05.b. (bk.29) the maam trasna murders

Irishcriminology.com

(Cursai Coireolaiochta Na h-Eireann)

Created By

Seamus Breathnach

5. Crime And

Punishment In

Nineteenth Century

Ireland

Studies In Irish Criminology:

Book 29

5.b. The

Maam Trasna Murders—

REVISITED

2

Sile, Sean and Seamus

Sile: I have heard about the Maam Trasna murders. But what is it about

the murder that warrants the attention of criminologists?

Seamus: I suspect it is because it is one of the most extraordinary

criminal events in the nineteenth century. It is an awkward, contrary, no-

where-disinteresting, but everywhere an ungraspable case.

Sile: That’s a mouthful! Maybe you should begin by saying something of

its details for those who are interested ? I have read two accounts of it

and I never found either that exciting.

Seamus: Go ahead!

Sile: I read (Fr.) Jarlath Waldron’s account and then I read the

contemporary account by a chap called Harrington. I found the second

account somewhat repetitive of the first – not completely, of course, but

substantially so. I felt that while Waldron’s account claims to differ from

Harrington’s, it was very similar to it.

Seamus: How so?

Sile: He finds first that the real suspect behind the murders is the dead

granny; he reverts to what Harrington claimed. Without having read these

accounts in detail the nuances are apt to get lost.

Seamus: What, can you tell me, is your fascination with the case?

Maam Trasna as a ‘Whodunit’?

Sile: Well, that’s my point. I didn’t – and still don’t – find the case that

interesting at all. I was hoping that your enthusiasm for Maamtrasna

might rub off on me.

Seamus: Do you know who did the crime?

3

Sile: I think I do, but it isn’t easy. I suppose, in this superficial sense, it is

a whacking good ‘ whodunit?’ But I’m sure that that aspect of it cannot

make it notorious, can it?

Seamus: No. I’m sure you’re quite right. Nevertheless, one can’t help

reflecting upon Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap in this regard. It ran for

ages in the West End on this very point – and what was every bit as

interesting as the plot, was the scheme by which the stage manager

engaged the audience not to tell the public who the culprit was. As a who-

dunit-drama, it was great, but imagine relying upon such a device to keep

up the interest in the plot! And, of course, it worked. Before I ever went

to see it, several people spoke to me about it, but each was careful to say

that they would not ‘ruin it for me by telling me who did the murder.’

Isn’t that remarkable!

Sean: What’s your point?

Seamus: The first point demonstrates the attraction that the whodunit has

in plots. It’s a bit like music that wanders from the dominant and never

returns to the tonic until the piece is over. The whodunit keeps the

question uppermost in the mind of the audience just as the Mousetrap did.

The second point is that this aspect of quizzicality has entered drama as a

most desirable thing: its anticipatory aspect being uppermost in its

success – especially where the Hollywood Film of late is concerned. But

here it is pronounced to such an extent that it has replaced the plot totally.

And this Hollywood conspiracy to replace plot with quizzical gimmickry,

has destroyed story telling as an art form. You will see it very particularly

in the Da Vinci Code, a story so contrived (by Hollywood) that it

becomes incredible as well as ridiculous. The overemphasis on

quizzicality gives way to endless and repetitive contrivances that spoil

any vestige of the narrative’s connection with verisimilitude.

Sile: It’s your age. It's definitely an age thing!

Sean: You’re right. I saw it also in Fatal Attraction.

Sile: So what if Hollywood now casts films in the same way as Gilbert

and Sullivan staged musicals. What you call the death of drama is, in my

opinion, the beginning of a new form thereof.

Sean: How do you mean?

4

Sile: The criminological argument runs something like this.

As we all know there has to be Heaven and Hell, Good and Bad, Crime

and Punishment. Above all there has to be punishment. All these films –

like Christianity, whose paradigm they echo on the screen -- are

essentially about a punishment. And since the punishment must squarewith Biblical or Christian mores, the repentance part is totally excised. Why? The reason for this is -- I imagine -- because when the opportunity to

repent and make recompense is removed, the film director can dwell upon what most interests the modern inquisitorial audience -- retribution! The naked masochistic reward for delaying the final delivery of the final coup de gras. It sounds illogical : Kant's categorical imperative reduced toa holywood execution in plastic. This inner essential has to be couched in terms

of comeuppance. This is the sole theme and raison d’etre of the film. In order,

therefore to deliver the coup de gras and retain one’s Christian’s balance of

of propriety, the culprit must really get up the nose of the audience.

