Barrington initially preyed on members of London’s high society and no pocket or purse was safe from ‘the prince of pickpockets’. On one particular occasion he gate-crashed the Queen of England’s birthday party dressed as a parson and managed to pick several pockets without being detected. On another occasion he was thrown out of the House of Lords when he was spotted by a member of the house while going about his business.
Following several stints in prison Barrington decided that London was getting too hot for him and decided to try his hand in Dublin and he made several visits to the city during his criminal career. He sometimes visited Dublin in the company of the bare-knuckle boxer Daniel Mendoza and a team of his criminal cronies, using the fighter’s bouts as cover for their criminal activities.
The Freeman’s Journal announced Barrington’s return to Dublin in February of 1788 in much the same fashion as a visit from a famous actor or other performer:
By various accounts, the noted and famous Barrington is lately arrived in this city: doubtless he intends honouring some of our crowded churches, the law courts, Promenade, Theatre, and other public places, to keep in practice his unrivalled sleight of hand.
One of Barrington’s most infamous and daring robberies took place in March 1790 when it was reported that he picked the pockets of thirty wealthy members of the congregation attending a charity sermon at St Mary’s Church in Mary Street. The Dublin Morning Post also reported that Lady Charlemont was taken for the princely sum of twenty guineas by the ‘prince of pickpockets’.
Despite the widespread reporting of Barrington’s alleged Dublin crimes, he was never actually caught in the act. However, during his extended crime spree in London he was arrested and imprisoned on at least seventeen separate occasions.
Barrington’s life of crime finally came to an end when he was sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Australia in 1791. On arrival at Botany Bay he was rewarded for his good behaviour on the voyage with the post of Superintendent of Convicts at Parramatta in Sydney’s western suburbs. Later on he turned the full circle from poacher to gamekeeper when he became chief constable of Parramatta, which his biographer in the Newgate Calendar claimed: ‘testified the sincerity of his reformation, and rendered him a useful member of society for the remainder of his life.’
Church Street Disaster
On 2 September 1913, two four-storey tenement houses in Church Street collapsed killing seven people and injuring many more, and eleven families were left homeless.
A DMP man, Sergeant Long, who had been walking the beat on Arran Quay, heard the crash of the falling buildings and immediately made his way to the scene of the disaster.
On arrival at Church Street he found that numbers 66 and 67 directly opposite the Father Matthew Temperance Hall had collapsed.
Long immediately called the fire brigade and began the grim task of searching the rubble for survivors with a number of other DMP men and civilian volunteers.
A report in the Evening Herald of 3 September described the grim scene:
… the first body come upon was that of a woman, Mrs. Fagan. A few yards away a little boy lying in his little cot slept the sleep of death … the little fellow who had long golden hair and was aged about five, must have been alive up to about three o’clock this morning. There was a look of fear and anguish on his tear stained face, and he had grasped the sheet convulsively in his death agony.’ It emerged afterwards that this was the body of three-year-old John Shiels.
Towards dawn, rescuers heard a dog barking in the rubble. Soon afterwards they discovered the frightened animal lying trapped under a fallen beam, next to the body of a man who had perished in the disaster. A slightly injured black cat was also found near by.
In all, fifteen tenants were removed from the rubble with eight surviving. The dead were named as: Peter Crowley (6), Elizabeth Fagan (50), Nicholas Fitzpatrick (40), Margaret Rourke (56), Elizabeth Salmon (4), Eugene Salmon (17) and John Shiels (3).
The owner of the tenements, Mrs. Margaret Ryan, who lived in a house at the rear of the premises, said afterwards that she had been talking to one of her tenants, Teresa Timmins, in 67 when they heard a loud noise coming from number 66. The women ran next door where they found some of the tenants looking at a marble mantelpiece that had fallen in one of the front rooms of the house. Margaret Ryan said afterwards that she heard a series of sharp cracks followed by a rumbling sound. The women, including the landlady, attempted to flee the building at that stage. Mrs Ryan and some of the others managed to escape, but fifteen tenants were trapped in the building.
The true cause of the collapse was never established but it emerged afterwards that the houses had been inspected two months earlier by an inspector of dangerous buildings from Dublin Corporation. The inspector, a Mr Derham, had issued the landlady with an order to erect a beam across the top of one of the houses and to repair a pier between the two buildings. Mrs. Ryan had the necessary work carried out immediately and the building was passed as being safe for habitation by the corporation.
Commenting on the tragedy shortly afterwards, the lord mayor of Dublin, Alderman Coffey, said that while he didn’t want to apportion blame for the tragedy, a great deal of responsibility lay with the Local Government Board for having delayed giving the go ahead for a scheme to replace the old tenements with new houses. He was also of the opinion that ‘heavy lorries like Guinness’ speeding up and down the city’s quays were having a detrimental effect on ‘old and shaky’ tenements in the city.
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 at a house on Hoey’s Court adjoining Werburgh Street. Swift’s father, also called Jonathan, died some months before the birth of his son leaving Swift’s mother destitute and dependent on the generosity of her husband’s family.
