Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Irish Crime and Punishment - Executions, irish justice,gallows, folk lore.
Comments
-
-
MarchDub reminded me of the notorious Shan Mohangi case - here is a booksellers description.Paperback. Featuring the 1963 murder of 16yr. old Hazel Mullen by medical student, Shan Mohangi. A book which provides for the first time a more accurate and disturbing account than the innuendo and rumour which hadn't been challenged for 30yrs. Illus. + Appendices. 174pp. p/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Vg+
http://www.laybooks.com/detail.asp?b=12691
There are some you tubes on the case from the Thou Shalt Not Kill Series - the Green Tureen.Politician exposed as man behind grisly Irish killing
By Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg
Monday March 23 2009
A former MP in South Africa has been forced to withdraw as candidate in next month's elections after being exposed as the man convicted of killing a Dublin teenager and chopping up her body after a row in a restaurant.
Shan Mohangi was 22 and a student at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin in 1963 when he strangled his 16-year-old girlfriend Hazel Mullen and then dismembered her body.
The case gained notoriety after it emerged at his trial that Mohangi tried to dispose of her remains, including her severed head, by cooking them to the point of incineration in the oven of the restaurant where he worked as a part-time chef, the Green Tureen on Harcourt Street.
He served four years of a seven-year sentence before being deported back to South Africa after being convicted of manslaughter.
There he changed his name to Narentuk Jumuna and became a successful businessman in his home province of Natal, to the point that he became an MP for the ruling National Party in the House of Delegates, the Asians-only chamber of what was the Tricameral Parliament.
He has since switched his allegiance to the Independent Democrats, one of the opposition parties to the ruling African National Congress, and until his past was exposed he was placed at number five in its list for the KwaZulu-Natal provincial assembly at elections due on April 22.
South Africa uses a proportional representation system.
Haniff Hoosen, the party's secretary-general, said that as soon as reports of Jumuna's former identity emerged he confronted him.
The former MP then offered to resign from the list. (© The Telegraph, London)
- Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/africa/politician-exposed-as-man-behind-grisly-irish-killing-1682337.html0 -
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
Here is a little gem about a prolific jail escapeeToday In Irish History – Caught! Fugitive Criminal Lynchehaun Arrested, 5 January 1895
11
Patricia Byrne discusses the capture of infamous criminal and later source of a literary legend, James Lynchehaun.
On Saturday morning, 5 January 1895, an excited crowd waited on the platform of Westport Railway Station. The train from Mulranny was expected and it carried, under heavy police escort, an infamous passenger. The fugitive criminal James Lynchehaun had been on the run for three months throughout that bitter winter and was tracked down the previous night in a hiding place at the home of James Gallagher of Shraheens, Achill. The prisoner was brought before the court in Westport.
The Mayo News correspondent at the scene reported that the handcuffed Lynchehaun appeared to have put on weight, sported side-whiskers and walked boldly through the crowd. The paper published a pencil sketch of his appearance as he entered the courtroom.
The Crime
It was in the darkness of an October night, three months earlier, on the remote northern edges of Achill that violent and terrifying events took place which would draw attention to the island from far and wide. Agnes McDonnell, and English woman and owner of an extensive estate in the townland of Valley, was brutally attacked and her home, the Valley House, burnt to the ground.
Dr Croly, who attended the injured woman, described the horrendous injuries he encountered: ‘Mrs McDonnell was in an almost lifeless condition. Her hair and nightdress were saturated with blood. Her pulse was trembling and barely perceptible. Her breathing was weak. Her body was almost cold.’
Agnes McDonnell survived the attack but lost her right eye and wore a veil in public for the rest of her life to conceal her disfigurement.
James Lynchehaun was Agnes McDonnell’s tenant and had been in dispute with her for some time. He was quickly arrested and charged. A week after the attack, the prisoner dramatically jumped from a long car at Polranny as he was being taken back to Castlebar Jail.
Conviction
The trial was held in Castlebar in July 1895 when James Lynchehaun and Agnes McDonnell faced one another for the first time since the attack. The Valley House crime scene was dramatically illustrated on a large, hand-drawn map by surveyor C.K. Dixon.
James Lynchehaun was found guilty and Justice Curtin pronounced sentence: ‘Your crime is murder, except for the accident that by a merciful intervention of providence this woman was endowed with splendid courage and vitality, though poor wreck she will live for a few and miserable years. The sentence of the court is penal servitude for life.’
Agnes McDonnell stayed on in Achill, managing her estate, worshipping at St Thomas’ Church and occasionally visiting her city home in London.
Notoriety
More would be heard of James Lynchehaun. Seven years after his conviction, he sensationally escaped from Maryborough prison and made his way to the United States. The authorities were determined to have him extradited back to Ireland to serve out his sentence. However, in a landmark court case in Indianapolis, Charles W Moores, US Commissioner, ruled that James Lynchehaun’s crime in Achill was a political one and the prisoner could, therefore, not be extradited. ‘Let the prisoner be discharged,’ he ordered.
