Legal Memories (1884-5)

Chapter XVII

Legal Memories (1884-5)

I was called to the Irish Bar in November, 1884. The learning of its members astonished me. One of them, Edward Cuming, where a beginner needed help, could not merely give every case, but would name the Law Book and sometimes the page at which it was recorded. There were few Nationalists then at the Bar.

In December, 1884, at the Dublin Winter Assizes, I got my first brief in a murder trial. The late Dr. Falconer led me. The Crown alleged that the prisoner, whose Christian name was Maurice - a gardener to a gentleman in Kildare - had killed his wife. Proof turned on a question of time. The accused had to ring a bell at one o’clock for the dinner hour of his master’s workmen, then go to his home a mile away, and return by 2 p.m. to ring a second bell,

In that hour he was alleged to have murdered his wife, and to have set fire to his house to make it appear that the crime was the work of tramps. The prosecution therefore had to rebut the defence that the crime was the work of tramps and was not done between 1.15p.m. and 1.45 p.m.

The chief Crown witness was a blind beggar-woman, tall and gaunt, whose face was scarred into ugliness by the pittings and blotchings of confluent smallpox. She was the most repellant female I ever saw.

She swore that, passing the prisoner’s cottage, she heard his wife’s voice, which she knew, crying, “Oh, Maurice, Maurice, don’t kill me!” At the inquest, however, she had told a different tale. The contradiction she explained by admitting that she had committed perjury before the coroner, but had gone to the Sacraments at Easter and been warned in Confession to tell the truth.

Next, two urchins were called, who said that, coming from school, they meant to steal gooseberries in Maurice’s garden, but drew back because one cried to the other, “There’s Maurice!

A question as to the admissibility of this evidence arose, but Judge Murphy allowed it. The murder must have been committed about 1.30 p.m., and Dr. Falconer asked one lad if he was in a hurry home.

“No, I wasn’t.” “How far had you come since one o’clock?

“A mile. There were crab-apples on the road, and we pelted stones to get them down.”

In the gentlest voice Falconer inquired, “Who told you to tell the story that you said to your comrade, on reaching the garden, ‘There’s Maurice’? “The boy answered, “The sergeant, sir.”

“What? Sergeant Blank of the R.I.C.?” “Yes, sir.”

Verdict, “Not guilty”

It was Christmas Eve, and as I left court through the throng a clammy hand was thrust into mine, and a husky voice muttered words of gratitude. Great was my disgust when I found that the released prisoner had clasped my hand. The people of his locality refused to associate with him afterwards, and he had to fly to America.

Carson, the eminent Law Lord, had won an assured position at the Irish Bar before I was “called.” In 1881 he used to appear for tenants applying to the Land Courts to fix fair-rents. My brother (apprenticed to a Lismore solicitor) sometimes instructed him. The landlords soon descried his genius, and engaged him on their side.

The trial which brought Carson to the front was that of a Miss Anthony, known afterwards as the “Lady Litigant.” She lived in Tallow, Co. Waterford, and, travelling in a train without a ticket, was ejected at Dungarvan by a railway porter. She received injuries, and Carson fought her battle so stoutly that heavy damages were awarded. The Railway Company appealed, and a litigation long drawn out began, but the lady won.

Miss Anthony then started sham suits and conducted them herself. She pledged a ring with a trader in Tallow to procure bacon. To get the ring back she threatened an action for illegally taking pledges, and retrieved her property.

Flushed with success, she proceeded against her parish priest for slander in that he prevented her becoming a “choir nun.” The priest, she alleged, passed her over at the altar rails when she presented herself for Holy Communion. She sued for the alleged ill-fame implied in the refusal. The priest naturally compromised. Next she attacked a rate collector for “excess” in his collection. This action she lost, and to save her goods from seizure, she persuaded the Christian Brothers in Tallow to take her sheep into their field.

She also borrowed money from them on the security of the sheep. To evade paying the Brothers she sued them for the recovery of the animals, and terrorized them from going into court.

She next served a writ for slander on a Dublin solicitor, who threw it into the waste-paper basket, having never heard of Miss Anthony.

She got judgment, “in default of appearance,” for £1,000. The solicitor moved to set this aside, and though his motion succeeded, she was allowed costs.

In many feigned actions for years Miss Anthony figured. She travelled free on the railways, as the companies deemed it cheaper to allow this than to defend her suits.

