The Roger Casement Microbiography

by Conor Kelly, 27 May 2009

Casement was born in Sandycove, Dublin in 1864 to a Unionist family loyal to British rule in Ireland. Orphaned at age 13, he was raised by his uncle at Magherintemple, Co. Antrim. After a brief stint working with a railway company in Africa, he joined the British consular service. In 1903 he headed the investigation into allegations of slavery and torture against the native workers on rubber plantations in the Congo Free State (or Belgium) of Leopold II. Around this time he began to grow quite critical of the colonial dream and the notions of Empire. This, in turn, led him to become involved with the growing underground movement for a republic on his native soil. In 1910 he found himself investigating yet more atrocities under Portuguese rule in the Putumayo region of the Amazon. In 1911 he was knighted in London for his diplomatic and humanitarian services. After retiring early on the grounds of ill health from the Foreign Office, he began recruiting volunteers in Ireland and abroad to stage a rebellion against British rule in Ireland. In 1916 he was arrested near Banna Strand, County Kerry attempting to run 20,000 guns (a gift from the German Kaiser) into Ireland for the planned Easter Rising. During his trial, it emerged that a series of personal diaries – allegedly in Casement’s handwriting and alluding to a multitude of homosexual sex acts (then illegal) – were circulating in a bid to discredit his name and his republican cause. With mild public outcry Casement was tried and found guilty. In 1916, guilty of treason, he was hung until dead and buried in a mass grave at Pentonville Prison in London.