By making him (or her) so obnoxious, by visibly making him such a hate-

figure, the punishment, when it comes, comes as ‘justice’,condign and balan ced. And no matter how horrific the coup de gras, it is meant morally as a just thing to

do, a good ending to an evil episode. The good shall be rewarded and the wicked

shall be punished.

So, for example, in Fatal Attraction, there’s going to be a final reckoning.

Someone therefore has to perform like a bitch and elicit the sympathies of

the audience in preparation of the savage end. The story is ever the same.

In Fatal Attraction the bitch of control, played by Glenda Close, has to be

killed, because she wont take ‘no’ for an answer. She wants to destroy

Michael Douglas’s happy family (not to mention his pet rabbit), that is,

‘happy’ in an acceptably unhappy modern way. Anyway, they kill Glenda

with knives and water. But the feeling is renewed like an old cadence

from The Pirates of Penzance. They want to execute her -- but more than

once. One killing does not exhaust the sense of Hollywood revulsion that has

been created throughout the film. The usual thing is to delay the torture of the

final blow. But they can’t delay her death. So, they do the next best

thing. They get her to revive herself after her death by water and then she

is re-executed -- but this time by the wife : and by way of firing several

bullets into her body. Hollywood has always had such respect for Guns

and Bullets – now extended to the modern woman and her trusty six-pack!

Hollywood knows how final guns and bullets can be. But, even still, they

might think of restaging another comeback, if and when the public is

prepared for it.

Sean: So, where does that leave us?

5

Sile: It leaves us with two things. One is that there is a lot to be said for

jigsaw puzzles, after the fashion of either Da Vinci, The Mousetrap or,

indeed, Harry Potter. Audiences love a puzzle, whether of cross words or

of words that cross. And the second point is that the engrossment of

puzzles into contrived plots has worked its way to great effect into the art

of story telling. If the Plot has been taken over by the cinematography of

gimmickry and cinematography itself, then so be it. We can’t always

expect to have a Hamlet-like plot. Maybe it is sufficient just to stay on to

look at the pictures. But you don’t agree with that?

Seamus: Well, there is the possibility that there has been a warping of the

cinema-going public’s brain. And each year it gets worse, approximating a

bad version of Jungle Book, with neither the tunes nor the plot of the

original… South Pacific was the same. Everything is not only

consumable downwards but is aimed at titillating the untitillatable -- the

infant who is both infant and infantile! Anyway, how should we apply

what you have said to Maam Trasna?

Sile: Well, I take the points that you have made and they are all present in

Maam Trasna. It should be said, however, that the contrivances in Maam

Trasna are not simply those of a one-dimensional agent like Hollywood –

an agent that controls the narrative. The contrivances in Maam Trasna are

the real people in the story. The contrivances from the revelations of the

‘ independent witnesses’ to the‘ Crown Approvers’ to the Politicians

(Irish and British), as well as the role of the Church – they are all part of

some great contrivance that is quite difficult to unravel. But my point is

that this great whodunit, and its contrivances, is part of the murder, not

part of its outside narrative.

Maam Trasna as Narrative

Seamus: There is another significant point I want to make and it is this. In

studying murder, as either a narrative, or as a criminological event, the

object, surely, is to learn from it. Whether art teaches or entertains – or

whether these categories are mutually exclusive – is an argument that we

are not going into here but which resonates (aphoristically at any rate) in

the writings of Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century and George

Bernard Shaw, and indeed, more seriously in the works of the Italian

philosopher Croce. Is art meant to edify or entertain?

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According to Benedetto Croce (in an 1893 Essay) much depended upon

whether history should be conceived as a science, as it had lately been

conceived by the Germans, or as an art form. Although Croce was

inclined to reject most of the theories then prevalent and opt for art as an

individually intuitive matter, a vision of anarchic proportions, he

contrasted the nominalism of art with science as a construction of general

concepts and their interrelationships.

Sile: But we are hardly interested here in the philosophic arguments. Are

we not more concerned with Maam Trasna as a social phenomenon?

Seamus: Of course, but how do we relate such social phenomena, as

narrative, as science, or as art?

Sean: I see what you mean.

Sile: Maybe, like the Aes Dana or the Blessed Trinity, art, science and

history are all three leafs of the same Trinitarian shamrock. And even if

we can’t resolve the matter here, can I say that I believe our purpose in

dealing with accounts of murder is to be edified by the analysis of the

history of our past, and by our examination and assessment of our

experiential past. To pour it into a biblical bottle or a criminal lawyer’s phial

and to freeze it forever is the last thing we want to do with it, because it is

the least beneficial way to treat it. And yet this is what we do all the time.

