There is an actual Ed Ball (1916–1987) in Irish history who had a longer version of his name, Edward Francis Allen Preston Ball, and an unsympathetic mother whom he just had to kill. Because Edward Francis Allen Preston Ball, or let’s call him Ed, couldn’t find a job, he lived at home with his separated mother in Dublin. We can only guess why his mother was separated; perhaps it was because Ed was living at home. However, in this he was quite normal for an Irish son. He found job satisfaction in unpaid walk-on parts in plays at the Gate Theatre.
On 17 February 1936 his mother, not appreciating his thespian potential, refused to give him £60 to go on a foreign tour with the Gate Theatre, so he did the only thing that he could do – he split her head open with an axe and dumped her body in the sea. After a six-day trial the following May, he was found guilty but insane, and was detained indefinitely in the Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum, where he was visited by some of his friends from the theatre. He was eventually released and went abroad as he had originally wanted.
One of my favourite names for a sinner in Irish history is Clotworthy Skeffington (1743–1805). He fell off his horse in 1757 and landed on his head. The rest, as they say, is history. The bump had unpredictable moral consequences. While on his mandatory Grand Tour of Europe, he decided to settle down in Paris, where he ran up debts of £30,00057 through what was called fashionable living – womanising, gambling and investing in a scheme to import salt from Africa, as you do. While he had an annual income from his estates of £5,000, he chose to avail of a French law that allowed him to go to gaol for twenty-five years in lieu of paying his debts. He settled down to life in the Hôtel de la Force gaol. He met a woman and married her in gaol in 1787. She failed to bust him out twice before finally hiring a mob of peasants to break him out in 1789, the year the French Revolution began. One advantage of the French Revolution was the ready availability of peasant mobs.
Clotworthy was back in debtors’ prison in London by 1793, having separated from his gaolbird wife. His new girlfriend, Elizabeth Blackburn, moved into gaol with him. He was soon out again because his debts were deemed to be fraudulent. But he was back in again in 1796. He was eventually released when he was persuaded to place his estate in trust.
Back home in Antrim, he had to beat off a different mob of peasants who attacked his castle in 1798. You need to be careful with peasant mobs. They are notoriously difficult to control and can go either way. Indeed, that may be a reason for their waning popularity.
Murder Mystery
There are disappointingly few real-life murder mysteries in Irish history because, fortunately, the authorities were resourceful at finding suitable culprits for the crimes, innocent or guilty. However, William Bourke Kirwan (c.1814–1880?) is at the centre of a still unresolved mystery.
Kirwan studied art, becoming an accomplished miniaturist. He exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy between 1836 and 1846. Like many people in Irish history he was a multitasker because he also worked as a picture cleaner, anatomical illustrator and property speculator. This kind of occupational combination is familiar to us from the Celtic Tiger era in Ireland when everyone could include property speculator in their curriculum vitae. He married Maria Crowe in 1840, and they lived together in Merrion St, Dublin. They had no children. However, William had eight children with his mistress, Maria Kenny. He divided his time evenly between living at home with Maria-the-wife and with Maria-the-mistress and the children in Sandymount.
In June 1852 Kirwin and his wife went to Howth on a painting holiday from where they made regular visits to Ireland’s Eye island off the coast. He sketched while she bathed. On 6 September, when the boatman returned to pick them up, Kirwin told him that Maria-the-wife was missing. A search followed and Maria-the-wife’s body was found laid out on a wet sheet at an area called Long Hole. The coroner returned a verdict of accidental drowning. It seemed that Kirwin was in the clear.
However, shortly after the verdict, Kirwin moved Maria-the-mistress and the children into his house in Merrion St. When the landlady of the holiday lodgings at Howth heard about the new domestic arrangements, she called the police, which was the principal pastime amongst seaside landladies. She told the police that she had overheard Kirwin threaten his wife while they were staying in her lodgings. Overhearing threats was the second most common hobby amongst seaside landladies.
Meanwhile, witnesses in Howth came forward to testify that they could hear screaming from Ireland’s Eye on 6 September, the day Maria-the-wife died. The police yielded to the mounting indignation of the people of Howth and ordered for the body to be exhumed. An autopsy revealed that Maria-the-wife had died of asphyxiation, and not drowning, so Kirwin went on trial for murder in December 1852.
Isaac Butt (1813–1879) defended him. Kirwin’s choice of attorney may have been a mistake because Butt was never motivated by money and, therefore, could not have been a real attorney. He was a distinguished lawyer but he lived in relative poverty because he had principles. He took on causes rather than lengthy litigations. His mind wasn’t fully on the law because he was also a writer, pamphleteer, translator, historian and journalist, as well as a politician. He failed to take himself seriously as a barrister, scholar or popular politician. His obituary in the Times read, “He mocked and trifled with Fortune when she was in her most gracious mood and turned his back upon her richest gifts.”
