The Grave of Robert Emmet No time was lost in carrying out the sentence of the court, and on the day following the trail, 20 September, Emmet was taken from Kilmainham Goal to the place of his execution, opposite St Catherine's Church in Thomas Steet. Place on the scaffold and a rope put around his neck, Emmet was twice asked by the executioner if he was ready and answered in the negative, and before he had a chance to answer a third time, was launched into eternity. The terrors of the law were not yet complete, for after death Emmet's body was takendown and the head cut off and displayed to the crowd by the hangman Thoman Galvin with the words "This is the head of a traitor, Robert Emmet" Emmet's remains were conveyed first to Newgate Prison and then back to Kilmainham Gaol, where the jailer George Dunn was under instructions that if no-one claimed they were to be buried in Bully's Arce, a nerby unofficial popular burial place in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Kimainhoam. Some of Emmet's relatives and friends had also been arrested, including those not involved in the Rising, such as his brother-in-law Robert Holmes, and others were too afraid to come forward. Accordingly, Emmet's body was buried some hours in Bully's Acre, according to Dunn beside the grave of one of his executed follower, Felix Rourke, 'near the right-hand corner of the burying ground, next the avenue of the Royal Hospital, close to the wall, and at no great distance from the former entrance, which is now built up.' Give that it is established that Emmet's body was at least temporarily interred in Bully's Acre, it might be appropriate to erect some sort of memorial there to record this fact, without of course representing it as an epitaphed tombstone. There are the facts concerning the burial of Robert Emmet as we known them, and it is here that the mystery begins. It would appear that Emmet's remains were soon after taken secretly from Bully's Acre and reinterred in St Michan's, a church with strong United Irish association, in whose vaults lie the remains of the Sheares brothers. St Michan's is a fascinating church, as the antiseptic conditions of its vaults causes bodies to remain in mummified condition, and to this day visitors are shown an uniscribed marker in the churchyard which they are informed marks Emmet's grave. However, in the decades after the traumatic events of 1803, and as legend began to supplement hazy memories, it was claimed that other cemeteries in fact had the honour of providing Emmet's last resting place, including St Anne's in Dawson Street, and Glasnevin Churchyard. Strangly, there was one place which did not figure largely in the increasing speculative and imaginative theorising about the location of Emmet's grave, namely, his family's parochial Church. The Emmet family resided in St Stephen's Green (the neglected historic house collapsed some years ago), and attended services in the Church of Ireland St Peter's Church in Aungier Street. It was in fact the tradition of the Emmet family in America that Robert had been finally laid to rest in the family vault in this church, as recorded for example by his grand nephew Dr Thomas Addis Emmet. It was believed that following the death of Mary Anne Holmes in 1804, an opportunity was presented for the discrete transfer of the body of her brother Robert from St Michan's to St Peter's under cover of her interment, which arrangment was overseen by the sympathetic Rev Thomas Gamble, who ministered in St Michan's. *ST CATHERINE'S THOMAS STREET- PLACE OF EXECUTION* *ROBERT EMMET MEMORIAL - THOMAS STREET* As the centenary of Emmet's Rising approached, a Dublin solicitor, David A Quaid, published a booklet which made a coherent case that Robert had been buried in St Peter's. Quaid again hypothesised that following the death of Mary Anne Holmes, the opportunity was taken secretly to reburry the executed rebel in the family vault in St Peter's. Mary Anne's husband, Robert Holmes, remained in prison for some time after the 1803 Rising, and clearly scarred by his experience, for the remainder of his life he was tight-lipped about Emmet. However, Quaid noted that Holmes had never had a memorial erected for his beloved wife, suggesting that this was done to keep Emmet's burial place as secret as possible, and indeed to comply with the patriots wishes as expressed in his speech from the dock. Unfortunately, in the late nineteenth century rebuilding work in St Peter's had already obliterated the site of the Emmet's vault, but nonetheless there were excavations there and in St Michan's in 1903, the results of which were inconclusive.
You can join Unsolved Mysteries and post your own mysteries or
interesting stories for the world to read and respond to Click hereScroll all the way down to read replies.Show all stories by Author:  64747 ( Click here )
Halloween is Right around the corner.. .
|