In this sense there is an atrocious incapacity to learn – to learn from our

experience. So, with the Irish, the novel idea that they should learn from

their own experience antedates any argument as to whether art imitates

experience or whether it entertains or edifies. These distinctions and

arguments come after the establishment of a discourse that is not overwhel--med by parables from either the pulpit or the judicial bench. This non-

discourse is an index of the disconnection between experience and any art

forms to which it pretends it gives birth .

Sean: Methinks we are, in this respect, too attentive to Hollywood.

Maybe they overcame us too early with the cinema and we have never

analysed the arts properly.

Seamus: I don’t follow.

Sean: Sile thinks that the narrative should edify. To do so, a commitment

to the social phenomena – in this case, the social phenomena of Maam

Trasna – is imperative. But Hollywood has no such ambition. As social

phenomenon its narratives need not necessarily have to do with social

7

experience in the ordinary way. The cinema's main appeal at present is to

stimulate the dominion of the imagination in children. Its purpose and its

end is to‘ play with’, rather than to teach or entertain – which need not be

bad in any moral sense – but which may be somewhat tedious in the long

term. It also, in some ways, spells out the worrying disjuncture between

social experience and social concern. We grew up in American Movies!

Sile: But the biblical narrative was once based on social phenomena, until the Holy Romans did a Hollywood on it, and conveyed it to the empire as abstract or eternal truth. Like Hollywood, the Bible displaced Gaelic tribes with Jewish roots, just as the Hollywood American displaced the native Indian tribes. What one can do with abstractions and a story!

Sean: How rich!

Sile: Elsewhere, hasn’t Seamus explained that all you need to do is to

re:travel the imperialised trails of the Christian conquest. Write a book or

a tune evocative of Jesu and/or the Virgin Mary, and they will play in

every hick hut from here to Uganda. The priesthood through the pulpits

will feed it to the parishes, the parishes will feed it to the communities,

the communities will feed it to the schools, the schools will feed it to the

children, and the mothers will even go without contraceptives to give

their children the message of the Lord and at least an equal if not a better

chance in life.

Sean: Yes. I remember that. But what I meant was, it should be

connected and understood in terms of each community’s own history,

each community’s own experiences.

Sile: But that’ the point of imperialism. Through the Christian spectacleas well as through the Hollywood spectacle, we both know all their

experiences – as all our experiences –. Or, put another way, their

experience has become our experience and our perceived reality.

Sean: Jesus! The way you talk about it, one would think that we are all

dummies, clones, moronic pieces of consumable Christian and

Hollywood propaganda.

Sile: Precisely!

Seamus: Precisely!

Sean: O, my God! Are you saying that Maam Trasna has been fed to us

in the same way?

8

Sile: Well, if we are informed of everything else in the same fashion as

we are informed of both the Christian conquest and how murder, war, and

justice are done in Hollywood (and Rome), then the answer must be’ yes.’

As we are all aware, we have had a great increase in the incidence of

murder in Ireland, but it never seems to be related either to any historical

or social events. (For a further airing of this criticism See 10.e. Bk. 13: A

Short History of Capital Punishment in Ireland: Vol. 4: Infanticide Or The Mercy

Miracle. ) All the babble about Irish murder seems to go no further than

the event itself or by reference to bankrupt Christian morality, or some

idea of police or criminal ‘ science’ that is invariably couched in the same

or similar terms, and little else besides.

Sean: But we cannot blame Hollywood for such shallowness, no more

than we can blame Rome for the shallowness that proceeds from the

practice and content of religion and its homogeneous references to Bible

and Scripture. It stifles both the social sciences as well as the propensity

to speculate howsoever. In truth it is so inferior to the work of the social

sciences that its pre-eminence is a tribute to the totalitarianism of

Christianity at the highest levels of comprehension. It is as if religion has

lost all credibility; it just governs from RTE in the most fickle manner.

Even in its obsolescence real analysis has to take second place to the

Church’s hoary old make-believe.

Seamus: But surely you overlook the real issue of murder today?

Sile: Which is?

Seamus: These days I feel that murder, its management and its portrayal,

is actually part of Christian morality. In comparison with what’s on

television as news, the Seventh Commandment is just ridiculous. It’s like

preaching from Castel Gandolpho about the virtue of being born in a

stable — and without the slightest hint of irony! Who’s kidding whom?

