The bishop was condemned to death on Friday 27 November and was taken to Dublin Castle to await execution. Although Atherton had pleaded not guilty to the charge in court he decided that the sanctity of the churchyard would be too good for his remains and he summoned the clerk of St John’s Church and the verger of Christchurch to ask them to bury him under a rubbish heap in the furthermost corner of St John’s churchyard just off Fishamble Street. Full of remorse, Atherton attributed his downfall to the ‘reading of bad books, viewing of immodest pictures, frequenting of plays and drunkenness etc.’. He also decided at one point that ‘a dog’s death was too good for him’ and considered asking to be beheaded instead of hanged.
On the morning of his execution, Atherton was taken in a coach to the gallows, which was then located close to where Parkgate Street is now. He was escorted by two city sheriffs and the county sheriff ‘with a great company of halberds (swordsmen) to assist him’. As the grim procession made its way past Christchurch, the ‘passing-bell’ was tolled. One eyewitness, Nicholas Bernard, dean of Ardagh, said that he had never seen either the town or the castle so crowded before.
When he had completed his last speech at the foot of the gallows, Bishop Atherton climbed the ladder and placed his head in the noose. His hands were untied and he was allowed to fasten a handkerchief over his face. He turned to the hangman saying ‘honest friend, when thou art ready tell me, and I will tell thee when I am ready’ and he handed him the customary fee that was paid to ensure a quick execution.
He was left hanging for nearly an hour after which his corpse was taken back across the Liffey in a coach and later that night he was buried in the spot that he had requested in St John’s churchyard.
Atherton’s steward, John Childe, was executed shortly afterwards on the bridge of Bandon in County Cork.
James Annesley
Anglesea Street in the heart of Dublin’s Temple Bar takes its name from Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesea, who held several leases on properties there during the middle of the seventeenth century.
In 1743, a curious case involving James Annesley, great grandson of Arthur, took place in the High Court in Dublin. James was a son of Arthur Annesley, who held the title of Lord Altham, and Mary Sheffield, daughter of the duke of Buckingham.
James was born in Wexford in 1715 and his parents separated in February of the following year. His mother returned to England where she died some years later. James continued to live with his father and a few years later they moved to a house at Cross Lane in Dublin along with his father’s mistress, a Miss Gregory.
The new Lady Altham wasn’t too fond of young James and in 1724 when he was only eight years old she persuaded his father to send him to live at a lodging house, which was either in Fleet Street or Ship Street. He was educated at Barnaby Dunn’s school in Werburgh Street.
James was later sent to live at the home of a dancing master named Cavanaugh, who was instructed to keep the boy out of the way. However, James didn’t like it there and escaped soon afterwards. He knew that he couldn’t go home because of Miss Gregory’s opposition to him and he became a homeless vagrant, living on his wits in the back alleys and laneways of Dublin.
James was eventually taken into the care of John Purcell, a butcher in the Ormond Market who had been introduced to the boy by Dominic Farrell, a Dublin linen merchant.
Farrell went to see Lord Altham to plead with him to take responsibility for his son, but Altham apparently washed his hands of any responsibility towards the child, claiming that Miss Gregory wouldn’t allow him inside the house.
James continued to live with Purcell and his wife at their home in Phoenix Street until the death of Lord Altham in 1727. In the normal run of things, young James Annesley should have been the next Lord Altham, but his father’s brother Richard had other ideas. Not too many people knew of James’ existence and Richard wanted the title for himself.
Richard decided to get rid of the youngster and he had James arrested in 1728 on a trumped-up charge of having stolen some silver. The boy – who was still only twelve years old – was taken to Ringsend, where he was put on board a transport ship bound for Philadelphia. There he was immediately sold into slavery on the instructions of his uncle.
Following a series of adventures in America he eventually escaped to Jamaica in 1740. He arrived back in Dublin two years later along with a wealthy companion Daniel McKircher, who was determined to help him regain his estate and title.
