“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.