 |
| WHERE ROBERT EMMET DIED, DUBLIN. -It was on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 1803, about noon, that Robert Emmet, the young, gallant and unselfish Irish patriot was executed for the "rising" of July 23, in the same year, "in Thomas street, at the end of Bridgefoot street, and nearly opposite St. Catherine's church" -the edifice shown in the sketch. Dr. R. R. Madden, M. R. I. A., author of the Lives of Robert and Thomas Addis Emmet, and of the United Irishmen, is our authority. Emmet was only twenty-five years old when he perished on this fatal spot, and his execution is thus described by the historian: "The scaffold was a temporary one, formed by laying boards across a number of empty barrels that were placed, for this purpose, nearly in the middle of the street. Through this platform rose two posts, 12 feet high, and a transverse beam was placed across them. Underneath this beam, about three feet from the platform, was a single narrow plank, supported on two sides, on which the prisoner was to stand at the moment of execution." The platform was reached by a ladder. Emmet mounted the scaffold quickly, and said in a sonorous voice: "My friends! I die in peace and with sentiments of universal love and kindness toward all men." In a moment the rope was adjusted, the cap drawn down, the plank tilted and brave Robert Emmet, Catholic Ireland's Protestant patriot-hero, was a corpse! The hangman immediately severed the head from the body and, holding it up before the horrified people, shouted: "This is the head of a traitor!" Ireland's worship of the martyr's memory gives the lie to the official butcher. |
 |  |