Uncle Richard, however, wasn’t about to give up the title easily and he attempted to have his nephew killed on several occasions. Once, at the Curragh, Richard’s son Francis and one of his servants attempted to kidnap James but they were foiled by James’ companions, who gave them a ‘sound horsewhipping’ to the great pleasure of the race-goers.
James eventually instigated proceedings against his uncle in the High Court on 11 November 1743 and after a trial that lasted fifteen days the jury found in the younger Annesley’s favour.
However, Richard appealed against the decision and the case dragged on for an incredible sixteen years until 1759 when James died suddenly at the age of forty-three. Richard died two years later and the estate eventually passed into the hands of his son Arthur.
Soup Kitchens
Although Dublin was not as badly affected as other parts of Ireland during the Great Famine, which began in 1845, many starving people flooded into the city in search of food. One of the easiest ways to feed the starving masses was through the use of soup kitchens, which were capable of feeding thousands on a daily basis.
One of the best-known soup kitchens in Dublin was at Croppies Acre in front of the Royal Barracks (Collins Barracks), which was set up by the famous French chef Alexis Soyer. Soyer was born at Meaux-on-Brie on the Marne in 1810 and he served his time as a chef at some of the best restaurants in France. He moved to England during the 1830s. There he established himself as one of the finest chefs in the country and in 1837 he was appointed head chef of the Reform Club.
It was while he was working at the Reform Club that Soyer became interested in the plight of the victims of the great Irish famine. In 1847, Soyer wrote several letters to the press on the subject and in April of that year he was appointed by the British government to open a soup kitchen in Dublin from which he dispensed meals at half the usual cost to the British Exchequer.
While in Ireland, Soyer produced a booklet entitled Soyer’s Charitable Cookery or the Poor Man’s Regulator which he dedicated ‘for the benefit of the working, labouring and poorer classes of Ireland and Britain’. The booklet, aimed primarily at the upper classes, appealed for increased charitable funding for the victims of the Irish famine and gave details of how to set up a soup kitchen. It also contained several recipes for cheap and nourishing meals such as, ‘meagre pea soup, curry fish, cheese stirabout, St Patrick’s soup, and oyster porridge’.
Soyer was invited to come to Dublin by the British government in the spring of 1847 to set up a soup kitchen. His kitchen supplied an estimated one million meals in the space of five months – an average of 8,750 per day. Soyer claimed that one bowl of his soup, when taken with some bread or a biscuit, provided enough nourishment to keep a healthy man going for a whole day. Soyer further claimed that his soup had been given the seal of approval by ‘numerous noblemen, members of Parliament and several ladies’. The soup was made from leg of beef, water, onions, flour, pearl barley, dripping, salt and brown sugar.
Soyer’s soup wasn’t universally welcomed, however, and there were some complaints that it actually harmed a number of people who had been suffering from dysentery.
The soup kitchen itself was described in Cecil Woodham-Smith’s book The Great Hunger as ‘a wooden building, about forty feet long and thirty feet wide, with a door at each end; in the centre was a 300-gallon soup boiler, and a hundred bowls, to which spoons were attached by chains …’
People were admitted to the hall in shifts of 100 at a time by the ringing of a bell. When they had
finished the soup, they were handed a piece of bread and left by the second door. The bowls were then cleaned and the next batch of people were summoned, again by the ringing of the bell.
Loughlinstown Camp
During the turmoil and political upheaval that preceded the 1798 rebellion, one of the events that the British government feared the most was a French invasion of Ireland and there was particular concern that this invasion would most likely take place in Dublin.
In 1794 a British army officer, Colonel George Napier, pinpointed Killiney Bay as the most likely spot for such an invasion and he proposed the erection of a large military camp at Loughlinstown in order to defend the city from any such attack. Napier specifically chose Loughlinstown because it was on a height overlooking Killiney Bay but was yet far enough away to be out of range of the French artillery.