I saw her about 1886 in the Court of Appeal in front of a row of law books. Lord Justice FitzGibbon asked would she not allow her counsel to argue the case? “Oh, no,” she replied, “I only employed Mr. Blank to bring down the books from the library!”

When her victims were exhausted and the Courts grew tired of her, she went mad and became an inmate of the Cork Lunatic Asylum. There she hanged herself. No newspaper dared mention the suicide lest she might have circulated an unfounded rumour in order to take proceedings for libel!

This is, therefore, the first obituary notice Miss Anthony has received after thirty years!

In England a litigant named Chaffers, who revelled in suing judges and officials, provoked the passage of an Act to suppress the nuisance unless the Attorney-General previously sanctioned such procedure.

We refused to allow it to apply to Ireland, and Lord Alverstone (then Attorney-General Webster) agreed to this exclusion, as we feared that the business of Resident Magistrates might become a sheltered industry.”

At the Cork Assizes, 1885, I was counsel against Dr. Cross, of Shandy Hall, defendant in an action by Phil Connell, a farmer, who had objected to Cross hunting over his land. Cross, with a blow of a whip, struck off Connell’s ear, and rode on.

The wounded man recovered £200 damages.

Two years later Cross stood in the dock accused of poisoning his wife, sister of the widely-known M.P. for Brighton, Sir William Marriott.

The trial attracted general attention. Marriott had hit the Gladstone Government hard about 1881 by resigning the seat he won in Brighton as a Liberal, and recapturing it as a Tory.

Cross was notable in Co. Cork as the son of a father who used to drive a tandem composed of a horse and bullock to every Assizes, Quarter Sessions and Petty Sessions as a litigant.

The day after his wife’s funeral he married his children’s governess, and suspicion was excited. Sir William Marriott wrote him for an explanation, and deeming Cross’s reply unsatisfactory, demanded the exhumation of his sister’s body. The local district inspector of the R.I.C., an able Englishman (Tyacke), had won a reputation for fairness and uprightness. To arrest Cross, however, without convincing evidence would throw a slur on his caste, especially after the verdict against him for the assault on Connell. Yet Tyacke was undaunted, and the coroner, M. J. Horgan, a Nationalist solicitor, helped him.

Horgan had been Parnell’s election agent in 1880, and Parnell acted as best man at his marriage.

Cross explained to Marriott, by a letter read at the inquest, the hasty burial. It set forth that his wife’s death occurred on a Friday, that the remains would not keep till Monday, and as Sunday was “the great day for Popish funerals,” he was forced to hold the interment on Saturday.

The body was exhumed, and when poison was found at the post-mortem, Cross was arrested. There was evidence to show that the doses were small, and that the victim might have been hurried off by being smothered under a pillow.

Cross was tried in Cork before Judge Murphy, an able and relentless lawyer. The prisoner was defended by John Atkinson (now Lord Atkinson). While awaiting the verdict the accused sent for his solicitor, who hurried to his cell, thinking he had some last point to urge. “Deyos,” said he, “after yesterday’s proceedings my dinner was cold, and I should feel obliged if you would take care that to-night it will be kept hot!”

A moment later he was called back to court to hear the dread verdict of “Guilty”

An English M.P. who was present at the trial told me that nothing convinced him more of the necessity for a change in Irish administration than the’ fact that the Court was thronged with hangers-on of the landowning class who sympathized with Cross, and desired his acquittal.

Judge Murphy charged against the accused. On the night before Cross was hanged, the late Sir Denis Henry (afterwards Lord Chief Justice, Belfast) dined with the judge. When about to leave, his host asked, “Denis, must you go to town to-night? Could you not stay?” “Why? ” said his guest. “Well,” he replied, “Cross is to be hanged in the morning, and I need company.”

The judge had been a leader on the Munster Circuit, and probably was often counsel for or against the father of Cross.

The Dublin Conservative organ recorded the execution with the eulogy that Dr. Cross faced death with the courage he showed in the trenches before Sebastopol.

Twenty years later a youth made his way to Cork from abroad to interrogate a solicitor upon the mystery which shrouded for him the deaths of his father and mother.

He had been brought up in ignorance of the tragedies. The man of law soothingly sent him away as little informed as he came.

