Roger Casement, nationalist and human rights activist, was hanged in 1916. Yet the controversy over whether he really wrote the Black Diaries (which record rampant sexual activity with dozens of men) is a subject which still inspires intense debate. Eoin O Maille is embroiled in a dedicated quest, involving a linguistic study of both the White (Dublin) and Black (London) Diaries, to prove that the latter are forgeries. He explains his motivation: "Roger Casement was the greatest humanitarian of this century. He was fearless and had a high moral standard."
Casement was born in Sandycove, Co Dublin in 1864. Orphaned young, he was raised by his uncle, an Ulster Protestant, in Ballycastle, Co Antrim. He entered the British consular service in 1892 and gained international fame from his two investigations into the methods of white traders, in the Belgian Congo and on the Putumayo river in Peru, which revealed atrocious cruelty by white traders and their agents in the exploitation of African and Indian labour.
In his White Diary, Casement described overseers in Peru who "dashed children's brains out against the stumps of trees" and "smashed Indians' testicles with a stick", quotes O Maille. In the Black Diaries, these incidents are "glossed over", says O Maille. Instead there are many entries such as the following: "Saw some great big stiff ones today at Cholos". The report of Casement's Congo investigation led to the appointment of a Belgian commission which supported his findings and resulted in a change in the Congo government. His Putomayo report earned him a knighthood.
In 1913 he joined the Irish Volunteers and tried to enlist German aid when the first World War broke out. In April 1916 the Germans sent a cargo of arms to Ireland; Casement followed in a submarine which landed in Banna, Co Kerry. He was tried and hanged for treason. During his trial, extracts from a Black Diary were circulated by the British authorities to blacken his name both in Ireland and the US. Extracts were shown to John Redmond, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to the US ambassador to Britain. Casement maintained he hadn't written it. A US journalist, Ben Allen of Associated Press, was refused access to Casement in person to ask him if he was the author. (In 1960, Allen maintained the Black Diaries he saw in the Public Records Office were not what he had seen in 1916.)
"If the Black Diary existed, why wasn't it produced at Casement's trial?" asks O Maille. Although the Black Diaries have been authenticated by forensic scientists, he argues: "I've never seen a report by these so-called scientists. A forger can sign a cheque, but he walks into a minefield when he attempts to forge a document of any length. He might be able to copy his victim's calligraphy, but he will have no holistic knowledge of his victim's idiom and speech structure."
O Maille, who has read the 1910 White Diary over 40 times, has identified key words, such as "actually", "task", "value" and "power" which Casement uses frequently. O Maille pored over the Black Diary for the equivalent period, but could not find these words: "Why should Casement abandon all his best words?" To illustrate this, he has drawn up a word frequency table, which has been confirmed by computer analysis. In linguistic terms, this is an objective comparison of the two contending diaries. "The forger was able to step into his victim's shoes, but not into his Ulsterness. He was tone deaf," says O Maille, who also cites "the absence of specific essential words, and linguistic components, as well as idiom, collocations, Irishisms, and unusual foreign words from the 1910 London Black Diary."
O Maille gives the example of two versions of the same sentence written in Casement's 1910 Amazon diary: (White) "I shall know what is in the wind." (November 15th) (Black) "I shall know the plot that is in view." (November 14th)
He also gives two versions of an interview Casement carried out with a Barbados man, Stanley Sealy: (White) "I took down his statement almost word for word, and I shall never forget it. It was told with a simple truthfulness that would have convinced anyone in the English-speaking world, I think, of the man's absolute Good Faith and Simplicity. I decided that I must have this statement." (Black) "I took down his statement almost word for word, and I shall never forget the effect if produced on me, it was told with a simple truthfulness, and even grace of simplicity that would have convinced anyone in the English-speaking world of the man's absolute Good Faith and scrupulous exactitude, and all with appropriate gesture and restraint of gesture too."
"Why should Casement, writing 3,000 words a day, gild the lily like this?" asks O Maille, who maintains that Casement's true history has been obscured by the "red herring" issue of homosexuality when it should revolve around the issue of textuality. O Maille does not believe Casement was gay: "There is no shred of evidence of homosexuality in the Putumayo Diary."
He continues: "If Casement really wanted to keep an obscene diary, surely it would be so from start to finish, and would not repeat some of the `clean' stuff from the other diary? He was often working an 18-hour day and had a worsening eye problem, so why should he repeat the same material in a second diary?"
O Maille notes that when Casement was in Peru he was "surrounded by enemies". "Only a madman would have kept a Black Diary under such circumstances. If such a Black Diary had been in his possession, they would have found it and he would have been destroyed. The four English commissioners who accompanied Casement would have been alerted."
Lilliput's publication, last year, of Casement's Amazon Journal, edited by Angus Mitchell "opened up the whole can of worms". "For the first time, the White Diary could speak to the public for itself." Prior to that time, it had been available for readers to consult, but not borrow, at the National Library, where it was deposited in 1951 (with other material given by Casement's cousin Gertrude Bannister and George Gavan Duffy). The Black Diaries were published in Paris in 1959 and released by the British government in 1994. An edited version of both diaries, edited by Roger Sawyer, was published by Pimlico Press last year.
The debate still rages and O Maille continues to amass information. Pieces of the jigsaw remain unavailable. Among the papers the British Home Office has still refused to release on the grounds of national security are those detailing exactly where and when Casement's diary was discovered by Scotland Yard officers. As Casement wrote to a friend from his prison cell: "It is easy to pelt the man who can't reply . . . but remember no story is told until we have heard all of it."