CASEMENT ROGER: (1864-1916) Irish Patriot, Revolutionary and Nationalist, executed for treason.

A.L.S., Roger Casement, three pages, folio, Lourenco Marques, Mozambique, 29th May 1897, to His Excellency the Governor of Mauritius. Casement writes in his capacity as a British Diplomat and Consul and announces, for the information of the next of kin, that the Director of the Civil and Military Hospital in Lourenco had deposited £6.11.10 with him, 'belonging to a native of Mauritius whom the hospital authorities styled "Luiz Oguis", who died… on the 4th…' Casement continues to state that, from other sources, he has been informed that 'a native of Mauritius named Louis Auguste, a mason by profession was admitted to the hospital some time ago suffering from a contagious disease.' In concluding he asks which authority in Mauritius should be sent the money. Some extensive, neat splitting to central fold (repaired), small tears to edges and light water staining, just affecting a few words of text but not the signature, G

Casement worked in the Congo for Henry Morton Stanley and the African International Association from 1884 before joining the Colonial Service, under the authority of the Colonial Office, first serving overseas as a clerk in British West Africa before transferring to the Foreign Office service as British Consul in the eastern part of the French Congo.

Casement has been described as the 'father of 20th century human rights investigations', in recognition of his Casement Report on the Congo (1905) in which he exposed the abuses of the enslavement, mutilation and torture of natives on the rubber plantations, and his important investigations of human rights abuses in Peru, which led to his knighthood in 1911. During World War I Casement sought the aid of the German military for the 1916 Easter Rising which sought to gain Irish independence from British rule. As a result he was arrested, convicted and executed for treason.