Seamus Breathnach’s Irish-criminology.com examines Irish society through its norm-creating as well as its norm-breaking agencies. These include the Church controls of Ireland’s State -- its Schools, Law, Police,

Courts, Prisons, Media and much more...

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15.) Addenda!

15d.) Irish American cases (Book #20)

BLIND JUSTICE

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CONTENTS

1. Blind Justice 1872 2. The Glennlara Murder, 1879 3. The American Dream, 1885

4. Love Thy Father, 1899 5. The Lodger, 1902 6. Foster, 1905 7. Home Is The Hero 1910 8. Michael Walsh, 1924 9. Annie Walsh, 1929 10. The Oldest man in the World, 1932 11. Lehman, 1945

Blind Justice

The small market town of Ballyjamesduff is situated in the barony of Castlerahan, in the county of Cavan. These days the old town’s location is more apt to be described as being ‘eight miles from

Cavan town and forty four from D u b l i n . ’ ( S o m e f l y - f i s h i n g Ballyjamesduffians like to think that forty four miles is not quite far enough away from the hustle and bustle of the Metropolis!)

The town’s Market House (erected in 1813) is still in tact, and what with the addition of a modern Museum erected to its own self-esteem, Ballyjamesduff has much to commend it. Any Irish Museum that is unafraid of exhibiting its Sheela-na-Gigs for all and sundry to see, or of housing same in a nineteenth century

convent, deserves all the ecumenical support it receives.

Like all other Irish towns, Ballyjamesuff had its fill both of religious wars and their aftermath, emigration. But such experiences are not always negative. In the eighteenth century, for example, John Wesley made his way to the town to preach a new religion and built a Methodist church for those who were in the mood for religious change.

A century later , Percy French (1854 -- 1920), the song-writer and drains-inspector for the county of Cavan circa 1870s-80s, tried his hand at another kind of preaching. In his much-loved ballad ‘Come Back Paddy Riley To Ballyjamesduff’ , he tried to convince the plain people of the county that ‘the grass grows greener’ in

Ballyjamesduff than anywhere else. Some people say he had enormous success in this enterprise -- and certainly no less than John Wesley.

Apart from being the town that everyone wants to visit, Ballyjamesduff has in more recent times become both a place of retreat as well as a thriving commercial hub, a product of the Celtic

Tiger - and a far cry from its 1837 description when , according to Samuel Lewis, the town had ’ five streets, containing together 150 houses’. That was when the town’s inhabitants numbered less than a thousand.

The town developed along an old mail-coach road that ran between Virginia in the South East of the county to the more central town of Cavan -- hence the stage-coach quality of its broad main street. In 1820 the Virginia/Cavan route changed and so, too, did Ballyjamesduff. It became something of a quiet backwater. And by the 1870s , the town had expanded considerably, but not

unpleasantly. It had its own police station (Royal Irish Constabulary) and it held its own petty sessions. It also had large contingents of Yeomen. But the yeomanry, and the militiamen and the religious wars aside, part of the town’s attraction had always been its comparative safety, and had it not been for a spectacular case of homicide in 1872, Ballyjamesduff would have remained blissfully obscure.

Prior to the murder of Patrick Lynch in 1872, the town rested on its laurels as a rural retreat, where nothing more noisy than the splash of trout was to be heard. Eighteen seventy two was a very particular year. So far as murder was concerned, it fell on a mild year within a mild decade. And despite the scandal two years earlier, when Hugh Fay was tried for choking his lover Mary Lynch of Ballyjamesduff with a belt (Lynch being a popular name in the vicinity), the town was generally a murder-free zone. One might object that no conviction was secured in that case, even when an eye-witness to the murder was known. It was a mark of the times that , fear of reprisals kept that witness silent, and despite several trials, the prosecution-case collapsed utterly.

But how murder-free was Ballyjamesduff before 1872?

