Edward Fitzgerald
Lord Edward Fitzgerald is one of the most romantic figures in Irish history, a rebel aristocrat associated with the failed revolution of 1798, known as the ‘Citizen Lord’. He is today buried in Saint Werburgh’s Church near to Dublin Castle, an institution he hoped to overthrow by force. A small plaque on the front of the church marks this fact, and it’s one of the great ironies of the city that Major Henry C. Sirr who captured him is buried in the graveyard at the back of the church.
Plaque on Saint Werburgh’s Church, Werburgh Street.
One figure associated with Edward Fitzgerald I’ve been fascinated by for a while now is Tony Small, an escaped slave Fitzgerald encountered in the United States who he later employed as a personal assistant. Small became a frequent sight around Dublin in the 1780s and 1790s, in a city where coloured men were few and far between. Fitzgerald commissioned a portrait of Small in 1786 by the artist Thomas Roberts:
In her brilliant biography of Fitzgerald, Stella Tillyard noted that “If Lord Edward’s mother was his great love, his constant companion was Tony Small, the runaway slave who saved his life in North America in 1781”, and she went on to note that “Tony embodied and brought to life his master’s commitment to freedom and equality for all men.”
Small had witnessed the British and Americans at war firsthand in 1781, as when his owners had fled South Carolina with their possessions and slaves, Tony had escaped and stayed on. On the 8th September 1781, Tony wandered onto a battlefield, and as Tillyard has noted he stumbled across “the blood-soaked uniform of a British officer of the 19th Regiment of Foot. The man was alive but unconscious, overlooked by the search parties of both sides.” The man was Edward Fitzgerald, and when he next awoke he was in the small hut Tony Small knew as his home. Fitzgerald offered Small liberty, and a new life working as his servant, in return for wages. An incredible and unlikely friendship had been born.
Kevin Whelan discusses the friendship between the two in his entry on Lord Edward Fitzgerald for the Dictionary of Irish Biography, noting that “The best-documented Irish example of imaginative sympathy between a white and a black man is the subsequent relationship between Fitzgerald and Small. Until his death in 1798, in a sprawling career that took him across much of Europe, America, and Canada, Fitzgerald never subsequently parted from his ‘faithful Tony’.”
In time, this one-time British soldier and darling of the Ascendancy class was converted towards the ideas of republicanism, the influence of writers such as Thomas Paine and personal observation on the streets of France inspiring this total shift in identity and politics. It was not until 1796 that Fitzgerald joined the United Irishmen, but the seeds had long been planted.
Small followed Fitzgerald wherever he went, and on moving to Dublin with Fitzgerald, Small lived within the family home of Leinster House for a period. By this point Fitzgerald was married to a young French woman by the name of Pamela, and as Tillyard has noted “to Ascendancy society Pamela seemed to be every bit as much a symbol of the revolution as she was to Lord Edward himself.” Her poor English, and her Catholic faith, instantly distanced her from the Dublin ruling class of the day. Yet imagine how ‘different’ Tony Small must have appeared in the Dublin of the late eighteenth century.
One story relating to Small and Leinster House was told by John Brennan in a feature on Fitzgerald for The Irish Times in 1963, in which he noted that on one occasion when Fitzgerald was returning to his family home, Small alerted him to the presence of soldiers inside the house, thus saving Fitzgerald from arrest.
Leinster House. Today the home of the Dáil and Seanad but once the family home of the Fitzgerald family (NLI)
When Fitzgerald moved to Kildare in 1795, Tony moved with him, returning to Leinster House before the birth of the son of Fitzgerald and Pamela. The time in Kildare is remembered in Tillyard’s biography as a very happy one, with Tony said to come up from the servants’ rooms to dance jigs and enjoy Irish music and culture. He would travel also to Germany in May 1796 when Fitzgerald departed for there, to engage in discussions with the French Directory.
Tony Small had not alone an employer within the small travelling party in which he frequently accompanied the Fitzgerald’s, but also a partner. From the time he had lived in Kildare he had been very much in love with Julie, another servant who was the nursemaid of Pamela. Together they would have children.
Fitzgerald played a leading role in the planning of the insurrection for 1798, and his arrest and capture in May of that year on Thomas Street was a major blow to the republican movement. A reward for £1,000 was on the head of Fitzgerald, and he was considered among the most influential and indeed dangerous United Irish leaders still at large. He was taken to Newgate Prison, where he died having been denied proper medical treatment. This prison holds an infamous place in Dublin’s history, and it was there that the Sheares Brothers were hung, drawn and quartered for their role in the republican movement.
At the time of the passing of Edward, Tony was staying with Pamela in England. Both were naturally devastated, and the passing of the aristocrat-turned-revolutionary brought an unexpected twist in Tony’s life, as Pamela would in-time remarry and Tony and Julie felt it time to move on. Setting themselves up in London off the back of their savings, Tony died there following a period of illness. Not much was known of this period in Tony’s life, but recently released letters from the Fitzgerald family have shined a light on the period. Kevin Whelan has noted in a feature for History Ireland magazine that:
After 1798, Tony drops out of view but these new letters pick him up again. He had moved to London, and set up in trade in Piccadilly. Falling ill in 1803, he appealed to the Fitzgerald family for assistance which was quickly forthcoming (according to Lucy). The letter demonstrates Tony Small’s accomplished literacy. He talks of having spent money on doctors and asks ‘the family to make up a sum of money for me so that I might be able to keep on business for my wife and children which is my greatest trouble’. Small was obviously in contact with Arthur O’Connor’s peripatetic servant, Jerry O’Leary, because O’Connor wrote from Fort George that he had heard that Tony had fallen on hard times and was not being helped. Lucy Fitzgerald adds an indignant annotation that the family were indeed assisting him.
