Roger Casement Black Diaries
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Roger Casement Black Diaries
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Roger Casement: The Black Diaries - with a study of his background, sexuality, and Irish political life Paperback – January 5, 2016
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4.3 out of 5 stars
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Publisher
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Belfast Press; Second, revised and expanded edition (January 5, 2016) Language
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English Paperback
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728 pages ISBN-10
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095392873X ISBN-13
:
978-0953928736 Item Weight
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2.21 pounds Dimensions
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6.14 x 1.64 x 9.21 inches
4.3 out of 5 stars
22 ratings
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This book would benefit greatly with the addition of some maps -- of the area in Ireland where Casement grew up, and the areas of the Belgian Congo and the Amazon where Casement's investigations took place. These places are referenced with such frequency that maps would help the reader better understand the diaries and Dudgeon's text. Also, some background information on Ireland's political and religious history would help the uninitiated; as it stands, the target reader seems to be one of Irish history. Still, this reader learned a lot; Dudgeon's exhaustive research is immensely fascinating, and his comments and interpretation insightful and learned. Well-balanced and respectful.
Jeffrey Dudgeon is a wonderful and entertaining writer. He uses Roger Casement's "Black Diaries" as the basis for a biography that is sympathetic but not hagiographic. Casement was a great man but also a difficult person. Dudgeon's analysis of the more taboo elements of the "Black Diaries" is admirably even handed. What is especially impressive is the way Jeffrey Dudgeon takes on the entrenched homophobia of those who would deny the "Black Diaries" authenticity. Finally, he is a surprisingly witty writer. This book is a good read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent publication
The best and most important book on the subject, now updated and augmented. An excellent publication.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A superb book. Dudgeon writes about Casement with authority ...
A superb book. Dudgeon writes about Casement with authority, sensitivity and an occasional irascible humour. His work on the diaries is rigorous and illuminating; his biography of Casement is accessible and thoughtful.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful and well written
This book is a very good introduction to Sir Roger Casement. The author's appendix to the Black Diaries are very good and help us to understand Casement's diaries' context. Highly recommended
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely astonishing !
Reading ‘The Black Diaries’ is something of a walking tour on treasure island. You really risk to discover a treasure in every chapter and to be blown away by the unbelievable research Jeffrey Dudgeon did to - introduce the Casement genealogy - describe the schooldays and the start of Casement’s career - decipher all the places and persons in the Black Diaries - give a biography of a number of influential men in Casement’s life - offer us a wide and profound outline of Casement’s homosexuality at the end of the 19th century and a century of authenticity controverses - to write about the Easter Rising and Casement’s trials - to put together an unbelievable annotated bibliography Each chapter makes it worth reading : a fantastic read.
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In this revised and expanded second edition with more photographs, all Roger Casement's Black Diaries are, uniquely, again published together, including the never-before-seen erotically-charged 1911 Diary over which London threatened an obscenity prosecution. A number of new characters are introduced and some old mysteries solved.
The volume provides both a comprehensive view of the diaries' texts, with explanations for many of the cast of characters, famous, infamous, and fleeting, and a context for the author whose significance and seminal role in the political development of independent Ireland has been masked by the debates over the diaries' authenticity. This is a uniquely fresh and original look at the Irish patriot and humanitarian, hanged in 1916 for treason. It was the same Casement whose reports on rubber slavery and genocide in King Leopold's Congo and the Peruvian Amazon, in 1904 and 1911, reflected in two of his Black Diaries, that shocked Edwardian England.
The book also deals with the neglected sides of Casement's life, his involvement in Ulster politics, his family background in Co. Antrim, his Belfast boyfriend Millar Gordon, and his sociopathic companion, the Norwegian sailor, Adler Christensen, as well as a comprehensive view of the authenticity controversies, Casement's homosexuality, and his time in Africa and Brazil.
