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Remembered Today:

John Goey - executed by British 1916


corisande

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Strange goings on with the Irish Brigade. This man Goey or McGoey certainly existed. He came form New York in Dec 1916 to meet up with Casement. He was dispatched to Ireland and appears to have disappeared without trace. Certainly the Irish Brigade men believed him to have been shot in Peterhead Prison (the reports by Rahilly and Keogh are independent of each other)

Jour-intelligence.jpg

Keogh (Sgt major of Irish Brigade) describes him as McGoey, a volunteer from New York. Courier between Clan na Gael in US and Germany. Taken off a Swedish ship by the British in Kirkwall and shot the day before Good Friday 1916 at Peterhead Prison Scotland. Born Donegal.

Rahilly (A Private in Irish Brigade) described him as the "mystery man" who was sent to Ireland, caught by the British and executed in Peterhead Prison. The men in the Irish Brigade had no idea who he was, the rumour being that he came from a civilian prison camp - he spoke with a Northern Ireland accent

There is the thought that he may have been a double agent, and that he just returned to UK and changed identity. He does not appear on list of civil executions, which includes spies on this thread which seems to be a comprehensive list

Can anyone shed any light on who Goey was, and what happened to him

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The only thing I can offer is that Peterhead was fully equipped with a scaffold. I suppose he might have been taken to the quarry and shot but it would have been a lot easier to hang him. Peterhead is not easy to get to so they went out of their way to take him there.

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Peterhead is not easy to get to so they went out of their way to take him there.

Bearing in mind that the Irish Brigade believed that Goey had been taken of a Swedish ship in the Orkneys, I assume that he would have been taken to the mainland from there, and to that extent Peterhead is presumably a logical place to interrogate him.

Both Keogh and Rahilly wrote in Memoirs years later "Peterhead" - Rahilly's have never been published (I got them from the family and am going through them) and Keogh's have only been published this year (written in the 1920s)

They certainly believe Goey was shot at Peterheah. My feeling is he was a double agent, but I may never be able to prove that - particularly if Goey was an alias

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Basil Thomson in his book "Queer People" touches on him

"It happened that in the previous November one John M'Govey had come over from the United States as a volunteer. The German Admiralty approved of the suggestion, and on Sunday, 19th March, M'Govey was sent into Denmark with instructions to reach Dublin without delay."

and

[Casement] called again upon Captain Nadolny, who, to his surprise, addressed him in terms of great discourtesy and accused him of a breach of faith in having sent M'Govey to Ireland without consulting him. Probably the traditional jealousy between the naval and military departments was at the bottom of this outburst.

But there Thomson lets the matter rest and does not mention what became of

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  • 6 months later...

Let me give John McGoey another run for his money. I have found out more about him, so that I believe that I can substantiate who he was, the man who should have turned up from New York to deliver a message to Casement in Germany.

I cannot substantiate whether the right man turned up, and whether the British executed him. I feel that he may in fact have been a German agent, but no more than a feeling.

I have a full write up of what I know on this link

The bones of it are

1915 Nov 27. He arrived in Germany from USA

1915 Dec 5. Went to Zossen and joined the Irish Brigade.

Kept himself to himself which in Zossen. A "mystery man"

However he does give that he was born Glasgow 1883. And his next of kin as a sister Margaret McEneany living at 41 North Burns, Chester le Street, Durham. This enables me to get the certain marriage (1910 in Sunderland to James McEneany) and the probable births in Glasgow of Margaret McGuay (b1881) and John McGuay (b1883)

1916 Mar 19. Casement withdraws him from Zossen in order to take a verbal message to the Rising leaders in Ireland urging them to call of the Rising. The last anyone sees of him is when Casement bids him farewell that morning in Berlin

2 sources in the Irish Brigade (Keogh and Rahilly) say he was captured and shot by the British - no official record exists.

And the odd bits are

The man who leaves New York is about 30 years old, 5 feet 7 inches tall, speaks English with a Scottish accent

Meade describes the man who arrived as 5ft 6 inches, age about 30, stout build, fair complexion, smart soldier like appearance.

McGoey arrives in Copenhagen and gets passport from German Consulate for onward travel to Germany. The German consul issues the passport without a photo, as there was "not enough time"

Rahilly writes McGoey was the mystery man of the Brigade. We knew nothing about him and he did not tell. .... he spoke with a Northern Ireland accent

Keogh says McGoey had a "butterscotch" Derry accent

The early 1916 list of Egypt volunteers gives him as 32 years old, born Glasgow, next of kin Mrs Margaret McEaney. 41 North Burns, Chester le Street, Durham.

19 March 1916, a German police agent escorts McGoey to Warnemunde with no papers or passport and be put into Denmark.

Casement's diary notes say that the real purpose of McGoey going to to Ireland was to get the heads in Ireland to call off the rising and merely try to land the arms safely and distribute these.

