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Irish History: Strange but True, Clifden (2026)

17/05/2026

Ireland is not synonymous with dangerous animals, although there have been some fatal incidents over the years.

On 9 June 1903, a keeper at Dublin Zoo named James McNally was killed by a six-ton elephant, Zita, as he attempted to place lotion on her injured foot.

The elephant swung her trunk, knocking McNally to the ground, before standing on him and killing him instantly. Attempts to save McNally’s life were in vain.

McNally’s son had witnessed the incident, telling police that it had taken less than two seconds to occur.

According to newspapers, Zita was put down by police with six gunshots to the head and knees two days later.

The elephant had called Dublin Zoo home for twenty years and had been taught several tricks by McNally, who was said to have been very fond of her.

Interestingly, in May 1897, the same elephant had injured another keeper, knocking him to the ground and kicking him. This keeper, thankfully, managed to scramble to his feet and escape the enclosure.

An equally shocking case from the Zoological Gardens in Dublin occurred on Christmas Eve, 1891 when the Wrights, a family on holiday from Limerick, were visiting.

When the family reached the cage holding a bear, 17-year-old Francis put sweets in through the bars of the cage for the animal.

He then turned to look at his younger brother but when he did so, the bear suddenly grabbed his arm.

He clawed Francis’ wrist, lacerating it, before catching his arm in his mouth and holding on tightly for several minutes.

Workers with a shovel eventually extricated Francis from his grip but he died of shock in hospital shortly afterwards.

As for animals in the wild, there are few horror stories. In Donegal, there was a case in famine times where the leg of a man who had starved to death was discovered in an eyrie.

The nest was burned in retaliation by his outraged neighbours. An eagle was also said to have attacked a child who was herding cattle in Achill, Co. Mayo in February 1868.

Wasps attacked a pensioner named Edward Maguire in Scotshouse, Co. Monaghan in October 1911 when he attempted to dislodge their nest in his thatched roof with a shovel.

Maguire had fallen from the ladder after sustaining hundreds of stings and was aided by a neighbour who heard his anguished screams, finding swarms of wasps on him and inside his shirt.

Brought to Clones Infirmary, it was stated that Maguire hung precariously between life and death after the attack.

For more stories of the lesser-known side of Irish history, see my new book - 'Irish History: Strange but True.' In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at: https://strangeirishhistory.etsy.com/listing/4446372429,

Pictured is Dublin Zoo in years gone by, courtesy NLI.

14/05/2026

Iron Mike Malloy was the Irishman that they couldn't kill.

Little is known of Malloy’s early life, except that he was a native of Co. Donegal who had emigrated to America in search of a better life.

Once a respected fireman, Malloy’s fortunes declined as alcoholism took hold.

By the 1930s, he had become homeless, wandering the streets of New York City and sleeping wherever he could find shelter. And then, a group of men coldly decided take out a life insurance policy on Malloy, kill him and share the payout.

What they did not anticipate was Malloy’s uncanny ability to survive repeated attempts on his life. Like Rasputin, he seemed impossible to kill.

The mastermind behind the scheme was 27-year-old Tony Marino (pictured), owner of a Third Avenue speakeasy in those days of prohibition.

Marino had already profited once from murder: he had taken out an insurance policy on a homeless woman and then deliberately frozen her to death.

The insurance company paid out quickly, and Marino, emboldened by success, decided to try it again.

Malloy was a regular at Marino’s bar and he often begged for drinks.

He seemed an easy target with no family to care for him and Marino recruited two criminal associates, Francis Pasqua and Daniel Kriesberg, to carry out the dastardly plot.

The men began to offer Mike endless free drinks, hoping he would drink himself to death.

When this failed, they laced the drinks with rat poison, turpentine, and antifreeze, but the Irishman showed no ill effects, returning each morning for more.

Next, they served him raw oysters soaked in methylated spirits, sure that food poisoning would follow. It was to no avail.

Growing desperate, the men left an unconscious Malloy outside one snowy night, doused him with water, and hoped he would freeze to death. Instead, he roused himself and made his way to safety.

Next, the conspiracy enlisted a cab driver to run Malloy over.

He successfully struck Malloy with his taxi, then reversed over him. Incredibly, Malloy survived again, suffering only a broken shoulder and concussion.

By February 1933, the gang’s patience had run out. They plied Malloy with alcohol until he passed out, then placed a gas hose in his mouth until he stopped breathing.

A corrupt doctor certified the death as pneumonia. But when the men tried to collect the insurance payout, the company demanded to see the body.

