The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1881-02-08 00:00:00

MICHAEL. DAVITT.

Michael Devitt, ticket.of --leave Fenian, was arrested
in Dublin on Thursday. lie was brought to London
on Friday morning, in custody of the officer who
apprehended him. He was a once taken to Bow-street
Police-couii,, where formal evidence as to his identity,
and as to conviction in 1870, was laid before the
stipendiary magistrate, Davitt then asked why his
license had been revoked, but was informed that that
was no questim for the bench. A warrant for his
re-committal was then silmed, and the convict was
forthwith removed to Mdbank prison. Davitt is a
Roman Catholic and the son of a tenant farmer, and
was born at Straid, near Caatelbar, in 18hi. His
father was evicted in 1851, and the family went to
reside in England. They settled in Lancashire, where
they remained for twenty-five years. Michael Davitt
went to work in a cotton miU at Haslingden, at the
aged of nine, and he was a year at that labour when
his right arm got crushed by the mill machinery,
necessitating its amputation at the shoulder. For five
years he attended the Wesleyan School in Haslingtlen,
and at 15 got employed as assistant letter-carrier and
bookkeeper in the printing-office attached to the Post.
office there. Leaving in 1868, he beanie a commercial
traveller, dealing extensively in firearms, a vocation
which brought him into difficulty, as a large quantity
of his goods found their way to Ireland. On May 14,
1873, he was arrested in London, with a gunsmith
mund John Wilson, from Birminghan. He was tried
In Newgate on a charged of Fenianisra, and on July
17, 1870, was sentenced by Chief Justice Cockburn to
fiteen years' penal servitude, Wilson being awarded
seven. Corydon was the informer on the occasion, and
Devitt declared solemnly that he had never seen
Corydon before in his life till he confronted him in the
dock. Davitt underwent his imprisonment in Clerken-
well,Newgate, Milbark, and Dartmoor, till, on the 19th
December, 1877, after being seven years and seven
months in prison, he was handed a ticket-of-leave and
discharged. He then went on a lecturing tour through
England and Scetbind, and on the 21st June, 1878, he
was examined by the Royal Commission appointed to
inquire into the working of the Penal Servitude Acts.
The evidence given by him fills fifteen pages of the
Blue-book, and contains several suggestions as to the
classification of prisoners, &c. On the 23rd of July
last year, his health bein.c in a precarious condition, he
wont to America and delivered a comae of lectures
through the United States. He intended bringing
back his mother and sisters, who had gone to America
during his imprisonment. He, however, decided to
leave them there a year or tw longer, until times
improved in Ireland, and he again landed in this
country on the 31st December last, after establishrug
branches of the Lend League, and brou.7ht home a
large amount of money. He is the correspondent of
the Boron Pilot, and of an Irish American paper in
New York, and occasionally contrihutes to Irish
provincial papers. He has yet to serve seven years
and five months to complete his full toi.a of penal
servitude.