Stories about the elder Cross were a Munster Bar tradition. He sent a pack of hounds to Liverpool for an English hunt, but scarcely had the ship arrived in the Mersey than the hounds dashed ashore and scattered through Lancashire.

Cross took action against the steamer company, and the trial took place in the Court of Passage, Liverpool. He swore that the hounds were worth £10 or £12 a couple, or mote. The opposing counsel stood up to cross-examine, and said, “You have stated that the hounds are worth £10 or £12 a couple?” “Yes, I swear it,” said Cross.

Thank you, sir; you may go down.” Cross glared at him.

“Are you done with me? “he asked. “Oh, yes.”

“Ha ! ” roared Cross, “that’s not the way they’d cross-examine me on the Munster Circuit!

In July, 1885, I was Junior Counsel for prisoners called Sheehan and Brown at the Cork Assizes in a case known as ” the Castletownroche murders.”

Brown was a neighbour of Sheehan, who wished to marry his sister. The girl’s fortune was small, and Sheehan’s family were opposed to the match. Sheehan’s mother, sister, and brother disappeared in 1877, and he told his manservant that they had left for Fermoy. He added, “There will be plenty of room for the girl now.” Three weeks later Sheehan married Miss Brown.

Six years after, in July, 1883, Sheehan was evicted for nonpayment of rent, and went to New Zealand. No suspicion of foul play as to his relatives entered the mind of anyone. Domestic crime was rare in Ireland, and the police only busied themselves with political charges or agrarian disturbance. After Sheehan emigrated, his successor in the summer of 1884, finding that a well on his farm was nearly dry, began cleaning it out.

At a depth of 80 feet the skeletons of two women and a man were found. These were proved to be the remains of Sheehan’s mother, sister, and brother.

Policemen who knew Sheehan then sailed for New Zealand and arrested him. He dwelt far inland in a forest. His wife, when he was accused, declared she suspected he intended to murder her. Brown was arrested as an accomplice. Beyond the finding of the skeletons, however, proof of the murders was slight.

John Monroe, the new Tory Solicitor-General, went to Cork to prosecute. He visited the well, and affected by the horror, fell in a fit. The trial was, therefore, postponed till the Winter Assizes of 1885.

Unaware of Monroe’s illness, I, with other defending counsel (D. B. Sullivan and Dick Adams), drove to the well on a sunshiny Sunday.

Our solicitors were my brother for Brown, and MacMahon, of Fermoy, for Sheehan. After the drive and a swim in a stream, Dick Adams determined to break the Sunday Closing Act. A wayside public-house was nearby. When we entered, a peasant sprang out on the clay floor in an attitude of hatred towards MacMahon.

“You scoundrel!” he shouted. “You sold me to my landlord!” “What? ” exclaimed MacMahon.

The fellow shrieked, “Yes, I was the tenant of Clonmore, and applied for a fair rent, but you sold me and got my rent raised.”

Then he drew himself up as if to strike MacMahon, while we in wonderment took a posture of defence.

MacMahon, rooted to the ground, remained without reply.

Enjoying our consternation, the pretended assailant now burst into a laugh. Holding out his hand to MacMahon, he asked, “Sir, don’t you remember me? I’m the fellow yer honour got the grand reduction for. I never thought you’d be humbugged by me play-acting!” This was a great relief, and the playboy insisted on paying for our stout. It was the “Abbey Theatre” a generation before the Dublin Players began! We reached the well of tragedy to find it so gruesome that Monroe’s seizure was easily accounted for.

Five months later Sheehan and Brown were arraigned separately before Judge O’Brien at the Cork Winter Assize. I was unable to attend owing to Dublin business, but Adams told me that the Crown case had meanwhile been greatly strengthened.

Two informers, a father and son - the latter a convict - were enlisted for the prosecution. They swore that on the 22nd October, 1877, a dance on Sunday night took place at Sheehan’s home, which his family attended, and that Sheehan decoyed his brother when the music and gaiety were at their height to an outhouse and slew him, and that he next brought his sister and mother to their doom. Then after the dancers left he carted the bodies to the well.

The jury disagreed on the first trial, but on the second hearing Sheehan was convicted. When asked after the verdict what he had to say he declared, “Brown is innocent.”

Brown was next arraigned. Adams and D. B. Sullivan appeared for him. My brother at Petty Sessions had cross-examined the Crown witnesses, and thus enabled Counsel from written depositions to contrast inconsistencies between the evidence then given and that finally tendered.

