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Seamus Breathnach

5. Crime And
Punishment In
Nineteenth Century
Ireland
Studies In Irish Criminology:
Book 29

5.b. The
Maam Trasna Murders—
REVISITED
 Sile, Sean and Seamus

Sile: I have heard about the Maam Trasna murders. But what is it about
the murder that warrants the attention of criminologists?

Seamus: I suspect it is because it is one of the most extraordinary

criminal events in the nineteenth century. It is an awkward, contrary, no-
where-disinteresting, but everywhere an ungraspable case.

Sile: That’s a mouthful! Maybe you should begin by saying something of

its details for those who are interested ? I have read two accounts of it
and I never found either that exciting.

Seamus: Go ahead!

Sile: I read (Fr.) Jarlath Waldron’s account and then I read the
contemporary account by a chap called Harrington. I found the second
account somewhat repetitive of the first – not completely, of course, but
substantially so. I felt that while Waldron’s account claims to differ from
Harrington’s, it was very similar to it.

Seamus: How so?

Sile: He finds first that the real suspect behind the murders is the dead
granny; he reverts to what Harrington claimed. Without having read these
accounts in detail the nuances are apt to get lost.

Seamus: What, can you tell me, is your fascination with the case?

Maam Trasna as a ‘Whodunit’?

Sile: Well, that’s my point. I didn’t – and still don’t – find the case that
interesting at all. I was hoping that your enthusiasm for Maamtrasna
might rub off on me.

Seamus: Do you know who did the crime?

2
Sile: I think I do, but it isn’t easy. I suppose, in this superficial sense, it is
a whacking good ‘ whodunit?’ But I’m sure that that aspect of it cannot
make it notorious, can it?

Seamus: No. I’m sure you’re quite right. Nevertheless, one can’t help
reflecting upon Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap in this regard. It ran for
ages in the West End on this very point – and what was every bit as
interesting as the plot, was the scheme by which the stage manager
engaged the audience not to tell the public who the culprit was. As a who-
dunit-drama, it was great, but imagine relying upon such a device to keep
up the interest in the plot! And, of course, it worked. Before I ever went
to see it, several people spoke to me about it, but each was careful to say
that they would not ‘ruin it for me by telling me who did the murder.’
Isn’t that remarkable!

Sean: What’s your point?

Seamus: The first point demonstrates the attraction that the whodunit has
in plots. It’s a bit like music that wanders from the dominant and never
returns to the tonic until the piece is over. The whodunit keeps the
question uppermost in the mind of the audience just as the Mousetrap did.
The second point is that this aspect of quizzicality has entered drama as a
most desirable thing: its anticipatory aspect being uppermost in its
success – especially where the Hollywood Film of late is concerned. But
here it is pronounced to such an extent that it has replaced the plot totally.
And this Hollywood conspiracy to replace plot with quizzical gimmickry,
has destroyed story telling as an art form. You will see it very particularly
in the Da Vinci Code, a story so contrived (by Hollywood) that it
becomes incredible as well as ridiculous. The overemphasis on
quizzicality gives way to endless and repetitive contrivances that spoil
any vestige of the narrative’s connection with verisimilitude.

Sile: It’s your age. It's definitely an age thing!

Sean: You’re right. I saw it also in Fatal Attraction.

Sile: So what if Hollywood now casts films in the same way as Gilbert
and Sullivan staged musicals. What you call the death of drama is, in my
opinion, the beginning of a new form thereof.

Sean: How do you mean?

3
Sile: The criminological argument runs something like this.

As we all know there has to be Heaven and Hell, Good and Bad, Crime
and Punishment. Above all there has to be punishment. All these films –
like Christianity, whose paradigm they echo on the screen -- are
essentially about a punishment. And since the punishment must square
with Biblical or Christian mores, the repentance part is totally excised.
Why? The reason for this is -- I imagine -- because when the opportunity to
repent and make recompense is removed, the film director can dwell upon
what most interests the modern inquisitorial audience -- retribution! The
naked masochistic reward for delaying the final delivery of the final
coup de gras. It sounds illogical : Kant's categorical imperative reduced to
a holywood execution in plastic. This inner essential has to be couched in terms
of comeuppance. This is the sole theme and raison d’etre of the film. In order,
therefore to deliver the coup de gras and retain one’s Christian’s balance of
of propriety, the culprit must really get up the nose of the audience.

