Local Traditions - Historical and Otherwise - The Last Public Hanging in Ireland

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Local Traditions - Historical and Otherwise - The Last Public Hanging in Ireland  [duchas:4920394]

"The last public hanging in Ireland" - I remember the words as clearly as if I only heard them yesterday - was in Clonmel. (near Fethard Co. Tipp.  and the native place of my father) There were three men hanged for the murder of the Sheas of Banixtown (near Killusty). They were hanged publicly in the little village street. A neighbour of Shea, in Banixtown, had been evicted and Shea took over the evicted land. When the digging of the potatoes came Shea had a number of men at work on the "evicted farm". When they went in to their dinner there were "labbels"  put on the spade handles warning them not to continue. All the men left except three and of these only one stayed in the the house with Shea. That night when all had retired to bed in the house of the grabber "they" came and tied the doors and windows and set fire to the thatched roof. Of the gruesome details which I was accustomed to hear this one stands out most clearly. Mrs Shea had a baby seven months old. When all hope of getting out of the burning house was abandoned the frantic mother carried her baby to a big tub of spring water that was on the stillon and plunged the child into it hoping by that means to save its life. But in vain, when the debris was cleared in the morning the charred remains of the mother were found beside the water-vessel in which was the half-roasted half-boiled body of her baby! In all, the father

Local Traditions - Historical and Otherwise - The Last Public Hanging in Ireland  [duchas:4920395]

father and mother , nine or  11 children, a servant girl and one spailpín lost their lives in the horrible affair. (these of course are the numbers and details as I used to hear them and may bear but little relation to the truth (D.O.C)
I cannot now say if it was in regard to this matter that "Pierry Nagle the spy" gave information but I know his name was often mentioned in the fireside talks. My mother who is a native of Two-Mile-Borris used have something to say about  Elsie Rua, a travelling man's daughter who, I think, was, according to my mother, burned in the house. Perhaps she was the servant girl. My mother had a ballad about the burning.

Now three men were found guilty of the crime and were sentenced to public hanging in the street of Cloneen. On the day fixed for the  execution the gallows was erected on the village street before the prisoners were brought from Clonmel gaol under an escort of Yeomen. A crowd had gathered awaiting the climax of the horrible tragedy and the youth of the village, the small boys, were having high holiday. However it could occur, two young lads got on to the gallows and proceded to mimic the act of execution. One of them Billy Nunan,  put his head into the noose which hung loosely and stood on the trap-door, the other drew the bolt and there was a genuine hanging. Nunan was precipitated  into the trap but as good fortune would have it the rope had not been finally fixed and it "gave a little" with

Local Traditions - Historical and Otherwise - The Last Public Hanging in Ireland  [duchas:4920396]

him. When released he was apparently dead but was eventually revived. This accident was the reason (sic) why public executions were put a stop to in Ireland. Nunan survived his half-hanging until some ten or eleven years ago, when he died in Cloneen, well over ninety years of age. The writer met his grandson, a Nunan also, at an Irish Course in Clonmel in 1927 but the young man had not apparently been informed of how near he had been to never seeing this world.


In the vicinity of Cloneen, I think on the Mullinahone road, there was a place called Kilburry Demesne. Some 90 years ago this belonged to a family named Meagher, they may be there yet, but before their time, a "gentleman" named Clettherbook lived there. ( I spell it exactly as I used to hear it; the correct spelling is I believe Cletterbuk) "Clettherbook was an evicting crucifying, heristorical tyrant" was a pet phrase of  my father in speaking of him ("Heristorical" I now take to have been intended to express wicked in the historic sense") After his death, the servants were gathered together one night in the big kitchen in Kilburry when a pack of wool came rolling down the stairs making a frightful noise like the sound of rushing wind. An old woman who was in the kitchen, of all present, kept her head and seizeing the broom, she opened the door calling out in a loud