McGoey is never heard of again. Someone told the Irish Brigade that he had been shot by the British in Peterhead, both Rahilly and Keogh write this. One can only conclude that they got the information from the Germans, and how would the Germans know if the British had shot him? The story is likely to be false in that case.

29 March 1916, the first time Casement saw Nadolny after McGoey's departure, the discussion "soon developed into acrimonious controversy. I was reproached in terms of extraordinary discourtesy with something like a breach of faith or underhand trick because I had exercised my undoubted right of dispatching John McGoey to Ireland"

The Irish army, in 1924, tried to find where he might have come from in Ireland, and failed.

It is an intriguing puzzle, and I often find on the Forum that more minds can sometimes crack problems that are intractable to me

Anyone who can add any facts, no matter how small on McGoey, I would be very grateful

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The only facts I can offer are peripheral. There was a prison at Inverness where Goey could have been held, interrogated and executed. If he was brought from Orkney by train, he would have passed through Inverness. It is possible that he was sent by sea and so, Peterhead might make sense as he might have been expected to land at Aberdeen or Edinburgh. If the authorities feared a rescue attempt, that would have been difficult on the short journey from the harbour to the gaol at Peterhead. This penitentiary was one of the few which routinely had armed warders.

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Thanks for the input on Peterhead

My problem with him being executed at Peterhead, is that I am not convinced that he ever was there.

The only primary accounts come from 2 Irish Brigade men (Keogh and Rahilly) who say that independently he was shot by the British. But how on earth could they have known that (incarcerated in a camp in Germany). One assumes that that is what the Germans told the Irish brigade.

Which then raises the question as to how the Germans could have known - nothing appears in British records that I can find, and if they did execute him as a spy, then one would have thought something would be available in British records by now. The British were not reticent to say that they had executed named individuals as spies.

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I hear what you say and it is a puzzle. Very little to go on. There was, of course, a lot of sympathy in Scotland for Sinn Fhein at the time, as well as opposition. Information could have traveled through unofficial channels back to Ireland but Germany seems a stretch.

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The other odd thing is the accent he had. One would have expect a Scottish accent - I am fairly sure his birth in Glasgow is correct, and von Pappen cables Germany to expect a man with a Scottish accent.

You could argue that von Pappen could not tell a Glasgow accent from a Derry one, but the two Irish Brigade men who lived with McGoey both say he spoke with a Northern Ireland accent. An Irishman (let alone two) could tell the difference. So I conclude he had indeed a Northern Ireland accent when he arrived in Zossen. Could the "real" McGoey have had a Northern ireland accent

People have tried for years to find out more about McGoey, and I seem to have got closer than anyone yet, but somehow I am still struggling to see if the man in the birth cert in Glasgow is really the man who arrived at Zossen. And then what really happened to the man who left Zossen and was last seen leaving Casements's hotel escorted by a policeman and carrying no papers at all.

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  • 3 weeks later...

It cannot be bigamy surely?

I have the marriage cert and seem to have run into Bigamy, if anyone has the time or the inclination would they like to check my facts and conclusions. I assume if I reach the conclusion that there is bigamy, then I am wrong somewhere.

My full write up on McGoey is on this link,

Notes on his sister Margaret on this link

Notes on James McEneany on this link

I start with an entry in a roll book at Zossen POW camp

egypt-5-snippet.jpg

I have tried to track down John McGoey's sister from this, which seems the only hope of finding out what happened to John McGoey after he left Casement in Germany in 1916.

1. The only marriage I can find is of a Margaret McGoey to a James McEneany in Gateshead in 1910 The cert is on this link. It tells us that James McEneany was son of Owen McEneany

2. The 1911 census does not have James McEneany nor his new wife Margaret

3. There is a 1905 marriage of a James McEneany in Sunderland to a Sarah Rogers, they have one child in 1906 and a second one in 1916 (mother of that is given as Rogers).

Sarah Rogers is living with her parents in 1911 census without her husband.

4. There is no sign of any McEneany nor McGoey living at either

41 North Burns, Chester le Street (the address given by McGoey for his sister in 1916 document), nor

22 Hainingwood Terrace, Bill Quay, Heyworth (where she was living at time of her marriage in 1910)

5.Genes and Ancestry have trees on James McEneany/Sarah Rogers, but the owners are not able to help me.

There appears to be only one James McEneany in the area, and he appears to have married Sarah Rogers in 1905 and bigamously Margaret McEneany on 1910, and returned to his wife by 1916 to have a second child.

[edit - thee is a further marriage of Sarah Rogers] After that James McEneany and Margaret McEneany all seem to disappear off the face of the earth with no further mentions, including no mention of the death of either. However there is a marriage of Sarah McEneany in 1920, to a Lees Jobling, that is on an Ancestry tree as Sarah Rogers remarrying.

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