Another great story
This brings me to the story of Phil Cunningham. The main leader of the Irish convicts at Vinegar Hill in 1804, Cunningham may well have some claim as the least remembered Irish martyr of them all. That Cunningham has been largely forgotten in popular memory asks fundamental questions about the Castle Hill uprising itself. Was it, for instance, an unworthy event; an uprising of rabble rather than rebel convicts possessing neither principles nor a clearly articulated political agenda? Compared to Eureka, which, so the narrative goes and as Dr Evatt assured us, ushered in liberal democracy, Vinegar Hill is a poor relation. Sometimes it is forgotten altogether. 1 Why dont we know more about Cunningham?
It helps, I think, to put on record what we do know about Cunningham. Phil Cunningham was born at Glenn Liath, Moyvane, (in the modern parish of Molahiffe) County Kerry, though we do not know when. Both a stonemason and a publican in Clonmel, a thriving town of some 5000 residents in Tipperary to which he moved in the 1790s, Cunningham was not born to a position of great social standing. While this sharply differentiated him from the likes of Lord Fitzgerald, the rank and file of the United Irishmen was strongly comprised of people of such middling social status.
We do not know much about the details of his involvement in the tumultuous events of 1798, though it is probable he helped to coordinate the United Irish insurgency in the Clonmel district, perhaps holding the rank of captain. In Clonmel he was regarded as an articulate man who moved in high social circles. The Mayor of Clonmel, Richard Moore, provided a character reference at Cunninghams trial. It is not hard to find glowing accounts of Cunninghams intellectual acumen and personal magnetism. Kerry tradition has it that Cunningham was a man of great stature and commanding appearancea born leader of men and a man who commanded loyalty and got it and that he had a sharp mind.
As a policeman would have it, Cunningham first came to notice when he helped to re-organise the United Irish network in the south of Ireland in early 1799, a reminder that thinking about 1798 as a one year event only is misleading. It began much earlier and did not end until the early 1800s, in reality not until the disastrous military engagement at Vinegar Hill, New South Wales in March 1804. In 1799 Cunningham was involved in rescuing prisoners and conducting arms raids, as well as sporadically attacking the Clonmel yeomanry on the retaliate first principle. The Tipperary rebels continued to await the arrival of the French and tried to re-establish the lines of communication, deficiencies in which had hamstrung the success of the main event the previous year.
On the evidence of an informer, that great bane of Irish history, Cunningham was captured and charged with sedition at Clonmel 9-11 October 1799. A legal technicality caused the death sentence to be commuted to transportation to Botany Bay for life. In 1800 he was placed abroad the Anne, a 384 tonne foreign-built vessel, the third transport to carry rebel prisoners to New South Wales. Among the fellow prisoners was a veritable rogues gallery of United Irish rebels, including Manus Sheehy and Thomas Captain Steel Langan of the Kerry/West Limerick United Irishmen, as well as Fr Peter ONeill of Cork whose back was badly lacerated following a severe flogging.
Unsurprisingly there was a major mutiny. On 29 July 1800 Manus Sheehy seized the captain and first mate as they went into the ships prison to supervise fumigation. About thirty prisoners on deck sprang into action. Cunningham was one of the plotters. The mutiny, however, was unsuccessful. The ships crew quickly reasserted their authority. There was hell to pay for the mutineers. For his part Cunningham was dispatched to the hellhole of Norfolk Island, though he did not stay there long. His skills as a stonemason were needed in New South Wales and this probably saved him from further punishment. Assigned to duties in the government farming settlement at Castle Hill Cunningham ultimately became the overseer of government stonemasons.
Phil Cunningham did not knuckle under. Nor was he the most successful of rebels. With the fellow Anne convict, Conor Sheehan, in October 1802 Cunningham tried to abscond, seeking to join a departing French vessel. They did not get very far. Both were apprehended in Parramatta and received 100 lashes.
In 1804 Cunningham was reputedly building his own stone home, but the attractions of home ownership did not dissuade this rebel to modify his views. On 4 March he became the principal leader of the Irish rebels and uttered the republican battle cry, Death or Liberty. After addressing his followers at Toongabbies Constitution Hill Cunningham dispatched several columns to obtain guns and men prior to the planned attacks on Parramatta and Port Jackson. The tactics used by the United Irishmen in 98 massing centrally controlled forces on high ground sites-were again deployed.