While still a babe in arms, Swift was taken – some say kidnapped – by his nurse and brought to her home town of Whitehaven in Cumberland. By the time he returned to Dublin at the age of three, Swift’s mother had departed for her family home in Leicester leaving the young Swift in the care of his father’s brother Godwin. (Swift’s Alley near Francis Street was apparently named after this member of the Swift family).
The young Swift was despatched to Kilkenny for his schooling and he entered Trinity College in 1682 at the age of fifteen. Swift didn’t appear to have been too concerned with his studies as he only received his degree ‘by special grace’ which basically means that he had ‘pull’. During his time at Trinity, Swift was often in trouble with the college authorities for his poor attendance record, unruly behaviour and fighting and he was once censured for ‘neglect of duties and frequenting of the town’.
Despite his troubles, Swift remained at Trinity for another three years while studying for an advanced degree. At the outbreak of the Williamite wars in 1689, Swift left Ireland for England where he worked as a secretary to Sir William Temple at Moor Park in Surrey. He returned to Ireland to become a Church of Ireland minister in 1694 and was ordained at Christ Church the following year.
Having served his time in a number of parishes throughout Ireland, Swift became dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, a position that he held until his death in 1745.
Swift is chiefly remembered for his writing, and his best-known work, Gulliver’s Travels, was published in 1726. Most of his writings were political and religious satires, such as Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books published in 1704. He began to take an interest in the politics of Ireland and he became increasingly concerned about the scenes of dire poverty and distress that he witnessed on a daily basis on his travels throughout the city.
In 1720 Swift published his pamphlet A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture in which he urged Dubliners to boycott English made goods. Four years later in his famous Drapier’s Letters Swift thwarted an attempt by the British Government to saturate Ireland with an inferior copper currency known as ‘Wood’s Halfpence’.
By 1728 Swift’s health began to det
eriorate. He suffered enormously from Meniere’s disease, a condition that causes nausea, deafness and vertigo. The disease was not treatable in Swift’s day and he gradually lost the power of speech. In 1742, three years before his death, Swift lapsed into a coma from which he never recovered and he died on 19 October 1745.
As news of Swift’s death spread in 1745, large crowds of Dubliners flocked to his house to pay their last respects. According to Thomas Sheridan – Swift’s godson – many in the crowd managed to obtain locks of Swifts hair by bribing his servants. ‘In less than an hour’ said Sheridan, ‘his venerable head was entirely stripped of all its silver ornaments, so that not a hair remained.’
Swift’s remains lie in St Patrick’s Cathedral where, as the inscription beside his tomb reads: ‘ … fierce indignation can no more lacerate his heart. Go traveller, and imitate, if you can, one who strove with all his strength to champion liberty.’
Rochdale Disaster
On the night of Wednesday 18 November 1807, two of the worst shipping disasters ever to befall the city took place off Dun Laoghaire within hours of each other, leading to a total loss of almost 400 lives.
Earlier that afternoon, two transport ships – the Rochdale and Prince of Wales – had set out from the Pigeon House harbour on the Great South Wall. The Prince of Wales with 120 soldiers on board was bound for Liverpool, when a violent easterly gale accompanied by driving snow blew up in Dublin Bay. The blizzard, which lasted for nearly two days, was one of the worst ever seen in Dublin as evidenced by a report in the Freeman’s Journal a week later:
So great a fall of snow, at so early a period of the season, and in so short a time as that which fell on Thursday and Friday last in the vicinity of the metropolis, and, we believe, generally throughout Ireland, has not been remembered by the oldest person living.
On Thursday morning the Prince of Wales was spotted just outside Dublin Bay and it was believed that the crew were trying to return to the harbour. However, with visibility almost nil and the storm still raging, the hapless ship was driven onto the rocks at Blackrock. The captain launched the ship’s long boat immediately and made for the shore. Only seventeen people – including the captain, ship steward’s wife and child – made it into the boat. The remaining 120 passengers left behind – mainly British soldiers – all perished and most of them were buried in Merrion cemetery on the Merrion Road.
Following an inquest into the disaster, the master of the ship, Robert Jones, along with the mate and steward, were charged with the murder of the passengers, and it was alleged that they had removed ladders from the hold in order to get away in the long boat themselves. The trial, which was due to be heard in December, was abandoned due to lack of evidence.
The Rochdale , which left Dublin on the same day with 265 passengers on board as well as the crew, met a similar fate, leading to an even greater loss of life. Like the Prince of Wales, the Rochdale was observed in a distressed condition off Blackrock on Thursday. The crew made frantic attempts to signal for help but due to the atrocious weather conditions no assistance was forthcoming. The ship ran aground on rocks close to the Martello tower at Seapoint, not far from the site of the earlier tragedy. It was remarkable that despite the fact that the ship ran aground so close to the shore, not one person managed to reach land alive.
The bodies of the dead from both disasters were washed up along the coast from Blackrock to Bullock harbour and the Freeman’s Journal of 24 November reported a ‘scene of horror … shocking beyond description’ with countless ‘mangled and mutilated bodies of both sexes’ strewn along a two-mile stretch of coastline while the bodies of several women were washed up with the corpses of their infant children still clutched in their arms.
