Barrett, Michael

Barrett, Michael (1841?–68), Fenian, was born at Drumnagreshial, Drumkeeran, Co. Fermanagh, apparently the only son of Edward Barrett, a farmer. A catholic, he evidently received a good education before moving, not yet 21, to Britain, where he became a stevedore in Glasgow and joined the IRB. He was said to have attended the conference of Fenian head centres at Manchester in the summer of 1867 and to have gone to London, in November or December, shortly after the arrest of Ricard O'Sullivan Burke (qv) (who had organised the escape of the leading Fenians, Thomas J. Kelly (qv) and Timothy Deasy (qv), from police custody in Manchester), to free Burke and another Fenian, Joseph Theobald Casey (qv), who were on remand at the Clerkenwell House of Detention. The evidence seems to point to him having been one of a group of Fenians who on 13 December 1867 caused an explosion intended to blast a hole in the wall of the prison and allow Burke to escape; it killed a dozen or more local people and generated an anti-Fenian panic throughout Britain, but the rescue attempt failed. Barrett was arrested in Glasgow on 14 January 1868 and taken to London for trial at the Old Bailey in April. The chief prosecution witness was Patrick Mullany (d. 1879), a tailor from Dublin who was implicated in both Fenian rescue attempts and in fear of prosecution. According to Mullany, it was Barrett who fired the explosion. Though several other witnesses stated seeing him in London before or after the event, six others, all (or nearly all) Irishmen living in Glasgow, stated that he was in Glasgow when the explosion occurred. After being found guilty, Barrett, then aged 26, made a speech from the dock in which he denied setting off the charge. The capital sentence that followed was not remitted despite numerous pleas from influential persons. His death by hanging in front of Newgate Prison, London, on 26 May 1868 was the last public execution in England and as such aroused much interest. Possibly because of the depth of public outrage at the Clerkenwell explosion, however, it did not arouse the same passions in Ireland as the execution of the ‘Manchester martyrs’ six months before. The nickname ‘Mick’ for an Irishman is said to derive from Michael Barrett.