As Butt was such an unconvincing attorney anyway he might have argued for additions to the M’Naghten Rules58 on insanity and claimed that his client, Kirwan, was insane on two novel grounds: first, that Kirwin had moved Maria-the-mistress and her eight children into the house with him and, second, that Kirwan had hired him, Butt, to defend him. However, Butt did argue that Kirwin had no motive because Maria-the-wife already knew about Maria-the-mistress. He told the court that Maria-the-wife most likely died from a fit because she was epileptic.
Despite this, Kirwin was found guilty and sentenced to death. But new evidence was produced at the last minute. It was proven to be impossible to hear screams from Ireland’s Eye in Howth, so, shockingly, the witnesses must have been lying or imagining things. Furthermore, proof was offered that Maria-the-wife did in fact suffer from epileptic fits. Based on this timely overwhelming evidence of the absence of evidence against Kirwin, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. Phew! He must have been relieved.
He was eventually released in 1879, having served twenty-seven years. He was ordered to emigrate to America. He joined Maria-the-mistress and his children there, but he died soon after.
However, did he do it? Those who, at the time, were convinced of Kirwan’s guilt found the circumstantial case against Kirwin damning: he was Protestant and Maria-the-wife Catholic. But being innocent or guilty is legally irrelevant in the history of Irish justice. Pleading innocence is a naive defence against being hanged or sentenced to life in prison. You would do far better by pleading insanity.
Rope for Humanity
Hanging is a form of public entertainment that has gone out of fashion. In the nineteenth century, a journalist with the Freeman’s Journal, J.B. Hall, attended a hanging so that he could bring the details to a wider audience. Even by then hangings had moved indoors, thereby depriving the citizenry of a popular free distraction, such as that provided by the execution of Robert Emmet (see Chapter 1).
Hall gives us an account of the execution of twenty-year-old Patrick Walsh in Galway Gaol. Walsh, by the laws of probability operating at executions at that time, was innocent. Not that being innocent was relevant. However, Hall seemed to think it was important to mention it, just in case anyone was curious about such an abstract legal concept.
Walsh was accused of taking part in the Letterfrack murders in which John and Martin Lydon were killed.59 It seems that he was found guilty on the testimony of those who had actually murdered Lydon. Both the testimony and the verdict were regarded as wildly inconsistent, even for trials at that time. However, Walsh was
convicted and Judge Lawson sentenced him to be hanged on the morning of 22 September 1881. A popular call for a reprieve was refused. Calls for reprieves became more popular after executions were moved inside because the public no longer saw an advantage for themselves in a hanging. Hall hoped that he wouldn’t be allowed in to witness the execution for his readership, but thankfully he was.
A scaffold had been erected in the middle of the prison courtyard. A crowd could be heard praying outside the walls, or perhaps they were merely muttering that they couldn’t see anything. When a bell sounded, the condemned man emerged through a door, accompanied by a priest and two warders. Walsh mounted the scaffold and the hangman tightened a leather strap across his arms. The priest recited the litany and Walsh delivered the responses with increasingly intense devotion.
Walsh forgave those who had falsely testified against him. Then the hangman strapped his knees, placed a white cap over his head, drew the rope tight around his neck and pulled the lever. Hall fainted.
When he recovered he was asked if he would like to meet the executioner for a chat. He found him inside eating a breakfast of bacon and eggs. On the floor beside him was a bag holding a rope. The executioner told the assembled pressmen that this rope, which was one of his own inventions, had special humanitarian properties. Before leaving for his next assignment he gave each man his card – “William Marwood, Executioner, Horncastle”. He was a busy hangman.60
*
From looking at crime and punishment in Irish history, it seems that the only guaranteed way to avoid a rope around your neck was to be an attorney. It was more rewarding by far than sainthood, and the easiest form of sinning.
3
Glorious Irish Men and Women of the Battlefield: When It’s Not Good to Talk
Certain people in Irish history seem to have been washed along by a tide of events dictated by good or bad luck. Luck seems to play a particularly major part in the life of a soldier. But a soldier couldn’t be lucky (or unlucky) without a glorious war. Luckily for our Irish soldiers, there never seemed to be a shortage of wars they could fight in.
High Kings
Brian Boru (c.941–1014) is Ireland’s best-known warrior king because he understood the value of publicity. Boru was born sometime in the middle of the tenth century. Back then the main news headline items were death notices and battle results, and not the dates of birth of people who might or might not influence the outcome of future battles. The ancient sources guess that he was born in 941.
Boru controlled the Church, which at the time was the principal author of public image. The tenth-century monastery was the spin centre of its time. Like Elvis, Brian Boru’s best career move by far was his death in 1014, at the sharp end of a Viking axe. But this wasn’t any ordinary head splitting, which were quite common at that time. He contrived to have his skull divided in two while he was praying, thus elevating him to the status of saintly martyr.
Boru was particularly interested in spin because he was a parvenu on the kingly scene in Ireland. Like all rising stars, he was insecure. His dynasty, the Dál Cais, had only begun with his father. Boru’s older brother actually succeeded to the kinship of Cashel, and thus Munster,61 in 951. Happily, his brother was murdered in 976, allowing Boru to take over. The first thing he did was revenge his brother’s murder, thereby establishing his reputation with his own clan, who would have expected him to demonstrate outrage if he couldn’t manage an actual show of grief. His prestige quickly eclipsed that of his dead brother.