During the decade between 1861 and 1870, the Irish Bench handed down 40 capital sentences, and twenty of them resulted in an execution. During the following decade -- that is, between 1871 and 1880 -- 31 capital sentences were handed down and 15 of them resulted in an execution. So, while the 50% execution-rate held firm for both decades, the annual average number of persons hanged throughout the first decade was 2, while for the second decade it fell to 1.5.

But worse was to come, because for the decade between 1881 and 1890 the figures doubled, that is, 66 capital sentences were passed and 30 persons were executed. In other words the annual average number of capital sentences and executions in the sixties was respectively 4 in the sixties and carried 2 executions, then it fell to 3 in the seventies and half were executed, and then in the awful eighties it more than doubled to over 6 , accounting for 3 executions per year on average. In this context, therefore, 1872 was a mild year when it came to murder or execution. Moreover, 1872 was particularly mild in that it accounted for a mere 2 executions and zero commutations. Indeed, with the exceptions of 1868 and 1877, when there were no executions registered, 1872 was one of the mildest years for the thirty years between 1861 and 1890.

Within such an overview, then, we can appreciate something of the unusualness of the case of Patrick "Yankee" Lynch. But it was unusual in many other ways as well.

Perhaps the best place to begin the story is with Rose Lynch. Before Rose married Patrick Lynch, she owned a bog valued 10/-. And when Patrick returned home from America with some dollars in his pocket, he married Rose. In some respects he married the bog as well; for while Rose made a man of him, possession of the bog elevated him from foot-lose emigrant to the proud possessor of a ‘small-farml.’ The couple , with their son, Patrick Jnr., who was only eight years old in ’72, lived in comfort at Lackamore, a few miles outside Ballyjamesduff. Unfortunately , the bogland that blessed their marriage and gave the ‘Yankee’ such high prospects, began to assume a controversial aspect. In abutting the land of the Smith brothers (and their sister) the ‘ten bob’-bog rapidly became the source of a bitter quarrel that was to become fatal.

Prior to his murder -- on July 3 1872 -- Patrick had spent some seven years in the US. And then more recently - just before the harvest of ‘72 - he revisited the US again, this time for a few months’ duration. In an age when the Irish ‘Punt’ was as inconcieveable as a European Euro, the dollar was almighty and Rose Lynch would have been the firsst to admit that ‘the American dollar’ made life easier for herself and her family. And what if Patrick on occasion drank a little more than was good for him, it was his own money he was drinking and he only did so when he came home from the states! In any event, he was a reliable husband, a good father and a reliable provider.

It was because of his American visits that Patrick came to be widely known as the ‘Yankee’ -- an ambiguous if familiar term, which allowed his neighbors to reserve feelings both of endearment and envy in their everyday third-party references to him.

While he was abroad, things were settled at home. It was only when he came back to Ireland in the spring of ‘72 that the relationship between himself and the Smiths began to unravel. There were in all three Smith-brothers. Laurence was the blind one, and then there were the married ones, John and Patrick. There was also Laurence’s sister and his nephew, Bernard. They all lived in the family farm just a few miles outside of Ballyjamesduff in the direction of the New Inn – which was quite near where the Lynch-family lived. The friction centred around the relationship between Patrick Lynch and Laurence Smith. Laurence was well known around town, not just because of his blindness but also because of

his skills in negotiating the streets of Ballyjamesduff and the surrounding roads with the aid of a stick and a well-trained dog.

In many ways both Patrick Lynch and Laurence Smith had much in common. If Lynch had travelled abroad to make his fortune, so, too, had Smith. In his prime, Laurence Smith (40) had emigrated to Australia to work as a digger on the gold rush sites. It was there that an industrial accident which cost his sight. The goldfields, according to one authority, were frontier conurbations, where an unusual mix of men and women came together. Across the country, gold-fields became cultural 'melting pots'; over half the Victorian goldfields' with a population of 150,000 (in 1858) were British immigrants, and some 40,000 of them were Chinese miners and assorted workers.

www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/mateship

It was unfortunate that when Laurence Smith returned to Ireland he had nothing like Patrick Lynch’s wealth. Nevertheless, he was of the fervent opinion that Rose’s bog had always been Smith-land as of right-- no matter how Patrick Lynch or his wife’s family claimed prior title to it.