By making him (or her) so obnoxious, by visibly making him such a hate-
figure, the punishment, when it comes, comes as ‘justice’,condign and balan ced.
And no matter how horrific the coup de gras, it is meant morally as a just thing to
do, a good ending to an evil episode. The good shall be rewarded and the wicked
shall be punished.

So, for example, in Fatal Attraction, there’s going to be a final reckoning.

Someone therefore has to perform like a bitch and elicit the sympathies of
the audience in preparation of the savage end. The story is ever the same.
In Fatal Attraction the bitch of control, played by Glenda Close, has to be
killed, because she wont take ‘no’ for an answer. She wants to destroy
Michael Douglas’s happy family (not to mention his pet rabbit), that is,
‘happy’ in an acceptably unhappy modern way. Anyway, they kill Glenda
with knives and water. But the feeling is renewed like an old cadence
from The Pirates of Penzance. They want to execute her -- but more than
once. One killing does not exhaust the sense of Hollywood revulsion that has
been created throughout the film. The usual thing is to delay the torture of the
final blow. But they can’t delay her death. So, they do the next best
thing. They get her to revive herself after her death by water and then she
is re-executed -- but this time by the wife : and by way of firing several
bullets into her body. Hollywood has always had such respect for Guns
and Bullets – now extended to the modern woman and her trusty six-pack!
Hollywood knows how final guns and bullets can be. But, even still, they
might think of restaging another comeback, if and when the public is
prepared for it.

Sean: So, where does that leave us?

4
Sile: It leaves us with two things. One is that there is a lot to be said for
jigsaw puzzles, after the fashion of either Da Vinci, The Mousetrap or,
indeed, Harry Potter. Audiences love a puzzle, whether of cross words or
of words that cross. And the second point is that the engrossment of
puzzles into contrived plots has worked its way to great effect into the art
of story telling. If the Plot has been taken over by the cinematography of
gimmickry and cinematography itself, then so be it. We can’t always
expect to have a Hamlet-like plot. Maybe it is sufficient just to stay on to
look at the pictures. But you don’t agree with that?

Seamus: Well, there is the possibility that there has been a warping of the
cinema-going public’s brain. And each year it gets worse, approximating a
bad version of Jungle Book, with neither the tunes nor the plot of the
original… South Pacific was the same. Everything is not only
consumable downwards but is aimed at titillating the untitillatable -- the
infant who is both infant and infantile! Anyway, how should we apply
what you have said to Maam Trasna?

Sile: Well, I take the points that you have made and they are all present in
Maam Trasna. It should be said, however, that the contrivances in Maam
Trasna are not simply those of a one-dimensional agent like Hollywood –
an agent that controls the narrative. The contrivances in Maam Trasna are
the real people in the story. The contrivances from the revelations of the
‘ independent witnesses’ to the‘ Crown Approvers’ to the Politicians
(Irish and British), as well as the role of the Church – they are all part of
some great contrivance that is quite difficult to unravel. But my point is
that this great whodunit, and its contrivances, is part of the murder, not
part of its outside narrative.

Maam Trasna as Narrative

Seamus: There is another significant point I want to make and it is this. In

studying murder, as either a narrative, or as a criminological event, the
object, surely, is to learn from it. Whether art teaches or entertains – or
whether these categories are mutually exclusive – is an argument that we
are not going into here but which resonates (aphoristically at any rate) in
the writings of Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century and George
Bernard Shaw, and indeed, more seriously in the works of the Italian
philosopher Croce. Is art meant to edify or entertain?

5
According to Benedetto Croce (in an 1893 Essay) much depended upon
whether history should be conceived as a science, as it had lately been
conceived by the Germans, or as an art form. Although Croce was
inclined to reject most of the theories then prevalent and opt for art as an
individually intuitive matter, a vision of anarchic proportions, he
contrasted the nominalism of art with science as a construction of general
concepts and their interrelationships.

Sile: But we are hardly interested here in the philosophic arguments. Are
we not more concerned with Maam Trasna as a social phenomenon?

Seamus: Of course, but how do we relate such social phenomena, as

narrative, as science, or as art?

Sean: I see what you mean.

Sile: Maybe, like the Aes Dana or the Blessed Trinity, art, science and
history are all three leafs of the same Trinitarian shamrock. And even if
we can’t resolve the matter here, can I say that I believe our purpose in
dealing with accounts of murder is to be edified by the analysis of the
history of our past, and by our examination and assessment of our
experiential past. To pour it into a biblical bottle or a criminal lawyer’s phial
and to freeze it forever is the last thing we want to do with it, because it is
the least beneficial way to treat it. And yet this is what we do all the time.
In this sense there is an atrocious incapacity to learn – to learn from our
experience. So, with the Irish, the novel idea that they should learn from
their own experience antedates any argument as to whether art imitates
experience or whether it entertains or edifies. These distinctions and
arguments come after the establishment of a discourse that is not overwhel-
-med by parables from either the pulpit or the judicial bench. This non-
discourse is an index of the disconnection between experience and any art
forms to which it pretends it gives birth .