After limited skirmishes and several successful raids in the Seven Hills/Pennant Hills areas, George Johnson of the NSW Corps staged a tactical coup by taking the battle to the rebels. Cunningham and his colleagues, William Johnson and Samuel Hume, two Protestant United Irish from the north of Ireland, had expected more of a lull in which to rally their troops. They sought a cease-fire. Johnson initially agreed, but then reneged, ordering his troops to open fire. Estimates of the numbers of casualties vary. Ruan ODonnell says that 30 rebels were killed. The official Vinegar Hill Bicentenary view is that fifteen rebels died. Martial law was declared for the first time in Australian history. Nine of the rebel leaders were hanged. A similar number was flogged. Dozens more were sent to Van Diemans Land or Coal River, working the coal mines beneath Fort Scratchley, thus founding the city of Newcastle. The event ODonnell styles the most serious insurrectionary challenge directed against the Australian state was over.
Typically, there is debate about what happened to Cunningham. One tradition has it that during the cease-fire negotiations with Johnson a certain Lieutenant Laycock, struck Cunningham with his rifle or shot him in the back, either the blow or the bullet killing him. Laycock was a giant of a man, six foot six tall, but he had the heart and human decency of a pea and was mentally unbalanced, perhaps partly due to syphilis. Another tradition has it that Cunningham initially escaped, perhaps wounded, but was captured on a patrol later that night or early on the morning of 6 March, whereupon he was taken to the Hawkesbury and hanged in a storehouse. It might be that the two theories can be married. Given the early nineteenth century notions of exemplary justice it is possible that Laycock did kill Cunningham, and the gibbeting of his body followed in order to show all the other croppy boys that the likes of George Johnson would take no prisoners. Im pleased to note that as part of the present Bicentennial commemorations of Vinegar Hill, an historic marker has been unveiled on the site of the 1803 Government Store, at the corner of Windsor Road and George Street, Windsor, the site of Philip Cunninghams hanging. It is also comforting that a wreath has been laid at the nearby convict burial ground where Philip Cunningham is believed buried.
This brings me to the story of Phil Cunningham. The main leader of the Irish convicts at Vinegar Hill in 1804, Cunningham may well have some claim as the least remembered Irish martyr of them all. That Cunningham has been largely forgotten in popular memory asks fundamental questions about the Castle Hill uprising itself. Was it, for instance, an unworthy event; an uprising of rabble rather than rebel convicts possessing neither principles nor a clearly articulated political agenda? Compared to Eureka, which, so the narrative goes and as Dr Evatt assured us, ushered in liberal democracy, Vinegar Hill is a poor relation. Sometimes it is forgotten altogether. 1 Why dont we know more about Cunningham?
It helps, I think, to put on record what we do know about Cunningham. Phil Cunningham was born at Glenn Liath, Moyvane, (in the modern parish of Molahiffe) County Kerry, though we do not know when. Both a stonemason and a publican in Clonmel, a thriving town of some 5000 residents in Tipperary to which he moved in the 1790s, Cunningham was not born to a position of great social standing. While this sharply differentiated him from the likes of Lord Fitzgerald, the rank and file of the United Irishmen was strongly comprised of people of such middling social status.
We do not know much about the details of his involvement in the tumultuous events of 1798, though it is probable he helped to coordinate the United Irish insurgency in the Clonmel district, perhaps holding the rank of captain. In Clonmel he was regarded as an articulate man who moved in high social circles. The Mayor of Clonmel, Richard Moore, provided a character reference at Cunninghams trial. It is not hard to find glowing accounts of Cunninghams intellectual acumen and personal magnetism. Kerry tradition has it that Cunningham was a man of great stature and commanding appearancea born leader of men and a man who commanded loyalty and got it and that he had a sharp mind.
As a policeman would have it, Cunningham first came to notice when he helped to re-organise the United Irish network in the south of Ireland in early 1799, a reminder that thinking about 1798 as a one year event only is misleading. It began much earlier and did not end until the early 1800s, in reality not until the disastrous military engagement at Vinegar Hill, New South Wales in March 1804. In 1799 Cunningham was involved in rescuing prisoners and conducting arms raids, as well as sporadically attacking the Clonmel yeomanry on the retaliate first principle. The Tipperary rebels continued to await the arrival of the French and tried to re-establish the lines of communication, deficiencies in which had hamstrung the success of the main event the previous year.
