Thomas Clarke

Thomas James Clarke was the eldest to be executed. He was born in Hurst Castle, on the Isle of Wight to Irish parents. The family emigrated to South Africa, where he spent his childhood until aged 10. They then settled in Dungannon, County Tyrone. He went to the USA at twenty one where he joined the Clan na Gael, the American wing of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. After being sent to England on a dynamiting mission in 1883, he was arrested and sentenced to penal servitude for life but was released in 1898. He returned to Ireland and was made a freeman of the city of Limerick. Unable to get work in Ireland, he emigrated to the USA again in 1899 and married Kathleen Daly and became an American citizen at Brooklyn on 2nd November 1905. He returned to Ireland in 1907 and opened a tobacconist’s and newsagent's shop at 75A Great Britain Street that was a center of the IRB organization for the next decade. He published Irish Freedom, a militant anti-English journal in 1910 with Sean Mac Diarmada as manager. He organized a pilgrimage to Wolfe Tone’s grave at Bodenstown, Co. Kildare, as a counter to a royal visit of the new king of England, George V in 1912. He was elected to the IRB Supreme Council and urged the setting up of a Military Council in 1915 to plan a rising. He served in the General Post Office and, at the request of the other leaders, was the first to sign the Proclamation of the Republic. He was executed 3 May 1916.