Sean: Methinks we are, in this respect, too attentive to Hollywood.

Maybe they overcame us too early with the cinema and we have never
analysed the arts properly.

Seamus: I don’t follow.

Sean: Sile thinks that the narrative should edify. To do so, a commitment
to the social phenomena – in this case, the social phenomena of Maam
Trasna – is imperative. But Hollywood has no such ambition. As social
phenomenon its narratives need not necessarily have to do with social

6
experience in the ordinary way. The cinema's main appeal at present is to
stimulate the dominion of the imagination in children. Its purpose and its
end is to‘ play with’, rather than to teach or entertain – which need not be
bad in any moral sense – but which may be somewhat tedious in the long
term. It also, in some ways, spells out the worrying disjuncture between
social experience and social concern. We grew up in American Movies!

Sile: But the biblical narrative was once based on social phenomena, until
the Holy Romans did a Hollywood on it, and conveyed it to the empire as
abstract or eternal truth. Like Hollywood, the Bible displaced Gaelic tribes
with Jewish roots, just as the Hollywood American displaced the native
Indian tribes. What one can do with abstractions and a story!

Sean: How rich!

Sile: Elsewhere, hasn’t Seamus explained that all you need to do is to

re:travel the imperialised trails of the Christian conquest. Write a book or
a tune evocative of Jesu and/or the Virgin Mary, and they will play in
every hick hut from here to Uganda. The priesthood through the pulpits
will feed it to the parishes, the parishes will feed it to the communities,
the communities will feed it to the schools, the schools will feed it to the
children, and the mothers will even go without contraceptives to give
their children the message of the Lord and at least an equal if not a better
chance in life.

Sean: Yes. I remember that. But what I meant was, it should be

connected and understood in terms of each community’s own history,
each community’s own experiences.

Sile: But that’ the point of imperialism. Through the Christian spectacle
as well as through the Hollywood spectacle, we both know all their
experiences – as all our experiences –. Or, put another way, their
experience has become our experience and our perceived reality.

Sean: Jesus! The way you talk about it, one would think that we are all
dummies, clones, moronic pieces of consumable Christian and
Hollywood propaganda.

Sile: Precisely!
Seamus: Precisely!

Sean: O, my God! Are you saying that Maam Trasna has been fed to us
in the same way?

7
Sile: Well, if we are informed of everything else in the same fashion as
we are informed of both the Christian conquest and how murder, war, and
justice are done in Hollywood (and Rome), then the answer must be’ yes.’

As we are all aware, we have had a great increase in the incidence of

murder in Ireland, but it never seems to be related either to any historical
or social events. (For a further airing of this criticism See 10.e. Bk. 13: A
Short History of Capital Punishment in Ireland: Vol. 4: Infanticide Or The Mercy
Miracle. ) All the babble about Irish murder seems to go no further than
the event itself or by reference to bankrupt Christian morality, or some
idea of police or criminal ‘ science’ that is invariably couched in the same
or similar terms, and little else besides.

Sean: But we cannot blame Hollywood for such shallowness, no more

than we can blame Rome for the shallowness that proceeds from the
practice and content of religion and its homogeneous references to Bible
and Scripture. It stifles both the social sciences as well as the propensity
to speculate howsoever. In truth it is so inferior to the work of the social
sciences that its pre-eminence is a tribute to the totalitarianism of
Christianity at the highest levels of comprehension. It is as if religion has
lost all credibility; it just governs from RTE in the most fickle manner.
Even in its obsolescence real analysis has to take second place to the
Church’s hoary old make-believe.

Seamus: But surely you overlook the real issue of murder today?

Sile: Which is?

Seamus: These days I feel that murder, its management and its portrayal,
is actually part of Christian morality. In comparison with what’s on
television as news, the Seventh Commandment is just ridiculous. It’s like
preaching from Castel Gandolpho about the virtue of being born in a
stable — and without the slightest hint of irony! Who’s kidding whom?

Sean: You mean the reports by RTE on the daily murders in Ireland?