Sean: You mean the reports by RTE on the daily murders in Ireland?

Seamus: That’s part of it, of course. But I mean the way we and our

children and families all over the world are called upon to witness US

forces murdering people on our television. It’s done with the same

enthusiasm as a soccer game. We are even expected to cheer when the

US or its allies kill people. It’s like Israel deux point, Palestine nil;

9

America a direct hit, ten people dead, and a few more unintended ones –

and the terrorists NI L. The sacrifice of the Mass does the same thing!

Sean: But was Maam Trasna that brutal in the scheme of things?

Seamus: What scheme of things?

Sile: In term of nineteenth century murder?

Seamus: Maam Trasna was a gruesome crime. But when compared with

others – like The Invincibles or, worse still, The Burning of the Sheas, or

some of the other nineteenth century murders, Gaslight or Agrarian -- it

loses its notoriety.

Sean: So, what, then, makes Maamtrasna so irresistible as an Irish

murder?

Sile: -- But, surely, all of these murders have uniquely Irish features! And even if the Invincibles sounds like something authored by Baader

Meinhof a century later, any analysis of the facts and circumstances will

reveal their unmistakeable Irish identity.

Seamus: Maamtrasna has an intriguing continuity in Irish history.

Indeed, if understood in a proper context, it points unmistakeably, I

believe, to some of the most unique features of Irish life . Not only that,

but these features also strike one with an extraordinariness that pushes us

back to the boundaries of our simplicities in explaining murder.

Sean: What kind of features?

Sile: Yes. What features do you have in mind?

Seamus: Would you not accept that you can only appreciate the features

of a culture after you have become familiar with all the facts of a case. In

other words, is it not futile to talk of characters or situations or structures

(social or criminal) without first reciting the story, concerning the facts of

which, might I gladly say, all commentators are in agreement?

Sean: Of course.

Sile: So, what’s the case about?

Seamus: Buy a copy of the book and find out!

10

Sean: I will if you ever finish it. Surely you can mention one feature, which is unique to this case without having to recite all the details?

Seamus: Most of those involved spoke Gaelic. Isn’t that feature in itself

unique?

Sile: So, what’s the story about?

* * *

Studies in Irish

Criminology :

Book 29

THETHE

MAAMTRASNAMAAMTRASNA

MURDERS--MURDERS--

revisited

SeamusSeamus

BreathnachBreathnach www.irishcriminology.com

i

THE MAAMTRASNA

MURDERS –

REVISITED

WWW.IRISHCRIMINOLOGY.COM

Seamus

Breathnach

ii

COPYRIGHT

iii

Other Works by the Author:

A History Of The Irish Police

(From Earliest Times.)

Publishers: Anvil, 1974

Emile Durkheim On Crime And Punishment

(An Exegesis)

Dissertation. COM, 2002

The Riddle Of The Caswell Mutiny

UPublish. Com 2003

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN 20TH CENTURY

IRELAND: VOLUME 2

A Description Of The Criminal Justice System (CJS)(1950-80)

UPublish. Com 2003

www.irishcriminology.com

iv

DEDICATION

v

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements………..vi

Introduction………………viii

PART 1: Grass Roots

1. What Anthony Joyce Saw

2. The Morning After

3. Birds Of A Feather

4. Who’s Who in Maamtrasna

PART 2: Pointing The Finger

5. The Theorists

6. The Sheep-Stealers

7. The Informers

8. The Ribbon men

PART 3: The Powers That Be

9. The Approvers

10. Enter the Judge

11. Three Trials in a Row

12. Three Executions

PART 4: The Other Powers That Be

13. Here Comes the Bishop

14. I Confess (Again)

15. Church and State (and Church and Press)

16. Lessons of Maamtrasna

vi

PART 5: The Story -Tellers

17. Harrington

18. Jarlath Waldron

19. The Freeman’s Journal

20. Crime and Criminology

Maamtrasna Timeline

Appendices

References

Index

PART 1

The Maamtrasna Murders

1

Grass Roots

1. What Anthony Joyce saw

On Thursday night August 17th 1882 Anthony Joyce went to bed early.Around midnight he awoke abruptly. The heat of August was still in the airand despite the darkness, the stars lit up the sky. When he realised it was thedogs that awakened him, he tried to go back to sleep, but to his annoyance the barking persisted.

