Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa was born
Jeremiah Donovan in the
townland of
Reanascreena,
Rosscarbery,
County Cork, to Denis Donovan and Ellen Driscol, and was baptised on 4 September 1831. His parents were
Irish-speaking tenant farmers who raised him in the language. According to the scholar
John O'Donovan, with whom Rossa corresponded, Rossa's ancestors belonged to the obscure but ancient
sliocht of the
MacEnesles or
Clan Aneslis O'Donovans. His ancestors had held
letters patent in Kilmeen parish in the 17th century before the confiscations, with his
agnomen "Rossa" coming from the townland of Rossmore in
Kilmeen. Rossa became a shopkeeper in
Skibbereen, where, in 1856, he established the
Phoenix National and Literary Society, the aim of which was "the liberation of Ireland by force of arms", This organisation would later become a front for the
Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), founded two years later in
Dublin. He was sentenced to penal servitude for life due to his previous convictions. He served his time in
Pentonville,
Portland,
Millbank and
Chatham Convict Prison in England. Rossa was a defiant prisoner, manacled for 35 straight days for throwing a chamber pot at the prison's warden and thrown into solitary confinement on a bread-and-water diet for three days for refusing to take off his cap in front of the prison's doctor. For most of his time in prison Rossa was denied the right to correspond with his associates in the outside world because he violated prison rules. The election was declared invalid because Rossa was an imprisoned felon.
Dynamite campaign Rossa allegedly organised the first ever bombings by
Irish republicans of English and Scottish cities as part of the
Fenian dynamite campaign. The campaign lasted through the 1880s and made him infamous in
Great Britain. The
British government demanded his extradition from America, but without success. Rossa later justified his revolutionary activities in the following manner;
Failed assassination attempt On 2 February 1885, Rossa was shot outside his office near
Broadway by an Englishwoman, Lucille Yseult Dudley. The British government responded to the incident by stating that Dudley was mentally unstable and not acting on their behalf. Historians have argued that her motivation for the assassination attempt was anger at Rossa's role in the "skirmishing fund" which served as a fundraise for the dynamite campaign. ==Final years==