An Irishman's Diary

WHAT DOES the notorious Judge Norbury have in common with Brian Cowen, the Earl of Rosse and former attorney general Harry Whelehan? At least two things, actually: each has a Co Offaly connection and each figures in a remarkable book, recently published, entitled Legal Offaly, by Tullamore solicitor and local historian Michael Byrne.

The growth in the researching and publication of local history has been one of the most positive by-products of Ireland’s years of plenty. But Offaly would appear to have garnered a first in this fascinating narrative of lawyers, judges, crime and litigation, bizarre proceedings in court and the occasional bloody outrage across an Irish county.

The story of the law in Offaly since the 1820s is a microcosm of the social, political and economic evolution of modern Ireland. The author traces the story from the early Assizes and Quarter Sessions of “King’s County”, through the Sinn Féin courts, the War of Independence and the establishment of the Free State courts, right up to the present day.

Much of the story revolves around the imposing County Court House at Tullamore, designed in the Grecian style by architect JB Keane in 1833, destroyed by anti-Treaty forces during the Civil War, and refurbished to state-of-the art standards in 2007. Among the copious illustrations in the book is a series of fascinating pictures taken in and around the Court House: the Assizes judges arriving in the 1890s with a mounted escort of constabulary; Éamon de Valera addressing a meeting of the Council of County Councils in the 1930s; Bernard Kirwan, later immortalised by Brendan Behan as The Quare Fella, being escorted down the steps, having been arraigned for the murder of his brother, Laurence Kirwan.

Part of the narrative concerns the Tullamore Jail, adjoining the Court House and now a business centre. The jail has its own cheerless history. The plan-of-campaign activists William Smith O’Brien, John Mandeville and TD Sullivan were incarcerated here in the 1880s. Mandeville died shortly after being released, allegedly as a result of ill-treatment in the prison. In 1870, brother and sister Lawrence and Margaret Sheil were hanged within the walls, the first executions in Ireland under the new law requiring that judicial killing take place in private. On January 9th, 1903, Tullamore Jail saw the last hanging of a woman in Ireland. She was Mary Daly of Clonbrock, who was convicted of the murder of her husband, John Daly. Her co-accused, Joseph Taylor, was hanged two days later.

One of the most striking aspects of Michael Byrne’s book is the ease of transition from old to new and how the legal establishment – the solicitors, the barristers and indeed many of the judges – went on with their work under the new rubrics of the Free State, just as they had previously done under the Crown.

In time, the solicitors’ offices, the court-clerkships, the county solicitors’ posts, the registrars’ offices and so on came increasingly to be filled by men (there were no women) who had proven their nationalist credentials. The barristers who practised on the Midland Circuit under the ancient regime were gradually replaced with young men (again, there were no women) whose family names were often synonymous with Cumann na nGael and later with Fianna Fáil. The Rosses of Birr, the Digbys of Geashill and the other landed families which had provided judges, magistrates and gentleman barristers withdrew from the arena, making way for the new, full-time district justices and advocates who did not come from wealthy backgrounds and who had to work for a living.

But the old and the new co-existed amicably for some years. In many ways, this reflected the generally relaxed relationships between nationalist and unionist, Catholic and Protestant that characterised the midland counties in the decades after the establishment of the new State. Dreadful as they may have been, the killings at Coolacrease in 1921 were untypical of local realities. Remarkably, Tullamore today is one of the few county towns in Ireland where two cenotaphs stand: one at O’Connor Square, commemorating the men of King’s County who died in the Great War; the other, at the Court House, testifying to the Offaly men who fought with Óglaigh na hÉireann in the War of Independence.

Michael Byrne’s history is above all else a story about the individuals who have populated the legal system of the county. Brian Cowen has a walk-on role, starting as an apprentice at the firm of Brian P Adams in the early 1980s. Harry Whelehan is listed as a practitioner specialising in personal injuries on the Midland Circuit. Laurence Parsons, later Earl of Rosse, who trained as a lawyer, features as the sponsor of courts buildings in Birr and elsewhere.

Lord Norbury, who lived at Durrow Abbey, four miles from Tullamore, was the presiding judge at the trial of Robert Emmet in 1803. According to myth, he was assassinated on the avenue leading to his house in revenge for Emmet’s death. But that is a myth. Michael Byrne recounts that it was, in fact, his son, the second Lord Norbury, who was assassinated at Durrow in 1839. His murder had nothing to do with Emmet but was related to an agrarian dispute on his estate.

Michael Byrne’s Legal Offaly was grant-aided by the Heritage Council and is available through the Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society.