He got out of bed and went over to the main door to see what thecommotion was all about. To his astonishment he saw some men approachingalong the road. His house was some 47 feet from the main pathway, so therewas some distance between them. Indeed, the house was built at right anglesto the road (or boreen) with the door facing eastward. There was also a barnsituate at the end of the house which at first made it difficult for him – andsome would say, impossible -- to obtain a view of the road. Even if he couldnot recognise any of the members in the group, a sense of alarm neverthelessran down his spine. Neither for that matter could he at this stage hear anythingthe men were saying.

Whoever these men were, Anthony Joyce instinctively felt they wereup to no good. For six men to assemble in the early hours of the morning inthe back-of-the-beyonds of Cappanacreha was sufficient in itself to arouse hissuspicions.

He put on his trousers, threw a shirt over his flannel vest and hurriedround to the back of the house, losing sight of the men momentarily, butremaining anxious until he had the six in view again. This time he recognisedthem. Indeed, he knew every mother’s son of them. And why wouldn’t he?They were his neighbours and his kinsmen were among them.

His eyes followed the six as they passed by. Out of curiosity he felt hehad to follow them – not least because they were heading in the direction of


2

his brother’s house, and he wanted to make sure that whatever businessthey had out so late at night, it would not damage his brother or his family.Hurriedly he made a detour, short-cutting the party of six, and entering hisbrother’s house with some urgency. He roused his brother and his nephew andappraised them of what he saw. They came out and observed the six men forthemselves. They watched them proceeding along the road in the direction ofMichael Casey’s house. The three men decided to follow the party of six,wherever it would lead.

Remaining behind and staying out of sight, the three men followed thesix men along the road. And when they saw the six men stop at MichaelCasey's house, they halted and hid themselves behind some hedges. They couldclearly see ‘most’ of the men go into Casey’s house. It wasn’t long beforethese men re-emerged and walked along a back-road. Moreover, theirnumber had grown, for now the six men numbered ten. The extra four menhad come out of Michael Casey’s house. This intrigued Anthony Joyce wholater swore that he knew and recognised all ten men.

Accompanied by his brother and nephew, Anthony Joyce nowfollowed the suspicious gathering for two miles until they reachedMaamtrasna. The track was not only treacherous but the three men whowere trailing were in their bare feet. With the mountain to their right and thelake to their left they travelled at a comfortable distance behind the ten menwithout being noticed.

The ten men walked forward until they came to the river ofSrahnalong. As it happened they were on their way to the house of JohnJoyce and at Srahnalong (= a current/tide for boats/ships) they had the optionof going two ways, either by a high road or by a low road. According toAnthony Joyce they crossed the river to take the low road towardsMaamtrasna. (This fact, we might note, was going to be called into questionlater. For the moment it formed part of Anthony Joyce’s unfalteringtestimony.) With the determination of gun dogs the three Joyces continued tofollow the ten no matter – apparently -- where they would lead.

At last they reached John Joyce's house at Maamtrasna. AnthonyJoyce knew it well. But what were ten men doing there at such early hours inthe morning? And why had they come so far? He had followed them forsome two and a half miles – maybe the better part of three miles -- and, as heknew only too well, some of them had come from much further afield thedistance he had travelled with them.

He saw the ten men go into the broad yard and up to the door of JohnJoyce’s little cottage. At this stage he and his brother and nephew had to becareful to conceal themselves. This they did by taking refuge behind a treeobliquely situated across the yard of the cottage. They remained there in


3

anticipation. Anthony Joyce began to hear a noise at the door. Not all of themen went into John Joyce’s house. Some few remained visibly outside in theyard.

Anthony Joyce then heard more noise. It was like people beating at thedoor. He also heard people inside the house shouting and screeching. He alsoheard a shot. He could not distinguish the screams of women from those ofmen, but he heard screeching and he distinctly heard a shot.

But having heard the shot, the party of three fled the scene. The partyof ten, at the time, were filing out of the cottage and into the yard. And it wasat this stage that the three Joyces fled the scene. They did not know whattime it was exactly, or whether it was Thursday night or Friday morning. Allthey knew is that they wanted to get away – so they ran back home in theirbare feet – all the way to John’s house, where Anthony stayed untildaybreak.

That night nothing further transpired.

* * *

2. The Morning After

John Collins lived only yards away from the Joyce family and yet hehad heard nothing the night before. At six in the early morning of FridayAugust18 John Collins visited his neighbour. Six o’clock in the morningmight seem an un-Godly hour to be calling on one’s neighbours, but that ismore a suburban view than what actually happens between close neighbourswho live on the side of the mountain and who, for the most part, enjoy only amakeshift ‘agricultural’ level of subsistence. Sheep were the main asset of theMaamtrasna ‘economy’. So, if anything wild and seasonal, including rabbit,hare, fish, grouse, or pheasant chanced across a sheep man’s path, then itmade a welcome addition to the dinner table. The unfortunate thing was thatto procure such game, one had to forget about suburban habits of labour aswell as suburban hours of discourse.

