Police arrived at the tenement house No. 445 Cherry Street in New York City in July 1874 and inside they discovered Mortimer Moynahan "in a dying state while the dead body of his wife lay in an adjoining apartment".
The initial headlines of the day reported "Husband and Wife Commit Suicide As A Relief From Poverty"
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| Source: Clipped from Boston Post Boston, Massachusetts 14 Jul 1874, Tue • P |
Something did not seem right to me about this story. As I dug deeper, and with the help of William Casey at the Skibbereen Historical Society, I came to learn that Mortimer Moynahan was a dominant leader in the Fenian Uprising in 1867.
Despite O’Donovan Rossa’s words, today Mortimer Moynahan is largely forgotten in all of the history books.
I am so thankful that William Casey has examined Morty Moynahan's life and work in the hopes that it "will go a
small way to redressing that ‘treason’" and I am happy to include Morty Moynahan's story in the Moynahan Scrapbook. section of my blog
