Lifestyle – Judy Murphy meets Seán Ó Cuirreáin, whose research offers a fresh insight into Maamtrasna murder controversy

It’s not every day you’ll find a frugal public servant writing to an executioner in the hope of getting a cut-price deal for a forthcoming hanging.

But that’s exactly what Seán Ó Cuirreáin discovered while researching his book on the infamous 1882 Maamtrasna murders and subsequent trial, which represented one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Irish history.

The Maamtrasna murders on August 17, 1882, caused shock waves in Ireland, England and further afield. Five members of one family, from children to an elderly woman, were slaughtered in their cabin in this isolated area which was then in County Galway. One badly-injured child survived, as did a son who had been working in Clonbur on the night of the savage killing.

These murders took place against a backdrop of land agitation and secret societies and so “the government thought what happened in Maamtrasna was part of a reign of terror”, says former Raidio na Gaeltachta journalist Seán Ó Cuirreáin.

They were wrong, however, he adds, as it was a local squabble based on sheep-stealing – serious but without political undertones. However, that fact came to light much later, by which time innocent men had been jailed and one had been executed.

Seán’s book Éagóir (Injustice) contains much new information about the 1882 trial – a trial that later helped bring down the British Government, when it became apparent that the Crown had knowingly accepted perjured evidence from unreliable informants.

Among those convicted on this false evidence was Myles Joyce, who had an excruciating death on December 15, 1882, when his hanging went wrong.

It had been in relation to that hanging that Galway’s sub-sheriff, John Redington, wrote to executioner William Marwood of Lincolnshire in the UK, asking for a reduction in Marwood’s normal price as “it’s only one day’s job”.

The official public executioner received an annual retainer of £20 and an extra £10 for every person he hanged. But Galway’s sub-sheriff felt it was too much for this job.

Initially eight men were due to hang for the Maamtrasna murders – and as Redington explained in his bargain-seeking letter, “the law does not allow the sheriff anything for these executions and he has to pay the entire costs out of his pocket”. He added that “the charge will be the same as the last, viz. £20 for the day”.

Eight men were due to hang but five were given a last-minute reprieve by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Earl Spencer, and had their sentences commuted to penal servitude for life. The three remaining convicts were hanged by Marwood.

The events that led to this began in August 1882 in Maamtrasna with the horrific killings of the Joyce family. Ten men were charged with the murder, all native Irish speakers, most of whom had little or no English. They were tried in Dublin, in front of a judge with no Irish, with a middle-class jury who spoke no Irish.

Their solicitor was a 24-year-old who had just graduated from Trinity and was working in his father’s law practice in Tuam. He was a Protestant with no Irish, representing this group of Catholic Irish-speakers who were up on a charge of capital murder – punishable by death.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.