Told it had already been buried, the agents grew suspicious and contacted the police.

Marino, Pasqua, Kriesberg, and a fourth conspirator, Murphy, were arrested and charged with murder.

Despite each man’s attempt to deny responsibility, blame one each other or plead insanity, they were all found guilty.

All were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison.

Mike Malloy meanwhile, the man they could not kill, will be forever remembered as the Irish Rasputin.

For more stories of the lesser-known side of Irish history, see my new book - 'Irish History: Strange but True.' In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at: https://strangeirishhistory.etsy.com/listing/4446372429,

13/05/2026

There have been many railway crashes in Irish history, an early example being the 1853 train crash near Straffan, Co. Kildare.

The weather was foggy and the Cork to Dublin passenger train was making its way along the tracks just south of Straffan, as it had done since its inauguration several years before.

Suddenly, its piston snapped and it came to a halt.

Paddy Berry, the signal man, was dispatched back the tracks to frantically wave his lamp at the oncoming goods train from Limerick Junction, which was following some twenty minutes behind.

The train driver may not have seen the light and continued at full speed. Equally, he might have seen it and attempted to stop the train but was unable to do so quickly enough due to the lack of braking power.

Either way, it smashed into the back of the stationary passenger train. The first-class carriage at the rear was completely smashed and the rest of the train careered some three quarters of a mile along the line.

Eighteen people lost their lives in the tragedy, many of them from Ireland’s wealthier classes.

One of the victims was Daniel McSweeney, a nephew of the recently-deceased politician Daniel O’Connell.

Fortunately, the passenger train was not even a third full but even yet, it was recorded as one of deadliest railway fatalities in the world at that time.

The renowned poet William Allingham later wrote a poem about the awful tragedy. It ends with the following verses:

'Mong twisted metal, splinter'd wood,
Half buried in the ground,
'Mong heaps of limbs crush'd up in blood,
Must wife, child, friend be found.

No hostile cannonade, or mine,
Perform'd the cruel wrong;
Through peaceful fields they sped to join,
The city's sprightly throng.'

Safety systems improved over time, although there were a small number of notable accidents involving Irish trains over the following decades.

Five people died when a train derailed near Ballincollig, Co. Cork in 1878 due to poorly maintained tracks.

A decade later, the worst incident in Irish railway history occurred near Armagh (pictured) when hundreds of adults and children were on their way to a seaside excursion.

Their overloaded train stalled, then hurtled backwards, crashing into an oncoming train.

There were eighty-eight deaths, the worst railway disaster in Britain or Ireland at that point.

Another fatal collision occurred in December 1916 when two goods trains collided head-on near Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo after one of the drivers missed a danger signal in the dense fog.

Six railway staff were killed and ten more injured.

In January 1945, poor weather and a signal malfunction at Ballymacarrett Junction near Belfast caused one train, filled with workers on their morning commute, to crash into the back of another.

The wooden carriages of the stationary train were destroyed on impact, twenty-two people being killed and dozens injured.

For more stories of the lesser-known side of Irish history, see my new book - 'Irish History: Strange but True.' In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at: https://strangeirishhistory.etsy.com/listing/4446372429,

08/05/2026

The death penalty was used as a weapon to quell the dissent of the restless Irish population over the centuries.

Heroic nationalist figures such as Robert Emmet and Patrick Pearse numbered among the executed and it is therefore not surprising that there was a distaste for the ultimate punishment.

Initial plans to abolish the death penalty in independent Ireland were scuppered by the impending civil war, however.

The Free State government ultimately used it freely to crush the anti-Treaty republicans, executing eighty-one men in the terrible conflict, far more than the British had judicially killed in the War of Independence.

The death penalty also remained for common murder after this conflict petered out in 1923.

Between then and 1954, twenty-nine people were executed for this offence.

The first man hanged was William Downes.

His crime was the shooting of a policeman, Thomas Fitzgerald, and his death sentence was carried out with little fanfare in November 1923.

The last was Michael Manning, hanged in 1954 for the brutal killing of Catherine Cooper in Limerick, a crime which shocked the nation.

On top of this, six IRA volunteers were executed during the Emergency (WWII) under special powers, all but one by firing squad.

The sixth, Charlie Kerins, was hanged after he was controversially found guilty of being part of the team which carried out the 1942 assassination of Denis O’Brien, a member of the Garda Special Branch.

An Irish hangman was not employed in this, or any, case, however.

