I note that Jeffrey Dudgeon doesn’t respond to the point I made about him leaving out the following in the third edition of his book:

“It is possible that Millar bought the motor bike from Corbally and that Casement was repaying him as a separate note listing expenditure simply reads ‘Millar 25.0.0’…”

In my article I suggested it was highly unlikely that Corbally sold his motorbike directly to Joseph Millar Gordon and therefore Casement could not have paid a cheque to Corbally.

 Jeffrey appears to accept that there must have been some personal connection between Corbally and Casement for Corbally to have sold the motorbike directly to Gordon. But the only connection he can establish is that Casement knew a Lord Ffrench who was married to a Mary Corbally and who was the sister of Cyril Corbally. 

That is a tenuous connection. I have no doubt that Casement knew Lord Ffrench but, in the period covered in Jeffrey’s book, it is recorded that Casement met Lord Ffrench only twice:  on 18th July 1911 (more than a month and a half after the alleged payment to Corbally) and 6th August 1911.  

In all the voluminous undisputed correspondence written by Casement, there is no mention of a Corbally. 

The only mention of him in the disputed Diaries is in the 1911 cash ledger and then only briefly in connection with the motorbike transaction.

Curiously, there is no other mention of motorbikes at all, even in the disputed 1911 cash ledger or  the 1911 diary!  One would think that Casement would be interested in what his money had bought, or that Gordon would want to show Casement his motorbike which the latter had allegedly paid for!

Jeffrey finds it implausible that agents of the British State would frame Gordon because:

“…if the odious allegations became known, a totally maligned individual would want to defend his reputation and prove them false”.

But, as Dudgeon himself notes in his book, Gordon was only identified in 1997—long after his death in 1956.  The beauty of not identifying Gordon is that he couldn’t defend himself and since, he couldn’t defend himself, they (the agents of the British State) did not have to face any challenge. 

There is a pattern here.  They didn’t dare show Casement the ‘black diaries’.  When they showed the distinguished American journalist, Ben Allen, some alleged extracts, he was prevented from showing them to Casement. They were certainly not prepared to prosecute Casement and have their evidence tested in a court of law. 

And, of course, the British State did not allow access to the Diaries until 1959, and then only restricted access.  General access was only granted in 1995—84 years after the 1911 diary.  So, it was unlikely that someone would come forward and say something like “on the day Casement was supposed to have had sex with a Welsh grenadier in London, I was at a public meeting with 300 people in Edinburgh at which Casement was the keynote speaker”! 

They couldn’t risk that!

John Martin

Editorial Note:  Readers may find some useful information in this collection of references by Paul Hyde:  

Decoding – Casement