Beyond Tillyard’s excellent biography of Fitzgerald, little has been written on Tony Small. Did he appear in any of the Dublin newspapers of the day I wonder, as he would have been an unusual sight on the streets of the capital with his close relationship to Fitzgerald. The escaped slave who made it to Leinster House is as good a Dublin story as any, and Tony should not be forgotten.
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
Great post – just one small thing! The painting of Small with the pony is by Thomas Roberts I think, it was in a NGI exhibition a few years ago. His father, John Roberts, was an architect. 🙂
Cheers Katy! Perhaps so. I found the image on wiki which mentions John, and also this blog post: http://www.jimandellen.org/feministblog/911.html. I’ll get on it.
Cool – it was annoying me so I checked when I got back to the library earlier, it was in that Thomas Roberts exhibition! There is a great catalogue by William Laffan & Brendan Rooney if you’re looking for further info 🙂
Great post, fascinating story. Good on the Fitzgerald family for continuing their concern even the death of Lord Edward. During his Dublin days I’m sure that Tony would have been much stared at and commented upon, but I hope and believe he probably didn’t encounter too much racism, as (oddly, despite the odious institution of slavery) routine casual racism seemed to be more a feature of the 19th than the 18th century. (Huge generalization, I know, but that’s my take on it anyway) Interestingly, about 25-30 years later, Daniel O’Connell became a great friend of the great Afro-American campaigner (and former slave) Fredrick Douglas. Anyway, another terrific post, thanks for sharing.
Greatings from Charleston, South Carolina. I am delighted to see this web site which I found by accident. I am researching Tony Small from this side of the Atlantic, namely through Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s activities with the 19th Regiment of Foot and at the Battle of Eutaw Springs. I am trying to piece together Tony’s story after he left Charleston with Fitzgerald. He may have lived on an ancestor’s plantation, property on which the battle was fought. Any information such as that provided through this blog would be very much appreciated. I hope to make contact with Kevin Whelan and perhaps to visit Dublin to see the newly discovered letters in the future. (I have previously done research at TCD.) Is is likely that they will be published, especially the 150 letters from 1798, the 77 from Fitzgerald, and the 20 to him? A classmate at Pembroke College Oxford put me on to this project several years ago. Please contact me at rblack41@aol.com. Address: 931 Scottland Drive, Mount Pleasant, SC 29464. Thank you, Robert Ray Black, B.A. (Sewanee), M.A. (Oxon.), Ph.D. (Princeton), J.D. (South Carolina).
Good luck Robert! This is only a small blog post in the spirit of CHTM, dedicated to finding small Dublin gems. I knew if somebody was willing to dig a lot harder they could find a lot more, best of luck with this and do keep us in the loop!
Mr Black Ive sent you an email re a pair of black portraits in storage in Ireland.Im wondering if they relate to Lord Fitzgearld and Tony Small. ?Any help or advise much appreiated , Thank you . Tom Woods
Tom, I’m not sure if I am responding correctly through this blog, but I earlier sent you a reply that I did not receive your email reference portraits of black men and their relation, if any, to Tony Small and Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Therefore I’m resending your reply with a request that you resend the email to me at RBlack41@aol.com or Chaser41@gmail.com. Many thanks, Robert Black (FaceTime telephone 843-830-0397).
I wonder was there any connection between the family of Tony and that of Robert Small, the slave from South Carolina who in the American Civil War commandeered a Confederate picket steamer and with his family and other escaping slaves sailed out of Charleston Harbour to the Federal Blockade Squadron and freedom?
The Small family is distinct from the Smalls family in Charleston today, so unless an “s” was arbitrarily added to the Small family name between the Revolutionary War and the War Between the States, Robert Smalls (sic) was probably not related to Tony Small. There are about ten times as many people named Smalls than Small in Charleston today.
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Stella Tillyard was in Dublin Castle yesterday talking about Tony Small at the Dublin History Festival. Sadly, she reckons that the portrait above is not of Tony Small but of a servant from the Indian subcontinent working for someone else entirely. She also suggested that there would probably have been a fairly sizeable non-white population in Dublin at the time, largely because of the city’s status as a port, with the vanished history of these people being something ripe for further investigation.
This follows my comments made in January and February, 2013. I am nearing the end of writing a historical novel (100,000 words) on Tony Small, tentatively titled “Irish Lafayette.” The story of Tony is drawn from historians of the Southern Campaign in South Carolina. Lord Edward’s story is taken from Moore/MacDermott and, of course, Stella Tillyard. I would liked to have heard her speak at the Dublin Historical Festival (if you have an address for me to send her “Irish Lafayette” when and if it’s published, please send it to rblack41@aol.com; and, indeed, if you have a good publisher in mind, please let me know; the ms is being read now by a NY agency.) Kevin Whelan has been tremendous help. Again, my novel is historical fiction, but all the characters–mainly black–take the names of real people who play a part in the eleven battles Lord Edward was in during his time in South Carolina. The plot is solidly based on history of what is factual, probable or highly plausible.
So please stay tuned. Tony Small is a perhaps the last significant figure in American history who is almost completely unknown on both sides of the Atlantic.
My note of 2 February 2013 is wrong. A modern-day Tony Small and his sister Shirley who live in Eutaw Springs told me that the final “s” in their name is optional; their two brothers are named “Smalls.” No kin that they know of to Robert Smalls to whom a marker is erected in Charleston harbor. No kin either to our historical Tony Small. I hope to get equally wide recognition of Tony, same as with Buddy/Oscar, right-hand man of Marion, and Old Dick, right-hand man of Pickens. But Charleston is slow. I’m living in Bozeman, Montana, now and so will miss the annual Swamp Fox Symposium in Manning, South Carolina, on 3-4 October 2015.
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