1867’s Raid On Chester Castle

Not strictly 1876 or Wrexham, but while I was researching the background to my second Wrexham Victorian crime novel, Death Along the Dee, I came across this slightly strange – and vaguely related – story.

During the English Civil Wars, Royalist Chester (England, of course) had been besieged by Cromwell’s Parliamentarians from July 1643 until April 1645. Well, I knew about that. But I had no idea that, over two hundred years later, in 1867, Chester would once again be under threat – this time from an army of Fenian rebels.

A plot had been hatched by Irish-American former Conferderate soldier, John McCafferty, now in England to fight for the Irish Republican cause. The plot? For 2,000 Fenian supporters to gather from places like Liverpool, Halifax, Preston and elsewhere, then seize the weapons of the Chester Volunteers (militia) from their training hall near Pepper Street’s Newgate. The weapons would then be used  to capture Chester Castle itself and its store of 10,000 rifles plus a huge cache of ammunition. Next, McCafferty planned, they would hijack a train and force the crew to take them to Holyhead. At Holyhead they would commandeer a ship, sail to Wexford and raise an armed rebellion to free Ireland from English rule.

That’s one heck of a scheme but, unfortunately for McCafferty and his associates, sometimes the best-laid plans can sometimes go astray.

It started well enough, with an estimated 1,300 of the Irish conspirators managing to reach the city, as intended, late on Monday 11th February 1867. But little did they know that the plan had been betrayed on the previous day – with the rifles and ammunition removed from the castle and its garrison reinforced by regular troops from Manchester.

McCafferty had been lodging at the King’s Head in Chester, where he learned that they had been betrayed. He sent warnings to his ‘officers’ and, for the most part, during the night, the Fenians managed to slip away. Just as well since, in the early hours of the following morning, a further 500 soldiers from the Royal Scots Fusiliers arrived by train from London to supplement the Cheshire Yeomanry who had already arrived. These new forces were greeted by a huge crowd of grateful Chester citizens.

The planned risings in Ireland went ahead in February and March 1867 – in Dublin, Limerick and elsewhere – but without those weapons from Chester Castle they were pretty much doomed to failure.

McCafferty and his associate, John Flood, managed to escape to Dublin on 23rd February – but in Dublin they were arrested. McCafferty was tried and sentenced to death, though this was later commuted to life imprisonment. It seems he was then released on strict conditions in 1871 and went back to the USA, where he continued to support the Fenian campaign against Britain.

By 1874, he was back in Ireland where he became involved with the activities of the revolutionary National Irish Invincibles – who, in May 1882, were responsible for the Phoenix Park (Dublin) murders of Lord Frederick Cavendish, Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Burke, his Permanent Under-Secretary.

McCafferty

There are many rumours about McCafferty’s subsquent adventures – but rumours are about all they amount to.

Meanwhile, back in 1867, two of the insurrections leaders, Thomas Kelly and Timothy Deasy – both also veterans of America’s civil war – were captured in Manchester. But on the way to their trial, supporters attacked the police van. In the process of liberating the prisoners, a police sergeant was shot and killed. Neither Kelly or Deasy were recaptured and eventually escaped back to the USA. But three of those involved in the incident were tried and sentenced to death. They were publicly hanged on a temporary structure built on the wall of Salford Gaol, on 23 November 1867, allegedly in front of a crowd of 10,000 spectators.

When sentenced, there are recorded as having shouted “God Save Ireland!” This inspired the song of the same name which, for so long, became the unofficial national anthem of Ireland.