Over the years there were several campaigns to abolish the toll on the bridge but Dublin Corporation were powerless to do anything about it until the 99-year lease expired. Ownership of the bridge finally reverted into the hands of the corporation in September 1916. The Ha’penny Bridge ceased to be a toll-bridge on 25 March 1919, when the turnstiles were removed and it was thrown open for the free usage of the people of Dublin.
First Hanging
Thursday 7 March 1901 is a notable date in the history of Mountjoy Prison as it marks the first occasion that a prisoner was hanged in the gaol. Dublin man John Toole earned this dubious distinction after his conviction for the murder of his common-law wife.
John Toole, a Dublin cab driver had been separated from his wife and three children for a number of years and in December 1900 he was living in a rented room at 45 Charlemont Street with his new partner Lizzie Brennan. On the night of 1 December, Toole and Brennan returned to Charlemont Street following a heavy drinking session.
The next morning, worried neighbours who had been woken by strange noises in the house tried to gain access to the room but were unable to do so. The police were called and after breaking down the door they discovered the lifeless body of Lizzie Brennan, her throat having been slashed from ear to ear. Beside her lay the sleeping form of John Toole. Toole also had a throat wound but it was only a minor one. He was then taken to the Meath Hospital where he admitted trying to take his own life but denied killing Lizzie Brennan.
Toole was subsequently charged with the murder of Lizzie Brennan and his trial – presided over by Mr Justice Kenny – began on 7 February 1901. The judge decided that Toole’s actions had been premeditated and after only a few minutes of weighing up the evidence the jury returned a guilty verdict.
Donning the black cap, Justice Kenny sentenced Toole to death, telling him that he would be taken to Mountjoy where he would be ‘hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that your body be buried within the walls of the prison in which the aforesaid judgement shall be executed upon you, and may God in his mercy, have mercy on your soul.’
Toole’s legal team appealed to the Lord Lieutenant for clemency on behalf of the prisoner but it was turned down. Mountjoy’s first hanging would take place on 7 March as originally decreed by Justice Kenny.
Toole spent his last night on earth in the condemned cell. On the morning of his execution he refused breakfast and attended mass in the prison chapel at 7 a.m. Just before 8 o’clock he was taken to the scaffold that been erected in the prison’s central courtyard. The grim procession to Toole’s place of execution included the governor of Mountjoy, Captain MacMurray, the prison chaplain, the prison doctor, the sub-sheriff and six prison officers.
On reaching the execution chamber, Toole was placed on the trapdoor of the gallows, his feet were bound together and a white linen hood was placed over his head. The travelling hangman, T.H. Scott, who had come over from England to carry out the execution, placed the noose around the condemned man’s neck and at precisely 8 o’clock he pulled the lever, launching Toole into eternity.
Outside the prison the large crowd that had gathered on the North Circular Road to witness the event were informed of Toole’s death by the raising of a black flag high over the prison. The prisoner’s body was later taken down from the scaffold and buried in the prison graveyard.
Custom House Fire
‘Awful Fire at the Custom-House Stores’ was the dramatic headline that appeared in Saunders Newsletter on 10 August 1833.
This was as near a live report as you were going to get in Dublin 170 years ago as the newspaper gave an hour-by-hour report of a devastating fire that took place at the city’s Custom House during the early hours of 10 August.
The blaze was described in the Freeman’s Journal as the ‘greatest fire which ever took place in Dublin’ and ‘was seen with a brilliancy little diminished at Kingstown, and illuminated the firmament with light resembling day for miles around the city’.
Large crowds flocked from all parts of Dublin to witness the spectacle and the flames could be seen for miles around. Even ships thirty miles out in the Irish Sea reported seeing the blaze.
The Custom House itself was lit up as if it was midday rather than the middle of the night and the blaze could be seen from all parts of the city. Hundreds of kegs of whiskey were thrown into the Liffey to stop them from exploding and the quays and surrounding streets were ablaze with rivers of whiskey pouring from hundreds of damaged spirit kegs. Some of this burning whiskey flowed into the Liffey and ignited the barrels that had been thrown in earlier and the river was described as ‘a sheet of flame for half of its breadth.’
