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Who are the two men set to receive a pardon for being wrongfully convicted of murdering a landlord 142 years ago?

Sylvester Poff and James Barrett were hanged for the 1882 murder of Thomas Browne in Co Kerry

The grave of Sylvester Poff and James Barrett, who are to receive posthumous presidential pardons, in Co Kerry. Photograph: Facebook/Castleisland Heritage Group

Ronan McGreevy's face
Ronan McGreevy
Sun May 5 2024 - 06:30

The year 1882 is best remembered in Ireland for the Phoenix Park murders. On May 6th, the new chief secretary to Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and the permanent under-secretary, Thomas Burke, were brutally stabbed to death while walking through the Dublin park.

Their murders were the most infamous incident of the Land Wars, which ran from 1879 and 1882, and convulsed the country. In response, the British government brought in the Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act which provided the severest penalties for violent agitation.

It was in this febrile atmosphere that two men were hanged for the murder of a landlord in Co Kerry. On October 3rd, 1882, Thomas Browne was murdered while working in one of his fields in Dromulton near Scartaglin. Browne was described in court as a “large farmer, industrious, hardworking, and bearing a good reputation” who had been able to buy rather than rent a sizeable farm with two other former tenants.

Sylvester Poff, of Mountnicholas, and his first cousin James Barrett were convicted on the evidence of a single witness, Bridget Brosnan, who changed her story many times. Initially, she said three men had killed Browne, and then there were two. She claimed to have seen two men in long, dark coats shoot Browne on his farm. Yet her descriptions did not match that of either Poff or Barrett.

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Brosnan was the sole eyewitness and her testimony did not impress the all-male jury that deliberated at the first trial. “Not a chance,” was their response when asked by the judge if they had reached a verdict. A second “special jury” was convened from some of the more well-to-do denizens of the district who had been horrified by the unrest, which led to the killing of a magistrate and land agent Arthur Herbert near his home in Castleisland, Co Kerry on March 30th, 1882.

They convicted Poff and Barrett in December 1882 despite pleas of innocence from both.

“I never injured a hair on a man’s head,” said Barrett.

Poff said he was “no more guilty than our Saviour”, maintaining that he had nothing to do with the murder.

“We are as innocent as you are,” he told the judge.

Time has proven Poff right, and the Cabinet last month agreed to recommend posthumous presidential pardons for him and Barrett. It will be the fourth time that a posthumous pardon has been awarded, with Minister for Justice Helen McEntee saying it is a “very rare occurrence” and a “very high bar must be reached” for such a recommendation to be made.

Poff, who was born in 1846 during the Great Famine, was caught up in the Land Wars. He, his wife and their four children were evicted from their land in July 1881 and went to live with neighbours.

A contemporary report stated: “Poff, having given up possession quietly and himself and his family having procured shelter from a neighbour, the sheriff and party of police returned to Tralee about 2pm, leaving the bailiffs in charge of the evicted premises.”

Poff was of Palatine stock, hence his unusual surname. His Protestant ancestors came to Kerry in the 1740s or 1750s, having left Germany earlier in the 18th century to escape religious persecution. Many of them settled in west Limerick and north Kerry. At some stage in the next 130 years, the Poffs became Catholics.

Many Palatines in Ireland thrived in the flax trade, but Poff was not among them. He was helped by the Land League after being evicted and spent some time in jail, but so did many others at that time who were involved in land agitation.

Barrett was a single man in his 20s. He lived at Dromultan with his father, who was described in The Irish Times court report from the time as a “respectable farmer”. He had no criminal record. Barrett was something of an innocent abroad and protested after his conviction that he had never handled a gun in his life.

The prosecution could find no motivation for their alleged murder of Browne, yet the jury convicted the pair anyway. Both may effectively have been executed not for the murder of Browne but for that of the land agent Herbert. Nobody was ever convicted for his murder.

Even by Victorian standards, the murder trial was regarded as a sham. Six years afterwards, the Irish Nationalist MP Edward Harrington declared that the pair had been “judiciously murdered” and the ultimate motivations for their execution were political, not criminal.

“I do not think there is a man in Kerry who believes he was guilty. I am on my oath, and I say solemnly I believe he was as innocent as any man in this court.”

At this remove it is believed the most likely culprits for the Browne killing were two desperados will lived locally called Jack Cathy Connor and George Twiss, the latter being from a well-off family who had fallen on hard times.

The case has been taken up by volunteers at the Castleisland Heritage Centre who have worked tirelessly on it for years.

It is more than 140 years since Poff and Barrett were hanged in Tralee Gaol. The presidential pardon comes much too late for any of their immediate descendants, who had to live with the unfair stigma of being related to convicted murderers.

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