Collins was naturally very familiar with the layout of the cottage for hehad been there many times before. He knew that the cottage was small and


4

for seven people to live in a small cottage like it, certain economies of tasteand ceremony had on occasion to be ignored or set aside.

Ordinarily the Joyce household consisted of seven persons. But sincethe oldest son, Martin, had been recently working on business in Clonlitir,there were six members of the family in occupation of the cottage. Therewas John Joyce (50), who slept in the kitchen area with his second wifeBridget (45), and his son Michael (17). John’s mother Margaret (80) slept inthe back room with his daughter, Margaret Joyce Jr. (14) and his youngestson Patrick (9). The cottage, though usual for an Irish peasant, was so small asto instantly defeat both private taste as well as public hygiene.

When John Collins first came to the house there he noticed two menup bright and early. They were standing opposite the house converting at thetime. There was nothing unusual about this. Indeed, it wasn’t until heapproached the cottage that he instinctively knew that there was somethingamiss. For one thing, there was none of the usual noise that one associatedwith the cottage – no one was up and stirring --, and, secondly, the door, henoticed, had been broken off its hinges. He went into the cottage and sawJohn Joyce lying on the floor of the kitchen. He was obviously dead. Shockedat the sight and without further ado, he retreated sharpishly. He spoke to thetwo men of what he had found and with some urgency left it to them to raisethe alarm, while he went directly to the village. He returned promptly withsome of the villagers and re-entered the house.

To his further amazement he now found four dead bodies in the house,and another two wounded and struggling for life. Among the dead were

1. Margaret Joyce aged over 80,

2. John Joyce (Margaret’s son) aged about 50,

3. Bridget Joyce (John’s second wife) aged 45,

4. Margaret Joyce junior (their Daughter aged about 14, and

The wounded were Michael Joyce (their son) aged about 12 and PatrickJoyce, the youngest child aged 9 years. Both were still in great pain andstruggled with their respective wounds.

John Joyce's body lay motionless in the fore room. He had two bullet-wounds in his side and a deep cut across his head. His wife, with whom heslept, was shot to death as she lay in bed. In the back room granny MargaretJoyce lay dead with her granddaughter Margaret, whose skull had been


5

broken with a hammer. Michael Joyce, who was lying in the bed in thekitchen, was alive. He was able to speak, but with difficulty. Patrick, theyoungest of the Joyces, was also alive. In the tongue of the ancients, he askedMichael Joyce what had happened. Michael said that …

As it happened Michael Joyce, who was suffering from bullet wounds inhis neck and stomach, succumbed the same day to the overwhelmingmalignance of his wounds. Patrick Joyce, therefore, bruised and wounded,was the only survivor of the unspeakable savagery visited upon the house ofJohn Joyce of Maamtrasna.

Accompanied by the ten other villagers John Collins proceeded to thepolice hut at Finney to report the murder. Finney barracks was a makeshifthut a mile outside of Maamtrasna. On arrival at about nine o’clock in themorning, Constable Johnston met them. Two constables were dispatchedimmediately to the house to protect the scene. A tent was set up outside anda detailed account of the comings and goings of visitors was kept. Howeverresponsive the RIC were to the alarm, apparently they were not fast enough;because evidence was tendered at a subsequent trial that two dogs had takenup occupation in the bed occupied by the old lady, Margaret Joyce, and thatin fact her left arm which had hung over the bed had been eaten of all theflesh ‘ up to the elbow’. And despite chasing the dogs away, they hadclimbed back into the bed again and again.

When news of the murders reached the outside world, the enormity of the‘Maamtrasna Murders` began to take shape in the imagination of the worldand became a focal point for contemporary discussion. The Catholic Irish,renowned at this time for their religion, their unspeakable poverty and anunexplained amount of endemic violence was augmented by prototypicalsuperstitions and expectations. Throughout the country in general -- in thevillages and towns and cities -- the news spread rapidly. Soon other countiesre-echoed the news until it spread as a marker for national discussion. Alreadythe great sense of horror and foreboding that Maamtrasna engenderedentered the political discourse of the times. On the face of it, it tended toprove once again how violent, anarchic and ungovernable the native Irishwere. In this respect its immediate use to discredit the peasant leadership ofCharles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt, the leaders of the renownedLand League, was something waiting to be exploited. Comments broke outacross the British Isles, in the parlours of Dublin and London and surfacedmore sternly in the corridors and chambers of the imperial Parliament.

