Alfred Aylward

Tullabeg 1855-1858 I Alfred Aylward

Alfred Aylward (1843-1889?), Fenian and international revolutionary, was a native of New Ross, County Wexford, who attended Tullabeg in 1855-8. He was wounded, fighting with Garibaldi in Sicily. Having picked up some medical knowledge while recuperating, he served as a military surgeon in the American Civil War. Returning to Dublin, he was thrice arrested as a suspected Fenian, and later claimed to have been involved in Fenian bombings in England. The Fenians suspected him of being a government informer. Migrating to South Africa, he led a diggers’ rebellion to protest against the mining companies, but was acquitted in a subsequent trial. He later commanded a mercenary force that helped suppress a native rising in the Transvaal. Subsequently he was attached as a surgeon to the Boer forces in their first war against the British in 1881. He wrote an authoritative book on the Transvaal and edited a newspaper. Moving to America, he joined the Métis rebellion of Louis Riel in Canada. Branded a murderer, a traitor (to both the Fenians and the British), a conspirator, a mercenary and a secret-service agent, his later years remain a mystery, with rather implausible rumours that he was involved in the Phoenix Park murders, causing trouble in Sweden and advising the Mahdi in the Sudan. There were varying accounts of his death, which is believed to have occurred in 1889, but even this may have been a false rumour to deceive his pursuers.