However, it wasn’t all bad news. One newspaper reported that several bystanders and night watchmen managed to salvage a bucket of whiskey from the blazing building and were said to have been drinking it by the mugful. Sailors who had gathered on Custom House Quay to view the spectacle were reported to be ‘beastly drunk’.
The fire, believed to be accidental, broke out at around 2 a.m. on Saturday morning at the sugar and wine stores at the Custom House on the North Wall. The blaze quickly took hold and stores of spirits, oil and tallow further fuelled the flames. Fire engines and water carts converged on the scene from all over the city but they were useless against the severity of the inferno.
The blaze was eventually subdued and the labourers and dock workers who turned out to man the pumps on that night won great praise for their unstinting efforts. Working throughout the night and ‘refreshed at intervals with porter’, the men, with a little help from the weather, managed to confine the blaze to the sugar and wine stores. One fireman was horribly maimed when he fell into what was described as ‘a boiling mass of molten sugar’, while another was so overcome by whiskey fumes that he became violent and had to be restrained. He eventually threw himself into the river and was only rescued with a great deal of difficulty.
For a few hours, it seemed as if the flames would consume the Custom House itself but a timely change in wind direction prevented this from happening. Nonetheless, the fire continued to burn for another three days until it was eventually subdued.
Many Dublin merchants suffered substantial losses in the blaze. In the aftermath of the disaster it was estimated that 700 puncheons (large barrels) of whiskey were destroyed along with 5,000 casks of sugar. Large quantities of champagne, claret and burgundy and a range of other goods such as tallow, oil, hemp, silk and even a consignment of pianos were lost.
The traders were compensated to the tune of £68,000 some months later when a petition, presented to the British Government on their behalf by Daniel O’Connell, was successful.
Frank Du Bedat
Financial scandals in Dublin aren’t just a twenty-first-century phenomenon as evidenced by the case that came before the courts in 1891. One year earlier Frank Du Bedat, who was a member of a well-established Dublin banking family, took his place as the head of William George Du Bedat & Sons, Government Stock and Share Brokers at Foster Place next door to the Bank of Ireland in College Green.
This well-respected old Dublin Huguenot family’s motto ‘Sans Tache’ translates as ‘Without Stain’ but within a very short space of time, due to Frank Du Bedat’s activities, the firm’s reputation for honesty was in tatters.
Frank – a large man weighing over twenty stone – had a flamboyant lifestyle and expensive tastes. To his friends, he was known as ‘the Baron’ and on his many trips to Europe he spent money freely. He also bought Stoneleigh, a large mansion in Killiney, and began to spend large amounts of money on an extensive renovation project. In order to fund his extravagant lifestyle, Du Bedat began to gamble on the Stock Exchange using money taken from his clients’ accounts.
At the pinnacle of his career, when he had just turned forty, Du Bedat was elected President of the Dublin Stock Exchange in October 1890. This was to prove a very short-lived appointment, however, as within weeks he was ruined.
Du Bedat realised that he could
never make up his losses and he fled Dublin on Christmas Eve of that year, leaving a note for his wife Rosa and debts totalling over £100,000.
Six months later Du Bedat was arrested in Capetown in South Africa and was brought back to Dublin to face charges of bankruptcy and fraud. On 20 October 1891, one year after his election as President of the Dublin Stock Exchange, Du Bedat went on trial at Green Street courthouse for his crimes. He was found guilty as charged and he received a seven-year sentence with twelve months hard labour.
Sentencing him Justice Holmes said:
Francis Du Bedat … when you entered upon life you were endowed by those who bore your name with a rich inheritance in the reputation for honour and honesty … you took another course, you chose to make a rush for riches and the race for greed as so often happens has ended in ruin to yourself, bitter memories to others and benefit to none.
