Archive News
Retired medic plays detective to solve family murder mystery
Date Published: 10-May-2012
It reads like a detective mystery, but The Case of the Craughwell Prisoners During the Land War in Co. Galway 1879-85, a new book written by retired Associate Professor of Medicine at NUIG, Professor Pat Finnegan, is much more than that.
It’s a deeply personal story about his grandfather, Patrick Finnegan, who, in 1884, alongside RIC Constable Michael Muldowney, was wrongly convicted of murder. Their conviction followed the shooting of a young man, Peter Doherty, in 1881 in a dispute over land near Craughwell during Ireland’s first Land War.
Finnegan and Muldowney were convicted to hang based on the evidence of two informers, who had been paid by the Crown and whose statements were contradictory and completely unreliable. The judge in the trial, James Murphy, a ‘Castle Catholic’ from Limerick, did everything in his power to have them prosecuted rather than being an impartial arbitrator in the case, while the jury was selected to ensure their conviction. It was like a 19th century version of the Birmingham Six or the Guilford Four.
Eventually, they had their sentences commuted to life, after which both served 20 years. During that time, many petitions to have their sentences overturned were dismissed by the Crown, on the basis that ‘Justice must be done’.
“I always knew my grandfather spent 20 years in jail but I only knew the story in a very fragmentary kind of way,” says Pat, in the book-lined dining room of his Salthill home. “He didn’t talk that much about it, according to my father.”
Patrick died in 1939, two and a half months before Pat was born, but family interest in his legacy lived on. Pat’s sister Anne wrote her MA thesis on the history of the Land War in South Galway, while Pat himself, who is a retired consultant physician at UHG and Professor Emeritus at NUIG, first began exploring the story when he was a student.
Back then he went to the National Library searching for papers from the period, especially the Sligo newspapers, as the trial had been held there.
Very little had been written subsequently about events surrounding the case, except for one “appalling” publication in the States, says Pat whose busy medical career kept him from delving into the story for many years.
It was only when he retired in 2004 that he found the time to dedicate to this story.
He began researching his family history intensively, helped by relations, especially his father’s first cousin Alice McArdle, a retired teacher, who was a superb source.
Pat knew that the men known as The Craughwell Prisoners were convicted in 1884, so he decided to go back to 1879 to put the period and that story in context.
He began researching The Freeman’s Journal, The Irish Times and the local papers in Connacht from then until 1885.
Initially it was a broad trawl but “once I got into it I knew where I’d find things in the paper and which headlines were critical”.
After that he went to the National Archives in Dublin, which are located in the old Jacob’s Biscuit factory – a place that incidentally played a major role in the 1916 Rising.
He knew that information about the men’s trials and subsequent pleas to have their death sentences commuted was in the papers of the Chief Secretary.
The volumes contained all kinds of prison records and reports from the prison boards, he explains.
“They are massive volumes, but the legibility was amazing, bar one clerk – and I’d have shot him if I got my hands on him,” he laughs.
“To find what I was looking for was a major task. The records were done alphabetically and geographically to an extent. At that stage I knew 1881 was a vital time and I started looking for Peter Doherty.”
Pat’s account of the shooting of Doherty – as a punishment for taking land after a family had been evicted – is thorough. So too is the account of the two informers, Moran and Raftery, who were each paid by the Crown. One of the most fascinating aspects for this reader was that Raftery’s wife was horrified by her husband’s actions and contradicted his testimony locally and in court.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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