Irish Historical Mysteries: The Diaries of Roger
Casement
Roger Casement (1864-1916)
The long standing controversy surrounding the authenticity of the diaries of the
executed Irish rebel Roger Casement is once again in the news. A new forensic
analysis of the disputed diaries, which contain frank accounts of homosexual
activity, is claimed to show conclusively that they were written by Casement. But
is the case really closed?
Roger Casement was of Ulster Protestant stock, but was born in Kingstown, now
Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin, in 1864. In the 1890s Casement joined the British
consular service, and in 1903 was ordered to report on allegations of atrocities
against natives in the Belgian Congo in Africa. Casement's report confirmed that
rubber production there was organised on the basis of forced labour
accompanied by horrendous punishments and mutilations of the population.
Casement gained an international reputation for his humantarian efforts in the
Congo, and in 1910 he was further directed by the British Foreign Office to
investigate charges of ill-treatment of natives in the Putumayo region of Peru,
again an area of rubber production. Once more Casement's report lucidly
exposed the 'murder, violation and constant flogging' to which natives were
subjected by agents of a rubber company, and the report's publication in 1912
created an international sensation. Casement was knighted for his services in
1911 and retired from the consular service in 1912. (1)
Despite being a servant of the Crown, Casement had for many years held strong
views in favour of Irish independence from British rule. It was one thing to expose
oppression in other jurisdictions, quite another to oppose what he saw as misrule
in his own country, and Casement was about to embark on a course of action
which would cause him to be converted from hero to villain in the British mind. He
joined the nationalist Irish Volunteers on their foundation in 1913, and on the
outbreak of World War I in 1914 he supported Britain's enemy Germany, in the
hope that it would assist the achievement of Irish independence. Casement
travelled to Germany in 1914, where he endeavoured to secure significant
military aid and to persuade Irish prisoners of war to desert the British Army for
an Irish Brigade.
Disappointed in his efforts in Germany, Casement sent messages back to Ireland
endeavouring to deter nationalist leaders from a planned armed rising, which
however went ahead at Easter 1916. Casement himself returned from Germany
by submarine, and having landed at Banna Strand, near Tralee, County Kerry, he
was arrested by police and taken to London on 24 April. Placed on trial for high
treason at the Old Bailey, he was convicted and sentenced to death. In the time
honoured tradition of condemned Irish patriots, Casement delivered a speech
from the dock to justify himself, in which he declared, 'Self-government is our
right, a thing born in us at birth, a thing no more to be doled out to us or withheld
from us by another people than the right to life itself, than the right to feel the sun
or smell the flowers, or to love our kind'. (2) Following an unsuccessful appeal,
Casement was hanged at Pentonville Prison on 3 August 1916.
Because of the international respect in which he was held, influential people,
particularly in America, came forward to appeal for clemency for Casement.
However, having done to death the leaders of the 1916 Rebellion, the British
were in no mood to show mercy to Casement. One could perhaps point to the
fact that Casement had collaborated with a country engaged in a ruthless war
with Britain, but the means used by the British to discourage appeals on his
behalf were particularly discreditable. Among Casement's effects the British
claimed to have discovered at some point a series of diaries, which in their
accounts of frequent sexual contacts with males showed Casement to have been
a promiscuous homosexual. On account of their pornographic content, these
were termed the 'Black Diaries', and were distinguished from the 'White Diaries'
where Casement supposedly omitted sexual references and recorded only
details of his humanitarian work and private business. The British Government
ensured that extracts from the Black Diaries were shown to those appealing on
Casement's behalf, and given the horror with which homosexuality was then
viewed, sympathy for him dried up and his execution proceeded unhindered.
