Lambert’s life of crime began some five years earlier, when he was convicted in July 1783 for relieving a man of eight shillings and his watch and hat in Arran Street. Lambert – who was only caught because his victim remembered his distinctive limp – didn’t fit the usual profile of your average Dublin criminal as his father had been a member of the legal profession and his brother owned a considerable amount of property in the city.
Despite his connections, Lambert was sentenced to death, but he was later given a conditional pardon on the basis that he would leave Ireland for a period of not less than fourteen years.
Lambert left for an unknown destination soon afterwards, but three years later he returned to Dublin and was promptly thrown back into Newgate. He was held on remand for the next two years and in June 1788 he was granted another pardon, which was conditional on him agreeing to be transported not only out of Ireland but also out of Europe for the rest of his life.
Lambert readily agreed to the deal, but while awaiting transportation in Newgate he shared a cell with a violent inmate named Francis Bathhurst who was serving a three-year sentence for throwing a three-year-old boy from a third-storey window. Walker’s Hibernian Magazine for August 1788 reported on a violent struggle that had taken place in Newgate prison between ‘the celebrated Frederic Lambert’ and fellow inmate Francis Bathhurst Lambert had apparently tried to engage Bathhurst in a fight, which he refused because of Lambert’s disability.
Lambert then slashed Bathurst with a razor and was about to finish him off when he was overpowered by three other prisoners. Bathhurst’s wound was treated by the prison surgeon Lake, but it appeared initially that he would die.
However, Bathurst survived and in late October 1788, Lambert was charged with assault under the Chalking Act which allowed convicted criminals to be executed and dissected within two days of sentencing.
Lambert was duly found guilty of maiming Bathurst and the death sentence was carried out on 30 October 1788 on the gallows in front of Newgate prison. However, the execution – which was carried out in front of a huge crowd – didn’t go smoothly because the hangman had used the wrong thickness of rope and Lambert was seen to struggle against the rope for several minutes before dying. As the ballad said:
When he came to de nubbing chit
He was tucked up so nate and so pretty
The rumbler shoved off from his feet
And he died wid his face to the city
He kicked too but that was all pride
For soon you may know t’was all over
And when dat de noose was untied
At home why we waked him in clover
And sent him to take a ground sweat …
Paddy Flemming
The famous old Irish ballad ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ has been doing the rounds for many years now and the best-known rendition of the song is the one recorded by Dublin band Thin Lizzy in the early 1970s. ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ has also been covered by a wide range of Irish traditional musicians as well as by bands such as Metallica and The Grateful Dead; and I’m reliably informed that there’s at least one rap version of the ballad in existence.
The ballad, in its various forms of ‘McCollister’ and ‘The Irish Robber’ has the common theme of highway robbery, betrayal by a faithless woman and eventual execution of the hero. It has been around for well over 200 years and has its origins in a song written to commemorate the life and times of Athlone-born highwayman Patrick Flemming, who ended his days on a Dublin gallows on 24 April 1650.
Flemming’s exploits were first mentioned in a line of a ballad entitled ‘the Downfall of the Whigs’, penned sometime around 1684, and the ‘The Ballad of Patrick Flemming’ appeared circa 1810, 160 years after his death.
Patrick Flemming, the eldest son in a family of nine children, was born in poor circumstances in Athlone during the early years of the seventeenth century. At the age of thirteen he obtained the position of footboy to the countess of Kildare. However, young Patrick didn’t like taking orders from his ‘betters’ and he was soon shown the door.
Soon afterwards he managed to secure a domestic situation at the home of Lord Antrim but that job didn’t last much longer than the first. According to Flemming’s biographer, Patrick had a falling out with Lord Antrim’s Roman Catholic chaplain and he managed to ridicule the priest in front of the entire household. Flemming was once again given his marching orders but before he left he robbed his employer of silver plate and money to the value of £200.