In her statement to the RIC, Rose Lynch recalled how violent things had become in Ballyjamesduff. She referred to an incident in April, when Patrick struggled home from town one night. He had been severely beaten and had been left on the side of the road by his attackers. He became sick from the attack: he wretched on the side of the road. Worse was to come, for on the afternoon of the July 3 he was found again on the side of the road. This time he had been beaten to death.

According to the medical evidence, Patrick Lynch died from internal bleeding caused by no less than 18 wounds, 17 of which were described as ‘incised wounds’ and 14 of which were fatal. Two of the wounds extended from three-and-a-half to four inches deep and penetrated the chest cavity. Another seven wounds penetrated the abdomen, another the liver, and yet another behind the liver. The instrument used was probably a knife. According to the forensic evidence, the wounds had been inflicted partly while the deceased was standing, partly when stooped, and partly while he was in a recumbent position. In whatever posture the deceased assumed,

the quick, repeated stabs and the internal bleeding were the cause of death.

So random were the wounds that one of the great curiosities about the murder was trying to imagine how it happened. Who would murder so indiscriminately? Who would strike their prey so repetitively -- and in such a promiscuous manner? Murders, as with most aggravated personal assaults, quite often exhibit an unusual disciplinary efficiency. Where people tussle for life, murderers usually try to do maximum damage with minimum effort -- and as efficiently as possible! Between combatants, there is an economy of opportunity and energy that is rarely realized. But the splay of wounds sustained by Patrick Lynch conveyed the opposite impression.

If one can imagine two persons fighting with the explicit intent of killing each other, one expects the scene to contain a compound of clues describing the will to conquer in each combatant. One expects the clues to exhibit some aesthetic mix of anger , repulsion, assault, defense and attack. The exigency as well as the effort to immobilize and kill are sometimes inscribed on the defeated corpse. Patrick Lynch’s corpse proved extraordinary – not just in the multiplicity of assaults made, but rather because each volley made was made anew, as if its predecessor had no effect or geographic connection either with the volleys preceding or following. In this sense the stab-wounds appeared to be disconnected, and suggested -- peculiarly -- that they had been inflicted at random. That so many of the wounds inflicted had been fatal also suggested a most unusually passionate desire to destroy. It prompted the notion, indeed, that the murderer was for some time stabbing a dead or a dysfunctional body! Was the murderer blinded by his passion, or was he simply blind? Or both?

Several people had seen the actual murder as it unfolded. It happened at circa 3 p.m. in the afternoon on a public road. Some people tried to break up the struggle -- at which time Lynch purportedly rose from the ground and exclaimed, "See what you have done?" But he had no sooner said these words than he dropped dead.

The other pecular aspect about the murder was the fact that everyone in Ballyjamesduff knew who did it, irrrespective of whether they witnessed it or not. They even knew before it happened that it might well occur. The real question was never who

killed ‘Yankee‘ Lynch or, indeed, why he was killed. Everyone knew the answers to these questions. What they didn’t know was ‘How’. How was Patrick Lynch killed? And it was this aspect rather than any other that caught the public’s imagination.

How could Laurence Smith, a blind man, who could not get about the town or the countryside without the aid of a stick and a dog, manage to dole out such physical pain? How could he catch up with ‘Yankee’ Lynch, a perfectly fit man, hold on to him on the main road, and stab him 18 times, particularly when he couldn’t see him? And when Lynch, to all intents and purposes, had the full use of his senses!

Three Trials

Two juries had already considered this question and on both occasions they failed to agree. This in fact was Laurence Smith’s third trial. It was widely known -- not just to the jury, but all over Cavan county -- that on the afternoon of the murder the ‘Yankee’was seen leaving Ballyjamesduff on the road home. It was early in the afternoon, but he was in the mood for celebrating -- and that meant he got quite drunk.