Two smaller ships also went down in Dublin Bay during the storm but received little attention in the Dublin newspapers. A collier sank somewhere off Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) with the loss of all hands while a trading vessel belonging to Robert Shaw was also lost, and again there were no survivors.
Ball-bearing
During the Middle Ages, the annual festivals of Corpus Christi and, to a lesser extent, St George’s Day, were the highlights of the social calendar in Dublin. No expense was spared for the pageants, and thousands turned out to see the city’s guilds led by the mayor of Dublin, march through the streets of the city in the most colourful events of the year.
Each year, the guilds were commanded by the mayor and bailiffs of the city on the basis of ‘an olde lawe’ to assemble on these feast days to enact religious plays and pageants assigned to them by the mayor. These annual events were lavish productions and were a source of great pride for the guilds and Dubliners in general.
From the year 1512 onwards the mayor of Dublin was forced to walk barefoot at the head of the Corpus Christi procession in atonement for an attack by some of the citizens of Dublin in which St Patrick’s Cathedral was desecrated and ransacked, in what was described as a: ‘… heathenish riot of the citizens of Dublin rushing into the church armed, polluting with slaughter the consecrated place, defacing the images, prostrating the relics, razing down the altars with barbarous outcries …’
One of the most curious annual civic events to take place in the city during those years was the Shrovetide ‘bearing of balls’ procession enacted by young, newly married Dublin males.
Today many men and women would claim that marriage is a cross to be borne, but in the Dublin of the fifteenth century, newly wed Dublin men were forced to carry small decorated balls through the streets of the city in an annual ritual that occurred every Shrove Tuesday.
This little mentioned practice was sometimes referred to as ‘Corperaunt Day’ and was first mentioned in a Dublin context in 1462. Young men who had wed during the previous year were expected to take part in the procession and to pay a levy to the corporation.
The various guilds of Dublin took part in the pageant, marching in a strict pre-ordained sequence as on other occasions such as Corpus Christi and St George’s day. In an article written on this topic in 1925, Myles Ronan states that the bearing of balls was a tradition that originated at Chester in England, where decorated balls were awarded as prizes in racing and archery competitions. These balls were afterwards exchanged for bells. Other writers have disputed Ronan’s assertion, claiming that the evidence for the Chester tradition is much later than that of Dublin.
The practice of ball bearing in Dublin was first mentioned in Dublin Corporation Assembly records for 1462 when it was decreed that ‘all manner of men of the said city, as well as clerks of court as other men (being wedded) shall bear their ball upon this day upon the pain of ten shillings, half thereof to be paid to the Mayor for the time being and the other half to the treasuries of the said city’. It was apparently quite a serious offence to ignore this edict as defaulters were liable to be arrested by the bailiffs and imprisoned until the fine was paid.
One of the last known references to the practice is seen in the Dublin Assembly Rolls of 21 January 1569 when the mayor issued the following instructions for the procession: ‘It is agreed for eschewing controversy that may arise on Shrove Tuesday in bearing balls that every occupation to keep order in riding with their balls as they are appointed to go with their pageants on Corpus Christi day.’
May Day
In olden times the ancient feast of Bealtaine was celebrated in Ireland to welcome in the new summer season. In more recent times, the May Day ceremonies played a big part in the social calendar of the Irish people, and in many parts of Dublin it was one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the whole year.
The biggest May Day celebrations in the city took place in the Liberties and the largest bonfire in the city was lit on an open space near St Patrick’s Cathedral along with many other fires in the back lanes and alleyways of the Liberties. The weavers had their own bonfire at Weaver’s Square while the hatters held their celebrations at James’ Street. There was another bonfire at St John’s Well near Kilmainham while the major celebration on
the north bank of the Liffey took place at Smithfield.
Every year, during the days and weeks leading up to May Day, ‘May-boys’ toured the city collecting money and whiskey for the festivities. Some of the money was spent on turf and logs for the bonfire and old tar barrels to keep the blaze going throughout the night. Curiously, many of the bonfires contained a blazing horse’s skull which took pride of place perched on top of the fire. The significance of having a blazing horse’s skull on the fire isn’t clear but they and other animal bones were donated from local knackers’ yards and tanners yards at Kilmainham.
An unnamed scribe writing in 1825 commented that the practice of dragging these bones to the fires led to a term of abuse that was in common usage in Dublin during that era: so if someone told you that they were going to ‘drag you like a horse’s head to a bonfire’ it didn’t mean that they wanted to take you for a pint!
During the lead-up to May Day, rioting between the various Dublin gangs was commonplace as one would try to snatch the other’s May-bush, which was central to the celebrations.
There was fierce competition between the warring factions as to which area could display the finest May-bush and they often went to great lengths to secure a suitable one. The bush, usually a thorn bush, was selected well in advance of May-day and on the day before the festival a large crowd, armed with axes, saws and ropes descended on the chosen tree to cut it down and carry it home for the revels later on.
These excursions sometimes led to serious disturbances that had to be broken up by the police as the May-boys sometimes chose thorn bushes that had been growing in a private garden or lawn, much to the irritation of the owner.
Hidden Dublin Page 8