Seamus: That’s part of it, of course. But I mean the way we and our
children and families all over the world are called upon to witness US
forces murdering people on our television. It’s done with the same
enthusiasm as a soccer game. We are even expected to cheer when the
US or its allies kill people. It’s like Israel deux point, Palestine nil;

8
America a direct hit, ten people dead, and a few more unintended ones –
and the terrorists NI L. The sacrifice of the Mass does the same thing!

Sean: But was Maam Trasna that brutal in the scheme of things?

Seamus: What scheme of things?

Sile: In term of nineteenth century murder?

Seamus: Maam Trasna was a gruesome crime. But when compared with
others – like The Invincibles or, worse still, The Burning of the Sheas, or
some of the other nineteenth century murders, Gaslight or Agrarian -- it
loses its notoriety.

Sean: So, what, then, makes Maamtrasna so irresistible as an Irish

murder?

Sile: -- But, surely, all of these murders have uniquely Irish features!
And even if the Invincibles sounds like something authored by Baader
Meinhof a century later, any analysis of the facts and circumstances will
reveal their unmistakeable Irish identity.

Seamus: Maamtrasna has an intriguing continuity in Irish history.

Indeed, if understood in a proper context, it points unmistakeably, I
believe, to some of the most unique features of Irish life . Not only that,
but these features also strike one with an extraordinariness that pushes us
back to the boundaries of our simplicities in explaining murder.

Sean: What kind of features?

Sile: Yes. What features do you have in mind?

Seamus: Would you not accept that you can only appreciate the features
of a culture after you have become familiar with all the facts of a case. In
other words, is it not futile to talk of characters or situations or structures
(social or criminal) without first reciting the story, concerning the facts of
which, might I gladly say, all commentators are in agreement?

Sean: Of course.

Sile: So, what’s the case about?

Seamus: Buy a copy of the book and find out!

9
Sean: I will if you ever finish it. Surely you can mention one feature,
which is unique to this case without having to recite all the details?

Seamus: Most of those involved spoke Gaelic. Isn’t that feature in itself
unique?

Sile: So, what’s the story about?

***

10
Studies in Irish
Criminology :
Book 29

THE
MAAMTRASNA
MURDERS--
revisited

Seamus
Breathnach
www.irishcriminology.com
THE MAAMTRASNA
MURDERS –
REVISITED
WWW.IRISHCRIMINOLOGY.COM

Seamus
Breathnach
i
COPYRIGHT
ii
 Other Works by the Author:

A History Of The Irish Police

(From Earliest Times.)
Publishers: Anvil, 1974

Emile Durkheim On Crime And Punishment

(An Exegesis)
Dissertation. COM, 2002

The Riddle Of The Caswell Mutiny

UPublish. Com 2003

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN 20TH CENTURY

IRELAND: VOLUME 2
A Description Of The Criminal Justice System (CJS)(1950-80)
UPublish. Com 2003

www.irishcriminology.com

iii
DEDICATION

iv
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements………..vi
Introduction………………viii

PART 1: Grass Roots

1. What Anthony Joyce Saw

2. The Morning After
3. Birds Of A Feather
4. Who’s Who in Maamtrasna

PART 2: Pointing The Finger

5. The Theorists
6. The Sheep-Stealers
7. The Informers
8. The Ribbon men

PART 3: The Powers That Be

9. The Approvers
10. Enter the Judge
11. Three Trials in a Row
12. Three Executions

PART 4: The Other Powers That Be

13. Here Comes the Bishop

14. I Confess (Again)
15. Church and State (and Church and Press)
16. Lessons of Maamtrasna

v
 PART 5: The Story -Tellers

17. Harrington
18. Jarlath Waldron
19. The Freeman’s Journal
20. Crime and Criminology

Maamtrasna Timeline
Appendices
References
Index

vi
PART 1
 The Maamtrasna Murders

Grass Roots

1. What Anthony Joyce saw

On Thursday night August 17th 1882 Anthony Joyce went to bed early.
Around midnight he awoke abruptly. The heat of August was still in the air
and despite the darkness, the stars lit up the sky. When he realised it was the
dogs that awakened him, he tried to go back to sleep, but to his annoyance the
barking persisted.

He got out of bed and went over to the main door to see what the
commotion was all about. To his astonishment he saw some men approaching
along the road. His house was some 47 feet from the main pathway, so there
was some distance between them. Indeed, the house was built at right angles
to the road (or boreen) with the door facing eastward. There was also a barn
situate at the end of the house which at first made it difficult for him – and
some would say, impossible -- to obtain a view of the road. Even if he could
not recognise any of the members in the group, a sense of alarm nevertheless
ran down his spine. Neither for that matter could he at this stage hear anything
the men were saying.