Flemming lay low for a while after this incident and then made his way to Dublin where he soon earned notoriety as one of the city’s most prolific burglars. After a period of about six years, Flemming was forced to flee Dublin because every watchman in the city was on his case. He fled to the midlands where he became a highwayman and he often ventured out from his stronghold in the Bog of Allen to rob passing coaches and other unsuspecting travellers.
Flemming quickly graduated from robbery to murder and he was said to have treated his victims with an ‘abundance of barbarity’. He once kidnapped the four-year-old son of Lady Baltimore telling her that he would cut the child’s throat and make a pie of him if she didn’t pay a ransom within twenty-four hours.
When things got too hot for him in the midlands, Flemming fled to the Munster region to continue his life of crime. He was eventually caught and imprisoned in Cork City but he escaped by climbing up a chimney.
During the years that followed the increasingly desperate Flemming and his gang murdered at least five men, two women and a fourteen-year-old boy and mutilated and tortured many others including Sir Donagh O’Brien who had his ears, nose and lips cut off during a robbery.
Patrick Flemming was eventually captured while drinking at a tavern near Maynooth and taken to Dublin where he was hanged in chains along with fourteen other criminals on 24 April 1650.
First Lord Mayor
The title of mayor of Dublin stretches back nearly eight hundred years to 1229 when Henry III conferred on the citizens of Dublin the right to elect annually from themselves a loyal discreet and proper mayor’. Richard Muton was elected as first mayor of Dublin but the first man to hold the title of lord mayor was Sir Daniel Bellingham – a Dublin gold and silversmith – who held the office in 1665.
Bellingham, who was born circa 1622, became a freeman of the city in 1644 and sheriff of Dublin eleven years later. He became a ‘sir’ in 1662 and also held the post of vice-treasurer of Ireland from 1663 to 1666.
Prior to holding municipal office in the city, Bellingham was the chief supplier of silver ceremonial objects to the City Assembly and assembly records show that in 1652 ‘at the request of the Mayor and Sheriffs, he had made six silver maces for the officers following the city sword …’ Bellingham was paid sixty-six pounds sterling and he was given some old city maces and other silver items in part payment for his labours.
However, four years later, Bellingham still hadn’t been paid in full for his efforts and in 1656 he petitioned the assembly to pay him the outstanding balance of fifty-seven pounds and three shillings – it was agreed to pay him his money out of fines due to the city. Despite being owed such a large sum, Bellingham still agreed at the same meeting to supply the Assembly with a large silver basket to be put on display with the City Sword.
Bellingham’s gold and silver business did very well out of his connection with the city fathers and in 1662, when they decided to present the duke of Ormonde with the freedom of the city and a gold cup and gold box, he was given the lucrative contract of £350 for manufacturing these items.
When Bellingham became lord mayor in 1665 he made himself a great silver mace that was to be carried in civic processions alongside the City Sword. The Great Mace presently in use by Dublin City Council was made by another goldsmith and lord mayor of Dublin, Thomas Bolton, in 1717. This mace is believed to retain some parts of Bellingham’s original mace.
When his tenure as lord mayor was over in 1667, Bellingham left the mace to
the city and was paid sixty pounds sterling for his trouble.
Gilbert, in his History of the City of Dublin, says that Bellingham ‘held his mayoralty … in a large elegant structure, erected by himself across the ancient entrance to Cow Lane at the corner of Fishamble Street and Castle Street’. Gilbert records that in later years, the lord mayor’s house was occupied in the mid-eighteenth century by ‘an eccentric tobacconist, Thomas Bond and afterwards by another tobacconist named Molony’.
Bellingham was re-elected lord mayor in 1666 but he turned down the offer on the grounds that it would conflict with his duties as deputy receiver of the Exchequer.
Bellingham was a wealthy man at the time of his death in 1671 and he owned a considerable amount of property on the north side of Dublin. In his will he bequeathed some of these lands at Finglas to set up a fund to help prisoners incarcerated in the city’s debtors’ prisons and the Four Courts Marshalsea Prison.
