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Life
| 1840- [Thomas Francis Burke; var. Bourke]; b. Fethard, Co. Tipperary; son of a successful painter/decorator who emigrated, with his family, to New York after the Famine, 1850; later settled in St. John’s, Newfoundland, for his wife’s health; later moved to Toronto when his own health failed, joining a relative in the Provincial Parliament; Thomas Francis settled in Boston, working as a decorator; supported the family in Toronto by remittance from 1858, when his father ceased to work; |
| rejoined his mother and sisters in New York on the death of his father; his nationalist views strongly influenced by is mother; travelled at work, returning to New York, 1865, when he was appt. foreman in a major painting firm; working in New Orleans at the the outbreak of the civil war; fought at Antietam and Gettyburg; wounded and held prisoner at Fort Delaware, in dire conditions leading to the death of 2,000 prisoners; survived and returned to New York; |
| joined the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood [IRB]; sent back to Ireland to command Tipperary district in 1867, arriving in poor health; immediately interrogated by police on arrival and claimed that he was visiting friends in Ireland before he died; arrested after the Rising; tried for treason and sentenced to death; afterwards commuted on intervention of Archb. Paul Cullen [see further under Cullen, supra]; greatly admired for his dock speech of 1 May 1867, often compared with Emmet’s, made in the same court; there is a life of Burke (called Bourke therein) in John Savage’s Fenian Heroes and Martyrs (1868). |
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Criticism
John Savage, ‘Colonel Thomas Francis Bourke’, in Fenian Heroes and Martyrs, edited, with an historical introduction on “The Struggle for Irish Nationality” (Boston: Patrick Donahoe 1868), pp.121-62.461pp. [See Burke’s dock speech - as infra.
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Commentary
M. J. Heffernan, on the influence of Bourke’s mother (quoted in John Savage, Fenian Heroes and Martyrs, 1868): ‘[...] their fond mother, and one of the truest types of a true mother, told them stories of a time and a country which the elder children could not more than remember, and which the younger ones never saw; and she related passages of that country’s most melancholy history, and named the books in which the episodes could be found, and they read these books as soon after as possible; and she told them stories of wrongs and sufferings, which their race had been made to bear, some printed in books, and some which were printed nowhere but in the burning memories of Irish people. She explained to them how it came about that such a race [126] had been so abused, wronged, degraded and despised, and she there and then made Tom a Fenian! And as the evening wore on, some friend paid a visit and heard a sweet song sweetly sung. (How charmingly Tom’s voice accompanied those of his beloved sisters!) No silly rhodomontade, but the real thing - “Cushla Gal Machre[e]” and “Who fears to speak of Ninety-eight?” And, dear, oh dear, how poor Tom could sing: “The Green, O, the Green, ’tis the color of the true!” / And then bed-time came, and the favored visitor having gone, this thrice happy little household knelt down together to mingle their responses in the Rosary, and offer an united prayer for the repose of the soul of the dead father. And then they retired for the night, under the shield of God’s special protection - this Irish widow and her Irish children, with their hearts full of Irish virtue and Irish love.’ (See full-text copy of Savage’s life of Bourke, attached.)
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Quotations
Dock Speech (1 May 1867) [from John Savage, ‘Colonel Thomas Francis Bourke [sic]’, in Fenian Heroes and Martyrs, NY 1868, pp.121-62):
| ‘[...G]entlemen of the jury, I now solemnly declare, on my honor as a man - aye, as a dying man - these statements [i.e., perjured evidence brought against him] to have been totally unfounded and false from beginning to end. In relation to the small paper that was introduced here and brought against me, as evidence, as having been found on my person, in connection with that oath, I desire to say, that paper was not found on my person, and I knew no person whose name was on that paper. O’Byrne, of Dublin, or those other persons you have heard of, I never saw [156] nor met. That paper has been put in there for some purpose. I can swear positively it was not in my hand writing; I can also swear I never saw it, yet it is used as evidence against me. Is this justice? Is this right? Is this manly? I am willing, if I have transgressed the laws, to suffer the punishment; but I object to this system of trumping up a case, to take away the life of a human being. True, I ask for no mercy. My present emaciated form - my constitution somewhat shattered - it is better that my life should be brought to an end, than to drag out a miserable existence in the prison pens of Portland. Thus it is, my lords, I accept the verdict. Of course my acceptance of it is unnecessary; but I am satisfied with it. And now I shall close. True it is there are many feelings that actuate me at this moment. In fact, these few disconnected remarks can give no idea of what I desire to state to the court. I have ties to bind me to life and society, as strong as any man in this court. I have a family I love as much as any man in this court does his. But I can remember the blessing received from an aged mother’s lips, as I left her the last time. She spoke as the Spartan mother did - “Go, my boy. Return either with your shield or upon it.” This reconciles me. This gives me heart. I submit to my doom, and I hope that God will forgive me my past sins. I hope, too, that inasmuch as He has for seven hundred years, preserved Ireland, notwithstanding all the tyranny to which she has been subjected, as a separate and distinct nationality, He will also retrieve her fallen fortunes - to rise in her beauty and her majesty, the sister of Columbia, the peer of any nation in the world.’ |
| Quoted in Savage, op. cit., - as attached. |
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References
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (1984) quotes his dock-speech: quoted the Spartan mother: ‘return with your shield, or on it.’ (D. B. Sullivan, Speeches from the Dock, [rev. ed.], Dublin, 1968). [No entry in ODNB].
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