In the meantime, a savage local crime had been committed, the sentimentsand circumstances surrounding it were local, and vengeance would be local.And already, on the very same day as the Joyce family had been slaughtered,the Royal Irish Constabulary had their main man under lock and key. Notmuch happened in Maamtrasna without the knowledge of ‘ Big’ Ben Casey


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and his son John. The Caseys lived conveniently between the slaughteredfamily and the mountain on whose commonage for centuries beasts hadgrazed free of rent. The Caseys lived at the bottom of the mountain, hencetheir address ‘Bun-a-chnoic” (= ‘Bottom of the Hill or Mountain). Anddespite this advantage ‘ Big’ Ben Casey had been complaining for ages aboutthe disappearance of his sheep off the commonage.

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3. Birds Of A Feather

At midday on Friday, Anthony Joyce decided that he would go and see thepolice. He wanted to report what he, his brother and his nephew, had seenthe night before. By the time he got to the RIC station at Finney, he had hismind prepared to recite the whole story. When he went into the RIC hut, hefound that the police were unusually busy and unusually good tempered.They hardly had the time or the inclination to notice him. Eventually he madehis presence felt – for he knew that he had something important to say. Hetold one of the officers who understood some Gaelic that he had something tosay about murder. The officer got him an interview with the Sergeant incharge and a translator.

‘Ask him what he has to say?’ said the Sergeant.

Anthony Joyce’s eyes now moved to the translator. He also noticedthat several others had moved into the room to hear what was going on. Thetranslator related the story back to the Sergeant and everyone else the room.A pause ensued and a broad smile broke across the Sergeant’s gob. AnthonyJoyce could not account for this reaction. It was disconcerting to be laughedat in a police station, especially when he was bearing what was, by any stretchof the imagination, a rather important piece of information.

‘Cerd ‘ta cearr?’ he asked his translator. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Tell him’, said the Sergeant, ‘Tell him we know about the murder. Weknew about it early this morning, when the men of the village came in. Andyou might as well tell him that we have arrested the culprit as well. And if hecan add anything useful, he can make a statement to that effect later’


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Anthony Joyce was astounded. He felt quite deflated. He had so muchto tell the police ,but he now found that they had arrested one of the menresponsible. If they already had the killers – even one of them -- then therewas no more to say or do. They would get the whole story sooner or later.He turned it over again in his mind. Their efficiency of the police wasincomparable. It appeared that they were compiling a full report on the wholematter. As he spoke they had their man in the station and were interrogatinghim.

But still he couldn’t quite understand it. He knew that John Collins hadfound the bodies early that morning, that it was he who sounded the earlyalarm and that it was he who first raised the hue and cry. He just couldn’tunderstand how the RIC knew who the culprits were. Surely John Collinshadn’t given the police that information. So, who could have done it? As faras the early alarm was concerned, he himself had heard the news repeatedthat morning in the village, but, curiously, instead of going to the police eitherthen or earlier, he decided to revisit the scene of the murders again.

It is instructive if at this juncture we peruse a sketch map prepared ofthe scene of the Maamtrasna murders. This sketch was drawn up by one JohnRyan on a scale of twelve inches per mile and is universally useful. It servedas a reference source for lawyers and juries during the respective trials thatfollowed. It also provides a focus on many of the residences occupied both bythe witnesses as well as the suspects to the murders. The sketch does notinclude the dwellings of some of the suspects alleged to have been involved inthe murders, simply because it is too small to include those who lived outsidethe area. On the other hand the sketch included most of the dwellings ofthose concerned with the murder, it describes the path taken by murderersand witnesses alike. It also adds a sense of reality to Anthony Joyce’sevidence.

But leaving aside the whereabouts of the suspects for the moment, wemight first observe from the sketch the distance that extends fromCappanacreha on the right to Maamtrasna on the left. On the right side of thesketch also is a marking for Derry, with Derry Park and Lough Maskoccupying the middle ground. The middle line in the Sketch commencing atCappanacreha and finishing at Maamtrasna details the path taken by thesuspected murderers and the witnesses who followed them. The path runsbetween lake and mountain and extends between two to three miles in length.The road going through Cappanacreha (South) and Shanavallycahill (North)was where the three Joyces said they first saw six suspicious men – fromwhich vantage point they began to follow the suspects right across the entirelatitude of the sketch.