A half-hour after his departure from Ballyjamesduff , Laurence Smith also left Ballyjamesduff. There was compelling evidence to show that the blind man even took a circuitous route, by way of a bye road, which would more or less show that he was not anxious to overtake the deceased, but, on the contrary, would show that he was trying to avoid him. Unfortunately, as the popular account had it, he did overtake Patrick Lynch. And when both men came within some proximity with each other, then, as everybody believed, ‘skin and hair would be flying’.

But how, precisely, did the two men come into what the Judge of trial called this "unwelcome contact" with each other? This was the mysterious point upon which the jury had to decide, but could not.

All other questions as to Laurence Smith’s guilt were simple. Once one understood the antecedents to the murder -- which were both plentiful and public -- one understood perfectly how everybody in Ballyjamesduff came to know so much about the impendingtragedy.

As early as 1868, for example, the neighbors ‘had words’ over their respective adjoining land-rights. Harsh things were said and Laurence Smith sued the deceased in Trespass, Slander and Assault. Already, therefore, the tension between the parties had grown to a considerable extent. Unfortunately, Laurence, who initiated the case, now lost it. Notwithstanding the sympathies generally accorded to afflicted persons, particularly one who could nevermore appreciate the splendors of the Cavan countryside in all its seasonal glory, people conceded that justice might have been better served any other way than by an all-or-nothing court-decision. The consequences of such black-and-white, all-or-nothng logic as the law provided was inimical to any resolution which neighbours need to continue living beside each other. The familial loss of face that now followed the Smith-family in the neighborhood, not to mention the financial loss, had to be borne privately, stoically and coninuously. The finality of a court case in a small community has an enduring communal life-span that nowhere approximates any kind of calendar existence. The effects of the Smith v Lynch case back in 1872, like so many other murders that begin with court cases, were tremendous and enduring. Had Smith won the case, the effect might be the same , but might have inspired Patrick Lynch to avenge his personal and his family’s name, thereby reversing the order of the murder, or , perhaps, being more mobile and better funded, the family might have considered pulling up roots and re-locating. This was never an option for the Smiths. Moreover, in the instant case Laurence Smith and his brothers could not sustain the financial loss of the action.

Ejectment

It was not long before insolvency proceedings followed, and by a further order of the court made on the 15 September 1869, the Smiths were forced to sell a `small portion ` of their land to meet the legal costs.The land, which was sold by public auction, fetched the market price of £25. What added to the blind man’s humiliation was the knowledge that the land had been purchased by the `Yankee.’

But having bought the land, Patrick Lynch was now set the sticky problem of taking possession of it. The Smiths were too hurt to surrender possession gracefully, and the whole county knew it. It was at this point that Patrick Lynch began Ejectment proceedings. Once again writs were issued and served on Laurence Smith and

his family on June 28, the hearing being due to commence at Cavan Summer Assizes on or about July. The prisoner and his brothers, John and Patrick, and the rest of the family felt compelled to defend the ejectment action. It was while waiting for the ejectment proceedings to be heard that Patrick Lynch was killed.

In nineteenth century Ireland it was considered morally improper to force a neighbor out of his farm even when it was legal to do so. Indeed, obtaining possession through the courts was every bit as suspect as a police eviction, and to do it to a blind man and his family was reprehensible beyond description.This, after all, was the age of the agrarian crime. Maamtrasna and the Phoenix Park murders, two of the many celebrated nineteenth century agrarian multiple murders were only a decade away. Whether he knew it or not, Patrick Lynch was breaking more than the first commandment of rural survival, when he set himself the task of evicting the Smiths. Whatever public sympathy Patrick Lynch enjoyed before initiating eviction proceedings, by the time he got secured the order to evict there wasn’t a man in the county who was not emotionally on the side of the Smiths. So no one was terribly surprised when Patrick Lynch`s body was found outside `Barney Smith’s gate`.

