Sir, - I have received a copy of The Irish Times containing a letter from John Garton (November 1st), in which he writes about Roger Casement's suicide attempts. Had I known about the Dublin Casement Symposium, I could have brought to it a tape-recording of a long interview I had with the Welsh soldier whose job it was to ensure that no further attempts were made.
Like Mr Garton, I felt it necessary to treat the whole matter with great caution. That is why, apart from visiting the Tower of London, I tracked down Corporal King, of whom Casement wrote: "He was very sympathetic: the only ray of human sympathy and kindness I got through all that awful time and I'll never forget him." As readers of my book Casement: The Flawed Hero (1984) will know, I too wondered how the prisoner had managed to have poison so conveniently to hand. The whole story might well have been apocryphal. But, in addition to A. E. King's recorded testimony (which is corroborated to some extent by the actual circumstances of imprisonment), there is a formerly secret Home Office file, which since October 1995 has been accessible to any visitor to the Public Record Office at Kew. It is entitled "Prevention of further suicide attempts by Casement".
Hermann Goering managed to cheat the gallows, despite the many precautions taken at Nuremberg. I think Roger Casement had better chances of achieving the same goal. Posterity must make the most of his failure in this respect. At least history records his speech from the dock, and the tragic but courageous example of his death. As the hangman, Ellis, put it, he appeared to be "the bravest man it fell to my unhappy lot to execute." - Yours, etc.,
Bembridge, Isle of Wight, England.