The sketch also gives us an incidental impression of the extent of theJoyce and Casey settlements, the Joyces as an extended family clustering


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around the extreme right of the sketch and the Caseys, not so muchclustering as spread about the left side of the sketch. What perhaps is of equalimportance is the fact that few other families bearing a different surname --other than Casey and Joyce – occupied the landscape. The landscape itself iscolourful, picturesque, but was, at the time, rather barren of bloom as well asindustry manufacture. It is a place where no industry at the time had everpenetrated.

On the extreme left of the sketch is a large X indicating the cottage inwhich John Joyce and his family lived. This was where the murders tookplace and within which all the victims lived. On the bottom left hand cornerof the sketch there is a further inset sketch (Sketch Two) of John Joyce’scottage, it’s out offices, yard and across the yard some hedges. Symbols 1W,2W, and 3W show respectively where the witnesses, Anthony Joyce, hisbrother John and his nephew, Pat Joyce, concealed themselves from the viewof the murderers.

What will also be seen from the sketch is the general location of someJoyces and some Caseys in the general vicinity, almost to the exclusion ofothers. These tribal names do not totally exclude others – such as Lydons andCoynes – but any variety of settlers other than Caseys and Joyces in theneighbourhood was severely restricted. And this gives us a clue as to thenature of the relationships, which had for centuries built up in the area. Butmore of this anon.

What we are presently interest in is the location of the homes of thethree witnesses, marked respectively 1W, 2W and 3W (first, second and thirdwitness) locates where the Joyces lived, that is, to the right of the sketch andto the left of the road as one proceeds from Cappanacreha to Maamtrasna. Italso shows how closely the witnesses lived to other Joyces as well as, at theextreme left of the sketch, how close John Collins lived to the murdered manand his family. So when he came to see John Joyce early on Friday morning,John Collins had only to walk merely a few yards, whereas Anthony Joyce, torevisit the scene of the crime he had witnessed in the dark the night before,had to make a trip of two to three miles from Cappanacreha. Why he felt hehad to revisit the scene at all prior to reporting matters to the police was amatter for some speculation among those who heard his story. Of course itcould indicate that perhaps he didn’t know what had happened the nightbefore or, hearing the shot, he did not imagine that anyone had been killed.Alternatively, it could mean that he knew that someone had been killed butwanted to confirm this or, in any event, he wanted to see the scene before hewent to the police. These alternatives, as we shall see, were with good reasona matter of infinite speculation.

Also displayed on the sketch is the inset of the cottage, the location ofthe three witnesses vis-à-vis the cottage, several other houses, including that


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of ‘Big’ John Casey, beyond whose house was the Partry and Maamtrasnamountain ranges where the sheep of many of the villagers were held incommonage.

Before Anthony Joyce left Finney RIC barracks, he asked thetranslator: ‘Ce he?’ ‘Which of them have you arrested?’

The translator looked sheepishly at him. Loath to impart policeinformation to the public, by way of a concession he leaned into a whisper:“‘Big’ John Casey of Bunchnoic”.

‘Ach ni raibh se ann! Ni raibh se ann!’ said Joyce quite agitated.

The translator could see Joyce’s distress, but he also noticed somethingof satisfaction in his protest. For now he could speak authoritatively on thesubject of the murders. He kept repeating ‘He wasn’t there. It wasn’t him!He wasn’t there!’

When the Sergeant heard this, he was somehow impressed. He beganto take a much more serious look at the peasant-informant, Anthony Joyce.He asked the translator yet again what Joyce was doing in his station. Andwhen he was told about Joyce’s escapade the night before, he cleared thetable, emptied the room of most people, put Joyce sitting down in front ofhim and summoned the Head Constable and the DI (District Inpector) toattend.

For hours to follow they listened to what Anthony Joyce had to say.There wasn’t a man among them that was not perplexed. They got the mapsout. Pipe-smokers went in and out of the interview room shaking their heads.Older RIC members were being consulted as to the plausibility of AnthonyJoyce’s account. Anthony Joyce was ready, willing and able to go to courtwith his story. According to him it was all perfectly straightforward. But themore he expressed himself the more some of the older members flinched. Asixth sense told them that nothing was ever that simple in Ireland, least of allagrarian and familial murder.

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The Two ‘ Independent Witnesses’ ,

Anthony Joyce and his brother, John Joyce

05.b. (bk.29) the maam trasna murders

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