News of the murder had no sooner reached the RIC Barracks in Ballyjamesduff than Sub Inspector Ware presented himself and his men at the Smith farmstead. Inspector Ware duly cautioned and arrested all three brothers. It was then that Lawrence stepped forward and declared:

`It was I who was in contact with Lynch`, he said. `You have no business to take them. Don’t take them from their families.`

This was as good as a confession. After making some further enquiries the Sub inspector was sufficiently satisfied to allow the two brothers -- Patrick and John -- to remain on, but insisted that Laurence be taken into custody. He soon found that Laurence was ready to defend his actions.

‘I don’t consider myself an assassin’, said Laurence to the Sub inspector in a rather rhetorically voice. ‘What I did, I did in my own defense. I look upon myself as a soldier defending himself’. After a moment’s pause he continued: ‘Lynch drew the knife first’, and Laurence then demonstrated to the Sub inspector how he had taken it from the ‘Yankee’ - that is, he gripped the Inspector’s arm

and held it in a vice-like grip. He then carefully drew his hand down the Sub Inspector’s arm till he reached his hand. He then gave the Inspector’s hand a demonstrative wrench, as if to dislodge the imaginary knife from the Inspector’s grasp. With that, Laurence asked for a drink, and someone handed him a mug of water.

‘ It was a curious thing that you knew this man’, pried the Sub Inspector.

‘I knew him by his step’ , replied Laurence. ‘When providence takes away one sense, it strengthens the other senses,‘ said he in a manner that suggested he had been previously acquainted with such a reply.

He was then taken into custody.

The initial curiosity as to how the murder happened, became a great and enduring focal point for pub-talk in Ballyjamesduff. Most people could not envisage a blind man gaining such advantages over one who had the gift of sight. This curiosity in turn gave rise to another question -- which was: would any jury ever convict a blind man? Or convict him on such an incredible story?

Wagers were taken as long as the trials lasted and , as already stated, there had already been two such trials. One can only imagine the odds on the third trial around the bars of Ballyjamesduff and surrounds!

First Trial

Mr. Law, Solicitor General, prosecuted at the first trial, which resulted in a disagreement of the Jury. From the outset it was going to be a peculiar trial; for who was going to give evidence of the event as it occurred, and how – as a matter of fact – does a blind man manage to catch, overcome and kill another who has the full use of his senses? Without anoher demonstration from Laurence Smith, such an account is difficult to accept, especially when defense counsel has torn it to tatters. Furthermore, supposing that there was such evidence, how does one prove that in striking Patrick Lynch he was not lashing out in self-defense? Obviously the proofs for such a case would have to be remarkably explicit.

And this was fatally evident from the outset. Even in his address to the Jury, the Solicitor General conceded as much. He conceded that there was a ‘ blank ‘ as to what precisely took place

between the accused and the deceased at the time of their first meeting. One might possibly be justified in finding a verdict of manslaughter, ‘if they could reconcile the evidence in that direction…’ The Solicitor General further conceded that no one could be found to testify to Laurence Smith meeting with Patrick Lynch -- a crucial stage of the prosecution, ‘concerning which the Crown could offer no evidence’.

The question was not so much that the jury could not agree, but rather why such a pathetic prosecution case was allowed to run in the first place. If the State had no evidence against a citizen, then it should not go on a ‘fishing trip’ in the hope of finding out something or other by which they may then prosecute the defendant. No wonder the first case collapsed. The State then had the impertinence to have a second bite at the cherry.

Second Trial

When Smith was re-arraigned, in reply to the clerk of the Crown, he stated that he was not prepared for the trial to go ahead as he had no one to defend him and had no means ‘to fee Counsel’.

Baron Richard Dowse (1824-1890) must have been somewhat surprised at this development. He was, a Dungannon man, who was not without a blustering titter of wit. He became a graduate of Trinity College in 1845, he was called to the Irish Bar in 1852, and became a Queen’s Counsel in 1863,. He sowed his wild oats, as they say, on the north-west circuit before marrying and settling down with a lady named Moore from Clones. He also became an MP for Derry (1864-68) and was respectively appointed solicitor-general (1870), Attorney General (1872), and thereafter Baron of the Exchequer. In 1890 he passed away with the Spring Assizes while on circuit in Tralee, co. Kerry..

