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Irish Crime and Punishment - Executions, irish justice,gallows, folk lore.

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Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Fuinseog wrote: »
    The Lynch story could just be an urban legend. Hardimans history of Galway does not make reference to it.

    in Dublin people were punished at the Cornmarket. one of the punishments was to ride the wooden horse.

    I have never found a reference for the Lynch storybut when I heard it as a 9 year old it made me very suspicious o galway people.When I started the thread I had no idea what sources I would find .

    I am surprised at how little there is .

    Cornmarket you say, any info or pics on it ?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,284 ✭✭✭dubhthach


    According to this article in JSTOR there is at least one reference to the story from 1787 (33 years before Hardiman)

    Mayor Lynch of Galway: A Review of the Tradition
    James Mitchell
    Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society
    Vol. 38, (1981/1982), pp. 31-44
    (article consists of 14 pages)

    http://www.jstor.org/pss/25535518

    The actual Window itself though is creation of the 19th century by the local Rector of St. Nicholas using assorted medieval fragments (including a De Burgh coat of arms)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,284 ✭✭✭dubhthach


    It's been a long time since I read Hardiman (been from Galway -- my dad has a copy) but on the following page you can see the Skul&Crossbones which was reused in the 19th century "Lynch's Window" it was taken from a house associated with the Lynch family.

    http://books.google.ie/books?id=Lv8HAAAAQAAJ&dq=hardiman%20galway&pg=PA317#v=onepage&q&f=false

    The image references Page 70 and Page 76 which the story is told in that series of pages:
    http://books.google.ie/books?id=Lv8HAAAAQAAJ&dq=hardiman%20galway&pg=PA70#v=onepage&q&f=false

    So the particular structure was upstanding at time that Hardiman wrote in 1820, however it was subsequently demolished along with row of houses on that side of St. Nicholas (Market Street). The Street was widened and the current "Lynch Window" was erected by the Rector. I'm going on memory here so I can't recall what his name was or when in 19th century this happened.

    Row visible here on the Ordnance Survey map from 1837:
    http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,529697,725243,7,8


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,371 ✭✭✭Fuinseog


    CDfm wrote: »
    I have never found a reference for the Lynch storybut when I heard it as a 9 year old it made me very suspicious o galway people.When I started the thread I had no idea what sources I would find .

    I am surprised at how little there is .

    Cornmarket you say, any info or pics on it ?

    the Cornmarket reference I believe I cam across in Hidden Dublin or maybe another Dublin related book with 'Deadbeats and dossers' in the title.

    I cannot recall if William Henry includes the Lynch tale in Hidden Galway. He certainly says nothing of the Claddagh Ring for which Galway is famous.

    the Lynch window is from 1853. the hanging happened in 1492/3 and Lynch is said to have hanged his son from a 16th century window.
    I wonder how Hardiman missed the 18th century reference to Lynch. According to the version of the tale on the display boards in the castle itself the pope of the time sent Lynch rosary beads. I wonder is there a record of this?


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,221 Mod ✭✭✭✭slowburner


    Here's a questionable argument that the Galway origin is a myth.
    Note: there are some disturbing images in this link.

