X-Nico

10 unusual facts about Fenian


Annexation Bill of 1866

It was intended to appeal to Irish Americans who supported the Fenian Movement and were aggressively hostile to Britain.

Fenian

Michael Atkinson, Attorney-General of South Australia, spoke of those members of the ALP who wished to remove the title Queen's Counsel and other references to the crown as "Fenians and Bolsheviks" in a speech given at the ALP Convention in Adelaide on 15 October 2006.

Irish Catholics have been traditional supporters of the ALP and have influenced the party's stand on the monarchy.

Other Scottish clubs that have Irish roots, such as Hibernian and Dundee United, do not have the term applied to them, however.

Hammel Madden Deroche

During that time, he served with the Queen's Own Rifles and fought against the Fenians at the Battle of Ridgeway.

John Bedford Leno

He proposed that they create civil war in England and offered the service of two thousand sworn members of the Fenian body, and that he would act as their leader.

Spearwood, Western Australia

Phoenix Road was named by John Healy after Phoenix Park Dublin, where the British Chief Secretary for Ireland was assassinated by Fenians in 1882, although an alternative suggestion is that it was named by Steve Dobra, the first settler on Phoenix Road, who worked in Phoenix, Arizona before coming to Western Australia in 1912.

Westland Province

Bonar was chairman during the period of the Fenian riots and is credited with "great tact in handling that explosive situation".

William Augustine O'Carroll

He joined the Fenians in 1858 and was a contributor to the Nationalist journal Irish People for which he subsequently became the editor.

William Calcraft

Calcraft carried out the last public execution in England on 26 May 1868, when he hanged the Fenian Michael Barrett in front of Newgate Prison for his part in the Clerkenwell Outrage.


Cam Kirby

His son Joseph Kirby (1844–1937) enlisted as mercenary in the 184th Regiment of New York State Infantry of the Union Army during the American Civil War and returned to Canada in 1865 and joined the Ashberminam Company of Volunteers during the Fenian Raids of 1866.

CBS Sexton Street

Ned Daly, born in 1891 the son of Fenian Edward Daly, he was also the nephew of John Daly who was a leading member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the brother in law of Tom Clarke (Irish Republican).

Diarmuid and Grania

George Moore wrote a novel based on a translation by Lady Gregory of the Fenian tale The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne.

Fenian Ram

Presumably as a tribute to this vessel, the submarine which features in Frank Herbert's classic science-fiction novel of submarine warfare, The Dragon in the Sea, is named "Fenian Ram".

General Post Office

In 1868, as part of the Volunteer Movement, John Lowther du Plat Taylor, Private Secretary to the Postmaster General, raised the 49th Middlesex Rifle Volunteers Corps (Post Office Rifles) from GPO employees, who had been either members of the 21st Middlesex Rifles Volunteer Corps (Civil Service Rifles) or special constables enrolled to combat against Fenian attacks on London in 1867/68.

Griffith Barracks

Prominent Irish Nationalist leaders such as William Smith O'Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher (later Acting Governor of Montana), James Stephens (founder of the IRB) and "Honest" Tom Steele, were among its famous historical prisoners.

James Fintan Lalor

“His spirit, however, was undaunted,” according to O’Sullivan, and in the following year he set about organising a revival of the insurrection” in co-operation with John Savage, Joseph Brennan, John O'Leary and Thomas Clarke Luby in Tipperary and Waterford.

Ossianic Society

The group of Irish scholars emerged from competing societies, such as the Celtic Society and the Irish Archaeological Society, focusing on the translation of Irish literature from the "Fenian period of Irish history", specifically, the mythological works of Oisín and the Fianna, and the promotion of the Irish language.

Pat Nally

Nally from an early age had been a Fenian, and by the late 1870s was a leading organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Thomas Miller Beach

In 1865, through a companion in arms named John O'Neill, he was brought into contact with Fenianism, and having learnt of the Fenian plot against Canada (the Fenian raids), he mentioned the designs when writing home to his father in England.

Thomas Upington

He was accused of propounding Parnellite principles and denounced by British politicians in Cape Town as a “Fenian” whose "offence is rank", and who "has been fraternising with Mynheer Van Dunk instead of sticking with John Bull".