Policing and crime in early 19th century Athy

Throughout the greater part of the 19th century the dark clouds of unemployment hung over Athy. The closure of the tanyards and the winding down of the local breweries left a void which remained unfilled for many decades. Athy was a poor town in the midst of a rich countryside. Throughout the 19th century it was to be home to generations of unemployed men who with their families lived in the unfit hovels which lined it’s lanes and alleyways. Unemployment and wretched living conditions nourished the seeds of social discontent and criminality which surfaced from time to time during the first half of the 19th century. One notable crime recorded occurred on 2nd February 1801 when Joseph Higginbotham, farmer of Narraghmore, was murdered by one Christopher Duffy at Boleybeg and following the Coroner’s inquest it was found that James Johnson of Ballitore conspired with Duffy to murder Higginbotham. The Peace Preservation Force instituted by Robert Peel in September 1814 was the forerunner of modern police forces. A heavily armed force drawn mainly from the ranks of the militia and ex-soldiers, its operations sometimes gave cause for public complaint. On October 22nd 1817 Thomas Fitzgerald, the Geraldine based magistrate, forwarded to Dublin Castle the sworn affidavit of Thomas Noud of Kilmead concerning outrages committed by the new force. The replacement by the Peace Preservation Force of the local yeomanry, whose knowledge of their own locality was invaluable in combating crime, gave the locals greater scope for illegal nocturnal activities. Such activities grew in frequency and a number of incidents in and around Athy in August 1818 were the first indication of the resurgence of ribbonmen activity in south Kildare. Early in 1822 an attempt was made to burn the Athy Gaol for which a conviction was secured against a hapless individual the following March. Around this time the Peace Preservation Force was replaced by County Constabulary, a police force to which local magistrates retained the right of appointing constables and sub-constables. James Tandy, newly appointed Chief Magistrate of Police, residing at Annfield, Kilcullen was petitioned in October 1822 by some baronies to reduce the level of the police numbers in the county. The local landlords felt they were unable to finance from their own resources a large public force, whatever the consequences. However, Robert Rawson of Glassealy warned Tandy ‘that the emissaries of sedition are at work again as busy as ever …… I am assured there are regular meetings held now in this town (Athy) …… I have succeeded in dissuading the landholders of East Narragh from petitioning.’ The following years gave rise to sporadic outbursts of ribbonmen activity, such as the burning of the Athy residence of Chief Constable Dolman in 1825 for which two locals, Ging and Hutchinson were arrested. However, conditions in south Kildare had improved by 1828. Thereafter little of note occurred until 1830 when the house of Rev. Frederick Trench, Church of Ireland curate, was raided for arms when the Rev. gentleman was at Sunday Service. We are told that the raiders ‘were led by his wife quite peaceably through the dining room (where there were silver forks and spoons on the table) to his study where she opened a glass case in which were his arms, and a purse containing some money. They took away the arms, but touched nothing else.’ The ‘first green flag with white ribbon at the top of the pole ever I saw was on August 15th 1830’ wrote local man Charles Carey in his diary. It was apparently the only evidence of anti-government activity in the area at that time. The countryside had become more peaceful, no doubt due to the setting up of the county Constabulary. The general cessation of ribbonmen activities in and around Athy was marked by the first manifestation of union activity in the town. In 1832 the following notice was found posted near the Grand Canal in Athy. ‘T A K E N O T I C E From this day forward, that no man will be allowed to work in any boat without having regular wages 10/= per week. Any person or persons daring to violate this notice, will be visited by night by those people under the denomination of Whitefeet or Terry Alts. Any man putting us to the necessity of paying him a visit will be sorry; therefore any man who has not the above wages, let him not to attempt to leave Athy. I remain your humble servant Terry Alt.’ What effect this warning had on the boatmen of Athy we cannot now say. However, thereafter there was little or no local activity attributed to the ribbonmen or Terry Alts. Athy was to settle back into the murky backwaters of provincial life which in the first half of the 19th century involved continued squalor and poverty for a large proportion of its population.

Crime and Punishment in the old days

Wrong doers making an appearance before Courts today are faced with a range of punishments from fines to imprisonment to community services orders. The latter requires the convicted person to provide a specified number of hours of labour on a community project in his own locality. In this way he repays his debt to society and more specifically the community in which the offence occurred.

An offender would have faced almost certain death for many of the offence which today are treated quite lightly. At one time up to 500 criminal offences ranging from the stealing of a chicken to murder merited the death penalty. Every town had its Gallows and up to the beginning of the last century every traveller approaching Athy from the Kilcullen direction passed by the Gallows which was sited on rising ground just outside Athy. It was in this area, now known as Gallowshill, that the unfortunates were hanged and their bodies summarily disposed of in a nearby field. During the 17th and 18th centuries gibbeting or hanging the body of an executed criminal in chains on the approach to the town was the accepted practice. It acted as a permanent reminder to would be criminals and vagrants of the fate that awaited them should they step out of line in Athy.

Records of those hanged at Gallowshill are not available but we do know that on the 16th of August 1743 Luke Sherlock and his companion named Donnelly were hanged in Athy for robbery. The Dublin Journal of the 19th of September, 1756 reported that on the following Tuesday John Cronin was to be hanged in Athy for horse stealing, an offence committed four years previously. A note in the Irish Magazine of 1809 referred to a recent arrangement whereby Athy prisoners were transferred to Naas for execution. The writer regarded this as a breach of the privileges of the town of Athy! The change of execution place was of little consequence to those facing the ultimate penalty such as the four people sentenced to death at Athy assizes in July 1817 for stealing potatoes. Their six accomplices were deported for seven years.

