THE FATE OF SOME IRISH INFORMERS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 8, 13 June 1884, Page 27

THE FATE OF SOME IRISH INFORMERS.

(From the Pall Mall Gazette.') Piebce Naglb baffled for sometime the rigilance Committees of the Inner Circle on both sides of the channel. Nagle was most asuredly facile princeps among the informers who cropped up during the trials cf the Fenian prisoners. His nature was a compound of the worst vices that disgraced mankind. I never touched his hand without aa instinctive shudder. In my official connectioa with the 1.R.8., I took care to trust him as little only as I could. The position he held as folder in the Irish People office was so low an<? insignificant that it lulled all suspicions of the man's honesty. An example of the ruffian's hyprocrisy, in addition to the many others hitherto on record, may now be well told to the public for the first time. A few month's previous to the seizure of the Irish People, aod while he was in the pay of the Government, he approached one of the compositor* in the office, a Mr. C, and whispered to him pathetically that as the old Newgate prison was on the point of being demolished, a few of the brethren could not do better than accompany him in a last sad pilgrimage he was making to the room in that establishment where young Lord Edward Fitzgerald offered up his life for dear old Ireland. Pierce Nagle's suggestion was, of course, received with the utmost warmth, aud immediately carried out. Mr. C, my informant, tells me that when they entered the cell Nagle's emotion seemed to have overpowered him, for he actually burst into tears as he filled his breast-pocket with stray pieces of mortar that had fallen from the dilapidated walls. * Although Nagle thought himself secure, the Irish Nemesis was, however, on his track, and at last tripped him up in one of the lanes of London when he was promenading in the dead of night, when he was attacked, by a body of men, who, after having wreaked their vengeance on him, left him lying helpless in the streets. Nagle was taken to a hospital. One of his assailants visited it a few days afterwards on the plea of seeing one of the patients who happened to be in the same iiferd as the informer. After doing a kind service to the invalid, the 4«Bpirator walked along through the ward, anxious to know if Nagle wra still there and alive. At last he saw the informer, strapped up the roof of the bed, his eyeballs protruding, his face livid, and his whole frame writhing in convulsions of the direst agony. Nagle, on seeing him, shrieked out, " The assassins, the assassins 1 they're on me again 1 ' while the other unable to restrain his indignation, shputed, •• You arch-villain 1 you arch-villain 1" Next day when the Irish avenger called, he went to the spot where he had seen Nagle, but although the bed was there the bird had flown. It was generally considered that Nagle bad died from the wounds he had received on the occasion I have referred to, but such was not the case, for some time afterwards his mutilated body was found under the archway of one of the London bridges, a large bacon-knife, on the handle of which was the inscription, " Death to traitors," being embedded in his heart. • Two of the chief informers, John Joseph Corydon and Major Massy, have to all appearances escaped the fate of several of their confreres, although no opportunity was lost by the Vigilance men to "remove" them. Massy's assassination was decided on at a meeting of the men who had the Clerkenwell explosion in contemplation. Mr. , who knew the informer's address in London, volunteered to bring two men to the door of the house where Massy resided. A rendezvous was fixed between the three for the following evening, which was kept by the two parties who were " told off " to " remove" Massy, but Mr. ■, who was to have been there to point out the informer's residence, did not put in an appearance on the occasion : and when at length Massy's whereabouts was discovered the same two conspirators proceeded on their mission, but found that their intended victim had fled. Massy has since eluded all attempts to catch him, although, if report be true, he is seen, now and again promenading in disguise on the Parisian boulevards, or sipping his absinthe in the " swell " cafes of that gay and fashionable capital. Corydon is another of the fortunate informers who has (at least presumably) escaped a Fenian bullet. A very sad tragedy, however, occurred' in High Holborn, London, which led to the death, in 1867, of a young military bandsman, named McDonald, who bore such a remarkable resemblance to Corydon (wearing the same red curly hair, and bearing himself with the same gait as the informer) that he was shot at and mortally wounded by a body of Vigilance mea. Baruett, who was suspected of being the spy who sold the pass on Colonel Rick Burke and Casey in 1867, fled subsequently to America, where he was supposed to have met his doom at the hands of the Fenian avengers. I may add, by way of original information, that Mullany, who betrayed Barrett, was tracked to Australia, and was kicked down the staircase of one of the Melbourne lodging-houses by an angry Fenian, although it was generally reported at the time that bis fall, which proved fatal, was caused by an accident. Talbot, who entered the 1.8.8., in order to sell it, and who, a Protestant himself, so outraged common decency and the consciences of Catholics as to receive communion in Catholic churches in Limerick, in order, under the cloak of piety, to worm himself more and more into the confidence of bis dupes, was slain by Robert Kelly over a dozen years ago in the streets of Dublin at the express command of this same formidable, and to all appearances inexorable, Inner Circle. Such are the authentic facts of assassination, or attempted assassination, on the part of the Inner Circle of the 1.8.8., while that organization was, as I said before, a living, potent factor in Irish politics That the men who swayed the destinies of that organization from 1862 to 1867 refused to give their sanction to these measures no man who really knows anything of the secrets of Fenianism can well deny. To-day, when the Fenianism of the old school is reviving and thMV^ns taught over the ashes of McManus are about to be inculcaticTwith more than the zest and vigor of yore, the 1.R.8., rising Phoenix-like from its ashes, will struggle for Irish independence— as it has in the heyday of its existence ever struggled for it — honorably, enthusiastically, and well,