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THE RECENT DECISION to grant a state funeral with military honours to Thomas Kent, after his remains were disinterred from Cork Prison and DNA tested, has brought him to national attention in the packed build up to 2016.
Unknown to most, including many who travel through the train station named in his honour in County Cork, Kent is among the least recognisable of the men executed in 1916.
Somewhat of an anomaly, he was executed in Cork following an event that occurred after the Easter Rising had been suppressed. But who was Thomas Kent?
Born on 29 August 1865 in Bawnard House, Castlelyons, County Cork, Kent was the fourth of seven sons and two daughters of large farmers David and Mary Kent.
Having spent five years in Boston from the age of 19, Kent returned to Cork around 1890 and joined his brothers in nationalist land agitation. After the death of Charles Stewart Parnell in 1891, having earlier served a two month prison sentence, he withdrew from nationalist politics for over twenty years.
In 1914, the Kent brothers who had remained in Ireland – Thomas, David, Richard and William – were among the first to join the Irish Volunteers in Cork. Their company in Castlelyons was said to be the first teetotal unit in Ireland and the Kent brothers became well known in the county as prominent and active Volunteers.
A raid on the family home in January 1916 landed Thomas another two months in prison for illegal possession of arms.
The entirety of Cork’s Easter Rising action was centered on Bawnard House and the Kents. By the time the rebellion had been put down, no shots had been fired in anger in Cork.
As part of a national sweep of prominent ‘Sinn Feiners’, a small group of Royal Irish Constabulary under Head Constable William Rowe set out from Fermoy for Bawnard House to arrest three of its primary targets: Thomas, Richard and David Kent, who had spent Easter week ‘on the run’ but returned home after the Dublin surrender.
Also in the house was William Kent, who was believed by the police not to share his brothers’ extremism, and their octogenarian mother. The police called the Kent brothers outside but were instead fired on from the house. Head Constable Rowe was shot in the head; it was reported that ‘the top of his head was blown off and brain matter lying around him’.
After a number of hours – the details vary depending on the source – the standoff between the police and the Kents had ended. Rowe was dead. Richard Kent had been shot and killed trying to run away. David Kent was also shot and seriously wounded; he was arrested along with Thomas and William.
Thomas and William Kent were tried by field general courts-martial for ‘wilful murder’ in Cork on 4 May 1916. Their case was, in some ways, emblematic of the somewhat unpredictable course of the 1916 executions. Thomas was sentenced to death but William was acquitted. By the time David Kent was fit to stand for trial in Dublin in June, public opinion made another execution unthinkable.
The sentence against Thomas Kent was confirmed by General Sir John Maxwell and carried out by firing squad on 9 May in Cork Detention Barracks. Kent died clutching a set of rosary beads.
The execution of Thomas Kent had its own effect in Cork. Liam Lynch, die-hard republican and anti-Treaty leader during the Civil War, for instance, had been a Redmondite nationalist ‘until the day the British attacked the Kents at Bawnard and he saw Thomas Kent being brought in bleeding through the town of Fermoy’.
Strictly speaking, it was Irish policemen rather than ‘the British’ who had come to Bawnard House that evening, but that hardly mattered: Cork had its 1916 martyrs.
As the state funeral takes place, Thomas Kent will, for the moment, take centre-stage in the 1916 commemorative narrative.
Brian Hughes is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History, Trinity College Dublin. He has a PHD in Modern Irish History from Trinity College. His primary research interest is the impact of the Irish Revolution on individuals and communities and specifically the use of intimidation and coercion by the IRA between 1917 and 1922.
The state funeral will take place in Kent’s hometown of Castlelyons at St Nicholas’ Church from 1.45 pm today. RTE will be televising the ceremony (which will be attended by the President, Taoiseach and Tánaiste) live from 1.30pm. The ceremony itself will be celebrated by Bishop of Cloyne William Crean.
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out of the 253 incidents, how many were carried out by foreign nationals?.
Are u taking the piss.
David, I don`t think Ando is taking the piss. This activity seems to be the exclusive domain of foreign nationals. I don`t know the set up, but a check of the stats will show you that nearly all of those caught at this ATM game are of Eastern European origin. That is not a racist remark, simply the facts.
How does it matter?
David, care to provide source of your statistics?
Maybe he asked Homer Simpson…. Seems to work for Danny.
Where you get your stats is a valid question…so where did they come from???
Do u not mean ando???
Plus I believe it was irish low lives that crashed a JCB into a shop and stole the whole ATM.
In 2006, I was at a seminar on ATM Security and Fraud.The speaker (Head of Security for a major Irish Bank) stated that 9 out of 10 devices found on machines were traced back to an Eastern European or Russian crime syndicate.We were informed that some of the devices, that are extremely high tech, are worth €250,000 euro each!Many of the guys who plant them on the machines have been people trafficked into Ireland and to repay their exorbitant travel costs, they must attach and collect data from ‘skimming’ machines!The other ‘skimming’ machines (1 in 10) that were found were far more crudely made and attributed to Nigerian crime outfits.
So going by what this guy told us, in 2006, 100% of ATM ‘skimming’ machines were foreign made and owned. Maybe this has changed and other nationalities (including Irish) have taken up what is a highly lucrative activity estimated to be worth anywhere between €3.5 and €10 million every year!
One word…Romanians
One word: Romani. Romanians and Romani quite difference, ignorant heads will never comprehend. In Romania there is lot of decent hard working people (in Ireland too), these are gypsies from Romania that give them bad name and awful presence all over the world.
@dirpaddy.. I have been to Romania and they are a lovely race of people who are sick to death of people like you who confuse them with Roma.. have you ever met a real Romania as opposed to a Roma? it’s very hard to spot a Romanian person a they just look continental.. of all the countries I have visited in Europe Romania was the biggest suprise, its a bit backward but the people are friendly charming and very kind.
Gents,
You should know well by now that you cannot say a word about anyone from abroad because you will be immediately accused of not being a happy-clappy multiculturalist.
That we all know the answer is not enough.
its simply not PC to talk about foreigners ( yes, there, I said it, the F word !!) and their involvement in anything, other than religious festivals and projects run by women with double-barrelled surnames
Ah come on The journal, ATM Machine? Really? Automated Teller Machine Machine? like pin number? pcb board?
@Brian @Ando
Yeah sure, everything bad in this country is because of foreigners. They steal your jobs, they steal from your atm’s, they steal your women, etc. etc. :-)
To be bit more serious, I doubt there are any statistics showing what you are suggesting, most likely these stats are nothing more than a product of your prejudiced imagination.
In fact there were few news in past year or two saying about some eat european gangs skimming ATM’s in Ireland, but I don’t think there is more info than just that. And reason for it is probably only that Irish thugs didn’t have technology that other thugs brought in, not that they were so noble they decided not to ever touch any ATM’s… You want to comment, get your facts right, otherwise you just create biassed lies.
@Derek Marten
OK, thanks for that info, but even knowing these facts, what difference that makes who they are?
If somebody can afford 250K worth skimming equipment, they are not average guys, but mafia.
I’ve googled couple other news from around the world about ATM skimming that took places all over the world, and indeed they quite often mention Bulgarian, Serbian and Russian involvement, whether that be USA or France or Ireland.
However these are clearly people not linked with any East European minorities living in Ireland or any other country, but they are professional criminal groups doing their “jobs” all over the world. Suggestions made here in couple comments were quite obviously made towards East Eur. immigrants leaving in Ireland like they were to blame. Believe me that east E.U. people bank accounts were robbed too, I doubt criminals were doing refunds for non English sounding names :P
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