Baron Dowse lived at No. 38 Mountjoy Square until his death. The Times carried an obituary notice of March 15th :

"Mr. Baron Dowse was a self-made man, who, without social advantages, forced his way by his own merit to the eminent position which he occupied . . . He gave at all times free and vivid utterance to his thoughts, without waiting to examine critically the terms in which he should mould them. These were often quaint and graphic, with a dash of wit and humour, which, if a little wanting in dignity, .. .gave emphasis and force to an argument or comment."

Laurence Smith could have drawn worse Judges than the baron, who circumvented the present difficulties without much ado. He stated that in the exercise of his authority he would be obliged to assign the prisoner Counsel, and he hoped Mr Irvine (his pevious Counsel) would ‘undertake the task of seeing justice done the prisoner’

Mr. Irvine was now, unfortunately, indisposed. He said that his

engagements in the Record Court would deprive him of the opportunity of defending the prisoner. And while he would be most happy to comply with his Lordship’s Request, especially in a case where such responsibility was called for, he was not disposed to accept the case on such short notice.

This rather high-minded sentiment regarding the interests of the blind man led to what the local press called a “scene” which precipitated some agitation. The enquiry then passed over to Mr Irvine’s Solicitor, Mr Mahaffy. By way of explanation, Mahaffy informed the court that two months earlier he was offered only two guineas for himself and three

guineas for Counsel -- an offer which he at once repudiated, and there and then withdrew from the case. Apparently, when pressed by Baron Dowse, but he again stated that he would not undertake the responsibility of so serious a case on such short notice. This situation was rather dramatic, especially for Smith who was still fighting for his life without any legal team. One is sometimes struck by the base company which many a high-minded public sentiment keeps!

The press got wind of the matter are reported as follows:

“After much discussion (which went hard against the legal gentlemen present) Mr. Irvine consented to take charge of the case (instructed by Mr Sherrie). Counsel stated that the assignment of an advocate was very

short notice in a case where a man was on his trial for his life, but that he would undertake it in accordance with his Lordship’s directions.”

The Attorney General, who prosecuted for the first time in the case, presented the Jury with the same infirmities as were urged on the jury in the first trial -- that is, if they, the jury, had a doubt in the matter, and if they could reconcile the evidence in accordance with that doubt, then they might be satisfied in bringing in a verdict of Manslaughter rather than murder. But this tack had failed in the first trial and now, for the second time, the jury repudiated any finding of guilt on the part of Laurence Smith.

Would the state come again?

The Third Trial

During the third trial the evidence, as one might have expected, became a little more compelling. For one thing, the evidence was much better rehearsed and , secondly, people began to realise not only that murder -- however committed -- was not to be condoned but that the state in having three prosecution-cases brought against the defendant was desirous that they give their evidence with a little more gusto.

Accordingly, Joseph Lough, the Dispensary doctor, gave evidence of the elaborate wounds that caused Patrick Lynch’s death. Thomas Cunningham recalled that he met Laurence that day in a `great hurry`. He even enquired if he had seen the ‘Yankee’ pass on the road. And Rose Making, who knew Laurence well, came forward with the most damning testimony. She said actually saw Laurence striking the ‘Yankee ‘with a stick. It happened right beside her house.She continued:

" Lynch was stupid drunk. I saw the prisoner. He went off on the moment when I shouted. Lynch was taken up and laid on a cart till he came to. I washed blood off his temple, the prisoner had a stick. I saw him give Lynch a blow about the head. His head was cut. The day Lynch was killed I saw prisoner in my own house in the evening. I did not see him coming in. He was sitting there when I came in. He asked how I was. Lynch was coming up, and the prisoner. In own house. It was not long till Lynch came up. When I saw Lynch coming up he had a new pipe with him. I

said `I’ll shut the door, here’s Yankee Lynch’.