Instead, the Irish government recruited a series of English ex*****oners who travelled across the Irish Sea to carry out the grim duty.

The Pierrepoints were the most notable, often greeted at the docks by jeering Irish crowds.

Albert Pierrepoint (pictured) later recalled in his autobiography the intense animosity he encountered from the Irish population.

John Ellis, an earlier hangman who executed Kevin Barry during the War of Independence, received a similar reception.

In June 1921, an armed IRA party awaited him at Westland Row Railway station in Dublin but he narrowly avoided them.

To many, before and after independence, the image of an Englishman being paid to execute Irishmen was deeply distasteful, regardless of what they were accused of.

For more stories of the lesser-known side of Irish history, see my new book - 'Irish History: Strange but True.' In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at: https://strangeirishhistory.etsy.com/listing/4446372429,

04/05/2026

William Crotty was an Irish highwayman who was ultimately relieved of his head.

He became a highwayman as a teenager after his father was evicted from his small farm near Russelstown in Co. Waterford.

By the late 1730s, Crotty was the leader of a gang who traversed the south-east of Ireland, often using the caves on the Comeragh Mountains (pictured) as their base.

He robbed the wealthy and seems to have been well-regarded by the poor people.

He was renowned as an excellent handballer and he appeared regularly at fairs and markets, yet somehow evaded being caught by the long arm of the law, although he was at one point shot in the mouth.

A comrade, David Norris, and his wife eventually accepted a bribe and gave up Crotty’s location to the authorities in 1742.

The highwayman was first incapacitated with whiskey and then, as he slept, water was poured on his gun powder, rendering it useless.

Crotty was thus captured easily and dispatched to Waterford Gaol where he was predictably found guilty after a speedy trial and sentenced to death.

He was hanged on 18 March 1742, his head later affixed to a pole overlooking the gaol, his skeleton displayed in Waterford L***r Hospital for a time.

He is not forgetten in his home county.

Today, Crotty’s Lough and Crotty’s Den can be found in the Comeraghs, named in honour of the man who traversed these mountains many years before.

It is said that to this day Crotty’s gold lies buried somewhere in the same mountains.

For more stories of the lesser-known side of Irish history, see my new book - 'Irish History: Strange but True (from the author of 'Little History of Galway.) In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at: https://strangeirishhistory.etsy.com/listing/4446372429,

03/05/2026

Catherine O’Leary was wrongly blamed for starting the fire that destroyed Chicago.

Born Catherine Donegan, she married Patrick O’Leary, the couple emigrating in Famine times to Chicago, a fast-growing city with a thriving Irish community.

Catherine worked hard, keeping five cows and selling milk locally, while Patrick was a successful tradesman.

On 8 October 1871, a small fire started adjacent to the O’Leary home. Strong winds fanned the flames, turning the blaze into an inferno which destroyed nearly every home on the street.

Chicago, then only about thirty years old, was largely built of wood, its tightly packed buildings and the recent dry weather creating perfect conditions for disaster.

Over the next day and a half, the fire swept across four-square miles of the city, killing up to 300 people and destroying 100,000 buildings.

The tragedy drew worldwide attention, and aid poured in from across the United States and beyond. Reconstruction began almost immediately.

Because the city’s docks and railways had survived, trade and transport continued, fuelling a massive rebuilding effort.

The new buildings were designed to be far more resistant to fire, and against all odds, Chicago flourished. Within a decade, its population had soared to half a million people.

Nevertheless, the public were eager to find someone to blame and when a local journalist, Michael Ahern, reported that Catherine O’Leary had been milking her cow when it kicked over a lantern igniting the hay, she became the target.

Catherine admitted that she milked her cows twice daily, often by lamplight, but she firmly denied any involvement, producing witnesses who confirmed she had been in bed since 8 p.m., before the fire began.

The alarm had been raised by Daniel ‘Pegleg’ Sullivan, who first spotted the flames and woke the O’Learys. Still, the story of ‘Mrs. O’Leary’s cow’ spread rapidly, fuelled by anti-Irish prejudice.

Newspapers printed cartoons of Catherine and her infamous cow, making her an easy scapegoat at a time when Irish immigrants faced widespread discrimination.

Although Catherine was never charged, the false accusations haunted her for the rest of her life.

Ahern eventually retracted his story in 1893, but by then the damage had been done. Catherine O’Leary died two years later, heartbroken by the lingering stigma. Even her obituaries could not resist a cruel joke.

The Skibbereen Eagle quipped that she was ‘the lady responsible for the modern city by Lake Michigan,’ suggesting that Chicago should erect a monument to her cow.

