Sentence of death was passed, and, as echo to the sardonic "The Lord have mercy on your souls," rang back from the dock in five clear voices, with never a quiver of fear in them, "God save Ireland!" and the men passed one by one from the sight of my tear-dimmed eyes.
It was a sorrowful time that followed; the despair of the heart-broken girl who was Allen's sweetheart, and who cried to us on her knees, "Save my William!" was hard to see; nothing we or any one could do availed to avert the doom, and on November 23rd Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were hanged outside Salford Gaol.

Had they striven for freedom in Italy England would have honoured them; here she buried them as common murderers in quicklime in the prison yard.
I have found, with a keen sense of pleasure, that Mr.Bradlaugh and myself were in 1867 to some extent co-workers, although we knew not of each other's existence, and although he was doing much, and I only giving such poor sympathy as a young girl might, who was only just awakening to the duty of political work.

I read in the _National Reformer_ for November 24, 1867, that in the preceding week he was pleading on Clerkenwell Green for these men's lives:--"According to the evidence at the trial, Deasy and Kelly were illegally arrested.
They had been arrested for vagrancy of which no evidence was given, and apparently remanded for felony without a shadow of justification.

He had yet to learn that in England the same state of things existed as in Ireland; he had yet to learn that an illegal arrest was sufficient ground to detain any of the citizens of any country in the prisons of this one.

If he were illegally held, he was justified in using enough force to procure his release.