Dublin Folktales (17 page)

Later on, a thief known as Scaldbrother caused no little heartache for the people of the area. The sixteenth-century bandit roamed far and wide accosting local and visitor alike. He fled with their valuables into the huge maze of underground passages extending for some two miles beneath the ground, from the hay market at Smithfield to Arbour Hill where livestock was bought and sold on market day.

Not content with being a very successful thief, Scaldbrother was also a champion runner in a time when the watchmen were still on foot. It was their task to preserve the peace and to protect the citizenry. No matter who tried to catch him or who challenged him in his swift flight, Scaldbrother was always able to outrun and outlast them. So brazen did he become, that the running thief began mocking his pursuers for their slowness. It was even said that he would halt beside the Gallows tavern and pretend to place a rope around his neck and play at hanging himself in full view of his expiring pursuers. As some chasers grew close, he ran on to his underground hideout in the caves where no one would dare pursue him.

While his exploits were hailed among the criminal fraternity as reckless and daring, there was to be a reckoning for Scaldbrother from civilised society, as there had been for the man who called himself Little John of Sherwood Forest. As the hare, in the tale of the hare and the tortoise, had long since discovered slow but steady wins the race. A plan was hatched to best Scaldbrother by stratagem rather than speed. A number of stout young men, known for their speed and strength, were chosen to wait in ambush along his habitual
escape route. The next time he came by, running from his pursuers, he ran straight into the arms of his captors who lost no time in bundling him away to justice. Scaldbrother, the errant robber, was hanged on the very next day for his misdeeds. His execution was in public. Many of his victims would have attended to witness the end of the scourge that was Scaldbrother. He would run through the caves of Dublin no more. His race, along with Little John’s, was run.

In the early autumn of 1852, a married couple journeyed by boat to Ireland's Eye off Howth for a day's enjoyment. Just one of them was to come back alive. He was then to serve some twenty-seven years imprisonment on a prison island in Cork Harbour, for the murder of his wife on that day. Opinion in Dublin was split as his arrest and trial proceeded. Some said the woman died of natural causes, others said the man killed her.

William Burke Kirwan was sentenced to death for the murder of his wife, Sarah Maria Louisa Kirwan, whom he called Maria. However, the sentence was commuted to imprisonment on Spike Island in Cork Harbour. Kirwan was to be the last prisoner released from that prison in 1883 when Spike Island changed its custodial use to that of a purely military post. He was said to have been a professional artist and anatomical draughtsman. He was aged about thirty at the time of his wife's death. He was residing on Merrion Street with Sarah to whom he had been married for some twelve years. He was also believed, by neighbours at a Sandymount house, about a mile away from Merrion Street, to be the husband of a Miss Mary Kenny who lived there with seven of their children and who also used the name of Mrs Kirwan at times.

Sarah Kirwan was well-made and extremely good-looking. She was about thirty-five years of age when she died. She was
fond of swimming in the sea, and was a powerful and daring swimmer, according to witnesses. Therefore it was considered doubtful that she could have drowned by accident.

The story was that the Kirwans took lodgings with Mrs Power in Howth, where William sketched and Sarah swam in her bathing dress. At 10 a.m. on Monday 6 September, they took a boat to the island of Ireland's Eye, carrying Mrs Kirwan's bathing dress, a basket of provisions, two bottles of water and a sketch-book. It was the custom for boatmen to discharge their passengers and to go back to the island in the evening in order to return their passengers to Howth Harbour.

Another couple, a Mr and Mrs Brue, testified that they had landed on the island on the same day. Mrs Brue said that when she was leaving at about 4 p.m. she offered Mrs Kirwan a seat in her boat, but Mrs Kirwan declined the offer. Whatever befell Sarah Kirwan occurred in the following hours, when she and her husband were alone on the island. Several witnesses testified they heard repeated cries coming from the island, shortly after the Brues landed at Howth, not long after 4 p.m.. A rain shower fell at around 6 p.m. When four boatmen travelled at 8 p.m. to collect the couple, they found Kirwan standing alone on a high rock above the landing place. He said his wife left his company after the shower, and he had not seen her since.

After a prolonged search, one of the boatmen found Sarah Kirwan's body on a sheet, on a rock, in the middle of an area known as the Long Hole, the very area that witnesses said the cries had emanated from earlier in the day. The court heard that the rock was dry and the tide had receded six feet from its base by the time the boatmen had arrived. The dead woman was lying on her back on the rock with her bathing chemise drawn up from her body.

Kirwan showed signs of distress and told the boatmen to go and fetch her clothes. When the boatmen could not find her clothes Kirwan left them and returned a little later, to tell them where to find the clothes. Boatman
Patrick Nagle testified that he then found the clothes in a place where, as he swore to the court, he had already searched without success.

The woman's body was wrapped in a sail and brought back to Howth. It was noted that there were scratches on the face and eyelids, and blood came from a cut on the breast, and from the ears. An inquest returned the verdict that she had drowned, and the body was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. Nevertheless, rumours of foul play began to circulate. It was said that Kirwan had murdered his wife, a concept apparently supported by the existence of seven offspring with another woman. Kirwan was arrested and charged with the murder of Sarah, in December of the same year.

At his trial, an expert witness said the tide was full at about 3 p.m. that day. At about 6.30 p.m., the time Kirwan said Sarah left him to swim, after the shower, there were about three feet six inches of water over the rock. By 9.30 p.m., when the body was found, the water was about two feet lower than the rock. It is about half a mile from where the body was found to the island's landing place. George Hatchel, an MD and surgeon, testified that on an examination of the body, when it had been exhumed thirty-one days after death, he discovered no internal or external trace of violence. He was of the opinion that death was caused by asphyxia or stoppage of the respiration and that stoppage of respiration must have been combined with pressure or constriction of some kind. Simple drowning would not have caused the appearance presented. Going into the water with a full stomach would be likely to cause a fit, he said. Dr Hatchel said that marks on the eye-lids and on the breasts could have been caused by sea crabs attacking the body.

