man of courage
Sir Francis Fletcher Vane was an hereditary peer born in
Dublin of an Irish mother and English father.
A career officer in the British Army, he was sacked from
the Army ('relegated to unemployment') for preventing an
Army cover-up of a number of military murders in Dublin
during the 1916 Insurrection.
It was Vane who revealed the murder of the well-known writer
and pacifist Francis Sheehy Skeffington, by Captain Bowen-Colthurst.
Vane was an extraordinary character. Born in 1861 at 10
Great Georges street, Dublin, he died in London in
1934. Although an army officer, he spoke on anti-war platforms,
was a democratic aristocrat with socialist and republican
sympathies who challenged the jingoism of the empire and
the demonising of its enemies.
The Vane family had a long tradition of championing human
rights. An ancestor, Sir Henry Vane, led the republicans
in Parliament during the English Civil War and in 1656 his
tract a Healing Question. affirmed the doctrines of civil
and religious liberty.
He resigned from politics rather than acknowledges Cromwell
as Lord Protector. When the monarchy was restored he was
tried for treason and executed in 1662. Sir Francis was
sent to Military college in Oxford, was commissioned in
the Scots Guards before his appointment as captain in the
26th Middlesex Cyclist Battalion. When Britain invaded the
Boer Republics in 1899, he was sent to South Africa, Appointed
as a military magistrate in 1902, he was sacked for being
He was firmly set against the heavy-handed military repression
of the Boer people and wrote The War and One Year After
(1903) attacking British was methods.
His Pax Britannica in 1904 amplified his stand and he was
put on the retired list. However, he had become
South African correspondent for the Daily News and Manchester
Guardian. Then in 1906 he stood as a Liberal candidate in
the UK General Election. Although unsuccessful he became
active in the anti-war and suffragette campaigns. With the
outbreak of the 1914-18 War he felt it was his duty to return
to army service again. With the rank of Major he was sent
to Ireland as a recruiting officer. When the insurrection
took place he was ordered to take command at Portobello
Barracks, Dublin. There were about 300 soldiers in the garrison
mainly from the Royal Irish Rifles and the Ulster Militia
Battalion. Vane went round the area of Rathmines, personally
placing observation posts. On Wednesday, April 26, he returned
to the barracks.
It was then that he discovered the activities of Captain
J.C. Bowen-Colthurst in his absence.
Three suspicious persons were being held at
the barracks. They were the writer Sheehy Skeffington and
two journalists Thomas Dickson and Patrick MacIntyre.
Captain Bowen-Colthurst had decided to conduct some raids
and on the night of April 25 he had taken the prisoners
with his raiding party to act as hostages, human shields,
against all rules of war.
At Rathmines they came across a 17-year old boy named Coade
coming from a church, and, on orders, one of the soldiers
smashed the boys jaw with his rifle butt. Then Bowen-Colthurst
stood over him and shot the boy, as he lay senseless on
The raiding party then proceeded to the home of Alderman
James Kelly, a Unionist, but Bowen-Colthurst had mistakenly
identified him as a Sinn Féin councillor. They destroyed
his house with grenades. Another Dublin councillor, Richard
OCarroll, was also shot by Bowen-Colthurst.
Returning to barracks, Bowen-Colthurst then ordered his
sergeant, William Aldridge, to take the prisoners out and
shoot them. This he did, in Bowen-Colthursts presence.
Vane returning to barracks and discovering what had happened
had Bowen-Colthurst confined to Barracks pending court martial.
On reporting to army headquarters, Vane found his superiors
justifying Bowen-Colthursts actions. Royal Engineers
arrived and repaired the bullet holes in the barracks walls
to they could not be seen. Vane was removed from command
and Bowen-Colthurst was released and allowed to conduct
a vicious raid on Mrs Hannah Sheehy Skeffingtons house
for incriminating evidence.
On May 2, Vane left for England and, using contacts, managed
to secure a meeting with Field Marshal Lord Kitchener and
Bonham Carter, private secretary to the Prime Minister.
After two weeks of prevarication, in which Vane was relegated
to unemployment, on May 18, Lord Chief justice of
England,Lord Reading, accepted a military court martial
in private so that the Government would be spared a public
hearing. Bowen-Colthurst was quickly found guilty but insane
. He was confined to Broadmoor criminally insane hospital
for one year, then released and allowed to go to Canada
where he died in 1965.
the Government then offered Mrs Hannah Sheehy Skeffington
£10,000 compensation. She refused and demanded the
full facts be made public and even former President Theodore
Roosevelt became interested in the case. Thanks to Vane,
the horrors of the murders committed by Bowen-Colthurst
In 1917 Vane attempted to publish a book on the 1916 insurrection
but the proof copies were seized and prevented from publication
by the military censors. The manuscript was subsequently
lost. This was the first of Vanes books that was suppressed
for he wrote a book recounting incidents from South Africa,
the 1914-18 War and the Irish insurrection, which was also
seized and suppressed by the military censor.
He took up residence in Italy in 1918. his wife died there
in 1924, and he returned to Londons Bayswater in 1927,
leaving Italy after his political views caused him to fall
foul of the Fascist Government of Mussolini.
In 1930 he published his autobiography Agin The Government
- Memories and Adventures of Sir Francis Fletcher Vane,
giving full details of the Bowen-Cothurst affair.
British Officers like Vane, General F.P. Crozier, and latterly
Captain Fred Holroyd and Major Colin Wallace, have demonstrated
that there are occasional army officers of great moral courage
who find principles a more powerful force than political
expediency. We should honour them.
Courtesy of Peter Berrisford Ellis and The Irish Post