Plaque honours Fenian who was last man to be publicly hanged in England

The last man to be publicly executed in England has had a plaque erected in his memory at a mass grave in London.

Michael Barrett came from a small farm in Drumnagreshial, Fermanagh, and was 27 when he was publicly hanged in front of Newgate Jail in London in May 1868.

Three days after the hanging, public executions were banned and all subsequent executions took place within the prison walls.

Mr Barrett was a member of the Fenians and had been found guilty of blowing up the wall of Clerkenwell House of Detention in London in 1867.

The bombing was an attempt to free Richard O'Sullivan Burke, an Irish Republican Brotherhood member, but it went wrong and killed at least six people and injured many more.

This was one of the first Irish bombings on English soil. Six people were arrested but Barrett was the only one to be found guilty. There was some controversy over the case and his execution was postponed twice because of questions surrounding his guilt.

According to Keith Sugden's book Criminal Islington, the term "Mick Barretts" became a pejorative term for Irish nationalists after his execution and that was possibly where the term "Irish Mick" originated.

Like many other prisoners, Michael Barrett was buried under the "Birdcage Walk", the stone corridor linking the Old Bailey with the prison.

When the prison was demolished in 1902, the bodies were dug up in the middle of the night and placed in a mass grave in the City of London Cemetery in Essex.

Historian Ms Eva Ó Cathaoir traced Barrett to the cemetery and was told she was the first person to ask about him.

The National Graves Association (NGA) has now erected a plaque in his memory and shamrock was planted at the grave on St Patrick's Day.

The association was unable to trace any of Barrett's relatives.

Last October, the NGA succeeded in its campaign to have the remains of Kevin Barry and nine others exhumed from Mountjoy Prison and reburied in Glasnevin and Limerick.

Mr Matt Doyle, the NGAs secretary, said the memorial to Barrett was significant because of his involvement in the IRB and the fact that his was the last public execution in Britain. "He deserves to be honoured and remembered, as do all Fenians. They were all part of the Irish struggle," he said.

Ms Ó Cathaoir said Michael Barrett's guilt was never clearly established and the evidence given by witnesses at the trial was questionable.

The explosion was highly embarrassing for Irish nationalists as it killed several working-class people, she said. "You can't say he didn't do it, or he did it, but by today's standards, the conviction is extremely unsafe."