City Bellman
During medieval times in Dublin the office of city bellman was a much sought-after position. In 1578, the corporation of Dublin selected Dubliner Barnaby Rathe to be the holder of this exalted position, which was similar to that of the English ‘town crier’.
The corporation decided that it should get its money’s worth from Barnaby and he was also given the titles of ‘master of the beggars’ and ‘over-seer of the swine’.
Barnaby’s pig-catching skills must not have been up to much as the City Assembly found it necessary to amend his contract just a few months later. The wandering pig problem was much worse than when Barnaby had started and it was decreed that he would continue to get four pence from every household providing that ‘he do his duty in killing such swine as he shall find in the streets, and ridding the city of vagabonds and beggars … it is further agreed that the constables of every warde shall be aiding and helping the said Barnaby for the executing thereof ’.
Despite the efforts of the city fathers to help Barnaby, he found the additional role as ‘master of the beggars’ too much for him and two years later he petitioned the assembly for a place in St John’s poorhouse ‘without the Newgate’ and asked to be relieved of his post as ‘beadle of the beggars’. This situation arose because many citizens, who were supposed to pay the four-penny levy for Barnaby’s services, refused to do so and the assembly showed no inclination to collect the money by force. The assembly subsequently refused Barnaby’s request to give up his post as ‘master of the beggars’ but did agree to grant him lodgings in the poorhouse.
In June 1581 Barnaby again complained to the assembly that he wasn’t being paid for rounding up beggars and again asked to be relieved from his post. His request was again turned down but the assembly did pass extra laws ‘to compel the constables of the several wards to levy the said stipend out of several houses of their wards, and in default of payment, the alderman of the ward to commit the partie that doth refuse’.
The measure obviously didn’t work as two years later we find that Barnaby ‘who hath the greatest part of his wages yet due to him’, was back before the assembly again looking for his money. The assembly eventually agreed to pay Barnaby a fixed yearly rate of twenty-six shillings and eight pence for his labours.
His fortunes obviously went from bad to worse after that because eight years later Barnaby, who had lost his job as ‘beadle of the beggars’ to one John Balloure but retained the post of city bellman, was nearly destitute. He was still in residence at St John’s poorhouse in December 1589 and he was in debt to the assembly to the tune of twenty-three shillings sterling.
Although Barnaby spent his last years in the poorhouse, he seems to have been allowed to retain his job as city bellman and he appears to have died in office five years later. The last mention of Barnaby came in 1594 when assembly records stated that: ‘John Scally, bellman, shall have the bellman’s office, with all prerequisites thereunto belonging, in as large and beneficial manner as Barnaby Rathe, late bellman of this city hath enjoyed …’
Saint Valentine
Every year on St Valentine’s Day, romantic types descend on Dublin’s Whitefriar Street Church to visit the shrine of the ‘saint of love’, but in recent years there has been some controversy as to the real whereabouts of the saint’s remains.
The Catholic Encyclopaedia lists three different Valentines who were all martyred on 14 February. The first of these was a Roman priest who was martyred in either AD 269 or 270 and the second one was killed while serving as bishop of Terni near Rome. Information in relation to the third Valentine is thin on the ground and the Catholic Encyclopaedia only mentions that ‘he suffered in Africa with a number of his companions’.
Therefore we don’t actually know which Saint Valentine is actually being commemorated on 14 February, but the smart money seems to be on the Roman who was killed during the reign of Claudius the Goth. This Valentine apparently refused to carry out an edict issued by the emperor that forbade all marriages and engagements in Rome because of his belief that married men made poor soldiers. Valentine continued to marry young couples and he was clubbed to death and beheaded for his trouble.
The feast day itself is believed to be a Christian imposition on the pagan Roman festival of Lupercalia, which began on the Ides of February. This was a fertility festival that traditionally began with a visit by the Luperci high priests to the cave where the founders of Rome – Romulus and Remus – were looked after by a she-wolf.