In the years following, the existence of the Black Diaries was officially denied by
the British, and suspicions grew in the minds of Irish Nationalists that they might
in fact have been forged by British Intelligence and Scotland Yard in order to
blacken Casement's character. (3) In 1959 Peter Singleton Gates, a British
journalist who had received a leaked copy of the Black Diaries, published them in
Paris in collaboration with Maurice Girodias. (4) In the same year the British
began to allow scholars to examine the Black Diaries in the Public Record Office
in London. Leading biographers of Casement such as Inglis and Reid (5) now
tended to accept the authenticity of the Diaries, but in Ireland a number of
individuals kept alive the theory that they were forgeries, and the matter was
periodically aired in the letters pages of the Irish Times and elsewhere.
Unfortunately, some of Casement's defenders proceeded on the rather simplistic
basis that a true Irish Nationalist could not be a homosexual, whereas there is
more widespread acceptance today that Casement may indeed have been 'gay'.
The current re-opening of the controversy is due in large measure to the work of
Angus Mitchell, a British scholar who was commissioned to edit Casement's
writings for publication. (6) Mitchell found his intitial belief in the authenticity of
the Black Diaries undermined by his detailed study of Casement's career and
close comparison with the content of the White Diaries in the National Library of
Ireland in Dublin. Mitchell considered the Black Diaries to be 'riddled with
inaccuracies and inconsistencies', and questioned why Casement would keep in
his possession incriminating material which could have been used by his many
enemies in South America and subsequently in Britain. In particular, Mitchell
points to the fact that in 1910 Casement was suffering from eye problems which
caused him frequently to write entries in the White Diaries in pencil, whereas
corresponding entries in the Black Diaries tended to be written more deliberately
in pen. To illustrate this point, Mitchell provides photographs of White and Black
entries for 12 October 1910. (7)
Consider also the following sample pair of 1910 entries, from the White and
Black Diaries respectively:
Sunday 4th December. Out for a walk to the military firing ground with Ignacio
Torres as my guide. Took several photos of the ground and trees and a stream
beyond. Back at 11 - in great heat - and wrote a little in the afternoon altho' it was
stifling. In the evening the Cazes' had a bridge party after dinner which lasted till
midnight - and the heat lasted all night. It was really atrocious - not a breath of air
and I lay for hours trying to sleep - and then got up and wrote, but the
mosquitoes stop that game. (8)
Sunday. 4th DEC. Very hot morning. Looking out window saw Ignacio waiting.
Joy. Off with him to Tirotero and Camera. Bathed & photo'd & talked & back at
11. Gave 4/-. At 5.30 Cajamarca policeman till 7 at Bella Vista & again at 10.30
passeando & at 8 long talk. Shook hands and offered. Tall, Inca type & brown.
Cards & Bridge & stupid party till near midnight. Saw Cajamarca several times
from window. (9)
The first entry describes a day commencing with a combined walk and tour of
inspection and concluding with an evening of socialising at a bridge party. The
second entry portrays a round of sexual frolics with not one but apparently two
males, concluding with a bridge party which seems 'stupid' in contrast. If the
second diary entry is genuine, Casement possessed superhuman energy and a
Jekyll and Hyde personality, combining official investigative work and reporting
with voracious cruising day and night, and all the while finding time to write up
two diaries! There are other puzzling discrepancies between between the two
texts. For example, in a White Diary entry dated 30 November 1910 Casement
wrote: 'Sent John Brown and S Lewis to Prefect at 10am and Gusmán, but again
he could not see them'. (473) The entry for the same date in the Black Diary
gives an account which is at variance with this: '. . . sent for John Brown to go to
Prefect and Lewis and Gusman. They all went as far as I know at 10am but have
not seen one of them since. They are lazy swine.' (295)
While there are hints of relatively inoffensive homoeroticism in the White Diaries,
the Casement of the Black Diaries is not an attractive figure, and his
humanitarian work with oppressed natives seems secondary to what we would
today call predatory sexual tourism. A reasonable case can therefore be made
for the Black Diaries being written by someone other than Casement, using real
people and events from the White Diaries and other genuine documents as the
inspiration for the forgery.
A Symposium on Casement was held by the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin
2000, attended by leading scholars and Government adviser Martin Mansergh.
