The Black Diaries: Life of an Irish Rebel and Unrepentant Pervert
On August 3, 1916, Sir Roger Casement was hanged in an English prison for attempting to smuggle weapons from Germany into Ireland for the Easter Uprising. To the Irish he was yet another martyr; to the English he was a Knight, traitor and “pervert”, as revealed in excerpts leaked to the press from his seized diaries.
The handsome and eloquent Roger was born into a privileged Protestant Ulster family. After his Catholic mother died Roger and his two brothers went to live with relatives, where he developed a life-long friendship with his cousin Gertrude Bannister.
At the age of 20 Roger sailed to Africa, eventually working for the British Consular Service where he documented the atrocities committed against the Belgian Congo natives enslaved and tortured in the rubber trade. For his tireless and dangerous efforts he was granted knighthood. Later, Roger was appointed to a post in South America where he similarly revealed the exploitation of the Indians in the rubber trade.
As his interest in the plight of his own countrymen grew, his former Imperialist sentiments were gradually replaced by a fervent nationalism. Tensions in Northern Ireland mounted, Home Rule was debated in Parliament, the Ulster Protestants formed an armed militia, and Roger and other Irish nationalists, including his close friend, Alice Green, organized a militia of Catholics to be armed by weapons smuggled from Germany.
While Roger was in America raising funds for the gun-running scheme World War I erupted. Roger believed if Ireland sided with a victorious Germany, then Ireland might be granted statehood. Roger secretly sailed to Germany with his manservant and lover, Adler Christensen, to procure weapons for the Easter Uprising and to recruit Irish POWs for an Irish Brigade to fight against England.
While in Germany Adler betrayed Roger to the British, Roger became ill, his success in recruiting the Irish POWs was limited, and when the Germans abandoned the Irish cause, he set out for Ireland on a U-boat to call off the Uprising. Washing ashore at Tralee Cove in Ireland, Roger was captured by the British and arrested for treason.
After a sham trial Roger was sentenced to death. The British leaked the explicit homosexual contents of Roger's diaries to important officials and journalists in attempt to quell the mounting international reprieve efforts. Wishing to make an example of Roger, Asquith's Cabinet determined that only a letter from the U.S President could stay the execution: The telegram arrived as Roger was already headed to the gallows.
Roger’s last wish was to be buried in Ireland. Despite several petitions to have his body interred in Ireland, it was not until 1965 that his remains were exhumed and brought to rest in Ireland with 200,000 people lining the streets of Dublin to welcome their hero home, most of whom never knew Roger had been a homosexual.