Thomas Russell (21 November 1767-21 October 1803) was a leader of the United Irishmen who was executed for his part in the 1803 Rebellion.
Biography[]
Thomas Russell was born in Dromahane, County Cork, Ireland in 1767 to an Anglican family, and he joined the British Army in 1783 and served in India. In 1790, he met Wolfe Tone in the visitors' gallery of the Irish House of Commons and befriended him, and he also befriended Henry Joy McCracken, Jemmy Hope, Samuel Neilson, and other Irish republicans. In 1791, they founded the radical United Irishmen revolutionary movement. He wrote for the United Irishmen's publication the Northern Star and promoted the abolitionist cause, and he became the head of the United Irishmen in County Down. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1796 for his revolutionary activities and thus missed out on the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and he was exiled to Hamburg in 1802. However, he returned to Ireland to back Robert Emmet's failed 1803 Rebellion, after which he was hanged and then beheaded for treason.