Following the sacrifice of a goat and a dog at the cave, the goat’s skin was cut into strips and dipped in blood. The strips were then distributed to young men who would run through the streets of Rome slapping women with them. Far from objecting to the practice, Roman women considered themselves lucky to be slapped with strips of bloody goatskin, as they believed it would make them more fertile. Tradition also has it that the feast of Lupercalia was the time when young Roman men and women chose their partners.
Although the Carmelite church in Dublin’s Whitefriar Street claims to hold the remains of Saint Valentine, some other churches also make the same claim. These include the church of Praxedes in Rome and, more recently, St Francis’ Church in Glasgow.
While it’s quite possible that all the claimants possess a small piece of the saint’s remains, the Whitefriar Street case is authenticated by a covering letter from the Vatican, which arrived in Dublin with Saint Valentine’s remains in 1836.
One year earlier, a Whitefriar Street priest, Father John Spratt, who was a close friend of Daniel O’Connell, had been preaching in Rome. Father Spratt was renowned in Dublin for his powers of oratory and his work in the poorer areas of the city. While on tour in Rome, he had an audience with Pope Gregory XVI, who honoured him with a gift of the body of Saint Valentine. The saint’s remains arrived in Dublin on 10 November 1836 and were taken with great pomp and ceremony to Whitefriar Street Church, where they remain to this day.
Today, the wooden casket holding the saint’s remains is on public display at the shrine to Saint Valentine at Whitefriar Street Church and it has become a place of pilgrimage for lovers from all over the world.
Duke of Richmond
Charles Lennox, the duke of Richmond, came to Ireland in 1807 to assume the role of lord lieutenant. Within a short space of time, however, he was better known as the ‘duke of Poitín’.
The duke – after whom the Richmond Penitentiary and Richmond Lunatic Asylum were later named – arrived here to take up residence at Dublin Castle and his tenure was marked by feasting and drinking on a grand scale.
Lennox was more intent on the pursuit of pleasure than attending to affairs of state during his reign in Ireland, and it was said that he would think nothing of knocking back four bottles of claret with his dinner.
He took an active role in Dublin’s social life and he would often be seen at events such as the Donnybrook Fair and the annual pattern at St John’s Well near Kilmainham, where he presided over sumptuous feasts laid on for his cronies and hangers-on.
The duke also l
iked his sport and he was a regular visitor to cock-fighting bouts in Clarendon Street and he was also fond of boxing and cricket. However, his favourite pastime was the game of rackets – an early form of tennis – which he played regularly at the rackets hall in John’s Lane.
Richmond liked to amuse himself by bringing over some of England’s top players for matches and one of these was Lord Sydney Osborne, who prided himself on his skill with a racket. On one visit to Dublin he challenged ‘any man in the world’ to play him for a wager of a thousand guineas.
Along with his other vices, the duke of Richmond was also an inveterate gambler and he promised Osborne that he would find a worthy opponent for him. The man that the duke had in mind was a Dublin tailor named Flood, who also happened to be a highwayman and pickpocket in his spare time. Flood was also handy with a racket and the duke had seen him play on a number of occasions at the John’s Lane court.
The morning after striking the bet with Osborne, Richmond hurried off to the court to find Flood but was dismayed to discover that the tailor was lying in a cell in Newgate Prison, where he was due to be hanged for highway robbery on the following Saturday.
The duke quickly organised a pardon for the tailor and Flood was duly freed. Richmond soon made Flood aware of the real reason he had been released and the grateful tailor promised that he would win his bet for him.
The day of the match duly arrived and Osborne, who didn’t know a thing about Richmond’s little scheme, started the game brimming with confidence. He began the match well, but Flood slowly wore him down and gradually began to get on top of Osborne. Frustrated by the prospect of being beaten by a lowly tailor, Osborne soon lost his temper and ultimately the match and his wager with the duke of Richmond.
Hidden Dublin Page 18