The hanging of Thomas Russell – The Man from God Knows Where – in Downpatrick jail on October 21 1803 is the final chapter of the radical and revolutionary social and political experiment that was the United Irishmen movement.
In this bicentenary year Down District Council and Down Museum has organised a series of events to mark Russell's connections with Co Down and his activities around Downpatrick, Loughinisland and Seaforde in July 1803.
Thomas Russell intrigued his contempories and has engaged interest down to the present day. In the past 10 years he has been the subject of two major biographies.
Russell's posthumous fame is mainly attributable to The Man from God Knows Where, a long recitation beloved for several generations as a party peace – and not just confined to nationalists. I have heard a prominent Ulster Unionist councillor giving a stirring rendition and the fact that their ancestors were 'out' in rebellion in 1798 against the Crown is a source of stubborn pride to many present day unionists.
The Man from God Knows Where was written in 1919 by Florence Mary Wilson, who hailed from Warrenpoint. Ironically for a poem based on a republican theme, it is by far the best known piece of literature written in a type of Ulster Scots dialect and idiom.
Thomas Russell was born in Dromahane, Kilshannig near Mallow, Co Cork on November 21, 1767. Baptised a member of the Church of Ireland, he came from minor Anglo-Irish gentry stock, although his mother (an O'Kennedy from Tipperary) was Catholic. His family background was impoverished and Russell's poverty gave him a greater feeling of empathy with the vast majority of the Irish peasantry, the 'men of no property'.
Tall and strikingly handsome, Russell enlisted in the British army in 1783 and was posted to India, where he spent four years, returning to Ireland in 1787 as a 'half pay' soldier. This was a similar career progression as his near contemporary Arthur Wellesley who later became the Duke of Wellington, whose victory over Napoleon made him one of Britain's greatest military heroes and eventual prime minister.
On his return to Dublin, Russell met and became a firm friend with Theobald Wolfe Tone, a young Dublin lawyer. In August 1790 Russell was posted to Belfast as an Ensign with the 64th Regiment of Foot.
A town of 18,000 and economically prosperous, Belfast was in a radical ferment and caught up in the excitement of the French Revolution. Russell participated fully in the exhausting social round of meetings, dinners, dancing and drinking bouts. He was present at the formation of the first Society of United Irishmen in Crown Entry, off High Street, on October 14, 1791.
In December that year, financial pressures forced Russell to take up a magistracy in Castlecaulfield, near Dungannon, an appointment which only lasted about nine months.
Russell returned to Belfast where he worked with Tone in advancing the work of the Catholic Committee a body set up to secure the removal of Penal Law disabilities and also found time to embark on geological expeditions in Co Down with his friend John Templeton from 'Orange Grove', Malone.
In January 1794 Russell was appointed as librarian to the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge, later the Linenhall Library, and even though he was also a prolific contributor to the United Irishmen's paper Morning Star, he found time to commence the study of Irish.
The United Irish movement was forced underground following pressure from Dublin Castle and reorganised itself as a secret military and revolutionary movement. Tone had compromised himself by taking part in treasonable activity and had been left with little option but to emigrate to the United States.
Russell was one of those who climbed Cave Hill on a sunny day in early June 1795 with Tone, Henry Joy McCracken, Sam Neilson and others where at McArts Fort, they swore an oath "never to desist in our effort until we had subverted the authority of England over our country and asserted her independence".
For the next few years Russell criss-crossed Ulster as the United Irishmen's main organiser and his Letter to the People of Ireland, published in 1796, showed how far his social and economic views had developed to what was effectively a proto-socialist perspective.
A deeply religious man, and ecumenical before his time, Russell's socio-political views approximated to those of the christian socialists a century later.
Dublin Castle deemed Russell to be too dangerous to remain a free man and, faced with imminent arrest, he surrendered himself into custody on September 16, 1796.
For the next six years Russell was a state prisoner, first in Newgate, Dublin and then at Fort George near Iverness in Scotland. He had to endure the frustration of forcibly having to sit out the disastrous 1798 rebellion and the subsequent 1801 Act of Union.
The lull in Franco-British hostilities as a result of the Peace of Amiens enabled Russell to benefit from an amnesty to political prisoners and on June 30, 1802 he was put on board a ship to Hamburg.
He soon re-immersed himself in revolutionary activities and probably met Robert Emmet in Amsterdam some time around August 1803.
Russell returned to England but was seen crossing Westminster bridge by a scion of the ascendancy Beresford family and quickly moved on to Dublin where he continued with military preparations for another rebellion.
He was assigned to lead the rebellion in Ulster and, along with Jemmy Hope the Templepatrick weaver, travelled through counties Down and Antrim in a forlorn attempt to re-ignite the revolutionary zeal of 1798.
Ulster however, was a much changed place from the period up to 1798. Attempts to incite rebellion among the Presbyterians of Carnmoney and Broughshane ended in abject failure.
Russell reached McCartan's public house at Saintfield on July 22, 1803 and went on to Annadorn, about three miles west of Downpatrick. The time and place of rebellion was fixed for Loughinisland on Saturday July 23, 1803 with the plan being to march on Downpatrick.
The events of those few days were farcical and Russell went on the run, making his way to Dublin where he took lodgings in Parliament Street, just opposite Dublin Castle. There, on September 9 1803 he was arrested by the infamous chief of police Major Henry Sirr and was brought back to Downpatrick for trial.
On Friday October 21, 1803 Russell "stepped out for death". He was hanged and beheaded and his coffin taken to the nearby St Margaret's Church of Ireland cemetery. Mary Ann McCracken, sister of Henry Joy, arranged for a stone slab to be placed over the grave carved with the words 'The Grave of Russell' – the epitaph to a man who has fascinated generations of those interested in Irish history.
Carmel Hanna is an SDLP councillor for Balmoral, Belfast and a former minister for employment and learning in the suspended executive. She is a founding member of the United Irish Commemoration Society.
