1916: Thomas Kent
Add comment May 9th, 2018 Headsman
On this date in 1916, Thomas Kent was shot in Cork, Ireland — the only person executed that May for the Easter Rising outside of Dublin.*
The Kents were were prominent nationalists of several generations’ standing in County Cork and were all set to join the Easter Rising until the last-minute countermanding order went out.
When the Rising happened anyway in Dublin — a day later and numerically much smaller than originally intended — the constabulary was preventively dispatched throughout the island to arrest known fellow-travelers … like the Kents.
The constabulary’s attempted raid on the Kent property May 2 met armed resistance that became an hours-long siege; Constable William Rowe was shot dead, as was Richard Kent.
The surviving Kent brothers, William and David,** along with our man Thomas, were all tried for affair: William was acquitted, David condemned but the sentenced commuted, and only Thomas actually executed.
Cork’s main railway station was in 1966 re-christened Kent Station in his honor.
* In August of that year, Roger Casement hanged in London for treason in connection with the Easter Rising. Casement had not taken any direct part in the fighting, but had worked to arrange the (attempted) support of Britain’s wartime enemy, Germany.
** Both David and William Kent later sat in the Irish parliament.
On this day..
- 1935: John Stephenson Bainbridge, ten-minute alibi - 2020
- 2010: Four Kurdish political prisoners - 2019
- 1887: Charles Smith - 2017
- 1800: Three Canadian pirates in Philadelphia - 2016
- 1726: Three molly-house sodomites - 2015
- 1961: Alvin Table Jr. and Billy Wayne Sees, Bahamas pirates - 2014
- 1979: Rahim Ali Khorram and Habib Elghanian, millionaire businessmen - 2013
- 1474: Peter von Hagenbach, war crimes milestone - 2012
- 1766: Thomas Arthur de Lally-Tollendal, undiplomatic - 2011
- 1794: Four members of the Targowica Confederation - 2010
- 1947: Willie Francis, this time successfully - 2009
- 1628: Johan Bernhard Reichardt, a nine-year-old witch - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,England,Execution,History,Ireland,Martyrs,Murder,Occupation and Colonialism,Pardons and Clemencies,Revolutionaries,Separatists,Shot,Treason,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1910s, 1916, cork, easter rising, irish republicanism, may 9, nationalism, nationalists, thomas kent
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