home liberated, which was also a lie.”
Dr. Madden said to her with pretended seriousness, “You took the money, of course.” Her indignant answer, accompanied by a look to which Dr. Madden felt only a painter could do justice—was “Me take the money—the price of Mr. Robert’s blood! No; I spurned the rascal’s offer.”
“The major went on coaxing, trying to persuade her to confess. He said everything had been told him by one of her associates. Nay, what’s more, he repeated word for word, what she had said to Mr. Robert the night of the 23rd, when he came back to Butterfield lane—‘Bad welcome to you, etc.’ One of the persons present with him then must have undoubtedly been an informer. After she had been some time in Kilmainham, Mr. Emmet was arrested and sent to that prison. Dr. Trevor had frequently talked to her about him, but she never ‘let on’ that she had any acquaintance with him. At this time she was kept in solitary confinement for refusing to give information. One day the doctor came and spoke to her in a very good-natured way, and said she must have some indulgence, she must be permitted to take exercise in the yard. The turnkey was ordered to take her to the yard, and he accordingly did so; but when the yard-door was open, who should she see walking very fast up and down the yard, but Mr. Robert. She thought she would have dropped. She saw the faces of people watching her at a grated window that looked into the yard, and her only dread was that Mr. Robert on recognising her would speak to her; but she kept her face away, and walked up and down on the other side; and when they had crossed one another several times, at last they met at the end. She took care, when his eyes met hers, to have a frown on her face, and her finger raised to her lips. He passed on as if he had never seen her—but he knew her well; and the half smile that came over his face, and passed off in a moment, could hardly have been observed except by one who knew every turn of his countenance. The doctor’s plot failed, she was taken back to her cell, and there was no more taking of air or exercise then for her.
“She was in Kilmainham, a close prisoner, when Robert Emmet was executed. She was kept locked up in a solitary cell, and indeed always, with a few exceptions, was kept so during her confinement the first year. The day after his execution she was taken from gaol to the Castle, to be examined, through Thomas Street. The gaoler had given orders to stop the coach at the scaffold where Robert Emmet was executed. It was stopped there, and she was forced to look at his blood, which was still plain enough to be seen sprinkled over the deal boards.
“At the latter end of her confinement, some gentlemen belonging to the Castle had come to the gaol and seen her in her cell. She told them her sad story, and it was told by them to the lord lieutenant. From that time her treatment was altogether different; she was not only allowed the range of the woman’s ward, but was permitted to go outside the prison, and three or four times, accompanied by her sister and Mrs. Dwyer and one of the turnkeys, was taken to the Spa at Lucan for the benefit of her health; for she was then crippled in her limbs, more dead than alive, hardly able to move hand or foot.
“At length Mr. Pitt died; it was a joyful day for Ireland. The prisons were thrown open where many an honest person had lain since the month of July, 1803.”
Anne Devlin’s narrative to Dr. Madden did not exhaust the full tale of her sufferings. There is no mention in it of the fact that the whole of her family, except one sister and a brother who were mere children, had been thrown into prison, and their property ruined. As there was no place for the little brother to go he found refuge in his father’s cell in gaol. But the consolation of his boy’s company was not left long to old Brian Devlin. Some communication having been discovered between him and his daughter, the latter was removed from the new to the old gaol. Some time after, the boy, then sick of a fever, was taken in the night from his father’s cell and made to walk the mile which separated the new from the old gaol. Here he died in circumstances which were looked on as very suspicious.
So atrocious was the treatment meted out to Anne Devlin by Dr. Trevor that the other prisoners made special mention of it in a Memorial they presented to Lord Hardwicke: “His treatment,” they stated, “of all, but especially of one unfortunate State prisoner, a female, is shocking to humanity, and exceeds credibility. He drives, through exasperation, the mind to madness, of which instances have already occurred.”
Of what befel Anne Devlin when, broken in health and crippled in limb, she was at length liberated from Kilmainham we have no record. We must fill in for ourselves the main features of the forty years that elapsed before Dr. Madden discovered her in the old washerwoman, married to a poor labourer in “a stable yard” off John’s Lane. Poverty, sickness, grinding toil, hunger often, and want of every kind: these were her portion through those long years of misery.
She might have had a different portion. She might have said the one little word her captors wanted her to say. She might have stretched out her hands for their five hundred golden guineas, and walked forth that moment a free woman. She might have seen her father’s fields restored to him and his business flourishing; and she, herself, the well-dowered daughter of the prosperous dairyman, would surely have found a husband—not too squeamish about the origin of his wife’s fortune—to keep her in comfort all the days of her life. She might have had all that most men hold most dear—as the price of a single word.
She chose instead—what seemed certain death, and then torture of every description, both corporal and mental, until in the vile prison cell, the strong mind snapped, and the vigorous body broke. But the will, faithful to the end, never faltered.
The end of her story is told in a letter published by Dr. Madden in the Nation of September 27th, 1851:—
“Four years ago an appeal was made in the Nation on behalf of Anne Devlin, which was in some small degree responded to—very, very inadequately, however. Afterwards we lost sight of her entirely. So it seems did others of her friends until it was too late. But last week, a gentleman who always took the warmest interest in this noble creature, was informed that she was still living in a miserable garret of No. 2 Little Elbow Lane, a squalid alley running from the Coombe to Pimlico. On this day week he sought that wretched abode, but she had died two days previously, and had been buried in Glasnevin on the preceding day. A young woman with an ill-fed infant in her arms, apparently steeped in poverty, but kindly-looking and well-mannered, in whose room Anne Devlin had lodged, said: ‘The poor creature, God help her, it was well for her she was dead. There was a coffin got from the Society for her, and she was buried the day before.’ To the enquiry, what complaint she had died of, the answer was—‘She was old and weak indeed, but she died mostly of want. She had a son, but he was not able to do much for her, except now and then to pay her lodging, which was fivepence a week. He lived away from her, and so did her daughter, who was a poor widow, and was hard enough set to get a living for herself. About ten or twelve days ago a gentleman (she believed of the name of Meehan) called there, and gave the old woman something. Only for this she would not have lived as long as she did. She was very badly off, not only for food, but for bed-clothes. Nearly all the rags she had went at one time or another, to get her a morsel of bread.’”[[102]]
[102]. Dr. Madden has with delicate reticence veiled his own charity to Anne Devlin. It was during one of his absences abroad that she was lost sight of immediately before her death. The gentleman “of the name of Meehan” referred to in poor Anne’s landlady’s statement was Rev. C. P. Meehan, the historian. Father Meehan, Edward Kennedy (Miles Byrne’s half-brother), and Dr. Madden—let us remember their three names with gratitude, because out of their own scanty means, they tried to save the Irish nation from the disgrace of allowing Anne Devlin to die of hunger.
“It is a hard service they take, who help the Poor Old Woman.... But for all that they think themselves well paid.”
SOME OTHER ROMANCES OF ’NINETY-EIGHT