The Symposium was divided between those who believed in the authenticity of
the Black Diaries and those who considered them forgeries, the only consensus
being that they should be subjected to more detailed examination. Professor Bill
McCormack of Goldsmiths College in London decided to commission such an
examination, with financial backing apparently from RTE, the principal Irish radio
and television company, from the BBC, and belatedly from the Irish Government.
The expert chosen to carry out tests on the controversial diaries was Dr Audrey
Giles, whose experience includes thirteen years working at the Questioned
Documents Section of Scotland Yard. (10) Giles's conclusions were released in
advance of the second part of a much publicised documentary shown on Irish
television on Thursday 14 March 2002, entitled 'The Ghost of Roger Casement'
(BBC4 also screened a programme on the subject on 15 March, entitled 'Secrets
of the Black Diaries'). Giles concluded that the handwriting of both the Black and
White Diaries was unquestionably that of Casement, a finding accepted by
McCormack and a steering group of leading academics which he had
assembled. The issue, declared McCormack confidently, was now 'closed'. (11)
Unfortunately, rather than being a complete forensic investigation of Casement's
writings involving analysis of paper, ink, writing instruments, pollen, word
frequency and content, Giles's examination was confined mainly to handwriting.
(12) Hence Giles reported that she had 'found that the writings throughout the
documents show many similarities to the writings of Roger Casement, and no
significant differences.' (13) While she had 'examined the pages of the individual
documents using ultra-violet light to determine any differences between them',
she had not 'attempted to identify the origin of paper used in any of the
documents.' (14) Additionally, Dr Giles examined only a portion of the Putamayo
Journal or 'White Diary', from 9 October to 14 October 1910. (15)
Professor McCormack has also produced a full-length book in support of his view
that the Casement diaries are genuine and not forgeries, but it is a rather
unsatisfactory work. (16) The Giles Report is referred to in several places as
having conclusively proved the contested writings of Casement to be authentic,
but nowhere is there to be found the text of the report, an account of the process
whereby its compiler was chosen or even an adequate summary of the report.
Those who wish to study Giles's findings must take the trouble of applying to
Professor McCormack at Goldsmiths College in London for a copy of the report,
or seek it out in the limited number of repositories where it has been deposited
(including the National Library of Ireland and the British Library). McCormack
does find space for a rather aimless section inspired by the 'postmodern' and
psychologistic theories of Jacques Lacan, in which it is claimed that there is a
significant correlation between rubber production, which involves the breaking of
tree-bark resulting in the extrusion of a 'white sticky substance', and Casement's
alleged recording of 'same-sex' practices, 'in which the diarist details the
extrusion of a different white sticky substance (namely semen)'. (17) Proponents
of the forgery theory are somewhat contemptuously dismissed by McCormack as
'Casement Vindicators', and working himself up to a crescendo of fury at one
point, he draws comparisons with perpetrators of 'clerical child abuse, primeministerial corruption, and paramilitary terror', not to mention 'Holocaust Denial'!
(18) Aside from this kind of heated rhetoric, it would appear that Professor
McCormack has been somewhat precipitate in endeavouring to close debate on
the basis of what is, with all due respect to Dr Giles's abilities, an essentially
partial analysis of Casement's controverted writings.
Jeffrey Dudgeon has added to the growing volume of Casement studies with a
book written from the perspective of an Ulster Unionist and gay rights activist.
(19) Dudgeon's research certainly throws new light on Casement's Irish relatives,
friends and contacts, for the first time providing some biography for an alleged
lover who features in the Black Diaries, one Millar Gordon. (20) While all the
Black Diaries are published together for the first time, it is surprising to note that
some entries have been abbreviated or omitted, for example, the above
mentioned entry dated 12 October 1910 is absent. (21) While most of the
controversial Black Diaries entries are self-evidently obscene, Dudgeon's square
bracketed glosses on others seem a little strained:
1910, June 27, Monday. Left Carlton and to London. To Exhibition. Greek
[underlined twice] Fled [This sounds as if a rampant Athenian was getting out of
hand in a toilet cubicle in the Exhibition Hall, discretion calling for Casement's
hasty departure before the authorities were alerted by the noise.] (22)
In the last analysis, and although he himself believes in the authenticity of the
Black Diaries, Dudgeon seems surprisingly pessimistic concerning the possibility
of actually proving the case beyond doubt:
The notion of further forensic examination turning up convincing evidence to
prove forgery, or genuineness, was always implausible and has proved the case.