During the months of May and June of 1798 several men from Athy and the surrounding countryside were arrested and lodged in Athy jail. Located in Whites Castle the jail was commonly regarded as the worst of its type in Ireland. Seven of those men, six of whom were from Narraghmore, were tried convicted and sentenced to be hanged. They were marched from the jail to an area close to the present dry dock and opposite the Military Barracks, where a Gallows had been erected. After the hangings two of the seven were beheaded and their severed heads were placed on Whites Castle as a warning to the local people not to get involved in rebellious activity.

Frequently criminals were brought back to the scene of their crime and hanged from the nearest tree. Such a fate befell John Whelan, known locally as "Black Top" who was involved in an attack on Glassealy House, the home of Thomas J. Rawson in 1798. Rawson, who later wrote the “Statistical Survey of County Kildare”, was leader of the Athy Loyalists and a member of the local Borough Council. 'Black Top' and his accomplices burned Rawson's house on the same day that they had fired the home of Mrs. Hannah Manders of Glassealy resulting in the death of four women and Mrs. Manders' nephew.

In 1799 Rawson captured 'Black Top' in Monavullagh bog and he was tried before a Court Martial, convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. An eye witness account of 'Black Top's' journey to the place of execution in Glassealy was written by Mary Leadbetter of Ballitore. She referred to
"two men yet living but in the same car were their coffins. One had been convicted of burning the Courthouse in Narraghmore, the other for the murder of Hannah Manders and they were to suffer death at the places where their crimes had been committed. One of the men hung his head weeping, the other looked about as if stupefied by terror. The march of the soldiers was slow and solemn and the people in the market seemed afraid to notice the prisoners."

Two years ago, during clearance work on a field, Gallowshill began to give up its deadly secrets as several skeletal remains were recovered. Work was temporarily stopped while the authorities satisfied themselves as to the nature of the findings but work soon re-commenced as the bulldozers buried centuries of history and death beneath clay ready to give up new life to 20th century crops.

Luckily enough for some hanging was not the only form of punishment in bygone days. In addition to a prison sentence the criminal might expect to spend some time in the town stocks or in the town pillory or alternatively to be subjected to the whip.

Imprisonment was of course the primary form of punishment and still is to this day. To be deprived of your personal freedom was always an unpleasant experience but particularly so where the prison to which you were sentenced was regarded as the worst of its kind in Ireland. Such was the description accorded in 1824 to Athy jail, then located in Whites Castle by the Inspector of Jails. The prison had nine cells and the diet of the prisoners was bread and water only. Matters improved somewhat when the new jail was built on the Carlow Road in 1830. Consisting of five day rooms and thirty cells built in a semi-circular form around the Governors house, it replaced the much criticised Whites Castle jail. Prisoners were employed in stone breaking, mat making and oakum picking.

While the prison was designed to accommodate each prisoner in a separate cell the level of drunkenness and lawlessness in Athy soon lead to overcrowding. In 1854 the average daily number in the jail was 48, and in 1856 was 47. The severity with which offenders were treated by the law can be gleaned from an examination of the prison sentences imposed on local people in Athy Courts in 1837. Six prisoners were sentenced to life imprisonment for cattle and sheep stealing while one unfortunate man got seven years for stealing a pig. Two offenders were whipped for simple larceny while 103 men and women were sent to prison for drunkenness.

In earlier years the drunk would probably have served time in the town's stocks. An Act of 1405 required every town and village to have stocks which were two stout boards with holes through which the legs of the offender were placed while he was sitting, and then padlocked together. The object was to humiliate or shame the offender who was padlocked in the stocks for a prescribed period. The local stocks and the pillory were in all probability located in the Market Square in Athy.

The use of the pillory was another way of publicly humiliating any offender who was required by the local Court to be pilloried. Made of wood, the pillory was a frame with holes through which the head and hands of the offender were placed while he was in a standing position. When the offender was placed in the stocks or in the pillory, he was at the mercy of the locals who could jeer him or if he was particularly offensive or disliked throw rubbish at him. The records of the Borough Council show that on the 16th of October, 1738 the members of the Corporation noted the conviction of Graham Bradford, a freeman of Athy, for "wilful and corrupt perjury" following which he was pilloried and subsequently transported to America.

Reference was earlier made to offenders sentenced to whipping in Athy Courts in 1837. Whipping was a common form of punishment following the Whipping Act of 1530. Initially it was reserved for vagrants who were to be whipped until blood was drawn and who were then required to take an oath to leave town and return to their own area. In time whipping became a more common place punishment for petty offenders. A whipping post was normally provided alongside the town's stocks and used as required.

In 1798 a large wooden triangle was erected opposite the Military Barracks in Barrack Street and used in an attempt to obtain information from uncooperative local people. Men thought to be involved in rebellious activity were tied to the triangle and flogged. The man in charge was Thomas Rawson of Glassealy. Thomas Fitzgerald of Geraldine writing of his experiences in December 1802 described Rawson as having
"every person tortured and stripped as his cannibal will directed. He would seat himself in a chair in the centre of a ring formed around the triangle, the miserable victims kneeling under the triangle until they would be spotted over with the blood of the others".

If the pillory and the stocks were normally reserved for men a peculiarly female form of punishment was the ducking stool. Consisting of a chair at the end of a long pole or beam which could be swivelled and lowered into the River Barrow, the ducking chair was particularly effective in dampening the spirits of quarrelsome women. It was a form of punishment first used in the 15th century but which fell out of favour much to the dismay of many a hen-pecked husband, long before its usefulness could be fully exploited!