The British government agreed with Napier’s assessment of the situation and a 120-acre site in the townland of Lehaunstown on the Loughlinstown estate was purchased. A camp capable of holding up to 5,000 soldiers was established there by mid-1795.
The garrison of 4,000 men was initially billeted in tents on the site but a drawing in John Ferrar’s A view of ancient and modern Dublin of the camp in 1796 reveals that the vast majority of the soldiers were by then accommodated in rows of wooden huts. Ferrar said that there were sixty-four of these wooden huts, each one with accommodation for thirty-six soldiers and two NCOs, and there were another sixty-five assorted wooden buildings including officers’ quarters, kitchens and mess-houses.
Fears of an invasion were heightened in December 1796 when a French landing at Bantry Bay was stymied only by bad weather conditions. In response, the British government appointed Major La Chausse – a Frenchman serving in the British Army – to further strengthen the fortifications at Killiney.
La Chausse conducted a survey of the bay and made several recommendations for its defence including the placing of big guns on the cliffs overlooking the shore at Killiney and that all ‘hedges, ditches and ravines’ in the vicinity should be cut back so as not to give the enemy cover.
Despite the elaborate precautions, the expected French invasion never materialised and Loughlinstown camp was closed down in 1799 without seeing any action. During its short existence, stories written in the Dublin press in relation to the camp were mainly concerned with the leisure time activities of its inhabitants.
Loughlinstown was more like a holiday camp than a military installation and on weekends during the summer months, the roads to the camp were filled with daytrippers anxious to view, as one writer in the Freeman’s Journal put it, ‘the martial splendour of the tented field’.
The writer described the scene on the Bray Road on Sundays as ‘a scene of the true grotesque and highly ludicrous’ and said that ‘every vehicle from the Royal George to the dust cart was in motion on the Bray road, and every hack horse, mule, or ass that could be procured for hire, joined in the cavalcade’.
Visitors to the camp were entertained by marching military bands during the daytime and at night there was music and dancing in the purpose-built Assembly Rooms. Meals and refreshments were also on sale and there was a coffee room and several dining and beer tents at the camp.
Very little of military significance ever took place at Loughlinstown Camp, but in 1798 John and Henry Sheares, two brothers, both leading members of the United Irishmen, were charged with high treason and accused of formulating a plan to attack and take over the camp. Both were executed in July of that year.
The camp was broken up in April 1799 and the site was divided and sold off as farmland in 1812.
John O’Keeffe
John O’Keeffe, the writer and playwright, was born at Abbey Street, Dublin, on 24 June 1747. He was educated by the Jesuits as a child and he later studied art at the Royal Academy in Shaw’s Court off Dame Street, with his brother Daniel, under the guidance of Robert West. He spent a few years working as an artist in London where, as he said himself, ‘I was afraid of opening my lips, lest I should be laughed at for my Dublin brogue’.
He joined the Smock Alley Theatre in 1764 as an actor and he travelled the country in this capacity for the next ten years. He also began his career as a playwright around this time and his first contribution was a five-act comedy entitled The Generous Lovers .
O’Keefe was married to the well-known Cork-born actress Mary Heaphy (1757–1813), daughter of Tottenham Heaphy, who managed theatres in Cork and Limerick. They married in 1774 and appeared together in productions at the Smock Alley and Crow Street theatres. Because of the fact that O’Keeffe was a Catholic and Heaphy a Protestant, two separate wedding ceremonies had to be performed in order to keep both families happy. The marriage didn’t last for very long and sometime around 1780 Mary became involved in another relationship with an actor called George Graham.
When O’Keeffe found out about the relationship he was said to have beaten Mary so ferociously that he ‘demolished his wife’s nose’ according to the writer of a biographical sketch of O’Keeffe in the Catalogue of Five Hundred Celebrated Authors, published in 1788. The couple had three children: John Tottenham, Adelaide and Gerald. Following the break-up of his marriage, O’Keeffe left for England, bringing his children with him. According to his daughter Adelaide, O’Keeffe never mentioned his wife’s name again and when Gerald died in 1787 he became reclusive and withdrawn.
