The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 37

Two men were clearly identified as having perpetrated the unprovoked crime of a.s.sa.s.sinating the temporary occupant of the property, and were arrested.

The Gladstonian Attorney-General, in order to curry popularity, declined to challenge the jury, when the first man was put on his trial.

Consequently three cousins of the prisoner were impanelled, the jury disagreed, and the wretch bolted to America that same night.

The second man, though less guilty, was duly tried before a challenged jury, and not only sentenced but hanged.

He was the organiser of outrages for Cork, and his brother held the similar delectable office for Kerry. A good deal of the impunity with which crime was committed was due to the change in the jury laws, by which so low a cla.s.s of man was summoned into the box, that criminals began to consider conviction impossible. To my mind it was quite worth the consideration of the Cabinet of the time, whether trial by jury ought not to be abolished in Ireland--indeed, even to-day, I can see few reasons for its retention and many for its abolition.

Anyhow in the bad times I am now dealing with, to send persons for trial before a jury was but to advertise the weakness of the law.

Two men at Tralee were suspected of having paid their rent to me, and in spite of their a.s.surances that they were quite innocent and had not paid a farthing for two years, it was necessary for the police to escort them after nightfall to their homes about four miles away, and to advise them not to venture into the town for a long while after.

One of the worst features, however, of all this terrible period was that helpless girls and women were victims as well as men, I know of a case where some ruffians entered the house of a family at night, went into the bedroom of one of the girls, seized her violently, forced her on her knees, and held her in that position while one of the gang cut off her hair with shears, and then poured a quant.i.ty of hot tar on her head before entering the bedroom of her sister to do the same.

A similar fate befell two girls named Murphy merely because they were suspected of speaking to a policeman.

A man named Finlay was boycotted and then shot dead, and the neighbours jeered and laughed at his wife, when in her agony she was wringing her hands in grief.

The poor woman went into the street and knelt down crying:--

'The curse of G.o.d rest upon Father ---- for being the cause of my husband's murder.'

The priest had denounced him from the altar on the previous Sunday.

'Carding' has always been a favourite Irish form of physically insinuating to a man that he is not exactly popular. It consists of a wooden board with nails in it being drawn down the naked flesh of a man's face and body. This foul torture was often heard of, and it has been whispered that women and even girls have been the victims of this atrocity.

The merciful man is proverbially merciful to his beast, and those who showed mercy to neither man nor woman had none on the dumb animals owned by their victims.

A valuable Spanish a.s.s belonging to Mr. M'Cowan of Tralee was saturated with paraffin, set on fire, and horribly burned.

A farmer named Lambert found the shoulder of a heifer had been smashed by some blunt instrument like a hammer. I myself had a couple of cows killed and salted.

Indeed cattle outrages became incidents of nightly occurrence. Tenants in all disturbed counties, besides having their houses burnt, saw their cattle so horribly mutilated that the poor dumb creatures had to be killed to put them out of their misery. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would have no chance of obtaining general support among the lower cla.s.ses in Kerry, where beasts belonging to your enemy are simply regarded as so many goods and chattels, to be as badly damaged as possible.

It is a curious thing that the Irish and the Italian are the two most poetic and most sensitive races of Europe, and also are the two which exhibit the greatest indifference to the sufferings of dumb animals.

The distress in Kerry, of course, in the winter of 1879 had been as great as in the more famous famine, and I have heard the theory advanced in a London drawing-room that physical suffering renders uneducated people indifferent to any torture endured by animals. Personally, I should have thought a fellow feeling made us wondrous kind.

Reverting to matters with which I had more personal connection, an interesting episode occurred in June 1881, when The O'Donoghue moved the adjournment of the House of Commons to force a debate upon the subject of Lord Kenmare's estate, and I wrote a letter in the _Times_ in reply, from which may be condensed the following facts:--

On the Cork estate, from 1878 to 1881, the evictions did not average one for each year for every two hundred tenants.

On the Limerick estate for five years there have been no evictions.