Whoever these men were, Anthony Joyce instinctively felt they were
up to no good. For six men to assemble in the early hours of the morning in
the back-of-the-beyonds of Cappanacreha was sufficient in itself to arouse his
suspicions.

He put on his trousers, threw a shirt over his flannel vest and hurried
round to the back of the house, losing sight of the men momentarily, but
remaining anxious until he had the six in view again. This time he recognised
them. Indeed, he knew every mother’s son of them. And why wouldn’t he?
They were his neighbours and his kinsmen were among them.

His eyes followed the six as they passed by. Out of curiosity he felt he
had to follow them – not least because they were heading in the direction of

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 The Maamtrasna Murders

his brother’s house, and he wanted to make sure that whatever business
they had out so late at night, it would not damage his brother or his family.
Hurriedly he made a detour, short-cutting the party of six, and entering his
brother’s house with some urgency. He roused his brother and his nephew and
appraised them of what he saw. They came out and observed the six men for
themselves. They watched them proceeding along the road in the direction of
Michael Casey’s house. The three men decided to follow the party of six,
wherever it would lead.
Remaining behind and staying out of sight, the three men followed the
six men along the road. And when they saw the six men stop at Michael
Casey's house, they halted and hid themselves behind some hedges. They could
clearly see ‘most’ of the men go into Casey’s house. It wasn’t long before
these men re-emerged and walked along a back-road. Moreover, their
number had grown, for now the six men numbered ten. The extra four men
had come out of Michael Casey’s house. This intrigued Anthony Joyce who
later swore that he knew and recognised all ten men.

Accompanied by his brother and nephew, Anthony Joyce now

followed the suspicious gathering for two miles until they reached
Maamtrasna. The track was not only treacherous but the three men who
were trailing were in their bare feet. With the mountain to their right and the
lake to their left they travelled at a comfortable distance behind the ten men
without being noticed.

The ten men walked forward until they came to the river of
Srahnalong. As it happened they were on their way to the house of John
Joyce and at Srahnalong (= a current/tide for boats/ships) they had the option
of going two ways, either by a high road or by a low road. According to
Anthony Joyce they crossed the river to take the low road towards
Maamtrasna. (This fact, we might note, was going to be called into question
later. For the moment it formed part of Anthony Joyce’s unfaltering
testimony.) With the determination of gun dogs the three Joyces continued to
follow the ten no matter – apparently -- where they would lead.

At last they reached John Joyce's house at Maamtrasna. Anthony

Joyce knew it well. But what were ten men doing there at such early hours in
the morning? And why had they come so far? He had followed them for
some two and a half miles – maybe the better part of three miles -- and, as he
knew only too well, some of them had come from much further afield the
distance he had travelled with them.

He saw the ten men go into the broad yard and up to the door of John
Joyce’s little cottage. At this stage he and his brother and nephew had to be
careful to conceal themselves. This they did by taking refuge behind a tree
obliquely situated across the yard of the cottage. They remained there in

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 The Maamtrasna Murders

anticipation. Anthony Joyce began to hear a noise at the door. Not all of the
men went into John Joyce’s house. Some few remained visibly outside in the
yard.

Anthony Joyce then heard more noise. It was like people beating at the
door. He also heard people inside the house shouting and screeching. He also
heard a shot. He could not distinguish the screams of women from those of
men, but he heard screeching and he distinctly heard a shot.

But having heard the shot, the party of three fled the scene. The party
of ten, at the time, were filing out of the cottage and into the yard. And it was
at this stage that the three Joyces fled the scene. They did not know what
time it was exactly, or whether it was Thursday night or Friday morning. All
they knew is that they wanted to get away – so they ran back home in their
bare feet – all the way to John’s house, where Anthony stayed until
daybreak.

That night nothing further transpired.

* * *

2. The Morning After

John Collins lived only yards away from the Joyce family and yet he
had heard nothing the night before. At six in the early morning of Friday
August18 John Collins visited his neighbour. Six o’clock in the morning
might seem an un-Godly hour to be calling on one’s neighbours, but that is
more a suburban view than what actually happens between close neighbours
who live on the side of the mountain and who, for the most part, enjoy only a
makeshift ‘agricultural’ level of subsistence. Sheep were the main asset of the
Maamtrasna ‘economy’. So, if anything wild and seasonal, including rabbit,
hare, fish, grouse, or pheasant chanced across a sheep man’s path, then it
made a welcome addition to the dinner table. The unfortunate thing was that
to procure such game, one had to forget about suburban habits of labour as
well as suburban hours of discourse.
Collins was naturally very familiar with the layout of the cottage for he
had been there many times before. He knew that the cottage was small and

3
 The Maamtrasna Murders

for seven people to live in a small cottage like it, certain economies of taste
and ceremony had on occasion to be ignored or set aside.

