Signed by Tom Clarke [Clarke, Tom] Irish American Athletic ...

Hammer

€2,300

Signed by Tom Clarke

[Clarke, Tom] Irish American Athletic Club, Celtic Park, Long Island City, N.Y.  Membership Card no. 1012, Season of 1906, issued to Thomas Clarke, and with his unmistakeable signature. A rare memento of the great Fenian, first signatory of the 1916 Proclamation.

Born in the Isle of Wight, where his Irish father was serving in the British Army, Clarke went to the United States as a young man. He joined Clan na Gael (the American Fenian organisation), and in 1883 was sent to Britain on a bombing mission. He was quickly captured (possibly betrayed) and imprisoned under harsh conditions. Released in 1898, he went again to the United States, where he married Kathleen Daly (niece of his prison colleague John Daly).  He became a US citizen in 1905, but returned two years later, set up a tobacconist’s shop in Dublin, and began the reorganisation of the IRB which led in time to the rising of 1916.  Afterwards he was tried by court-martial and executed on 3 May 1916, the oldest of the signatories but still under 60 years of age. His signature is scarce. (1)