‘Sergeant Daniel Beverley’ (Bailey) of Sir Roger Casement’s ‘Irish Brigade’.

Bailey is fourth from the left and on his left, wearing knee-length boots, is the German interpreter, Zerhussen. The remainder are POW members of Casement's 'Irish Brigade'.

The Story of ‘Sergeant Daniel Beverley’ (Bailey) of Sir Roger Casement’s ‘Irish Brigade’ and his trial for High Treason.

Daniel Julian Bailey (Beverley’s real name) was born in Dublin on 27 January 1887. He enlisted into the Royal Irish Rifles on 7 April 1904 and, in 1906, was granted an extension to serve on a 9-year engagement. Following service in India and Burma, he returned to Watford, England where he was automatically transferred to the Reserve when he left the army on 29 March 1913. This liability meant that he was available for recall to ‘The Colours’ and could be mobilised during a national emergency. His discharge conduct assessment would have reflected the 84 days he spent in detention for absence and other offences during his time in India.

Following his discharge, he went to work in New Brunswick, Canada where he met and became engaged to a widow of Germanic descent called Katherine O’Dea (neé Katerina Ida Friedrich). He returned to England in 1914 and was working in Paddington, London, when he was recalled to The Colours and mobilised to the 2nd Battalion The Royal Irish Rifles in Belfast on 5 August 1914. After only nine days of re-enlistment, he landed with the British Expeditionary Force in France on 14 August 1914. During action, he was wounded, taken prisoner by the Germans and, by September 1914, arrived at a POW Camp in Sennelager.

During December 1914, the Germans announced - in an attempt to divide - that all those POWs who were Irish and Roman Catholic by religion could elect to be transferred to another camp where their conditions would improve. Almost immediately, some 800-900 POWs accepted in order to improve their lot and were then transferred to a special camp at Limburg an der Lahn. Post-war claims said that the number was eventually around two thousand. Sir Roger Casement, an ex-British diplomat and one of the founders of the Irish Volunteers who had been smuggled to Germany via Norway from the USA, visited the camp and addressed the POWs in February 1915. During his speech he urged them to join the German ‘Irish Brigade’ that was being formed in order to strike a blow for the Irish nation and relieve Ireland. Casement was hissed and booed out of the camp and following this humiliation never again addressed the POWs. Eventually some fifty-six volunteered, but despite having rations and other privileges cut, there were no more volunteers. Although some later admitted it was only out of hunger, one of the volunteers known as MaurIce Mead would in the future confess to killing three surrendered Royal Irish Constabulary prisoners of the IRA in cold blood during the post-war struggle for independence. One of two priests appointed by the Vatican to minister in Limburg, an Irishman and Dominican called Father Crotty, told prisoners that he had been sent by the Pope not to talk about politics or to mislead them but to tell them what was right; ‘as the priest of God I tell you it is your duty as good Catholics to keep the oath you have taken to be loyal to your King’. Things were not going well for German propaganda!

Bailey was one of those who volunteered for the Irish Brigade. The actual Brigade commander was not a POW but one Robert Monteith, an ex-bombardier of the Royal Horse Artillery and Irish Volunteer, also smuggled by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) from Ireland via the USA. The POW volunteers were equipped with a special uniform and awarded ranks in the Irish Brigade. Bailey was made a sergeant and used the name ‘Sergeant Beverley’. They were housed in a camp at Zossen where Bailey received basic training in explosives and at the end of March 1916, he went to Berlin for a week of further training. There he stayed in the same hotel as a very sick Casement and wore civilian clothing. Casement was involved with plans to smuggle guns and ammunition aboard a vessel disguised as a Norwegian merchant ship, the Aud Norge, that would sail from Lübeck to Innishtooskert, County Kerry. However, Casement insisted on travelling separately and, following briefings at the German War Office, Bailey, Casement and Monteith, travelled to Wilhelmshaven by train and boarded the German submarine U20 (the boat that had sunk the RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915).

They set sail on 12 April 1916 but following a rudder problem had to sail into Heligoland where they transferred to U19. The Aud had failed to make contact with the land reception party from the IRB and she was finally intercepted by a Royal Navy patrol vessel that ordered her to Queenstown (Cobh). The German Navy crew scuttled the ship with rigged explosives off Daunt’s Rock. Meanwhile, the U19 with Casement sailed round Shetland then headed for the west coast of Ireland where, at 0100 hrs on Good Friday, 21 April, it launched a collapsible canvas rowboat two miles offshore from Banna Strand, Tralee. The boat capsized in the Atlantic surf and Casement, ill since first arriving in Germany, was now too weak to travel further. In the chaos that followed, Monteith avoided capture and eventually escaped to the USA via Cork and Liverpool but Bailey and Casement were seized soon after landing, the latter imprisoned in the Tower of London within days.

Bailey and Casement were charged with high treason at Bow Street Police Court and remanded for trial at the Old Bailey. Daniel Bailey brokered a deal and agreed to turn ‘King’s Evidence’ against Casement. Although they were remanded together during committal proceedings, each appeared separately in the dock when appearing for trial at the Old Bailey. Casement was found guilty, condemned to death, stripped of his knighthood and executed at Pentonville Prison, London on 3 August 1916. The jury found Bailey, following Casement’s trial, not guilty, as the Crown Prosecutor offered no evidence by declaring ‘nolle prosqui’. Bailey was released and compulsorily retained under the Military Services Act (conscription). He went on to transfer and serve with, in turn, the Wiltshire Regiment, the Royal North Lancashire Regiment and the Royal Engineers Transportation (Railways), service with these units taking him to East Africa and the Middle East. The highest rank he achieved was Acting Corporal on 30 September 1918 and on 5 June 1919, he was Mentioned in Dispatches by General Allenby. He was discharged on 8 December 1919 with no mention of the ‘Irish Brigade’ or his U19 submarine adventures in his military service records. Daniel Bailey emigrated to Canada in 1921 and died in Ontario on 19 January 1968.