The Irish Republican Brotherhood is reorganized at…
1867 CE
The Irish Republican Brotherhood is reorganized at a convention in Manchester in July 1867.
An eleven man Supreme Council is elected to Govern the movement.
They will eventually be representatives from the seven districts in which the organization is organized: the Irish provinces of Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht, as well as Scotland, North England, and South England.
The remaining four members are co-opted.
The Council will meet twice a year, usually in the spring and the summer.
In Manchester, in August 1867, Thomas Kelly is declared Chief Organiser of the Irish Republic (COIR), in succession to Stephens.
The arrest and subsequent rescue of Kelly with Timothy Deasy in September 1867 results in the execution of the Manchester Martyrs.
The trio had been members of a group of thirty to forty Fenians who had attacked a horse-drawn police van transporting Kelly and Deasy, to Belle Vue Gaol.
Police Sergeant Charles Brett, traveling inside with the keys, had been shot and killed as the attackers attempted to force the van open by blowing the lock.
Kelly and Deasy had been released after another prisoner in the van took the keys from Brett's body and passed them to the group outside through a ventilation grill; the pair were never recaptured, despite an extensive search.
Two others were also charged and found guilty of Brett's murder, Thomas Maguire and Edward O'Meagher Condon, but their death sentences had been overturned: O'Meagher Condon through the intercession of the United States government —he is an American citizen—and Maguire because the evidence given against him was considered unsatisfactory.
Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien are publicly hanged on a temporary structure built on the wall of Salford Gaol, on November 23, 1867, in front of a crowd of eight thousand to ten thousand.
Brett is the first Manchester City Police officer to be killed on duty, and he is memorialized in a monument in St. Ann's Church.
Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien are also memorialized, both in Manchester—where the Irish community makes up more than ten percent of the population—and in Ireland, where they are regarded by many as inspirational heroes.
Kelly escapes to the United States and will remain associated with the IRB.
In the wake of the executions, membership in the Irish Republican Brotherhood begins to decline.
Many of the constitutional nationalists join Charles Stewart Parnell’s Home Rule Movement.