A chara, - I suppose anyone who believes that the people living on this island are entitled to run it as they think fit, will be interested in the fate of the man who was the first to announce his belief in this principle, and lost his life trying to achieve it. I refer to Wolfe Tone, and the fascinating item which appeared in The Irish Times recently in connection with his death. The generally accepted account is that the morning before he was due to be hanged, he committed suicide by cutting his throat with a knife.
There were always people who questioned this story. They believed it was unlikely that a prisoner to be hanged the next day would have been allowed to be in possession of a knife, and if he had been, they asked what had become of it. This knife would surely have been an important item of memorabilia, yet nobody had bothered to keep it.
Tone's trial, by military court martial, was illegal. The civil law had not been prorogued. When Curran had pointed this out, there would have been a long civil trial which would have given the French authorities time to intervene. And the British would not have dared to execute an officer who was a French citizen, for fear of French reprisals.
We now know that Tone died from a BULLET wound in the throat. It cannot be seriously suggested that he was allowed to be in possession of a pistol with which to kill himself. We can only conclude that Tone was killed by a warder, or possibly by this doctor Lentaigne who attended him. A likely-scenario is that this doctor, who wrote these notes in latin, knew the truth about Tone's death had a guilty conscience on the subject and wanted to leave this record, but did not dare to tell the facts openly.
Bullets fired from a handgun would have been made of lead in those days. If Dr Lentaigne's belief is correct that the bullet had lodged in Tone's lung, then this bullet would still be in the remains in Bodenstown.
I have written to the Minister for Foreign Affairs asking him to have an autopsy carried out on the remains. If a lead bullet is found 200 years after it was fired into Tone's throat, the mystery of his death is solved. Is mise,
Clondalkin, Dublin 22.