South Kildare Agricultural Progress 1861 / Patrick McCaffrey, Athy man executed 1861

I am an inveterate reader of our daily national papers. I have put this lifelong habit to good effect when mining the archives of newspapers for those historical titbits which often slip through the cracks of our town’s history. Lately I have been delving into the online digital archives of The Times newspaper of London. In The Times issue of 3rd September 1861 it’s special correspondent was reporting from Athy that August under the title ‘Ireland’s Agricultural Progress’. The anonymous writer gave a detailed account of farming activity in south Kildare and particularly agricultural activity around Athy. He paid particular attention to the lands owned by the Duke of Leinster who he described as having somewhere in and around seventy thousand acres in his ownership. Describing Athy as the ‘corn market and livestock mart of southern Kildare’ he noted it held an agricultural fair almost every six weeks, with a showing of between two thousand and three thousand head of cattle and many sheep. He noted the impact of the Scottish farming settlers brought over by the Duke of Leinster and their effect on the farming practices in the area. He wrote: ‘When Mr. Alexander, the Duke’s steward came, seventeen years ago, not a single cow or bullock was stall fed in winter in this district; now, the Irish farmers, like the settlers, universally practice turnip growing and stall feeding, even the man with only two milch cows being sure to tie one up and fatten her when milked dry.’ As to agricultural labourers in the area he found wages as being very low where men were paid three shillings a day for mowing and up to four to five shillings for urgent work, while women were paid one shilling and six pence for tying corn. The hours of labour were from six o’clock in the morning to six o’clock in the evening, with an hours rest at breakfast and another at dinner time. The chief diet, of the agricultural peasantry, was coarse wheaten bread and potatoes. It is clear that only a few short years after the famine had devastated the county, that life as an agricultural labourer was still tough and a driving force in seeing so many emigrate to both Britain and America. One such emigrant was Patrick McCaffery, and his short and sad life was the subject of a detailed report in the issue of The Times of 13th January 1862. He was born in Athy but his life story prior to his appearance in The Times is not entirely clear, but no doubt he and his family, like many others, were drawn to the industrial heartlands of Britain. Before enlisting in the Army he spent 18 months working in the cotton mills of Manchester or ‘Cottonopolis’. By 1861 McCaffery was a private soldier in the 32nd Regiment of Foot, stationed in Fulwood Barracks just outside Preston, Lancashire, thirty miles from Manchester. McCaffery’s notoriety arose from an incident on Saturday 14th September 1861 in the barracks. McCaffery shot and killed Colonel Hugh Denis Crofton and also Captain John Hanham. The incident appeared to have arisen from a dispute that McCaffery had with his captain whom he clearly intended to hurt or kill, while at the same time accidentally killing the colonel. His trial received significant coverage in both British and Irish papers of the time. McCaffery was represented by the barrister Charles Russell, later Baron Russell of Killowen, a native Irishman who would later distinguish himself in the Home Rule movement as a Member of Parliament in Westminster. Russell later represented Charles Stewart Parnell at the Parnell Commission hearings in 1888-1889. His participation in the tribunal, including an eight-day speech in defence of Parnell was crucial to exposing the forgeries of the fraudster Richard Pigot. But the outcome of the trial was never in dispute and McCaffery was hung at Kirkdale Gaol, Preston in front of a reported crowd of 30,000 people. While McCaffery’s life was short and his ending brutal, the story inspired a folk song which in it’s various iterations has been recorded by a succession of folk singers including Ewan McColl and the Dubliners. It clearly had a resonance down through the centuries and was often sung to the air of ‘The Croppy Boy’. It is a lament for a short life ending in violence replete with regret: ‘At Liverpool Assizes my trial I stood And I held my courage as best I could Then the old judge said, Now, McCaffery Go prepare your soul for eternity I had no father to take my part No loving mother to break her heart I had one friend and a girl was she Who'd lay down her life for McCaffery So come all you officers take advice from me And go treat your men with some decency For it's only lies and a tyranny That have made a murderer of McCaffery’