Ordinarily the Joyce household consisted of seven persons. But since

the oldest son, Martin, had been recently working on business in Clonlitir,
there were six members of the family in occupation of the cottage. There
was John Joyce (50), who slept in the kitchen area with his second wife
Bridget (45), and his son Michael (17). John’s mother Margaret (80) slept in
the back room with his daughter, Margaret Joyce Jr. (14) and his youngest
son Patrick (9). The cottage, though usual for an Irish peasant, was so small as
to instantly defeat both private taste as well as public hygiene.

When John Collins first came to the house there he noticed two men
up bright and early. They were standing opposite the house converting at the
time. There was nothing unusual about this. Indeed, it wasn’t until he
approached the cottage that he instinctively knew that there was something
amiss. For one thing, there was none of the usual noise that one associated
with the cottage – no one was up and stirring --, and, secondly, the door, he
noticed, had been broken off its hinges. He went into the cottage and saw
John Joyce lying on the floor of the kitchen. He was obviously dead. Shocked
at the sight and without further ado, he retreated sharpishly. He spoke to the
two men of what he had found and with some urgency left it to them to raise
the alarm, while he went directly to the village. He returned promptly with
some of the villagers and re-entered the house.

To his further amazement he now found four dead bodies in the house,
and another two wounded and struggling for life. Among the dead were

1. Margaret Joyce aged over 80,

2. John Joyce (Margaret’s son) aged about 50,

3. Bridget Joyce (John’s second wife) aged 45,

4. Margaret Joyce junior (their Daughter aged about 14, and

The wounded were Michael Joyce (their son) aged about 12 and Patrick
Joyce, the youngest child aged 9 years. Both were still in great pain and
struggled with their respective wounds.

John Joyce's body lay motionless in the fore room. He had two bullet-
wounds in his side and a deep cut across his head. His wife, with whom he
slept, was shot to death as she lay in bed. In the back room granny Margaret
Joyce lay dead with her granddaughter Margaret, whose skull had been

4
 The Maamtrasna Murders

broken with a hammer. Michael Joyce, who was lying in the bed in the
kitchen, was alive. He was able to speak, but with difficulty. Patrick, the
youngest of the Joyces, was also alive. In the tongue of the ancients, he asked
Michael Joyce what had happened. Michael said that …

As it happened Michael Joyce, who was suffering from bullet wounds in

his neck and stomach, succumbed the same day to the overwhelming
malignance of his wounds. Patrick Joyce, therefore, bruised and wounded,
was the only survivor of the unspeakable savagery visited upon the house of
John Joyce of Maamtrasna.
Accompanied by the ten other villagers John Collins proceeded to the
police hut at Finney to report the murder. Finney barracks was a makeshift
hut a mile outside of Maamtrasna. On arrival at about nine o’clock in the
morning, Constable Johnston met them. Two constables were dispatched
immediately to the house to protect the scene. A tent was set up outside and
a detailed account of the comings and goings of visitors was kept. However
responsive the RIC were to the alarm, apparently they were not fast enough;
because evidence was tendered at a subsequent trial that two dogs had taken
up occupation in the bed occupied by the old lady, Margaret Joyce, and that
in fact her left arm which had hung over the bed had been eaten of all the
flesh ‘ up to the elbow’. And despite chasing the dogs away, they had
climbed back into the bed again and again.

When news of the murders reached the outside world, the enormity of the
‘Maamtrasna Murders` began to take shape in the imagination of the world
and became a focal point for contemporary discussion. The Catholic Irish,
renowned at this time for their religion, their unspeakable poverty and an
unexplained amount of endemic violence was augmented by prototypical
superstitions and expectations. Throughout the country in general -- in the
villages and towns and cities -- the news spread rapidly. Soon other counties
re-echoed the news until it spread as a marker for national discussion. Already
the great sense of horror and foreboding that Maamtrasna engendered
entered the political discourse of the times. On the face of it, it tended to
prove once again how violent, anarchic and ungovernable the native Irish
were. In this respect its immediate use to discredit the peasant leadership of
Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt, the leaders of the renowned
Land League, was something waiting to be exploited. Comments broke out
across the British Isles, in the parlours of Dublin and London and surfaced
more sternly in the corridors and chambers of the imperial Parliament.

