Month: October 2021

Solicitor Tarred in South William Street Wine Cellar, 1875

61 South William Street, Dublin, today, via Google maps..

From the Freeman’s Journal, 27 August 1875:

“TARRING A SOLICITOR

At the Southern Divisional Police-court yesterday, Joseph Steele, who described himself as a wine merchant, of 16 Summer-hill, summoned Mr Richard Parsons, solicitor, for having assaulted him in the complainant’s place of business at 61 South William Street on the night of the 10th August.  It will be recollected that a few days ago Mr Richard Parsons, solicitor, summoned Joseph Steele and William McCabe for alleged assault and ill-treatment of him at Mr Steele’s wine cellar, at 61 South William Street, on the night in question.  From evidence given that day in favour of Parsons’ case it appears that Parsons had been invited by Steele, in company with two others, to his wine vaults in South William Street, and that while there, after drinking two or three bottles of wine, Parsons had been assaulted and abused by the others, knocking him down and kicking him, breaking his hat, and bedaubing his clothes and persons with tar, and then absconded.

Consequently both Parsons and Steele were arrested and confined during the night.  It also transpired that Parsons had obtained a judgment against Steele some twelve months ago for a debt, on foot of which execution was issued, and Steele confined in the Marshalsea.  Parsons insisted that Steele’s recent ill-treatment of him was due to ill-feeling arising from the former transaction.

William McCabe, of 15 North Earl Street, was examined by Mr White, and deposed that on the evening question in met Joseph Steele at the corner of Earl Street, they went into Byrne’s public house, where they were joined by Parsons.  Steele asked Mr McCabe to his business place in William Street and said to Parsons he would be welcome to come…. On going to William Street they had first, a bottle of port, secondly a bottle of sherry and thirdly, at the request of Parsons, a bottle of claret, shortly after Parsons became very drunk and struck Steele on the hat, who struck him in return, he next wanted to get the key of the wine cellar from Steele, a tussle ensued and in the excitement, Parsons seized a can of tar and rushed at Steele, who put up his hand to ward off the tar, thereby upsetting the tar over Parsons.  Parsons commenced to curse and swear and call Steele a bloody little fraud and say that the wine in Steele’s cellar belonged to Parsons and not Steele and he had only come to check it out.

His Worship, Mr Woodcock –  This case appears to me to be in all respects the most discreditable I have ever heard.  Mr Parsons, even on his own showing, was guilty of most discreditable conduct in spying on Steele.  Such conduct on the part of a member of his profession opens up a view of Dublin life which I had no idea of.  I intend sending the case for trial.”

All parties were acquitted in the Dublin Recorder’s court in October 1875, but poor Mr Parsons was unlucky again in March 1883 when he was attacked and robbed in Gloucester Street on his way home from the pub the day after St Patrick’s Day.  At the subsequent trial of John Duncan for this offence, Mr Parsons was asked under cross-examination:

“I believe you were tarred and feathered once? (Laughter) 

I was, by blackguards (Laugher). But I was not feathered.

Not feathered? Well no, not exactly.

Did you lose anything on that occasion? No, except my reputation.

Tell me where your offices are?  I am registered at Lower Gloucester Street.

That is where you hang out. What is that house? A spirit grocer’s establishment? Are your offices at the end of the counter?  Well, no, a bit off it.

Round the corner? No, I had the drawing room of the establishment, but never finished it.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, this somewhat mean cross-examination of Mr Parsons, his attacker, a Mr Duncan, was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 9 months with hard labour.

Number 61 William St is still standing today and even features in the National Inventory of Irish Architectural Heritage, though no reference is made to the wine cellar.  Perhaps it was filled in, as often happened with these cellars over the years!

The moral of the story: never accept a drinking invitation from your former opponent in litigation until the heat of their loss to you has subsided in their memory!

Inns Quay Before Áras Uí Dhálaigh: Images of the Four Courts Hotel

Some photos showing a 1960s/70s Inns Quay, from the Dublin City Digital Archive. This one from Dublin City Digital Archive shows the Four Courts Hotel in place of today’s Áras Uí Dhálaigh.

William Mooney’s close-up of the hotel in the 1960s. Mr Mooney’s comprehensive photo archive of Dublin is accessible to all through Dublin City Digital Archive. We owe him a debt of gratitude!

Another photo of Inns Quay by William Mooney, via Dublin City Digital Archives. This one shows a warmly dressed gent (perhaps a solicitor up from the country?) entering the door of the Four Courts Hotel in the 1960s. It must have been very handy for lawyers to have a hotel so close to the courts.

The same site today, courtesy of google maps, with the Four Courts Hotel demolished and replaced by the very brown legal building Áras Uí Dhálaigh. Hidden below ground in all the above photos is the ancient graveyard of St Saviour’s Priory which pre-dated the Four Courts by a number of centuries. Skeletons surface occasionally!

A card advertising the hotel, again from Dublin City Digital Archives. The Four Courts’ Hotel started life in the early 19c as the Angel Hotel, its name changing later. For some information about its early owners, the Bergin family, have a look at this great twitter thread by @rea esten.

