"Do you recognise it?" he asked.
"I do—I made it myself."
The Court was astonished. The prosecuting counsel asked:—
"How do you know it is yours?"
"By certain marks on it," the man replied, and these he proceeded to describe. As the description was found to be correct, and as the other witness, who had sworn that he had made the weapon, had not described any such marks, the case against Hogan broke down, and he was acquitted.
A few days afterwards he called on me, and explained how the thing had happened. When he was arrested, his friends in Birmingham, having still on hand some of the revolvers he had purchased, had an exact copy of one of them made by a gunsmith whom they could trust, with instructions to put his own private marks upon it, which he could afterwards identify. It was this weapon that had deceived the witness for the prosecution to such an extent that he wrongly swore to it as being his own manufacture.
Daniel Darragh, who was also put upon his trial for supplying the weapons for the Manchester Rescue, was not so fortunate as his friend Hogan, for he was convicted. He was sent into penal servitude on April 15th, 1869, but, being in delicate health, did not long survive, for he died in Portland Prison on June 28th of the following year. William Hogan, as the fulfilment of a sacred duty, brought the body of his friend home to Ireland, to be buried among his own kith and kin, in the Catholic cemetery of Ballycastle, Co. Antrim; and Edward O'Meagher Condon, when recently visiting this country, considered it a no less sacred duty to visit the grave.
It will be seen that William Hogan, with all his acuteness, had a very narrow escape from falling into the hands of the law and suffering its penalties. Still, it has been my experience, that men like him, who have stood their ground, following their usual legitimate occupations, were always less liable to be molested than what might be termed birds of passage, such as Rickard Burke, Arthur Forrester, or Michael Davitt.
Such, I consider, was the case of my friend, John Barry, when he was a resident in Newcastle-on-Tyne, in connection with an incident which he related to me a short time since. Some arms were addressed to him "to be called for," under the name of "Kershaw," a well-known north-country name, not at all likely to be borne by an Irishman. By some means the police got wind of the nature of the consignment, and the arms were held at the station, waiting for Mr. Kershaw to claim them. But it was a case of plot and counterplot; and when John was actually on the way to the railway station, he was warned in time by a railway employé, an Irish Protestant member of the I.R.B., and did not finish his journey. As "Kershaw" did not turn up, the case of arms was sent off to London to be produced at a trial then impending.
John Barry was at that time a commercial traveller, and, strangely enough, on one of his trips, he found himself in the same railway carriage with two detectives who were in charge of the arms on their way to the metropolis. John, as everybody acquainted with him knows, "has the music on the tip of his tongue;" the racy accent acquired in his childhood in his native Wexford. But he can put it off when the occasion requires it; and the two police officers were quite charmed with the social qualities of the genial commercial "gent" who was their fellow-traveller, never suspecting him to be an Irishman. They chatted together in the most agreeable manner, making no secret of their mission to London, and letting drop a few facts which proved useful to the counsel for the defence in the subsequent trial. Reaching London, they asked the commercial "gent" to spend a social evening with them and some of the witnesses in the case, which had some connection with the arms intended for "Mr. Kershaw." He could not do so, he said, as he had a previous engagement—which happened to be with Arthur Forrester and some witnesses on the other side. But, he continued, he would be glad to see them on the following day. Where could he see them? At Scotland Yard; and at Scotland Yard, accordingly, he met them, where they showed him, as an evidence of the desperate characters they had to deal with—his own case of arms!