In the meantime, a savage local crime had been committed, the sentiments
and circumstances surrounding it were local, and vengeance would be local.
And already, on the very same day as the Joyce family had been slaughtered,
the Royal Irish Constabulary had their main man under lock and key. Not
much happened in Maamtrasna without the knowledge of ‘ Big’ Ben Casey

5
 The Maamtrasna Murders

and his son John. The Caseys lived conveniently between the slaughtered
family and the mountain on whose commonage for centuries beasts had
grazed free of rent. The Caseys lived at the bottom of the mountain, hence
their address ‘Bun-a-chnoic” (= ‘Bottom of the Hill or Mountain). And
despite this advantage ‘ Big’ Ben Casey had been complaining for ages about
the disappearance of his sheep off the commonage.

* * *

3. Birds Of A Feather
At midday on Friday, Anthony Joyce decided that he would go and see the
police. He wanted to report what he, his brother and his nephew, had seen
the night before. By the time he got to the RIC station at Finney, he had his
mind prepared to recite the whole story. When he went into the RIC hut, he
found that the police were unusually busy and unusually good tempered.
They hardly had the time or the inclination to notice him. Eventually he made
his presence felt – for he knew that he had something important to say. He
told one of the officers who understood some Gaelic that he had something to
say about murder. The officer got him an interview with the Sergeant in
charge and a translator.

‘Ask him what he has to say?’ said the Sergeant.

Anthony Joyce’s eyes now moved to the translator. He also noticed

that several others had moved into the room to hear what was going on. The
translator related the story back to the Sergeant and everyone else the room.
A pause ensued and a broad smile broke across the Sergeant’s gob. Anthony
Joyce could not account for this reaction. It was disconcerting to be laughed
at in a police station, especially when he was bearing what was, by any stretch
of the imagination, a rather important piece of information.

‘Cerd ‘ta cearr?’ he asked his translator. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Tell him’, said the Sergeant, ‘Tell him we know about the murder. We
knew about it early this morning, when the men of the village came in. And
you might as well tell him that we have arrested the culprit as well. And if he
can add anything useful, he can make a statement to that effect later’

6
 The Maamtrasna Murders

Anthony Joyce was astounded. He felt quite deflated. He had so much

to tell the police ,but he now found that they had arrested one of the men
responsible. If they already had the killers – even one of them -- then there
was no more to say or do. They would get the whole story sooner or later.
He turned it over again in his mind. Their efficiency of the police was
incomparable. It appeared that they were compiling a full report on the whole
matter. As he spoke they had their man in the station and were interrogating
him.

But still he couldn’t quite understand it. He knew that John Collins had
found the bodies early that morning, that it was he who sounded the early
alarm and that it was he who first raised the hue and cry. He just couldn’t
understand how the RIC knew who the culprits were. Surely John Collins
hadn’t given the police that information. So, who could have done it? As far
as the early alarm was concerned, he himself had heard the news repeated
that morning in the village, but, curiously, instead of going to the police either
then or earlier, he decided to revisit the scene of the murders again.

It is instructive if at this juncture we peruse a sketch map prepared of

the scene of the Maamtrasna murders. This sketch was drawn up by one John
Ryan on a scale of twelve inches per mile and is universally useful. It served
as a reference source for lawyers and juries during the respective trials that
followed. It also provides a focus on many of the residences occupied both by
the witnesses as well as the suspects to the murders. The sketch does not
include the dwellings of some of the suspects alleged to have been involved in
the murders, simply because it is too small to include those who lived outside
the area. On the other hand the sketch included most of the dwellings of
those concerned with the murder, it describes the path taken by murderers
and witnesses alike. It also adds a sense of reality to Anthony Joyce’s
evidence.

But leaving aside the whereabouts of the suspects for the moment, we
might first observe from the sketch the distance that extends from
Cappanacreha on the right to Maamtrasna on the left. On the right side of the
sketch also is a marking for Derry, with Derry Park and Lough Mask
occupying the middle ground. The middle line in the Sketch commencing at
Cappanacreha and finishing at Maamtrasna details the path taken by the
suspected murderers and the witnesses who followed them. The path runs
between lake and mountain and extends between two to three miles in length.
The road going through Cappanacreha (South) and Shanavallycahill (North)
was where the three Joyces said they first saw six suspicious men – from
which vantage point they began to follow the suspects right across the entire
latitude of the sketch.