One 19c Donegal lawyer began life as a boot-boy at the hotel and went on to a brilliant legal career before returning in his decline, with tragic consequences.

Another scandal attaching to the hotel occurred when a manager, Mr Kilbey, was charged with watering down whiskey in 1921. Mr Barror, the manager of the Four Courts tearoom, was charged with the same offence around the same time. Maybe a bad batch?! Image above via South Dublin Libraries. You can’t see it from this side, but there was a big advertising hoarding on the eastern side of the hotel.

Here’s the sign mentioned, just visible behind some trees. In true vintage form, it’s advertising Bovril.

The street between the Bovril sign and the west wing of the Four Courts is Morgan Place. At the time of this photo, it had yet to be incorporated into the Four Courts complex. Read about the history of Morgan Place and track its evolution on maps here.

An article on archaeological excavations carried out on part of the site of the Four Courts hotel in the 1970s is available here for those with access to JSTOR.

The Marital Misadventures of a Master of the Rotunda, 1890

Dr Macan, via the British Medical Journal.

“On Saturday in the Exchequer Division, the application for an attachment sought by a Mr Lynch (plaintiff in an action for criminal conversation, in which Dr Macan, of Merrion Square, and late of the Rotunda Hospital, is defendant) against the editors of the Medical Press and the Evening Mail, came on for hearing.

Mr O’Shaughnessy, QC, on behalf of Mr Lynch, read out the following article complained of:

‘Dr Macan, late Master of the Rotunda Hospital and President of the British Gynaecological Society, had the great misfortune to lose his wife three years ago, and the further misery to meet after some time with a person in the course of his practice whose attractive manners and executive ability made an impression on him. She represented herself as the wife of Owen Lynch, formerly of Dublin, afterwards of the United States, from whom she had been divorced for reasons unknown. It is enough to say that after some time Dr Macan married her and introduced her into Dublin society, where, of course, the wife of the Master of the Rotunda would be entitled to be received into the best ‘set.’ A terrible denouement followed, for it appeared, if report says true, that the lady was, and is in fact, the wife of Owen Lynch.  Such a misfortune might come upon any man without any act of either guilt or folly on his part; and until it is proved in court that Dr Macan acted with knowledge of the true state of affairs we should refuse to believe that the legal proceedings against him have any moral justification.’

Counsel characterised the article as a gross contempt of court, calculated to injure Lynch in having his case fairly tried by the jurors of the city of Dublin. 

Mr McLaughlin QC said that the Mail submitted itself to the judgment of the court and did not intend to influence the trial of the matter by any comments. It was the first time that an action for criminal conversation was brought against a man for relating with a lady whom he had married.

Chief Baron Palles said the court was clearly of the opinion that the article was an contempt of court, and that its tendency was to influence the minds of jurors on the most vital matter in the case, that relating to the alleged divorce… He thought that an attachment should be granted against each of the editors, but the attachments would not issue until a further order from the court. If further comments were made on this case the attachments would then issue.”

Dr and Mrs Macan’s house at 53 Merrion Square South, now The Wilde.

‘Conversation’ is an old euphemism for sexual intercourse and criminal conversation (commonly referred to as ‘crim. con.’ for short) was a civil action which a plaintiff husband was entitled to bring against any other man who had engaged in sexual intercourse with his wife during the period of their marriage.

According to Richard Adams QC, opening the case for Mr Lynch later that same year in the criminal conversation proceedings the subject of the contempt application, there had been very few crim. con. cases in the Four Courts of recent years since, as everybody knew, there was no country in the world in which domestic life was as pure as Ireland (Mr Adams must presumably have overlooked the many previous matrimonial mishaps of eminent members of the Law Library and their spouses).

Mr Lynch’s case, as presented by his legal team, was that Dr Macan had first met the plaintiff’s wife Mary Kate Lynch over a decade previously in the course of her treatment for ‘a painful and terrible’ disease; that Dr Macan had not only cohabited with Mary Kate prior to their purported marriage, but had entered into this marriage for money, believing her to be a rich woman possessed of ‘jewellery of unspeakable brilliance and a stud of six horses fit to astonish all Dublin.’ Furthermore, it was asserted that, having discovered that his new bride was not merely penniless, but had a husband alive from whom she had not been validly divorced, Dr Macan had sought to cover up scandal by bribing her to remain outside Ireland for ten years.  

Dr Macan, on the other hand, gave evidence that, far from having known Mary Kate Lynch for years, he had met her for the first time shortly before their marriage, at a dinner in Dromartin Castle where she was introduced as an American heiress and a friend of his host, Mr John Lalor. His first impression of Mary Kate was that she was ‘a rather fascinating little woman.  I got very intimate with her and paid her attention.’  When subsequently called in after she became ill, he carried out an operation on her privately and at no charge. Romance then progressed to the extent that he gave her a dog, and when she told him tearfully that she had cancelled an intended trip to England, because she did not want to leave the dog which he had given to her, he was so moved that he proposed on the spot.