In 1997, Chicago’s Committee on Police and Fire officially cleared Catherine O’Leary of any wrongdoing.

The true cause of the Great Chicago Fire remains unknown. Perhaps it was merely a stray spark from a nearby chimney.

We may never know what really happened, but at long last, history has righted a wrong: Catherine O’Leary was innocent.

For more stories of the lesser-known side of Irish history, see my new book - 'Irish History: Strange but True (from the author of 'Little History of Galway.) In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at: https://strangeirishhistory.etsy.com/listing/4446372429,

Pictured is an illustration from Harper's Weekly in 1871, pointing the finger of blame at Mrs. O'Leary.

02/05/2026

Elizabeth Sugrue was an Irish ex*****oner whose name remains well known, even if verifiable facts about her life are hard to come by.

It was said that as a youth, in the closing decades of the eighteenth century, Elizabeth absconded from the home of her wealthy family and eloped.

Her husband died young, however, leaving Elizabeth and her son Pádraig in a cottage outside Roscommon town, where she took in lodgers for a few pennies. Although poor, she was obsessed with money, teaching Pádraig that wealth was the key to happiness.

Elizabeth taught him to read and write but was said to be cruel and domineering. Life with her proved unbearable, and when he reached adulthood, Pádraig left home, joining the army.

Folklore records that in around 1790, some fifteen years after his departure, he returned home on horseback. Having done well for himself, he carried money and valuables, but decided not to reveal his identity immediately.

Instead, he posed as a traveller seeking lodgings, planning to observe his mother and reveal himself the next morning.

Elizabeth agreed to host the stranger, but realising he was wealthy, she murdered him in the night and stole his money.

Her crime was discovered and Elizabeth was imprisoned in Roscommon Gaol where she awaited ex*****on.

She was later reprieved but faced the alternative punishment of transportation to Botany Bay, which she dreaded. To avoid this, she offered to execute the remaining condemned prisoners herself in exchange for a pardon.

The offer was accepted, and she reportedly performed the grim task with zeal before a large crowd. In Roscommon, ex*****ons involved prisoners being dropped from a third-floor doorway, tied by the neck to an iron beam above.

Elizabeth did not mind and even sketched charcoal portraits of her victims on her cottage walls. For over a decade, she served as Connacht’s chief ex*****oner, earning the title ‘Lady Betty.’

She wore a mask when carrying out a hanging and was also tasked with flogging, the hapless victim tied to a cart.

Lady Betty is thought to have died violently around 1807. Three men arrested for fighting were sent to Roscommon Gaol and made to break stones in the yard. While they worked, Lady Betty entered.

As she passed the first man, he lifted a stone and struck her on the back of the head. She fell, and no one came to her aid.

A warder later found her dead.

Officials concluded she had fallen and struck her head on a stone, but years later, the truth of her death became known.

William Wilde, folklorist and father of Oscar, described her thus:

'Who, think you, gentle reader officiated upon this gallows high? —a female!

A middle-aged, stout-made, dark-eyed, swarthy-complexioned, but by no means forbidding-looking woman—the celebrated Lady Betty—the unflinching priestess of Roscommon for many years.'

For more stories of the lesser-known side of Irish history, see my new book - 'Irish History: Strange but True (from the author of 'Little History of Galway.) In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at: https://strangeirishhistory.etsy.com/listing/4446372429,

Pictured is Roscommon Gaol at the turn of the twentieth century.

26/04/2026

Body snatching was one crime that became associated with the nineteenth century, in Ireland and beyond.

During this period, anatomists were keen to understand the inner workings of the human body.

To do so, they required cadavers for dissection, but very few people were willing to donate their remains to medical science.

William Burke and William Hare capitalised on this shortage.

The Irishmen plied their body-snatching trade in Scotland in the late 1820s but eventually progressed to murder to feed their lust for corpses.

They ultimately brought sixteen bodies to a local anatomist, most of which they had killed themselves.

Elaborate ways to deter grave robbers, such as iron coffins and mortsafes, began to be built by members of the wealthier classes in Ireland around this time.

Patrick Cotter was one man who was wary of posthumous exploitation.

‘The Irish Giant,’ as he was known in his lifetime, was almost eight feet tall and realised his unusual dimensions would make him an attractive case study for anatomists.

For this reason, he had his body buried in three coffins, under concrete, and behind iron bars.

