Tom and Kathleen Clarke in New York.

 Tom and Kathleen Clarke in New York.

       Tom Clarke joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in 1878, at the age of twenty after a speech by John Daly in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone-Clarke's hometown. The IRB was a secret revolutionary organisation devoted to establishing a democratic Irish Republic by force.

        Daly was a well-known Fenian. He had been involved in an attack on an RIC barracks in Kilmallock, Co. Limerick. He came from Limerick City. He fled to the US after the failure of the Fenian Rebellions in 1867, but returned to Ireland in 1869. 

         In 1881, Clarke was involved in an attack on the RIC in Dungannon in retaliation for their shooting of a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in a riot clash with the Orange Order in that town. After this, he fled to New York.

         Clarke worked with explosives at building sites on Staten Island, NY. While in the US, he joined Clann na Gael and befriended John Devoy and Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa.

 Both were imprisoned, released, and exiled to New York in 1871 for Fenian activities. Clann na Gael is the organisation that succeeded the Fenian Brotherhood in the US, and still exists today.

        Clarke went to London in 1883 as part of O'Donovan Rossa's Dynamite Campaign. Clarke was plotting to blow up London Bridge. He was betrayed by informers and served 15 torturous years in British jails.

 Two of the men sentenced with him had gone insane from the enforced silence, darkness, isolation and various physical and psychological tortures.                             

      Clarke then developed an extremely close friendship with John Daly, who occupied the next cell. They developed a signal code system to communicate with each other. It is quite possible that this human contact and friendship helped them both to maintain their sanity. 

       John Daly had gone to New York upon his release in 1896. He spent a year there fundraising for Clann na Gael with John Devoy. He returned to Limerick City and opened a bakery. 

He took up the support of his brother Edward's ten children. He was elected Lord Mayor of Limerick City in 1899.

       Upon his release, Tom travelled to Limerick, and stayed with the Daly family. John Daly had granted Tom the Freedom of the City in recognition of his sacrifices for Irish freedom.

 He grew very close to John Daly's niece and nephew, Kathleen and Ned. Their father, Edward Daly, had died before Ned's birth. Tom became a sort of father figure to Ned, however Tom and Kathleen began a romantic courtship. 

         They would take early morning walks in the country. She was a strong, intelligent, courageous young woman. 

She was imbued with the love of Ireland and devotion to the republican cause which ran in her veins. They were well-matched, although Kathleen was twenty years his junior.

          Tom returned to New York in 1900. In 1901, Kathleen went to join him there and they were married on 16 July.

 When Kathleen's wedding dress failed to arrive, Tom's best man-John MacBride reassured her. 

He said "Never mind your trousseau girl, you're marrying a hero." A hero himself, and fellow IRB member, MacBride would soon go to South Africa and fight in the Anglo-Boer War, against the British. 

John Devoy was also part of the wedding party. Among Tom's various jobs in New York was working at Devoy's Gaelic-American newspaper.

        The newlyweds lived in The Bronx and Brooklyn. "New York was as new and interesting to me as anywhere else in America", Kathleen later wrote in her autobiography, "Revolutionary Woman". In 1902, their son John Daly Clarke was born.

 In 1905, Tom was granted US citizenship. In 1906, they purchased 30 acres of land in Manorville, Suffolk County, Long Island.

 In 1907, they purchased an additional 30 acres to their property. Later that same year, they returned to Ireland, where Tom opened a Tobacconist shop in Dublin.

        There has been much speculation about the sudden return to Ireland. The successful application for citizenship, the purchase of land, and then additional land at the same site are strong indications of the intention of permanent settlement. Especially as they now had a young son. 

The reason always given has been that Clarke felt that new opportunities for rebellion were presenting themselves in Ireland with increasing tensions between Britain and Germany. 

       It has been suggested that Tom Clarke was on a mission from the IRB the whole time he was in New York; or at least that his seemingly sudden, impulsive return to Ireland may have been a decision not originally his own. The result of his return was a revitalisation of the IRB through his leadership. 

       This has been suggested by historians such as Michael T. Foy. The secret nature of the IRB; and the obsessive secrecy practiced by Devoy and Clarke due to their experiences with informers, may make it impossible to ever really know some of the details of Tom Clarke's time in New York.