Irish Lives

James ‘Skin-the-Goat’ Fitzharris (1843-1910): FITZHARRIS was born October 4th, 1843, in Ballybeg, Co Wexford. From his early teens he worked on the local Sinnott estate with his father, John. In the early 1870s he was dismissed after wrecking a hunt by setting a sheepdog on a fox that was being pursued by Lord Courtown.

He went to Dublin, where he worked as a builder’s labourer and later as a cab driver. For a time he lived on Denzille Street, opposite James Carey, who employed him on general business. He also worked regularly for the Dublin Metropolitan Police.

It was said he got his nickname by killing a goat with his clasp knife when he saw it eating straw out of his horse’s collar. A more colourful account claimed he killed and skinned a pet goat and sold its hide to pay his drinking debts.

In December 1881 he was sworn by Carey into the Irish National Invincibles, a small secret society dedicated to political assassination, and he and his cab were often used on Invincible business. In 1882 he was involved in some of the attempts on the life of WE Forster. On May 6th, 1882, he drove Carey and two other Invincibles to Phoenix Park, and waited there to carry away three others after the killings. In the following months, Fitzharris continued to work with the Invincibles.

Named by an informer, he was arrested in February 1883 at his home off Lime Street, and was tried for murder, but found not guilty. During the trial he cut a wild figure in a shabby black overcoat, waistcoat, and red muffler, with his long unkempt beard.

He seemed unconcerned throughout the proceedings, shouting abuse at Carey and Kavanagh (who had both turned approver), winking at his friends and grinning broadly when his character was attacked by the prosecution. Retried on May 15th, he was found guilty of being an accessory to murder and sentenced to penal servitude for life. His heavy sentence and refusal to inform on his colleagues won him much public sympathy, and during his imprisonment he became something of a nationalist martyr – when his wife Kate died in 1898, Maud Gonne laid a wreath on her grave in Glasnevin cemetery.

After serving his sentence, Fitzharris was released in August 1899, and went to America, but was deported on advice from Dublin Castle. He tried to use his notoriety to start a career on the variety stage in Liverpool, but was unsuccessful and returned to Dublin.

He became a well-known Dublin character, celebrated in local folklore, and received several mentions in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

He died on September 7th, 1910, at the South Dublin Union Infirmary, and was buried alongside his wife. A plaque on his grave commemorates him and his fellow Invincibles.

James Quinn and Liam O’Leary

From the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of Irish Biography. See dib.ie for more details