Those buried in paupers’ burial ground, such as Bully’s Acre, near Kilmainham Co. Dublin, had no such protections and these mass graves were regular targets for grave robbers seeking fresh bodies.

In 1830, just one year after the hanging of the aforementioned William Burke, Albert Neagles was walking past the Hospital Fields, near Islandbridge, when he saw about sixteen men, armed with swords and guns, exiting the fields with a cart piled high with dead bodies.

After attempting to intervene, Neagles was threatened with a sword and wounded on the head.

He managed to fetch some peace officers who arrested several of the body snatchers who were said to be ‘old offenders and very well known in most of the police offices of Dublin.’

The following year, near the village of Kilrea, Co. Derry, Robert Norris was caught removing the body of Mary Thompson from a graveyard and placing it in a sack.

He was charged with body-snatching and the theft of the linen in which her body had been wrapped.

Norris was one member of a party of three but was the only man caught. He was swiftly found guilty and sentenced to seven years transportation.

Death masks were also a common aspect of death in earlier times, particularly in the case of those who were famous (or infamous).

Daniel O’Connell had a death mask made of him after his death. It ended up as the property of Dunravens, the family having been close friends of the O’Connells.

The mask remained in their possession for over 160 years before it was granted to the state, after which it was displayed at Derrynane House, O’Connell’s ancestral home.

Other Irishmen who had death masks made of their features include James Joyce and Brendan Behan while Robert Emmet’s severed head was used to create his mask.

These items remain an attraction to the morbidly curious – the ‘life mask’ of Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, was made days before his death on hunger strike in 1920 and can be found in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.

For more stories of the lesser-known side of Irish history, see my new book - 'Irish History: Strange but True (from the author of 'Little History of Galway.) In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at: https://strangeirishhistory.etsy.com/listing/4446372429,

Pictured is Resurrectionists (1847), by Hablot Knight Browne.

24/04/2026

Possibly the bloodiest Irish battle of the last half-millennium occurred on Galway soil, just outside the small village of Aughrim, in 1691.

War had begun after King James II, a Catholic, took the English throne in 1685, alarming the Protestant parliament. In 1688, they invited the Dutch Protestant William of Orange to seize the crown.

The War of the Two Kings then erupted, with Catholics in Ireland generally on James' side and Protestants favouring William.

There was a major engagement in Co. Meath, the Battle of the Boyne on 12 July 1690, which was won by William’s forces.

The Williamites crossed the River Shannon the following spring and managed to capture the strategic town of Athlone after a lengthy siege.

The two sides again faced off on 12 July 1691, this time at Aughrim, Co. Galway.

James’ supporters, the Jacobites, had positioned themselves on a small hill, giving them a positional advantage in the flat east Galway countryside.

This necessitated their enemies attacking uphill, through a bog, in misty conditions. The Jacobite
force looked to be routing their opponents until their general, a Frenchman named Saint Ruthe, was killed by a cannonball.

He was later buried in Loughrea.

This loss sucked the life out of the Jacobites and their defences quickly began to fall apart.

They were pushed back down the hill, where many turned and fled, others being killed by the Williamite cavalry.

Many of their most experienced officers were amongst the casualties.

It is believed that upwards of 40,000 soldiers fought in the epic battle and that 8,000 people were killed, surely making it the bloodiest day in Galway’s history.

The defeat finished off the Jacobites as a real force and led, indirectly, to the introduction of the Penal Laws in Ireland.

Centuries later, Emily Lawless, who spent much of her childhood in Co. Galway, wrote a poem about the terrible battle:

She said, ‘They gave me of their best,
They lived, they gave their lives for me;
I tossed them to the howling waste,
And flung them to the foaming sea.’

She said, ‘Ten times they fought for me,
Ten times they strove with might and main,
Ten times I saw them beaten down,
Ten times they rose and fought again.’

She said, ‘I stayed alone at home,
A dreary woman, grey and cold;
I never asked them how they fared,
Yet still they loved me as of old.’

She said, ‘God knows they owe me nought,
I tossed them to the foaming sea,
I tossed them to the howling waste,
Yet still their love comes home to me.’

For more stories of the lesser-known side of Irish history, see my new book - 'Irish History: Strange but True (from the author of 'Little History of Galway.) In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at: https://strangeirishhistory.etsy.com/listing/4446372429,

Pictured is the Battle of Aughrim, as painted by John Mulvany in the 1880s. The painting was once popular amongst Nationalists but was missing for a century until it resurfaced for sale in 2010.

