Sir, – In your issue of July 2nd (Arts & Ideas), you publish an interesting review by Eileen Battersby of a fictional biography of Roger Casement by the Peruvian-Spanish writer, Mario Vargos Llosa. The review includes a photograph of Roger Casement which you claim shows him en route to the scaffold.
You published this same photograph, with similar description, in “An Irishman’s Diary”, April 11th, 2011, compiled by the present writer, concerning Casement’s arrest near Banna Strand.
The photograph shows Casement attired in an elegant suit, with collar and tie, handkerchief in breast pocket, in handcuffs, carrying a hat. Such attire seems distinctly out of character with that of a convict en route to execution. More reliable evidence indicates that the photograph shows Casement emerging from the law courts in London (as would fit the background) following either his conviction on June 29th, 1916, or the rejection of his appeal against sentence of death on July 24th following. Be this as it may, one or other of these dates seems a much more likely provenance.
Casement later became concerned as to how he would comport himself on his final walk. He commented: “I hope I shall not weep, but if I do it shall be nature’s tribute wrung from me – one who has never hurt a human being – and whose heart was always compassionate . . . for the grief of others”. At the very end he had converted to Catholicism and was accompanied in his last moments by his chaplain, Fr Thomas Carey. When the fatal day dawned, he did not weep. In the words of Fr Carey, “he marched to the scaffold with the dignity of a prince . . .” The hangman, John Ellis, was later to describe him as “the bravest man it fell to my unhappy lot to execute”.
This great and good man – outstanding humanitarian and Irish nationalist – walked to his death on August 3rd, 1916. – Yours, etc,