Manchester Martyrs
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Manchester Martyrs by Gerald England as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Manchester Martyrs
Image: © Gerald England Taken: 29 Aug 2009
On 11th September 1867, the police arrested two men for behaving suspiciously in a doorway. The two, Colonel T.J.Kelly and Captain Deasy, were leading figures in the Fenian Rising. A week later, the prison van that carried the two handcuffed from court to Belle Vue Prison was ambushed by a crowd of thirty armed Fenians who had been lying in wait for it. After fatally shooting a police officer, the Fenians escaped with Kelly and Deasy (still handcuffed) never to be recaptured. Three of the ambushers were later executed for the murder of the policeman and went down in Irish Republican history as the "Manchester Martyrs" http://www.prideofmanchester.com/mancirish/history1.htm A plaque Image was erected on land by the side of the railway in 1989. The text reads "Fenian Ambush (September 1867) Site of the rescue of two Fenian prisoners. Following the shooting of a policeman three of the rescuers were executed at the last public hanging in the Manchester area (November 1867)." More information about these events can found at http://web.archive.org/web/20101017050222/http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume16/issue6/features/?id=114212
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Image Location
Latitude
53.466858
Longitude
-2.208438