James Lynchehaun was transformed from criminal outlaw to political hero. His status soared to new heights in 1907 when John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World – set in North Mayo – was premiered at the Abbey Theatre to riots and shouts of ‘Hurrah for Lynchehaun!’. Synge had included a reference to Lynchehaun in an earlier draft of the drama and had spoken of the indirect influence of the ‘Aran and Lynchehaun’ cases on the work.
James Joyce included a reference the infamous Achill man in Ulysses in his description of a bailiff: ‘He’s a cross between Lobengula and Lynchehaun.’ Stories abounded about Lynchehaun’s legendary exploits about which it became increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction.
The End
On 2 December 1937, under the bold headline He Baffled Police of Two Countries, the Irish Independent reported that James Lynchehaun had died in Scotland. He had become a pathetic figure in his later years, spending some time as an inmate of the County Home in Castlebar, when it was reported that he applied to be placed on the voter register. The Connaught Telegraph recounted that, when told that his application was refused because he was an inmate of the Home, the fallen hero was said to have replied, ‘I have no other home.’
http://www.theirishstory.com/2011/01/05/today-in-irish-history-caught-fugitive-criminal-lynchehaun-arrested-5-january-1895/
I wonder what the dispute was about.
Was he a tenant who did not benefit under the land acts ?0 -
-
I got me a heretic
Heretic was burned at the stake
■ A man being burned at the stake for martyrdom in circumstances similar to those suffered by Black O'Toole.
Wednesday August 11 2010
DURING Easter 1327, a Wicklow man named Adam Dubh (the Black) O'Toole was burnt at the stake outside the walls of Dublin on Hoggen Green (now the College Green area close to St. Andrew's Church). The penalty imposed on Adam was extraordinary, as the burning of people in medieval Ireland was a rarity. Indeed, Adam's crime was equally extraordinary. His was heresy.
Although the execution of Adam would become notorious, we know very little about the man himself. The contemporary accounts of his execution tell us that he was the son of Walter O'Toole. This Walter was important among the O'Tooles as evidenced by the fact that he had a charter of English law and liberty, while he was the only O'Toole included on the jury to investigate the archdeaconry of Glendalough in 1299. That Adam came from noble stock seems to be confirmed by Holinshed's Chronicle (written in the 1600s), describing him as a gentleman of the O'Tooles.
Even so, very little is known of Adam's upbringing. Walter probably sent the young Adam to be educated by the church, as an Adam O'Toole appears as part of an ecclesiastical community in south Wexford during the early 1300s. It was probably then that he received his first teachings in theology. By the 1320s, however, Adam seems to have broken away from the established church. This may have been for many reasons. Increasingly, the church in Ireland had become enveloped in a struggle for control between the Irish and English nations. Also there was considerable frustration among the Irish at Pope John XXII's failure to chastise Edward II of England for the behaviour of the English in Ireland.
Against this background, Adam began preaching among the Irish of the Wicklow mountains. Clearly he had become extremely radical in his views, denouncing the See of Rome as false. The subjects of his sermons can be deduced from his own evidence of 1327. Interestingly, there appears to be echoes of Catharism in his beliefs, as he denied the Incarnation of Christ.
He also held that there could not be three persons in the one God.
Scandalously, he further claimed that the Virgin Mary had been a prostitute - asserting also that the resurrection of the dead and the scriptures were little more than fables. Nonetheless, Adam's views garnered a considerable following among the Wicklow Irish - contributing to their increasing attacks on the Pale. By early 1327 Adam's preaching had come to the attention of the church and the Dublin government, leading them to seek his arrest as a disturber of the peace.
Upon his arrest, Adam was tried for heresy and refused to recant, denouncing the beliefs of the church before rejecting the authority of the pope. His clerical judges pronounced him a heretic, sentencing him to burn for his heresies. With co-operation of the civil authorities, the sentence was carried before large crowds in April 1327.
Even though the heretic was consigned to the flames, Adam's legacy remained. For between 1328 and 1333, the justiciar of Ireland wrote to Pope John XXII that Adam's heresy was evidence of Irish depravity, claiming that because of his perverse doctrine '.. many souls among the Irish were lost and damned'.
http://www.wicklowpeople.ie/news/heretic-was-burned-at-the-stake-2293208.html0 -
-
There are always goodies and baddies and one thing that always gets me is that Irish history always gets defined by the "struggle for independence " when there was a lot more to life.
So after reading about the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner by firing squad in Utah yesterday made it an ideal time for a salacious themed thread about the subject.
Its not intended to be a judgemental or even politically correct or rigidly factual so a bit of folklore and ducking stools are welome too.
So I will kick off with a few.In 1640 the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore , John Atherton was convicted of buggery and executed under a law he had campaigned for
Before Stephens Green was a park it was even a leper colony. It was also a place of public execution. So who died there and why.Under what laws.
ALL other major towns, Kilkenny, Carlow etc had executions, floggings, brandings, public amputations etc and even a Mayor of Galway is supposed to have been the hangman for his own son.
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.0 -
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
If you meant this link
I noticed that in the hangings link there were very few in Cork proving yet again the superiority of the county and its people
oncevotedff wrote: »
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?0 -
-
Advertisement
_%26_Childe,_John_(16_-1640)_-_1641.jpg)
Advertisement