On the Kerry estate, since he succeeded (in 1871), Lord Kenmare has expended 67,115 on drainage, road-making, and building cottages. The evictions have been about one in five hundred in every half year. The abatements, allowances, and expenditure in 1878, '79, '80, and '81, exclusive of what was spent on the house and demesne, were, 33,645, and I am under the mark when I say that, altogether, for these years of distress, Lord Kenmare spent more on his Kerry estates than he received out of it; yet for this, Land League meetings were held on his estate, and he was denounced in Parliament. The week that the Land League compelled Lord Kenmare to discontinue his employment to labourers, the weekly labour bill was 460.

There is no need to trouble readers with any further correspondence on a topic on which no one could answer me except by abuse, which is no argument; nor will I inflict any of the letters in which Mr. s.e.xton was clearly proved in the wrong when he misrepresented the case of Pat Murphy of Rath.

As an example of the state of affairs, in Millstreet--a mere village--there were thirty cases of nocturnal raid in the month of August 1881, even while it was engaging the attention of Mr. T.O.

Plunkett, R.M., Mr. French, chief of the detective department, two sub-inspectors, thirty-five constabulary, and fifty men of the 80th Regiment.

In the _Daily Telegraph_, with reference to the murder of Gallivan, near Castleisland, this remark appeared in a leader:--

'Horror-stricken humanity demands that an example be speedily made of the truculent and merciless ruffian who perpetrated this outrage.'

I quoted this in a letter the editor published, adding:--

'A few weeks after that occasion an old man named Flynn was shot within two miles of the place, because he paid his rent. His leg has since been amputated.'

Then I gave the following horrible case:--

On Sunday night the Land League police went to the house of a man named Dan Dooling, who lived within a mile of Gallivan's house, and within one mile of Castleisland, and because he paid his rent on getting a reduction of thirty per cent., he was taken out and shot in the thigh.

His wife, who was only three days after her confinement, pleaded for mercy on this account, but these lynch law authorities were deaf to the appeal for mercy, and she did not recover the shock of the entry of these 'moonlight' Thugs. This man could have identified his a.s.sailants, but he did not dare.

A good fellow called M'Auliffe, whose arm was shot off, could have done the same. The poor chap could be seen walking about with one arm, deprived of the means of earning his bread, and no doubt moralising over the state of the law, which would compensate him for the loss of his cow, if he had one, but gave him nothing for the loss of his arm.

On Friday, November 18, 1881, two tenants, named Cronin and one O'Keefe, holding land from Lord Kenmare, came into my office in Killarney.

O'Keefe, an old man of seventy, was the spokesman, and said:--

'If you plase, sorr, we have the rint in our pocket, and would be glad to pay it if it were not for the fear that we have of being shot.'

To my lasting regret, I replied:--

'There is no danger. You must pay.'

They did, and on the Sunday week following, a band of marauders, headed by fife and drum, went to the houses of these men, and shot them in the presence of their families. All the flesh on the lower part of O'Keefe's legs was shot away, one of the Cronins was shot in the knee, but the other in the body.

Everybody in the neighbourhood knew the perpetrators of this ghastly outrage, but said:--

'What use would there be in our telling, as the jury would acquit them, and we should be shot?'

Then came this announcement, which caused great excitement in Killarney:--

'In consequence of the difficulty of getting his rents, the Earl of Kenmare has decided to leave the country for the present. All the labourers employed on the estate are discharged, as well as some of the gamekeepers.'

My own opinion was that he showed great wisdom in abandoning the ungrateful locality where only man, debased by the Land League, was vile.

Outside my own folk, I found the people stiffer and less affable than formerly; but at no time had I any difficulty in obtaining or keeping domestic servants, though my wife got the majority from the neighbourhood of Edenburn.

I used to sit, on and off, on the bench as regularly as most of the other magistrates, whenever, indeed, my business permitted me to do so, and to my face no one ventured to abuse me.

Quite late in the bad times when I wanted a decree of ejectment against a fellow, the chairman, desiring to make peace, explained that his hesitation was entirely on my account, to save me from danger.

I replied that I had not quailed all those years, and I was too old to begin; so I had my decree, and that fellow's threats were as contemptuously treated as all the rest.

The Bank had a decree against a tenant of mine, and, having sold him out, entered into possession and put in a caretaker.

He was in occupation about eight hours, when he grew so frightened that he ran away. The tenant then went back into possession as a caretaker, whom n.o.body dared dislodge, and he promptly went to the Tralee Board of Guardians to obtain a pound a week as an evicted tenant.