Du Bedat was sent to Mountjoy where he suffered from ill health due to a ruptured hernia which he sustained during his trial after falling from a cab. He lost ten stone during his incarceration and in 1896 he was transferred to Maryborough Prison (Portlaoise) and released soon afterwards.
The following year Frank travelled to South Africa where he tried to re-establish himself as a financial guru. He returned to Dublin a few years later with a South American actress in tow and they lived in Malahide for a time.
Du Bedat was arrested for fraud again in 1903 following a disastrous Portuguese venture and he was sentenced to four years’ penal servitude. He was sent to serve his sentence at Maryborough but he was released by the lord lieutenant having served only a few weeks of his sentence when new evidence cast doubt on his conviction.
Du Bedat returned to South Africa with his new wife Rosita and hoped to begin a new life. They lived in a village called Kommetjie on the Cape Peninsula.
Frank Du Bedat died penniless on 20 July 1919 at the age of seventy years.
St Stephen’s Green
St Stephen’s Green has been one of Dublin’s most fashionable areas since the city’s gentry built their homes there in the eighteenth century. The lands were originally part of the thirteenth century St Stephen’s Leper Hospital. Mercer’s Hospital was later built on this site and for almost 400 years the green was common pasture used by the citizens of Dublin for the grazing of cattle and sheep.
Some attempts were made to clean up the area during the seventeenth century, but it didn’t really begin to develop until 1815, when the common was fenced in. Prior to this a badly kept hedge and a large ditch, which was apparently used as a repository for the city’s refuse, had surrounded the green.
In 1815 twenty acres were reserved for a park and eighty-nine plots of land surrounding the green were sold off to various developers. Within a short time the green was surrounded by the fashionable dwellings that we now know so well.
From 1815 until 1880 the green was reserved for the exclusive use of the residents of the area who had their own keys to the park. But the park was opened to the public in 1880 after Lord Ardilaun of the Guinness family paid £20,000 to have it laid out in its present form.
The four sides of the green had different names. The north side was called the Beaux Walk and became a fashionable meeting place. The south was called Leeson’s Walk after Joseph Leeson who lived there. The east side of the park was known as the ‘Monks Walk’, while the west side was known as the French Walk, so called because of the number of French Huguenots living in the area.
Over the years the green was used for many purposes. The citizens marched to the green every May Day and the Freemen of Dublin marched in military formation past the mayor and aldermen, who had gathered in a marquee specially erected for the occasion.
The green was also used for football and other sporting activities, which sometimes got out of hand and turned into major riots.
For many years Stephen’s Green was a place of execution and on Saturday 21 August 1784 thousands gathered there to witness the execution of Mary Fairfield, who was sentenced to death for the murder of a wet nurse named Mary Funt. Fairfield was taken to the green from her cell at Newgate prison in a cart. There she was strangled by the hangman who then flung her lifeless body into a fire.
The last hanging to take place at St Stephen’s Green was that of Patrick Dougherty who was executed there on 21 December 1782. Dougherty was sentenced to death for the armed robbery of an Ormond Quay wine merchant, Thomas Moran. Moran testified against Dougherty in court and he was hanged three days later. After Dougherty’s body was cut down from the gallows his family and friends seized the corpse and brought it to the door of Moran’s house at Ormond Quay. The Dublin Volunteers then snatched the body back and attempted to bring it to the anatomists at Trinity College for dissection. On reaching Trinity, the Volunteers – with Dougherty’s family and friends in hot pursuit – found the gates of the college locked against them.
The Volunteers were forced to hand over Dougherty’s body which was then taken away to be buried at an unknown location. Soon afterwards the lord lieutenant took steps to ensure that there would be no repeat of these bizarre scenes and he ordered that all future hangings would take place at the front of Newgate prison in Green Street.
