Riotous Assemblies
Page 13
The combined force of coastguard and police reached twenty, but even this was inadequate as news of the abundant timber spread. At a time of year when there was little work to detain them at home, much of the population of neighbouring islands and the nearby mainland descended on Lettermullen – one report estimated there were 800 men on the island on a particular day.38
The coastguards and policemen devoted their days to retrieving buried balks and spent the nights guarding what had been retrieved or resting in the shanty. Famished and lacking sleep, they sought warmth and solace in whiskey – both local and legal kinds. Although only one man, a police sergeant, was reported for drunkenness, there are indications that he was not exceptional in this regard.39
All the time, local people were subject to annoyances, boats being requisitioned and wires set across the Cúigéil to obstruct currachs. There was continual firing of weapons, moreover, one figure indicating that 300 rounds of ammunition were discharged between 8 January and 8 February. It was claimed that the shots were fired to disturb ‘wreckers’, but the evidence gives the impression that the occupants of the shanty were trigger-happy. Occasional whiskey-fuelled interrogations of ‘suspects’ did nothing to mend fraught relationships. Given all this, there was almost an inevitability about the events of 8 February.40
That night, the coastguards were more than usually vigilant because they had received intelligence that a major raid on the salvaged timber was planned. When a bád iomaire landed at Mulkerrin’s Creek long after dark, it attracted their attention. There were nine men in the boat, owned by Stephen Mulkerrin of Ard Thiar, Carna, eight miles away on the mainland. They had come, survivors testified, to collect a boat being built on Lettermullen for Mulkerrin’s neighbour, Thomas King. When six of the men went ashore, they immediately came under fire. All scurried away, five towards the boat, one away from it. Five shots rang out as the boat pulled away from the shore. Two of the four oarsmen, Thomas King and Patrick Folan, were hit. King died immediately; Folan survived for an hour. The body of Folan, an only son, was left at his parents’ house on Mason’s Island. King’s corpse was brought to his wife at Ard Thiar.41
The incident attracted little public attention, but it was raised in Parliament by Mitchell Henry, a Manchester merchant and Home Rule MP for County Galway since 1871. Henry was an advocate for his poorer constituents and he strove to ensure that justice was done in the Lettermullen case.42
Imperatives arising from the ‘rule of law’ dictated that there were coroner’s inquests, before a jury, into the deaths of Folan and King. Opening on Thursday 13 February 1873, five days after the men’s deaths, they were protracted affairs, adjourned several times before the delivery of a shock verdict on Tuesday 6 May. Carna was the place chosen for the sittings, because it was the ‘most convenient place to Lettermullen where there is a police station and a sort of courthouse’.43
The selection of the jurors had fallen to sub-Constable William Doherty, because his senior colleagues at Carna RIC station were gathering evidence on Lettermullen. Doherty conferred with Lieutenant Drew (who had been on Lettermullen on the night of the shootings), and complied with his request to disallow anyone residing on an island near the scene of the shooting and anyone related to either of the deceased.44 Twelve men were found who seemed to fit Drew’s criteria, though their suitability was later questioned. On his arrival in the early afternoon of 13 February, coroner George Cottingham swore in the twelve. The proceedings were observed by representatives of the Board of Trade, the coastguard and Dublin Castle.45
The jury’s first task was to accompany the coroner to Mason’s Island and to Ard Thiar, where the bodies were disinterred and autopsies performed on them by a local doctor. On the resumption in Carna courthouse, Inspector St Clair Ruthven questioned the doctor and several of those who had been present at the scene of the tragedy, whereupon Cottingham adjourned proceedings for three weeks. The inspector reported as follows to his superiors:
The seven survivors of the boat crew state that they were fired on without warning ... and that they were not near any of the cargo at the time ... None of the witnesses, as far as I am at present aware, identify personally any of the coastguard as having fired, but one gives the names of the coastguards he saw returning from where he saw the shots fired.46
