Thomas Kent: 16 Lives

16 Lives

by Meda Ryan

Kent was part of a prominent nationalist family who lived at Bawnard House, Castlelyons, County Cork. They were prepared to take part in the Easter Rising, but when the mobilization order was countermanded, they stayed home. The rising nevertheless went forward in Dublin, and the RIC was sent to arrest well-known sympathizers throughout the country. When the Kent residence was raided they were met with resistance from Thomas and his brothers Richard, David and William. A gunfight lasted for four hours, in which an RIC officer, Head Constable William Rowe, was killed and David Kent was seriously wounded.

Eventually the Kents were forced to surrender. Thomas and William were tried by court martial on the charge of armed rebellion. William was acquitted, but Thomas was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad in Cork on 9 May 1916.

Genres: History, Biography, Irish Literature, Nonfiction

400 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

MEDA RYAN, historian and author, is a native of West Cork and now lives in Ennis, Clare; she has participated in television and radio documentaries and has had articles published in a wide variety of history magazines and journals, plus national and local newspapers.
She was was widowed when her Husband, Donal Ryan, passed away in Ennis, Clare in 2013, who was also a native of Cork.

Ryan developed a strong interest in the Irish revolutionary period, and interviewed many veterans of the old IRA. For this reason, she has a huge amount of respect for these individuals and famously was involved in a dispute with Canadian historian Peter Hart on IRA Commandant Tom Barry. This prompted Ryan to write an extended biography of Tom Barry. Her fist Biography of Tom Barry, The Tom Barry Story was written in 1982 for the Mercier Press. Following the dispute with Hart, in 2003 She wrote her extended Biography entitled Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter

Her published books include Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter; The Day Michael Collins Was Shot; Liam Lynch: The Real Chief and Michael Collins and the Women Who Spied for Ireland.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you decided to play the “One of These Things is not Like the Others” game with the fifteen Easter Rising rebels executed on Irish soil, the answer would certainly be “Thomas Kent.” Considered by many as the “forgotten martyr” of 1916, he fought not in Dublin but in County Cork, his act of resistance not a street battle but a vigorous defense of a home by an aged mother and her sons, and it occurred not on Monday of Easter Week but on Tuesday of the next. Indeed, it had more to do with the Land League protests and their aftermath than with the revolutionary ferment in Dublin, and, as such, it provides a bridge which links the die-hard Republican families of the West with the Rising, and points to the War of Independence and the flying columns to come.

Because of his unique and prophetic position in Irish revolutionary history, Thomas Kent deserves an excellent biography. Unfortunately, this attempt of Meda Ryan’s falls considerably short of excellence.

This partial failure is not entirely Ryan’s fault, for any biographer of Kent is faced with two considerable difficulties: 1) much of the Kent family’s history of resistance (essential to Thomas’ story) occurred while he was in Boston promoting Irish language education, 2) Kent’s collected letters from America, as well as his mother’s and brothers’ replies together Thomas’ unpublished poetry and other writings, were confiscated and presumably destroyed by the British after the siege of May 2nd in an attempt (only temporarily successful) to keep his name from the list of martyrs. Because of this, any person who tells Kent’s story is in danger of 1) losing track of his individual deeds in the narrative of family events, and 2) failing to reveal his inner life, since so little evidence remains of his writings and conversations.

Instead of being content with a much shorter biography—which I believe would have been a wiser choice—Ryan crams her 340 pages of text full of tangential family doings and the tedious transcripts of court cases (one of these, involving a boycott in which a man is prevented from buying livestock, is supposed to be amusing, but I did not find it so.).

Still, when Ryan gets to the meat of her book—the account of the dramatic siege of the Kent family home, which looks more like an American gangster shootout from the 20’s than the Easter Rising—she does an able job of bringing the book to an exciting conclusion.

If you love Irish history, as I do, I would give Ryan’s book a try. (Do yourself a favor though, and skim all that legal banter, particularly all the stuff about the cows and the pigs.)

[Differengenera · Rating 3 out of 5]

some really great details and accounts of the activities of the land league in Cork when resisting Balfour's coercion acts but they feel not only like they should be in a different book, given their relatively minimal impact on the guy whose name is on the cover, but also that they're being used as part of a showcase for primary documents, especially court transcripts; this stuff isn't sufficiently condensed to form a portrait or a larger unity of an historical moment, memorable as much of it is.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ar dtús, ní raibh an leabhair siumiúil, go háirithe le linn na caibidil a bhaineann leis an dtriail chúirte, d'éirigh sé suimiúil ina dhiadh san. Níl raibh an insint sa beathaisnéis so chomh maith leis na beathaisnéisí eile sa sraith '16 Lives'. Ach, fós féin, do bhí deas bheith ag léamh fén fear so, fear nach bhfuil mórán aithne agamsa (nó ag éinne) fé.

[Caoimhin Gabhann · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amazing family, the best of the book is in its final few chapters. Up to that point it was hard to keep focus. The while centre of the book, chapter after chapter is the playing out of court cases nearly scene by scene.

Rest in peace the kent Brothers and their beautiful mother

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first book I have read about the Kent brothers. My uncle lived in Fermoy and so I had wished I read this book earlier so I could have discussed the book with my uncle while he was a live. The only drawback on the book, is that it goes into a lot of detail on the court issues, I think it could have been edited better and still retain the importance of those legal cases. Ireland owes much to the likes of Thomas Kent.