    Etymology

    In the United States, the origin of term "lynching" or "lynch law" is traditionally attributed to a Virginia Quaker named Charles Lynch.
    Charles Lynch (1736–1796), a Virginia planter and American Revolutionary who headed a county court in Virginia which punished Loyalist supporters of the British.[6]
    The following are several improbable suggested sources of the word's origin:
    William Lynch (1742–1820) from Virginia claimed that the phrase was first used for a 1780 compact signed by him and his neighbors in Pittsylvania County.
    James Lynch Fitzstephen from Galway, Ireland, who was the Mayor of Galway when he hanged his own son from the balcony of his house after convicting him of the murder of a Spanish visitor in 1493.
    Lingchi, a Chinese form of execution used from roughly AD 900 to 1905.
    Archaic verb linch; to beat severely with a pliable instrument, to chastise or to maltreat.
    There is little actual doubt as to where the term originates. During the Revolutionary War, Judge Charles Lynch imprisoned activists who were loyal to the British and who threatened the colonists' military situation.
    In passing these sentences, comparatively mild though they were, the county court was transcending its powers; the General Court alone had jurisdiction in cases of treason. After the war, therefore, the Tories that had suffered at his hands threatened to prosecute Colonel Lynch and his friends, and the affair attracted wide attention. To avoid the trouble of a lawsuit, Lynch had the matter brought up before the legislature, of which he was still a member; and after a long and thorough debate, that aroused the interest of the whole country, the following act was passed : "Whereas divers evil-disposed persons in the year 1780 formed a conspiracy and did actually attempt to levy war against the commonwealth, and it is represented to the present General Assembly ... that Charles Lynch and other faithful citizens, aided by detachments of volunteers from different parts of the state, did by timely and effectual measures suppress such conspiracy, and whereas the measures taken for that purpose may not be strictly warranted by law although justifiable from the imminence of the danger, Be it therefore enacted that the said Charles Lynch and all other persons whatsoever concerned in suppressing the said conspiracy, or in advising, issuing, or exacting any orders or measures taken for that purpose, stand indemnified and exonerated of and from all pains, penalties, prosecutions, actions, suits, and damages on account thereof, And that if any indictment, prosecution, action or suit shall be laid or brought against them or any of them for any act or thing done therein, the defendant or defendants may plead in bar and give this act in evidence." The proceedings in Bedford which the legislature thus pronounced to be illegal, but justifiable, were imitated in other parts of the state, and came to be known by the name of "Lynch's Law." In justice to Colonel Lynch, it should be remembered that his action was taken at a time when the state was in the throes of a hostile invasion. The General Court, before which the conspirators should have been tried, was temporarily dispersed. Thomas Jefferson, then the governor of the state, was proving himself peculiarly incompetent to fill the position. The whole executive department was in a state of partial paralysis. It was, therefore, no spirit of insubordination or disregard of the law that induced Lynch to act as he did. There were few men living more inclined than this simple Quaker farmer to render due respect in word and deed to the established authorities. But the seed that had been sown sprung up and bore evil fruit... In 1796 he died, at the age of sixty, and was buried at his home on the banks of the Staunton, in a country which he had found a primeval wilderness... and which he left a prosperous, peaceful, and law-abiding community.
    —Thomas Walker Page, "The Real Judge Lynch" (December 1901) The Atlantic Monthly
    http://av-naacp.org/lynching.htm

    The Galway Lynch story is more than likely factual.
    Did the the word Lynching probably came about as an amalgamation of the Virginian Lynch law and the event in 1493 in Galway.



    (totally unconnected - in the JSTOR ref to Lynch House (?) '
    ...and is called the Crossbones, now a Kip
    ???


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,440 ✭✭✭califano


    Does anyone know what the address of the green tureen was or what premises is on the site now?.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Does anyone know what the address of the green tureen was or what premises is on the site now?.

    I think its 95 Harcourt Street , but am not sure.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,221 Mod ✭✭✭✭slowburner


    I wonder if Wexford bridge holds the record as the venue for the greatest number of executions.
    If not, it must at least hold the record for the most intensive barbarity and savagery.


  • Registered Users Posts: 155 ✭✭ODriscoll


    CDfm wrote: »

    I noticed that in the hangings link there were very few in Cork proving yet again the superiority of the county and its people ;)
    If you meant this link

    That website is clearly not a comprehensive or (remotely credible) complete list for Ireland.
    Curious as to how and why the site claims a "Listing of all U.K. executions from 1735 - 1964."

    Yet they only start in 1835 for Ireland!
    Politically or conveniently ignorant perhaps! Missing out entirely the first generation of enforced union of 1801, and the many Irish victims of Colonial executions within the period claimed.
    It is probably just coincidence, but those missing years did witness many Colonial rule executions in Ireland, so many as to raise some inner doubt, even among the most conveniently ignorant and ardent British Unionist romantic.
    I have read historical records of the hundreds hanged in County Cork as named or alleged rebels involved in 1798. Those hangings and punishments for 1798, were mostly carried out between 1800 - 1805, but went on well into the next decade of that 19th Century.
    slowburner wrote: »
    I wonder if Wexford bridge holds the record as the venue for the greatest number of executions.
    If not, it must at least hold the record for the most intensive barbarity and savagery.

    Why do you say that? Is it likewise because of the Colonial executions of the early 19th Century?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,161 ✭✭✭✭Ash.J.Williams


    ODriscoll wrote: »
    If you meant this link


    That website is clearly not a comprehensive or (remotely credible) complete list for Ireland.
    Curious as to how and why the site claims a "Listing of all U.K. executions from 1735 - 1964."

    Yet they only start in 1835 for Ireland!
    Politically or conveniently ignorant perhaps! Missing out entirely the first generation of enforced union of 1801, and the many Irish victims of Colonial executions within the period claimed.
    It is probably just coincidence, but those missing years did witness many Colonial rule executions in Ireland, so many as to raise some inner doubt, even among the most conveniently ignorant and ardent British Unionist romantic.
    I have read historical records of the hundreds hanged in County Cork as named or alleged rebels involved in 1798. Those hangings and punishments for 1798, were mostly carried out between 1800 - 1805, but went on well into the next decade of that 19th Century.



    Why do you say that? Is it likewise because of the Colonial executions of the early 19th Century?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Dunlavin_Green


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