The inquest resumed on Wednesday 5 March, but there was little fresh evidence until John Larkin took the stand on Thursday afternoon. Larkin, from the island of Daighinis, was a noted local character, with a reputation as both a courageous, skilful seaman and a tearaway. According to folklore later collected by Seán MacGiollarnáth: ‘Fear spóirt agus óil é. Ní raibh daimhseoir ar bith ab fhearr nó é’.47 Larkin identified two senior coastguards as having fired the fatal shots: Lieutenant Drew, the officer in charge on Lettermullen, and Chief Boatman Jago. There was consternation in the courthouse, and proceedings were adjourned for three weeks. St Clair Ruthven observed that Larkin’s testimony was inconsistent with that of other witnesses, and even with his own initial statement.48
The sitting on 26 March was brief, because only eleven jurors showed up. According to the crown solicitor, ‘[Bartley Mulkerrin’s] excuse is that he had been at the fair of Roundstone on the day before, drank to be drunk, and forgot all about the inquest – the man is quite illiterate and could not be persuaded of the impropriety of his conduct.’ A significant development at the next sitting on 21 April was that Larkin’s evidence was supported by John Ridge. The response of the coastguard’s solicitor was to seek an adjournment, and to demand that Ridge be charged with perjury.49 On the last two days of the inquest, 6 and 7 May, the jurors heard further witnesses examined by the coastguards’ attorney before retiring to consider the evidence. According to one version of the story, they decided on a verdict of murder, but were dissuaded by the coroner, Cottingham. Ultimately the verdict was delivered in the following terms: ‘Thomas King came by his death at Lettermullen, on the night of 8 February 1873 by revolver shots inflicted on him by Captain [sic] Drew and Richard George Jago whilst in their own boat. We therefore find them guilty of manslaughter.’ A similar verdict was delivered in the case of Folan.50
Two weeks after the killings, ownership of the cargo passed to the firm of Cloherty & Semple, which operated a sawmill in Galway. On behalf of the insurers, Captain Lodge accepted £1,050 for a cargo that had cost the previous owners £4,085. The coastguards remained on Lettermullen, protecting the salvaged timber, trying to recover pieces that had been secreted away and awaiting the arrival of cargo vessels from Galway. As for the people of Lettermullen, they were angered by the killing of Patrick Folan and Thomas King, but evidently in no way intimidated.51 As winter gave way to spring, crops were planted over concealed balks and a spirit of defiance manifested itself in nightly raids and daily confrontations with the coastguard. Boycotted by the island people, and consequently dependent on provisions sent irregularly from the mainland, the coastguards’ lives became more difficult.52
Between February and late April, Cloherty & Semple recovered almost half of the cargo: 600 of 1,100 balks, but none of the less valuable deals or staves. These, ‘being portable’, according to Joseph Semple ‘were carried away by the natives’.53 Allowing for what was lost before landfall, it may be estimated that the south Conamara people kept a third of the total. The struggle over this portion ended on 28 April, when another violent confrontation led to withdrawal of the coastguard and acceptance by Cloherty & Semple of the futility of trying to retrieve any more. They decided, instead, to lodge a claim for malicious damages with the county grand jury.54 Despite his considerable profit, Joseph Semple continued to lobby the authorities, arguing that a firmer stand should have been taken:
Until the government take up such occurrences on imperial grounds, I am of the opinion that this system of public plunder in those districts in which such wrecks occur will be perpetuated and that the milk-and-water measures generally adopted by the Receiver of Wreck tend in great measure to incite the inhabi
tants of such districts to those daring and lawless acts. It appears to me that the powers of the Receiver of Wreck are wholly inadequate to repress such tumultuous depredations as took place at Lettermullen, and adverting to the small number of the Coast Guard and the Police available on the occasion, and their want of accommodation and provisions, I am of the opinion that upon such occasions, a vessel of war should be sent to the scene of the wreck.55
After the inquest, the coroner issued a warrant for the arrest of Drew and Jago. Drew was dining with his host in Carna, Colonel Forbes, when he was apprehended. The two were taken to Galway gaol, where they spent eight days before being released on bail. Their period in prison, in cells ‘intended for the common prisoners’ where they were ‘subject to the prison rules’, they felt very harshly. Drew complained of damage to his reputation: ‘There was a run made upon me by my tradesmen which would not have occurred if I had been at liberty.’56
