James Stephens, founder of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, 1866 (albumen print)

James Stephens (1824-1901) civil engineer on the Limerick and Waterford Railway, joined Young Ireland and took part in the 1848 rising at Balingarry, Tipperary. Exaggerated reports of his death enabled him to evade the authorities and escape to France, where he lived until 1856, when he returned to Ireland and began setting up a network of underground contacts. During this period he was known as 'an seabhac siubhalach', the wandering hawk, anglicised to 'Shooks'. The IRB, started on 17th March 1858, was organised on military lines, in 'circles' on 820 men, each answerable to its own colonel or 'centre'.