When the case for the Crown closed, the Crier, Ford (a crony of the Judge), came with a meaningful air to warn Adams, “Call no witnesses.”

Believing the hint came from his master, Adams acted on it, and no witnesses for the defence were examined.

The Judge’s “charge” however, pressed powerfully against Brown, and he commented severely on the failure to call witness. Adams was panic-stricken, and when the jury retired he turned on Ford, protesting, “Why did you tell us to call no witnesses?” The Crier trolled out, “Because I hate alibis and perjury.”

Adams threw up his hands and told him to let the Judge know that the prisoner’s counsel wanted to see him. Regarding themselves as misled, they begged O’Brien to modify his charge. He refused, but Brown was acquitted. His gratitude towards his lawyers was such that he would not pay a copper for his defence, though it cost my brother hundreds of pounds. In those days every one prosecuted by the Crown held himself out as an enfant de patrie.

My brother’s boldness in the case led me later to take risks in defending another prisoner. An old man was found dead in his parlour near Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin, with his skull battered in, and the Crown asserted that his brother committed the murder. The chief witness was a gravedigger from Glasnevin, who swore before the magistrate that he saw the accused leaving the house on the night of the crime. Unless this story could be shaken it meant that the accused would hang. I believed the accused did not intend to kill, but that in a moment of passion, having been refused money, he struck his brother without premeditation.

So I cross-examined the gravedigger at the magisterial inquiry as to the darkness of the night, the shadows cast by trees, and the doubtfulness of identification by one who had never seen the prisoner before. Then suddenly I asked, “Do you realize that your evidence, if true, will put the rope round the prisoner’s neck?”

“I do,” came the husky answer. “Then,” I said, “will you swear positively that he was the man you saw leaving the house.”

The witness hesitated, and falteringly answered, “No, I will not, I am not sure.” This reply, appearing on the depositions, was fatal to the Crown case.

At the trial the jury found the accused “Not Guilty.” He then took out probate to his brother’s estate and became the sole inheritor of his means.

The Crown could often have got verdicts of “manslaughter” in Ireland from juries which shrank from convicting prisoners on capital charges, but its Counsel pressed for the “rigour of the game.”

When I had been some years practising in Dublin, Sir Charles Russell, in his masterful way, almost ordered me to come to the English Bar and promised that he would get me briefs. I was doing well at home despite frequent absences in Parliament, and did not like to make the change. Years afterwards he scolded, “Healy, why didn’t you come to England when I promised to get you business?” “Well,” I answered simply, “I thought you merely wanted to pay me a compliment.”

He was furious and ,turning on his heel, growled, “I never pay compliments!”

A jest of Baron Dowse was then potent. “An Irishman thinks himself a big chap until he reaches the Kish Lighthouse on his way across the Channel.”

I got “silk” in England under the Chancellorship of Lord Loreburn. Meeting me in the Commons corridor after his appointment, he said, “Healy, can I do anything for you?” “Well,” I laughed, “are there any vacant bishoprics?” “No,” he murmured wonderingly. “Then,” said I, “since you can’t give me lawn, you might give me silk!” He smiled, for, as Bob Reid, he, too, often urged me to come to the British Bar. So I became a King’s Counsel in England as well as Ireland.

Monroe, who prosecuted the “well” murderer, had been counsel for Parnell at the State Trial of 1880. In 1883 he became the Tory candidate against me in Monaghan. As election joke of his deserves remembrance. He told the Orangemen: “Parnell beats the big drum; Sexton plays the clarinet; and Healy blows his own trumpet!”

In 1885 he stood as the official Conservative candidate for Armagh, but was opposed by Colonel Saunderson as a Tory Independent. Saunderson had been Liberal member for Cavan in 1868-74, and during the contest against Monroe did not mince his words.

Criticizing the new Irish Tory policy, Saunderson declaimed: “Nothing delights England more than to wipe the tears away from the eyes of Erin, but she always takes care to make Erin pay for the pocket-handkerchief.”

Monroe was beaten again. Afterwards he was made a judge and was respected by all for his impartiality and good humour. His son became Prime Minister of Newfoundland in 1925, and, after attending the Imperial Conference of 1926, spent a week-end with me in the V.R. Lodge.

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