After the two regained their freedom, they endeavoured to discredit both the proceedings at Carna and the characters of those involved. Friends and colleagues intervened on their behalf, the most persistent being Captain Bedingfield of the coastguard’s vessel HMS Valiant. The ‘lawless savages’ of Lettermullen and Carna, he insisted, should not be allowed to visit ‘gross indignities’ on dutiful officers or to make a mockery of the legal process. The Carna proceedings would have been ‘ludicrous’ if the outcome had not been so serious:
It is admitted that part of the jury were the wreckers engaged in the affray, they were in the coroner’s court in their shirtsleeves, each having his shelalah, which they seem to have freely used on the table, and also in poking up the coroner to enforce their opinions. They contradicted the witnesses, and when any evidence was given which they did not like, they howled at them in Irish. Seven of these could not understand English, only two could write their names, and the coroner himself seems to have been quite unable to control them.57
These points were addressed by Captain Scully RM, Dublin Castle’s observer. Bedingfield exaggerated, he wrote: there was no evidence that any juror was involved in illegal salvage, and while one lame juror supported himself with a blackthorn stick, there were no shillelaghs in the courthouse. They did not attend ‘in their shirtsleeves’, as alleged, although most were wearing the báinín, the ‘short jacket ... generally worn by small farmers in that part of the country’. As for their lack of English, this was true, but the coroner had interpreted the testimony for them. Indeed, continued Scully, ‘considering that the greater number of them were uneducated, they were well-conducted and appeared to attend to the evidence’.58
A key witness at the inquest had been John Larkin, who had been employed by the coastguard until a few days before the shooting. As one of two witnesses claiming to have been able to identify those involved, he could not have been expecting a warm welcome from Drew when he travelled to Galway to claim unpaid wages from his stint assisting the coastguard. Drew’s response was to accuse him of being drunk and to have him arrested and locked up for the night. On his release, Larkin was promptly re-arrested and charged with having committed perjury at the inquest, on foot of an affidavit lodged by Drew. It was later alleged that Drew was on intimate terms with the magistrate who heard the case – indeed, that he was dining with him when Larkin called.59 It was a serious interference with legal process that a man accused of a crime, while on bail, could have the principal witness against him charged with perjury. For that reason, the attorney-general subsequently withdrew the charge. But the eventual outcome of the perjury proceedings did not diminish their intimidatory affect. John Ridge, the other key witness, absconded rather than face prosecution for perjury himself60
On 28 July 1873, during the summer assizes, Drew and Jago faced trial in the crown court for the manslaughter of Thomas King. Chief Justice Monahan, a former MP for the town of Galway, heard the case. The Tuam Herald described the scene at the Galway courthouse:
In the grand jury gallery were assembled a fair show of the elite of the ‘citie’ and its vicinity, most of whom seemed interested on the part of the defendants, but in the body of the court appeared the frieze coats, the most enthusiastic portion of the audience. Amongst those stood prominently was a goodly group of blue-coated men, friends and brothers in the craft of the deceased, men whose faces seemed prematurely haggard and careworn from their eternal sea-toil, but whose sense of despotic power and injustice exercised towards them under the pretext of executing government mandates has roused their energetic feelings to the fullest extent, which is vividly depicted on their countenances.61
With the Board of Trade solicitor, James O’Dowd, instructing the counsel for the defence, the jury selection took some time. By one account, he challenged all men wearing frieze coats, lest his clients’ prospects be adversely affected by any sense of solidarity among the subaltern groups of the county, as had apparently happened at the inquest.62
The defence strategy was two-pronged: that the accused were not the men involved; and that, even if they had shot King and Folan, they were legally justified in doing so. In respect of the second, their case was weak, even if there was some ambiguity in the ‘Instructions to Receivers of Wreck & Officers of Coastguard’ contained in the 1854 Merchant Shipping Act:
They are armed with full powers and may even use force, and they are bound to do so, if they can by no other means prevent plunder, disorder or obstruction to the saving of life and property. But if proper firmness and judgment be shown, it will seldom if ever be necessary to resort to extreme measures, and whilst the law gives indemnity for violence done to others by the receiver or officer of the coastguard and his men in the due discharge of their duty, this indemnity must be considered as not extending to cases where a quarrel ending in violence may have been caused or aggravated by want of temper or misconduct on their part.63
To prove that their clients were not present at the time of the killings, the defence relied on a claim that Drew had fallen into the sea earlier, so by that time he was not wearing the distinctive uniform that witnesses used to identify him and, furthermore, that his pistol was out of action due to seawater. The defence also tried to undermine the credibility of witnesses, on the basis of their poor English and their inability to tell the time, focusing in particular on the testimony of John Larkin, who had given different versions of his story. Larkin insisted that he told the truth when under oath, and had dissembled earlier only to secure the wages he was due from the coastguard.64
On the second day of proceedings, the trial was halted by the jury, the foreman indicating that they wished to bring in a ‘Not guilty’ verdict. For their early decision, the jurors were complimented by Justice Monahan, who further remarked: ‘I am very glad that two men who have served their country so long & so well were not guilty of the offence with which they were charged. They leave the court without a shadow of a stain on their characters.’65
That might have been the end of the matter, but for the interest of Mitchell Henry MP. His lobbying resulted in an inquiry into the affair under the auspices of the Board of Trade, which opened in Galway courthouse in mid-August 1873, three weeks after the conclusion there of the trials of Drew and Jago. Witnesses were again brought from Ceantar na nOileán, but one observer saw the inquiry as a ‘bare-faced farce’, not least because it was chaired by James O’Dowd, who had represented the accused coastguards a few weeks earlier.66 No ‘man of honour’, asserted ‘Justitia’ in a letter to the Galway Vindicator, would have accepted the appointment in such circumstances. The Vindicator itself – Galway’s main Catholic nationalist paper – had reported the proceedings in matter-of-fact fashion, and its accuracy in this task had been praised by James O’Dowd. But if its coverage was dry and restrained, it did also print Justitia’s scathing and passionate critique.67
The anonymous correspondent’s other major criticism of the inquiry was that its terms of reference precluded it from investigating the issues that were of greatest public interest: the shooting of King
and Folan, and the blatant intimidation by a magistrate of a key crown witness, John Larkin. Justitia also questioned O’Dowd’s selection of witnesses: asking Drew about the conduct of the Carna jury, he suggested, was like asking a burglar to give a character witness for the policeman that arrested him; calling Henry Warren – a friend of Drew who had enjoyed ‘the conviviality of the shanty’ during a ‘pleasure excursion’ – to testify to the exemplary conduct of the coastguard on the island was simply preposterous.68 However, if James O’Dowd seemed careful to protect his recent clients, Drew and Jago, he did offer the opinion that those charged with protecting a wrecked vessel were not entitled to shoot people merely on the suspicion that they were pilfering parts of the cargo.69
By this time, indeed since the end of April, the remainder of the wreck had been left to local people to dispose of, and there is some indication of disagreements over the salvageable material. According to the responsible police inspector, based in Spiddal twenty miles away, a summertime increase in the number of assaults in the district was attributable to ‘disputes over plunder taken from the wreck’.70 There was no hint of such friction, however, in an account from July provided by John Clarke Drew. During his unannounced visit for the purpose of mapping Lettermullen for his defence on the manslaughter charge, Drew claimed to have counted 158 of the large balks and to have noticed great numbers of staves in some houses, as well as numerous open pits from which (he presumed) hidden timber had been recovered. He also saw seven or eight sawpits, apparently recently made, scattered across the island.71