Nonetheless a number of commentators maintain a naive belief in the ultimate
proof of authenticity only being provided by amazingly complex, untried, scientific
tests. But the diaries are like the Turin Shroud, an article of faith. (23)
In a survey of the Hitler Diaries, Mark Hofmann and other forgery cases, Kenneth
W Rendell has stated that 'it can be an error to conclude from an examination of
only a few factors that the writing is genuine or forged'. (24) It has reasonably
been pointed out as well that a forensic document examiner who is neither
English nor Irish would be in a better position to provide an objective analysis of
Casement's diaries, and indeed the task is one which would appear to require the
services of a team of specialists. While the present writer is among those
inclining to the view that the Black Diaries may be forged, much more detailed
analytical work needs to be carried out before this particular mystery can be said
to be solved and the ghost of Roger Casement laid to rest. The case very
definitely is not closed one way or the other.
Sean Murphy
References
(1) For brief accounts of Casement's life see Dictionary of National Biography, 1912-21, Oxford
University Press, 1927, and Henry Boylan, A Dictionary of Irish Biography, Second Edition, Dublin
1988.
(2) Roger Casement's Speech from the Dock, 30 June 1916,
http://www.ucc.ie/ucc/depts/history/multitext/1916/casement.html.
(3) William Maloney, The Forged Casement Diaries, Dublin and Cork 1936.
(4) Peter Singleton Gates and Maurice Girodias Editors, The Black Diaries, Paris 1959.
(5) Brian Inglis, Roger Casement, London 1973; Benjamin L Reid, The Lives of Roger Casement,
London 1976.
(6) Angus Mitchell Editor, The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement, Dublin 1997; Mitchell had
placed the full text of his introduction to this work on the web at http://www.anaconda.winuk.net/intro/intro.html, together with the text of the Black Diary for 1910 at
http://www.anaconda.win-uk.net/blackdiaries/blackdiaries.html, but these URLs are now inactive.
(7) Mitchell Editor, Amazon Journal, pages 17-56, illustrations between pages 256-57.
(8) Mitchell Editor, Amazon Journal, pages 482-83.
(9) 'The Forged Black Diaries', http://www.anaconda.win-uk.net/blackdiaries/blackdiaries.html.
(10) Dr Audrey Giles, http://www.agiles.demon.co.uk/Audrey2.html.
(11) 'Academics say Casement's Black Diaries genuine following forensic examination', Irish
Times, 13 March 2002.
(12) Dr Audrey Giles, 'Examination of Casement Diaries', Report 8 February 2002 on instructions
from Professor W J McCormack; copy obtained from Professor McCormack.
(13) Giles Report, page 3.
(14) Giles Report, page 11.
(15) Giles Report, pages 42-43.
(16) W J McCormack, Roger Casement in Death, or Haunting the Free State, Dublin 2002.
(17) McCormack, Roger Casement, pages 183-184.
(18) McCormack, Roger Casement, page 209.
(19) Jeffrey Dudgeon, Roger Casement: The Black Diaries, with a Study of his Background,
Sexuality and Irish Political Life, Belfast 2002.
(20) Dudgeon, Roger Casement, pages 383-401.
(21) Dudgeon, Roger Casement, page 232.
(22) Dudgeon, Roger Casement, page 222.
(23) Dudgeon, Roger Casement, page 565.
(24) Kenneth W Rendell, Forging History: The Detection of Fake Letters and Documents,
University of Oklahoma Press 1994, page iv.