Retired medic plays detective to solve family murder mystery

It reads like a detective mystery, but The Case of the Craughwell Prisoners During the Land War in Co. Galway 1879-85, a new book written by retired Associate Professor of Medicine at NUIG, Professor Pat Finnegan, is much more than that.

It’s a deeply personal story about his grandfather, Patrick Finnegan, who, in 1884, alongside RIC Constable Michael Muldowney, was wrongly convicted of murder. Their conviction followed the shooting of a young man, Peter Doherty, in 1881 in a dispute over land near Craughwell during Ireland’s first Land War.

Finnegan and Muldowney were convicted to hang based on the evidence of two informers, who had been paid by the Crown and whose statements were contradictory and completely unreliable. The judge in the trial, James Murphy, a ‘Castle Catholic’ from Limerick, did everything in his power to have them prosecuted rather than being an impartial arbitrator in the case, while the jury was selected to ensure their conviction. It was like a 19th century version of the Birmingham Six or the Guilford Four.

Eventually, they had their sentences commuted to life, after which both served 20 years. During that time, many petitions to have their sentences overturned were dismissed by the Crown, on the basis that ‘Justice must be done’.

“I always knew my grandfather spent 20 years in jail but I only knew the story in a very fragmentary kind of way,” says Pat, in the book-lined dining room of his Salthill home. “He didn’t talk that much about it, according to my father.”

Patrick died in 1939, two and a half months before Pat was born, but family interest in his legacy lived on. Pat’s sister Anne wrote her MA thesis on the history of the Land War in South Galway, while Pat himself, who is a retired consultant physician at UHG and Professor Emeritus at NUIG, first began exploring the story when he was a student.

Back then he went to the National Library searching for papers from the period, especially the Sligo newspapers, as the trial had been held there.

Very little had been written subsequently about events surrounding the case, except for one “appalling” publication in the States, says Pat whose busy medical career kept him from delving into the story for many years.

It was only when he retired in 2004 that he found the time to dedicate to this story.

He began researching his family history intensively, helped by relations, especially his father’s first cousin Alice McArdle, a retired teacher, who was a superb source.

Pat knew that the men known as The Craughwell Prisoners were convicted in 1884, so he decided to go back to 1879 to put the period and that story in context.

He began researching The Freeman’s Journal, The Irish Times and the local papers in Connacht from then until 1885.  

Initially it was a broad trawl but “once I got into it I knew where I’d find things in the paper and which headlines were critical”.

After that he went to the National Archives in Dublin, which are located in the old Jacob’s Biscuit factory – a place that incidentally played a major role in the 1916 Rising.

He knew that information about the men’s trials and subsequent pleas to have their death sentences commuted was in the papers of the Chief Secretary.

The volumes contained all kinds of prison records and reports from the prison boards, he explains.

“They are massive volumes, but the legibility was amazing, bar one clerk – and I’d have shot him if I got my hands on him,” he laughs.

“To find what I was looking for was a major task. The records were done alphabetically and geographically to an extent. At that stage I knew 1881 was a vital time and I started looking for Peter Doherty.”

Pat’s account of the shooting of Doherty – as a punishment for taking land after a family had been evicted – is thorough. So too is the account of the two informers, Moran and Raftery, who were each paid by the Crown. One of the most fascinating aspects for this reader was that Raftery’s wife was horrified by her husband’s actions and contradicted his testimony locally and in court.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.