Kirwan's defence argued that if he had followed his wife into the water and held her under, then his arms and body must have been as wet as his feet were when the boatmen arrived on that evening. Kirwan said his footwear was damp
from walking across wet grass on the island searching for his missing wife. Surgeon Rynd swore that, in his opinion, the appearance of the body at the post-mortem examination would be produced by an epileptic fit that could have resulted from sudden immersion in water with a full stomach.

However, when prosecutors asked if placing a wet sheet over the mouth and nose would produce all the effects of drowning, medical witnesses said it would be impossible, by the appearances described, to distinguish between accidental or forcible drowning. Once all the witnesses had been heard, Mr Justice Crampton charged the jury and they retired. At 7.40 p.m. they returned. The foreman reported that he didn't think they were likely to agree. A second juror said there was not the most remote chance of them agreeing. When a third juror said there was not the smallest chance of an agreement, the Justice said he would return at 11 p.m. to see how they were getting on. When he heard then that there was no verdict, he said it would be necessary for them to remain in the room for the night without food.

After a further half-an-hour's deliberation, they returned with a guilty verdict. Kirwan continued to declare his innocence, even when the sentence of death was pronounced by the judge. The death sentence was commuted, by the then Lord Lieutenant Lord Eglinton, who was the head of government in Ireland under the Crown system. Kirwan was ordered to serve penal servitude for life. He was removed to Spike Island, where he served no less than twenty-seven years imprisonment to his release on 3 March 1879. His release was conditional on his going to live outside the British dominions.

It was said he travelled to the United States, in search of the mother of his seven children who had migrated there when the trial was completed. In his defence, those who said Kirwan was an innocent man said it was extremely unlikely that he could have followed Sarah into the water and drowned her with his hands or with a wet sheet without
either of them showing marks of a struggle on their bodies. The theory of accidental drowning while undergoing a fit induced by entering the water with a full stomach, met all the facts of the case, it was argued by M. McDonnell Bodkin, K.C. author of the 1918
Famous Irish Trials
.

A pamphlet
The Ireland's Eye Tragedy
by J. Knight Boswell was published in 1853. The pamphlet alleged that suspicion was aroused against Kirwan by information made on 21 September 1852, by a Mrs Byrne, who carried a bitter grudge against Kirwan, and who constantly strove to make trouble between him and his wife. She said she believed that Kirwan had taken his wife to some strange place to destroy her, and she had no doubt in her mind that the said Mrs Kirwan was wilfully drowned by her husband.

Mrs Crowe, Sarah Kirwan's mother, contradicted this allegation when she said there could not be a quieter husband than Kirwan was to her daughter. Indeed, servants in the Kirwan household all deposed that Mrs Kirwan was subject to fits. One, Ellen Malone, said that on one occasion, Mrs Kirwan told her she felt her senses leaving her while sitting in a tin bath of lukewarm water. Malone said she saw Sarah's face suddenly turn pale, and she became insensible.

McDonnell Bodkin quoted a Dr Taylor, who in February 1853, minutely examined the evidence in the light of medical authority and example, and of his own personal experience, and concluded by declaring:

Furthermore, experts said the resistance which a vigorous person can offer to a murderer intent on drowning her is such as to lead to a necessity to inflict greater violence than is necessary to ensure death of the victim. The absence of any marks of violence or wounds on the body of Mrs Kirwan suggested that death was not the result of homicidal drowning or suffocation, but most probably from a fit resulting from natural causes. Kirwan's real offence would appear to have been against morality, his defenders suggested. It was clear from reports of the trial that at least some of the jury were reluctant to convict. It was only on what amounted to a threat that they would be locked up all night without food that they produced a guilty verdict.

A twist in the tale came when it was revealed by John Wynn, Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Eglinton, that:

Guilty of murder, or guilty of transgressing the moral code of the day, William Burke Kirwan's life took a turn for the worse on that September day on Ireland's Eye in 1852, when he and his wife stepped ashore on Ireland's Eye, and their marriage disappeared forever.

Who knows what goes on in a cat’s mind? They pay lip service to man, but leave as soon as the call comes from their kin, day or night. They return when it suits them and devil a one knows what transpired while they were away.

There is a story that is told in many ways and in many countries of a man that witnessed hordes of cats burying the king cat, with a great torch-lit ceremony one pitch black night. Often, when the story is told in the presence of a cat, he will listen attentively to the end of the tale where the king cat is declared dead. Then, the formerly silent animal attacks the teller or races away declaring itself to be the new king of the cats.

A story is told of a meeting of cats on the road near Tallaght in County Dublin. They were there, it was said, to elect a new king. In the suffocating darkness, a man, with drink on him and in charge of an ass and cart, drove through them. He killed so many cats that locals swept barrowfuls of them off the road, the next morning. The now sober man did not sleep for weeks afterwards for fear the watching, hating cats would tear his throat open in revenge if he fell asleep. His only solution was to buy a pair of terriers that he loosed on the cats until they were dispersed to the four winds. Whatever evil eye had been placed on him for killing cats, with the wheels of his cart, was finally sent
away to another parish. What happened to him when the dogs grew old and slow and the descendants of the vengeful cats returned we do not know. But ever afterwards he walked with a permanent twist in his neck from looking over his shoulder. If he saw a big buck cat on the path ahead of him, he always crossed the road to be away from it.