The sketch also gives us an incidental impression of the extent of the

Joyce and Casey settlements, the Joyces as an extended family clustering

7
 The Maamtrasna Murders

around the extreme right of the sketch and the Caseys, not so much
clustering as spread about the left side of the sketch. What perhaps is of equal
importance is the fact that few other families bearing a different surname --
other than Casey and Joyce – occupied the landscape. The landscape itself is
colourful, picturesque, but was, at the time, rather barren of bloom as well as
industry manufacture. It is a place where no industry at the time had ever
penetrated.
On the extreme left of the sketch is a large X indicating the cottage in
which John Joyce and his family lived. This was where the murders took
place and within which all the victims lived. On the bottom left hand corner
of the sketch there is a further inset sketch (Sketch Two) of John Joyce’s
cottage, it’s out offices, yard and across the yard some hedges. Symbols 1W,
2W, and 3W show respectively where the witnesses, Anthony Joyce, his
brother John and his nephew, Pat Joyce, concealed themselves from the view
of the murderers.

What will also be seen from the sketch is the general location of some
Joyces and some Caseys in the general vicinity, almost to the exclusion of
others. These tribal names do not totally exclude others – such as Lydons and
Coynes – but any variety of settlers other than Caseys and Joyces in the
neighbourhood was severely restricted. And this gives us a clue as to the
nature of the relationships, which had for centuries built up in the area. But
more of this anon.

What we are presently interest in is the location of the homes of the

three witnesses, marked respectively 1W, 2W and 3W (first, second and third
witness) locates where the Joyces lived, that is, to the right of the sketch and
to the left of the road as one proceeds from Cappanacreha to Maamtrasna. It
also shows how closely the witnesses lived to other Joyces as well as, at the
extreme left of the sketch, how close John Collins lived to the murdered man
and his family. So when he came to see John Joyce early on Friday morning,
John Collins had only to walk merely a few yards, whereas Anthony Joyce, to
revisit the scene of the crime he had witnessed in the dark the night before,
had to make a trip of two to three miles from Cappanacreha. Why he felt he
had to revisit the scene at all prior to reporting matters to the police was a
matter for some speculation among those who heard his story. Of course it
could indicate that perhaps he didn’t know what had happened the night
before or, hearing the shot, he did not imagine that anyone had been killed.
Alternatively, it could mean that he knew that someone had been killed but
wanted to confirm this or, in any event, he wanted to see the scene before he
went to the police. These alternatives, as we shall see, were with good reason
a matter of infinite speculation.

Also displayed on the sketch is the inset of the cottage, the location of
the three witnesses vis-à-vis the cottage, several other houses, including that

8
 The Maamtrasna Murders

of ‘Big’ John Casey, beyond whose house was the Partry and Maamtrasna
mountain ranges where the sheep of many of the villagers were held in
commonage.

Before Anthony Joyce left Finney RIC barracks, he asked the

translator: ‘Ce he?’ ‘Which of them have you arrested?’

The translator looked sheepishly at him. Loath to impart police

information to the public, by way of a concession he leaned into a whisper:
“‘Big’ John Casey of Bunchnoic”.

‘Ach ni raibh se ann! Ni raibh se ann!’ said Joyce quite agitated.

The translator could see Joyce’s distress, but he also noticed something
of satisfaction in his protest. For now he could speak authoritatively on the
subject of the murders. He kept repeating ‘He wasn’t there. It wasn’t him!
He wasn’t there!’

When the Sergeant heard this, he was somehow impressed. He began

to take a much more serious look at the peasant-informant, Anthony Joyce.
He asked the translator yet again what Joyce was doing in his station. And
when he was told about Joyce’s escapade the night before, he cleared the
table, emptied the room of most people, put Joyce sitting down in front of
him and summoned the Head Constable and the DI (District Inpector) to
attend.

For hours to follow they listened to what Anthony Joyce had to say.
There wasn’t a man among them that was not perplexed. They got the maps
out. Pipe-smokers went in and out of the interview room shaking their heads.
Older RIC members were being consulted as to the plausibility of Anthony
Joyce’s account. Anthony Joyce was ready, willing and able to go to court
with his story. According to him it was all perfectly straightforward. But the
more he expressed himself the more some of the older members flinched. A
sixth sense told them that nothing was ever that simple in Ireland, least of all
agrarian and familial murder.

* * *

9
 The Two ‘ Independent Witnesses’ ,
Anthony Joyce and his brother, John Joyce