White Quakers
Joshua Jacob, a member of the Dublin biscuit-making family, was born at Clonmel in 1802. He was educated in England and at the famous Quaker School at Ballitore in Kildare. Afterwards, he came to Dublin where he found employment at Cavert’s the Candlemakers in Thomas Street. He married for the first time in 1829 and established a business at the ‘Sign of the Teapot’ in Nicholas Street where he ran a tea shop and grocer’s store.
Joshua was an active member of the Dublin Quakers, or the Society of Friends as they were known, but he believed that too many of his contemporaries were destroying the society in their quest for wealth.
Joshua and about thirty other members of the community decided that a more severe brand of Quakerism was required and they broke away to form a group that came to be known as the ‘White Quakers’. The new group, who dedicated themselves to a simple and frugal lifestyle, were so called because they only wore white clothing and painted all of their furniture white. Joshua also decided that all symbols of pride and ostentation were surplus to the new group’s requirements and he smashed all of the mirrors in his house at Nicholas Street. He developed a particular distaste for bells, watches and clocks, believing them to be the work of the devil and he was once thrown out of a friend’s house for setting fire to a bell rope there.
The group’s first headquarters in Dublin was at 64 William Street, where they stayed from 1840 until 1843, when they were evicted following a court case. They then moved to large premises on Usshers Quay that had formerly been Holmes Hotel. P.J. McCall in his Shadow of St Patrick’s makes an intriguing reference to the White Quakers’ ‘nude procession’ to the hotel, calling it ‘one of the strangest sights of this century in Dublin’.
In keeping with his extreme beliefs Jacob liquidated all of his assets and donated the proceeds to the common fund of the White Quakers. Joshua’s brother had died some time previously leaving a widow and six children and Joshua gave their trust fund to the White Quakers.
The executors of the will took legal action against Joshua and he was sent to the Four Courts Marshalsea prison off Thomas Street. He had two rooms in the Marshalsea and he spent three and a half years there writing pamphlets and newspaper articles in support of the White Quakers. He was even allowed to hold the occasional prayer meeting in the prison yard during his stay there. He was eventually released due to ill health in 1846.
On his release Joshua went to live at the community’s new home at Newlands in Clondalkin. By 1851, Jacob and the White Quakers had moved to a house known as ‘The Sabine Fields’ at Scholarstown near Rathfarnham. He seems to have given up his interest in Quakerism at this time after his second marriage, to Catherine Devine, a young Cork widow. The couple’s children were subsequently baptised in the Catholic church in Celbridge and th
e former ‘Apostle of the White Quakers’ himself was baptised as a Catholic there in 1859.
Joshua Jacob died at the home of his son John in Clondalkin in 1877 at the age of seventy-six. He was buried at Glasnevin, not with his former companions in the White Quaker plot in the southern section of the cemetery, but in a separate family grave with his wife Catherine and one of their sons.
Prince of Pickpockets
One of the best-known thieves of late eighteenth century Dublin and London was George Barrington who was also known as ‘The Prince of Pickpockets’ or the ‘Arch Pickpocket’.
Barrington, alias Waldron, was born in Maynooth in 1755, the son of a local silversmith. Although his parents were poor, they managed to provide young George with a decent education, most of which he received in Dublin. However, his schooling ended abruptly at the age of sixteen in 1771 when he got into a quarrel with one of his classmates and stabbed him with a pen-knife. Barrington fled from Dublin to Drogheda, where he teamed up with a travelling theatre company owned by a convicted London fraudster, John Price.
Price had been sentenced to be transported to America for his crimes, but had escaped and fled to Ireland. Barrington had a natural talent for acting and for a time he enjoyed a reasonable amount of success on the stage. His biographer said that he ‘had a speaking eye, an expressive countenance, a tolerable theatrical figure, a very pompous enunciation, and a most retentive memory’.
The theatre company fell on hard times and Barrington decided that the life of a gentleman thief was infinitely more rewarding than that of an actor and he soon rose to the very top of his new profession.
Hidden Dublin Page 7