He was also nearly blind at that stage, having suffered for some years from a serious inflammation of the eyes, which he sustained when he fell drunk into the river Liffey at Ringsend one dark December night. O’Keeffe compounded the problem by seeking remedies from quacks – including electric shock treatment – which ultimately led to him losing his sight. O’Keeffe spent his last years living in a cottage in Southampton where he died on 4 February 1833.
Although he is chiefly remembered for his plays and other dramatic works, O’Keeffe also left behind his memoirs, Recollections of the Life Of John O’Keeffe which he dictated to his daughter Adelaide during the latter years of his life. His memoirs contain many witty and amusing anecdotes of life in Dublin and paint a fascinating picture of the city’s characters and the personalities of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
O’Keeffe was on first name terms with all of Dublin’s leading actors and playwrights, and his book contains many references to theatrical luminaries, such as Peg Woffington, Spranger Barry, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Henry Mossop, David Garrick and others. Other well-known Dublin characters such as Jonathan Swift, George Faulkner, the Dublin printer, and the informer Leonard McNally are mentioned, but there are also many other tales related to duelling, drinking and forgotten Dublin pastimes and customs.
O’Keefe also recounts several amusing tales of some of the city’s characters, such as Travair, the cobbler, and the eccentric Captain Debrisay, who are not generally mentioned in other contemporary works.
Oxmanstown
On the north shore of the River Liffey the modern district of Oxmantown represents an area settled by the Hiberno-Norse community of Dublin following the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the late twelfth century. The area was originally known under the variants of Ostman’s Town, Houstmanebi, Ostmanby, Oustmanton and Oestmantown. All of these variations in spelling refer to the ‘men who came from the east’, i.e. the Vikings. There may have been an earlier Hiberno-Norse Viking settlement in the area as the church of St Michan had been established there some eighty years earlier.
The exact location of the settlement is hard to define but it seems to have been located roughly in the area stretching from the Liffey up as far as King Street, by Arbour Hill to the west and St Michan’s on the east side. The famous green or Common of Oxmantown was located in and around the Smithfield market area. The green was used for many years as a pasture for cattle and sheep and also as a place of recreation for the citizens of Dublin. The Green was eventually covered over after the corporation decided to sell it off in lots for building purposes in 1664.
Stanihurst also alludes to a resident of Oxmantown who lived, not on the green, but under it. Stanihurst was referring to a famous Dublin thief called Scaldbrother who lived in a cave known as ‘Scaldbrother’s Hole’, which was said to stretch a long distance under Oxmantown Green.
Scaldbrother was said to have been so confident in his ability to outrun all pursuers that he would often wait for them under the gallows at ‘Gybbett Slade’ near Arbour Hill before disappearing into his lair with his booty. Scaldbrother’s luck eventually ran out and he was hanged on the gallows at Gybbet Slade. This area has been identified in other sources as Gibbet’s Glade and Gibbet’s Shade.
Scaldbrother’s Hole is mentioned again in Nathaniel Burton’s Oxmantown and its Environs written in 1845. Burton says that builders digging foundations for houses at Oxmantown regularly broke through into the cave while some Smithfield brewers used part of the thief ’s lair for the storage of beer.
There is another Oxmantown legend concerning Little John, partner-in-crime of the English outlaw Robin Hood. The story goes that following the death of Robin Hood, Little John went on the run from the forces of the law and made his way to Dublin. During his time here he was said to have impressed the natives with his archery skills and he once fired an arrow from the Old Bridge of Dublin all the way to Arbour Hill. The place where the arrow landed was allegedly known for some years afterwards as ‘Little John his Shot’.
Hidden Dublin Page 16