Roger Casement had iconic status in life and after death was sanctified and vilified in equal measure. His real self was consequently obscured. This book combines a rigorous academic study of Casement, the public and political figure (with over 1,000 references and an extensive bibliography, updated to 2016), alongside an account of his personal life, sexuality, and consular career, and an informed view of how they all interlocked and originated. It also provides a fresh assessment of the events leading up to the Easter Rising and British intelligence failings, and an up-to-date account of the controversies that have swirled around Casement to this day, including the attempts made in Dublin, from the 1930s, to threaten the truth about the Black Diaries.
' No Roger Casement - No Easter Rising ': Casement groomed the key personnel who set about creating the Irish Republic, from 1904 to 1923. He commissioned the first arms for the IRA - on two occasions, in 1914 and 1916. To know about Roger Casement is to know why Ireland achieved independence and why Ulster stayed separate remaining in the UK after partition. This volume therefore provides an insight into the political conflict in the north and suggests how it could be diminished by both learning and respecting each other's stories and agreeing to disagree.
Jeffrey Dudgeon was born in Belfast, educated locally and at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1981 he was the winning plaintiff at the European Court of Human Rights in a suit against the UK. This resulted in the decriminalisation of male homosexuality in Northern Ireland in 1982. A civil servant for many years, he was, from 1995-8, parliamentary adviser to the UK Unionist MP for North Down. For the following two years, he was engaged, full time, in researching this book. Awarded an MBE in the 2012 New Year's Honours List, for services to the LGBT community, he was, in 2013, one of the two Ulster Unionist Party representatives at the Haass Talks. In 2014, he was elected to Belfast City Council, and chairs its Diversity Working Group. He continues to speak on issues relating to Roger Casement and his global significance, particularly so in the Decade of Centenaries, whose apex is 2016. Much of his recent research has been in relation to Casement's time in Berlin, involving transcription of his German diary and associated documentation, as well as further investigations into his companions and British Intelligence in 1916, and newly emerging aspects of his upbringing.
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By Paul Tilzey
Last updated 2011-06-06
For decades, mystery has surrounded the Black Diaries of Roger Casement, which exposed him as a homosexual. Theories of forgery have been widespread, but now conclusive forensic testing finally reveals the truth.
The renowned human rights campaigner, Sir Roger Casement, was hanged in 1916 for his involvement in the Irish Nationalist revolt in Dublin - the Easter Rising. His guilt was never seriously in doubt but the Black Diaries sealed Casement's fate. Within their pages are the explicit details that exposed him as a promiscuous homosexual. When selected extracts were shown to public figures and known sympathisers, most shrank back from the calls for clemency that could have saved Casement. He went to his death in disgrace.
Such underhand tactics were always bound to arouse suspicions of foul play.
The diary pages were distributed by the British authorities in a determined effort to ensure that Casement's execution would be unopposed. Such underhand tactics were always bound to arouse suspicions of foul play.
After Casement's death the diaries were retained by the Home Office and held in conditions of extraordinary secrecy, which only added to the atmosphere of mistrust. There has existed for many years now a widely held belief, particularly in Ireland, that all five diaries were forged.
A page from the Black Diaries
©
Suspicions of forgery were first aroused at the time of Casement's execution when many of his closest friends and relatives insisted that he was not homosexual.
Herbert Dickey, an American doctor, spent several weeks during 1911 travelling with Casement in South America and observed nothing. New York lawyer John Quinn had also known Casement and wrote to a friend, using the language of the day: 'Never by word or act, by tone of the voice, by a gesture or by the slightest syllable or letter was there a shadow or shade of anything of a degenerate about him.'
'They got the diary, cooked it and forged bits...'
Gertrude Bannister, Casement's favourite cousin and confidante, was equally adamant. She held a theory of how the diaries had been produced which she explained in a letter to Roger's sister Nina. 'While he was in the Putumayo he kept a diary in which he jotted down all the foul things he heard of the doings of the beauties out there whose conduct he was investigating. He used it later for his notes and report... They got the diary, cooked it and forged bits to make it seem as if it were R's own experiences.'