22/04/2026

Eamonn Ceannt, born in Ballymoe, Co. Galway in 1881, would become one of the seven signatories of the proclamation of the Easter Rising.

Ceannt moved around the country regularly in his youth on account of his father, James, who was a police sergeant, but always considered himself a Galway man.

His interest in Irish language and culture grew throughout his teenage years and ultimately he became a musician and Irish speaker of some renown.

A talented uileann piper, Ceannt made an invaluable contribution to Irish music by collecting many airs which might otherwise have been forgotten, including in Connemara and on the islands, to which he was a regular visitor.

He spoke Irish with the Connemara dialect and had a great love for the region.

His interest in Irish nationalism also grew as he got older and in 1915 he was appointed to the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

During the Rising itself, he served as commandant of the 4th Battalion stationed at the South Dublin Union, with more than 100 men under his command

He surrendered reluctantly after six days of heavy fighting when ordered to do so by his superior, Padraig Pearse

Ceannt had married Aine Ni Bhraonáin in 1908 and it was to her that he would write the following letter on his last night.

'My dearest wife Áine,

Not wife but widow before these lines reach you.

I am here without hope of this world and without fear, calmly awaiting the end. I have had Holy Communion and Fr. Augustine has been with me and will be back again.

My poor little sweetheart of — how many — years ago. Ever my comforter, God comfort you now. What can I say? I die a noble death, for Ireland’s freedom. Men and women will vie with one another to shake your dear hand.

Be proud of me as I am and ever was of you. My cold exterior was but a mask. It has served me in these last days. You have a duty to me and to Rónán, that is to live.

My dying wishes are that you shall remember your state of health, work only as much as may be necessary and freely accept the little attentions which in due time will be showered upon you.

You will be — you are, the wife of one of the Leaders of the Rebellion. Sweeter still you are my little child, my dearest pet, my sweetheart of the hawthorn hedges and summer eves. I remember all and I banish all that I may be strong and die bravely.

I have one hour to live, then God’s judgement and, through his infinite mercy, a place near your poor Grannie, and my mother and father, and Jem and all the five old Irish Catholics who went through the scourge of similar misfortune from this Vale of Tears into the Promised Land. …

Adieu,

Eamonn.'

Ceannt was duly executed on 8 May 1916 by firing squad in Kilmainham jail, Dublin, and was buried at Arbour Hill prison cemetery.

For more stories of the lesser-known side of Irish history, see my new book - 'Irish History: Strange but True (from the author of 'Little History of Galway.) In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at: https://strangeirishhistory.etsy.com/listing/4446372429,

19/04/2026

Assassinations grew in number during the Irish Land War and many went unpunished, a prominent example being the fatal shooting of Lord Mountmorres in September 1880.

Mountmorres was a landlord with just twelve tenants living near Clonbur on the Mayo–Galway border.

He was vocal in his opposition to the Land League, however, something which may have marked him out as a target.

No prosecution was ever forthcoming.

The magistrate Arthur Herbert was also shot dead, in his case near Castleisland, Co. Kerry in March 1882. Desperate efforts to prosecute the killers were also unsuccessful and a reward of £2,000 went uncollected.

Herbert was buried in nearby Ardcrone, although his presence there was resented by locals and his body was removed and reinterred elsewhere late in 1883.

April 1882 in Co. Westmeath saw the ‘Barbavilla Murder,’ in which Maria Smythe was shot down as she returned from church. The target of the assassination was probably Maria’s brother-in-law, William Barlow Smythe, a hate figure locally having recently evicted tenants from the Barbavilla estate in Co. Westmeath.

In June 1882, John Henry Blake, a land agent for one of the largest absentee landlords in Ireland, Lord Clanricarde, was gunned down by a party of men while on his way to church in Loughrea, Co. Galway. His servant, Thady Ruane, was also fatally wounded.

There were multiple other fatal attacks on landlords agents, process servers and herds and Ireland was a common topic of discussion in Westminster.

In some cases, hangings followed, notably at Cloughbrack, Co. Galway when three local men were convicted on dubious evidence of a double agrarian murder that occured there in 1882.

Ultimately, suppression of resistance, and imprisonment of the leaders of the Land League movement followed these outrages, as did limited legislation supposed to favour tenants.

The Land War came to an end but anger over the distribution of land remained and would flare up repeatedly in the years to come.

For more stories of the lesser-known side of Irish history, see my new book - 'Irish History: Strange but True (from the author of 'Little History of Galway.) In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at: https://strangeirishhistory.etsy.com/listing/4446372429,

Irish History: Strange but True

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