The prisoner said: ‘ you need not... If he doesn’t meddle with me I’ll not meddle with him’. Lynch then passed. I saw him, and I went out and walked a bit of the way with him to convey him from the door. I came back. The Prisoner was there.He left my house shortly after. It wasn’t long. My daughter asked me to rest. He said he had to go home to churn. I heard that he (Lynch) was killed in scarcely an hour after that. I saw prisoner on the Tuesday evening before the deceased was killed. Mrs Bradywas there. The Prisoner said: ‘Only for you Rose, the law would be little trouble to the Yankee’ "

Thomas Smith, Laurence’s nephew, also took the stand to say that on the day of the murder when he finished school, he tended the cows, and on his way back from the fields he saw the prisoner standing over the deceased, who was -- at this time -- flat on the ground. Laurence asked him if there was any blood on his (Laurence’s) stick. Thomas told him there was. Laurence then directed him to `wash it off`.

Bernard Sexton who also saw the two men struggle with each other couldn’t see the knife in ’Larry’s hand’, nor anything else either.! When reminded that in the second trial he had already testified that he saw Laurence beat the Yankee with his fist, he had to take time to reconsider his evidence.

The Jury made a finding of Guilt against Laurence Smith and accompanied it with a strong recommmendation to mercy.

Baron Dowse concurred both with the verdict and the recommendation to mercy. And when the question of mercy arose later, he duly wrote to the Lord Lieutenant as follows :

Dublin: 13th August 1873

‘... It is to be regretted that the following facts of the case, were not, as I am informed communicated to your Excellency in the communication of the 7th inst., and in the hope of affording such information connected with this painful case as may yet enable your Excellency to see cause for granting a reprieve.

The only circumstances that I can see in the case that render the prisoner a proper object of mercy are his total or nearly total blindness, and the possibility that the prisoner and the deceased may have come into collision without premeditation on the part of the former. The existence of ill-will on the part of the prisoner towards the deceased is apparent. This ill-will may have led the prisoner to have quarreled with or assaulted the deceased and in that quarrel the knife may have been used

without any original intention on the part of the prisoner to have recourse to so deadly a weapon.

Your Excellency will permit me to add that I am informed it would be almost without precedent in British Law that a blind man should be hanged no matter what the conviction against him, and that he should be treated as an imbecile or lunatic according to the accusations made against him.

The other points of evidence against Laurence Smith included testimony to the effect that he had bought a knife from John Connolly’s shop before the struggle with Patrick Lynch. The knife bought was ‘similar’ to the knife found by Constable Phelan in a bush just 170 yards from the prisoner’s house. Laurence Smith’s trousers was bloodstained, as was a handkerchief examined by Professor Reynolds. There were scratches on Laurence Smith’s hand. Furthermore, contrary to the evidence in favour of Laurence’s defense, Mrs Smith, his sister-in-law confessed that she remem-bered the day of the murder -- but that, contrary to Laurence’s evidence, there had been no churning done in the house that day. And Edward McGauran, the 23rd witness confirmed it. On August 16 1873 Laurence Smith was hanged in Cavan.

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Index:

See Criminal Files, National Archives, Bishop Street, Dublin 8: S-18-73

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballyjamesduff#Notable_Places_In_Ballyjamesduff

www.irelandoldnews.com/Other/1873/AUG.html

www.sierratel.com/colinf/genuki/cav/Castlerahan/Ballyjamesduff.html

www.archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/IRL-CAVAN/2006-03/1141608975

www.ulsterbiography.co.uk/biogsD.htm

w w w . i r i s h - a r c h i t e c t u r e . c o m / b u i l d i n g s _ i r e l a n d / d u b l i n /memorable_dublin_houses/7.html

www.kennys.ie/Search_Results.aspx?profile=Books&keywords=Cavan+%28irish+OR+ireland%29

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