1916 headline about Casement's capture
©
Casement's first biographer, Denis Gwynn, was frustrated in his efforts to investigate the issue. The Home Office refused to confirm that the diaries even existed. However, in 1936, William J. Maloney, an American doctor with no connection to Casement, made a direct allegation of foul play in The Forged Casement Diaries .
Dr Maloney had not had access to the diaries himself, but he drew attention to apparent inconsistencies in the descriptions given by those who had seen them. This included the Irish Republican leader Michael Collins who inspected them in 1921 and was satisfied that they were genuine. Maloney also proposed a variation on Gertrude Bannister's explanation of how the diaries were forged, which has since become known as 'The Normand Theory'.
Whilst conducting his investigations in South America, Casement had obtained one of Normand's private diaries...
Armando Normand was the most infamous of the managers employed by the Peruvian Amazon rubber company. The cruelty he inflicted on the native workers, as well as their wives and children, was truly appalling.
While conducting his investigations in South America, Casement had obtained one of Normand's private diaries, translated it and sent it to the Foreign Office. According to this forgery theory, these descriptions of Normand's depraved acts of sadism, written in Casement's own hand, were later incorporated in some way into other genuine diaries.
The problem with this explanation is that the diaries describe the activities of a promiscuous homosexual but it is evident from Casement's own Putumayo report that Normand was violently heterosexual. Nevertheless, Dr Maloney's book had a powerful impact, particularly on two poets: W B Yeats and Alfred Noyes. Their reactions helped propagate the idea that Casement had been the victim of a British conspiracy.
In August 1916, the English poet Alfred Noyes was working in the News Department of the Foreign Office. As part of his work as a wartime propagandist he published his own account of having seen the Black Diaries. 'I have seen and read them and they touch the lowest depths that human degradation has ever touched. Page after page of his diary would be an insult to a pig's trough to let the foul record touch it.'
But Noyes soon got his comeuppance for having lavished such invective on the recently executed Casement. Later that same year he was in Philadelphia to give a lecture on English poets, but before he could utter a word he was confronted by Sir Roger's sister, Nina. He recalled in his memoirs, 'The chairman had just finished his introduction, and I was already on my feet, when a lady of distinguished bearing rose in the audience and asked if she might say a few words... to my horror and that of the audience, she announced that she had come for the express purpose of exposing the speaker of the evening as a "blackguardly scoundrel". "Your countrymen," she cried, "hanged my brother Roger Casement."'
His admission was seized upon by Casement sympathisers...
Twenty years later, the unfortunate Noyes found himself the victim of a rather more eloquent but equally withering attack. After reading Dr Maloney's book, W B Yeats was moved to write a protest poem entitled Roger Casement , and he was not afraid to name names.
Come, Alfred Noyes, come all the troop That cried it far and wide Come from the forger and his desk Desert the perjurer's side
Stung into action, Alfred Noyes wrote a letter to the Irish Press in which he confessed that he might have been misled about the authenticity of the diaries. His admission was seized upon by Casement sympathisers and, in recognition of Noyes having deserted 'the perjuror's side', Yeats kindly rewrote his poem to read 'Come Tom and Dick, come all the troop'.
In 1957 Alfred Noyes made full amends for his previous harsh judgement when he published The Accusing Ghost or Justice for Casement in which he argued that Casement had indeed been the victim of a British Intelligence plot. His conversion, and Yeats' protest in verse, cemented the idea that the diaries were forgeries.
On 12th March 2002 the results of the first ever fully independent forensic examination of the Black Diaries were announced at a press conference in London. The examination was carried out by Dr Audrey Giles, an internationally respected figure in the field of document forensics. It was commissioned by Professor Bill McCormack of Goldsmiths College, London, and jointly funded by the BBC and RTE. The verdict was as follows:
The unequivocal and confident conclusion which the Giles Document Laboratory has reached is that each of the five documents collectively known as the Black Diaries is exclusively
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