On the evidence of an informer, that great bane of Irish history, Cunningham was captured and charged with sedition at Clonmel 9-11 October 1799. A legal technicality caused the death sentence to be commuted to transportation to Botany Bay for life. In 1800 he was placed abroad the Anne, a 384 tonne foreign-built vessel, the third transport to carry rebel prisoners to New South Wales. Among the fellow prisoners was a veritable rogues gallery of United Irish rebels, including Manus Sheehy and Thomas Captain Steel Langan of the Kerry/West Limerick United Irishmen, as well as Fr Peter ONeill of Cork whose back was badly lacerated following a severe flogging.
Unsurprisingly there was a major mutiny. On 29 July 1800 Manus Sheehy seized the captain and first mate as they went into the ships prison to supervise fumigation. About thirty prisoners on deck sprang into action. Cunningham was one of the plotters. The mutiny, however, was unsuccessful. The ships crew quickly reasserted their authority. There was hell to pay for the mutineers. For his part Cunningham was dispatched to the hellhole of Norfolk Island, though he did not stay there long. His skills as a stonemason were needed in New South Wales and this probably saved him from further punishment. Assigned to duties in the government farming settlement at Castle Hill Cunningham ultimately became the overseer of government stonemasons.
Phil Cunningham did not knuckle under. Nor was he the most successful of rebels. With the fellow Anne convict, Conor Sheehan, in October 1802 Cunningham tried to abscond, seeking to join a departing French vessel. They did not get very far. Both were apprehended in Parramatta and received 100 lashes.
In 1804 Cunningham was reputedly building his own stone home, but the attractions of home ownership did not dissuade this rebel to modify his views. On 4 March he became the principal leader of the Irish rebels and uttered the republican battle cry, Death or Liberty. After addressing his followers at Toongabbies Constitution Hill Cunningham dispatched several columns to obtain guns and men prior to the planned attacks on Parramatta and Port Jackson. The tactics used by the United Irishmen in 98 massing centrally controlled forces on high ground sites-were again deployed.
After limited skirmishes and several successful raids in the Seven Hills/Pennant Hills areas, George Johnson of the NSW Corps staged a tactical coup by taking the battle to the rebels. Cunningham and his colleagues, William Johnson and Samuel Hume, two Protestant United Irish from the north of Ireland, had expected more of a lull in which to rally their troops. They sought a cease-fire. Johnson initially agreed, but then reneged, ordering his troops to open fire. Estimates of the numbers of casualties vary. Ruan ODonnell says that 30 rebels were killed. The official Vinegar Hill Bicentenary view is that fifteen rebels died. Martial law was declared for the first time in Australian history. Nine of the rebel leaders were hanged. A similar number was flogged. Dozens more were sent to Van Diemans Land or Coal River, working the coal mines beneath Fort Scratchley, thus founding the city of Newcastle. The event ODonnell styles the most serious insurrectionary challenge directed against the Australian state was over.
Typically, there is debate about what happened to Cunningham. One tradition has it that during the cease-fire negotiations with Johnson a certain Lieutenant Laycock, struck Cunningham with his rifle or shot him in the back, either the blow or the bullet killing him. Laycock was a giant of a man, six foot six tall, but he had the heart and human decency of a pea and was mentally unbalanced, perhaps partly due to syphilis. Another tradition has it that Cunningham initially escaped, perhaps wounded, but was captured on a patrol later that night or early on the morning of 6 March, whereupon he was taken to the Hawkesbury and hanged in a storehouse. It might be that the two theories can be married. Given the early nineteenth century notions of exemplary justice it is possible that Laycock did kill Cunningham, and the gibbeting of his body followed in order to show all the other croppy boys that the likes of George Johnson would take no prisoners. Im pleased to note that as part of the present Bicentennial commemorations of Vinegar Hill, an historic marker has been unveiled on the site of the 1803 Government Store, at the corner of Windsor Road and George Street, Windsor, the site of Philip Cunninghams hanging. It is also comforting that a wreath has been laid at the nearby convict burial ground where Philip Cunningham is believed buried.