Boru had a genius for dynastic marriages. At different times, he married into the leading royal families on the island. Again, fortunately for him, he was able to marry four different provincial princesses because all of his wives obligingly predeceased him. When his fourth wife died, surprisingly, he didn’t marry again. Perhaps he had exhausted the supply of princesses or the remaining ones felt being married to him was too dangerous. But Boru had daughters to marry off.
One daughter married the king of the O’Neills in Ulster. Another daughter married Sitric Silkbeard, King of Dublin. Sitric was the son of one of Brian’s own wives, making him both his stepson and son-in-law. The next daughter married the son of the man who murdered Boru’s brother. But Boru killed his brother’s murderer in battle in 978. This probably didn’t endear him to that particular son-in-law. In any case, this was a time before the discovery of family affection.
Along with his innate marital skills, Boru also had some martial abilities. He carried out the standard raids of the time that obliged him to slaughter men, women, children and animals. He also established his authority by regularly touring the country. He never allowed serial defeats in raids and battles to undermine his determination to go down in history as our greatest soldier king. Though handy with a sword or an axe, he was probably an even better administrator than a warrior. While ruling with an iron fist, or axe, he was one of the first Irish kings actually able to delegate. He broke with the Irish tradition of direct control-freak monarchy.
As Boru had lived by the axe, and administration, so he was determined to die by the careful administration of an axe. In 1014 he marched against the Vikings to his career-defining moment at the Battle of Clontarf. This manouvre was in aid of accessing the lucrative trading networks in Dublin. According to his image makers, Brian’s son Murchad from his first marriage, with whom he didn’t get on, took responsibility for the fight while Brian retreated to a tent to pray with his back to the open flap.
The monks, whom he hired for 20 ounces of gold to produce his myth, portrayed this battle as the ultimate showdown between evil heathen Vikings on the one side and, on the other, delightful Irish soldiers forced to kill only in defence of an unambiguously noble cause. This account was only completed in the twelfth century because the monks were slow to get the message out, probably because they had to illuminate each page with elaborate and priceless illustrations. In their version, the Vikings were assigned the role of the invincible despicable pagans, while Boru’s Irish side were rightly described as being nice: certainly too courteous to be appreciated by the gauche Norsemen.
Both Murchad and his son were killed in battle, but the friendly Irish won the day. However, a stray Viking sneaked up behind Brian while he was praying. He split Brian’s devout head in two because he was such an especially nasty Viking. This act exposed the Vikings for what they were: really impolite people.
However, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this Viking was actually one of Brian’s own spin monks in disguise who was stage managing the battle, because, in order to succeed in terms of public relations, Brian had to die. Thus, Brian became an instant royal martyr, saintly ruler and a tragic loss. It was probably one of the most successful image management exercises in Irish history, and a credit to the monks who did everything with just quill and parchment and without social media technology. They did such an outstanding job that I believe them.
The obituary written by the monks after the Battle of Clontarf described Brian Boru as the “over-king of the Irish of Ireland, and of the foreigners, and of the Britons, the Augustus of the whole of north-west Europe”. He is also described as the Emperor of Scotland. Not bad for 20 ounces of gold.
A Model Army
What counts in Irish history as “visiting” often involved a violent reluctance on the part of the guest to leave the country when the hospitality was exhausted. This is how, for example, Oliver Cromwell qualifies to feature as a “guest” in Irish history. He was over here bashing us on our heads, meaning that he was not at home in England bashing his countrymen on theirs. What if Oliver Cromwell had fallen in love with a young Irish lass, or lad? Would things be different now? Would there be a portrait of him in every Irish home with a candle burning under it? But it seems he didn’t really like us. I don’t think he liked anyone.
In 1649, Oliver Cromwell brought his New Model Army62 to Ireland. This army was the only law-abiding entity in the country a
t that time. The New Model Army in Dublin seems to have been – literally – a model army. When not actually killing each other, the life of the soldier was more regulated than any other in history. By the middle of the seventeenth century, most European armies had developed a comprehensive body of law to maintain discipline and ensure justice in the army’s dealing with civilian populations. This martial law was usually read out to the soldiers on a weekly basis. Obviously, many didn’t pay attention. Courts-martial in Cromwell’s army consisted of all the officers of the rank of ensign or higher sitting as a court. There was no quorum but officers were regularly fined or reprimanded for not attending.
Captain Sanchey, who was late into court on Wednesday, 11 February 1651, had his excuses rejected and was fined 5s.63 that had to be paid there and then. On another occasion, 24 December 1652, Captain William Sands was fined 2s. 6d. for leaving court without permission. That fine was to be passed on to the poorest soldier under his command. Sands probably left court because he was bored or busy, since it was Christmas Eve and the court was only hearing the usual cases of drinking, swearing, “drinking lewd healths”64 and uttering scurrilous speeches; predictable punishments were death, whippings and, perhaps the worst, wearing a sign around your neck that read “Drinking Health”, or in our terms, making toasts.
Poet, Madman, Scoundrel Page 8