Evidence given by other witnesses disclosed that Mary Kate, the daughter of a servant to the O’Conor Don, had married Mr Lynch, a porter, in the Pro-Cathedral, Dublin, at the age of 19.  Later, when economic circumstances required her husband to seek work in America, she and her three children found shelter at Lakelands Convent, Sandymount, where she was already known to the nuns through her mother.  

After a subsequent unsuccessful visit to her husband in Louisville, Kentucky, Mary Kate took up the post of companion to an ailing lady, becoming sufficiently intimate with Mr Lalor, the husband of her employer, to be invited, following that lady’s demise, to stay on to comfort him in his bereavement. 

There was also a Ned Connors, of Kentucky, whom Mary Kate had met during her visit to Louisville, and whose love letters, read out in court, referred so often to the need for his beloved to clean and file her teeth as to suggest that he might have shared with Dr Macan some orificial expertise, albeit in the field of dentistry rather than gynaecology.

After hearing the above evidence, the jury limited damages against Dr Macan to the sum of one farthing, further vindicating his character by finding as a matter of fact that he had not become aware of Mrs Lynch’s married status until he was some months married to her, and had refrained from any intimacy with her following this discovery.

Unsurprisingly, Dr Macan had no difficulty in having his purported marriage declared a nullity, though the Freeman’s Journal did see fit to sympathise with him on the loss of Mary Kate, ’the woman who at a bound could, by the most splendid mendacity and fraud, walk from the poverty stricken hearth of an invalid labouring man to the drawing rooms of the ‘best set’ in Dublin society and who, under a bigamous marriage, could shine in Dublin as the wife of an eminent professional gentleman while her real husband, over in Kentucky, was earning the precarious penny of a street car conductor.’

There is no record of what subsequently happened to Mary Kate Lynch, though one suspects she was well paid not to share her story in the popular press.  The easy fluency of her below letter to Dr Macan suggests that it would have been an interesting read!

“My Darling Arthur – You don’t know how much I love you or you would try to care for me.  I quite know the trouble I have caused you, and I am sorry from my heart for it.  I cannot now undo what I have done, but I can do all in my power to make up to you for all that is past.  Arthur, I feel it awful when you don’t talk to me, or look as if you didn’t care to see me.  I am trying to be straight with you, and will do my best not to wrong you.  I don’t think anyone could love a man more than I love you.  That is why I notice every turn of your face.  Do care a little for me.  All I want or care for in this world is your love.  Your own MARY.”

Dr Macan remains a celebrated Dublin physician, noted for first introducing stirrup examination to the Rotunda. Omitted from subsequent accounts of his illustrious career, Mr Lynch’s case against him surely merits some record – not only as an example of that rarest of things, a successful Irish action for crim. con. – but also as an illustration of how even the most eminent of professional gentlemen can be led astray by vanity, flattery, and the wiles of a charming and persuasive woman!

Former British Intelligence Officer and Would-Be Barrister Drowns at North Wall, 1921

The scene of Mr Morrison’s death, via Dublin Port

From the Belfast Telegraph, 11 August 1921:

“BELFAST OFFICER’S DEATH. STRANGE AFFAIR IN DUBLIN. BELIEVED HE WAS A MARKED MAN.

We regret to announce the death of Mr Frederick W Morrison, a native of Belfast, which took place under sad circumstances through drowning in Dublin. The deceased was a fine specimen of manhood, six feet high, and as clever as he was brave. In his eighteenth year, Mr Morrison was appointed to a commission from the service of the Bank of Ireland in Sligo.  He was soon transferred to the Machine Gun Corps, and lost his left arm at Messines in 1916. 

After the war he decided to become a barrister and went to Dublin to study. The desperate deeds of Bloody Sunday in the metropolis made a profound impression on him, because he was acquainted with several of the victims and had been speaking to them the day before they were murdered. He remarked at the time that it would take very little to make him join the Auxiliaries, and he did so a short time later.  During the present year he was appointed Intelligence Officer in Dublin – a most hazardous post- and it was finally thought necessary for his own safety to transfer him to Co Roscommon, where he was ambushed several times. 

After three’ months service he took up duty again in Dublin.  Last May he was examining Sinn Féin  letters captured in a raid, and the first one he opened contained the following: ‘One-Armed Morrison back in Dublin. Seen in Grafton Street yesterday at 2.30 p.m.’ He did not communicate this to his parents at the time, but he knew he was a marked man. 

Eventually he retired to resume his studies. Last Thursday he returned to Dublin for a final ‘grind’ before the examination for the Bar and both on Saturday and Monday. His parents had cheery letters from him. on the Monday evening he met his death, and the circumstances seem inexplicable because he was in the best of spirits leaving home and his last letter of Sunday was very bright.  He was looking forward eagerly to qualifying for the Bar, and his mysterious death has come as a terrible blow to his friends. At the inquest in Dublin on Wednesday a verdict of suicide while temporarily insane was recorded.”

Reports from Dublin newspapers disclose that Mr Morrison was last seen entering the water at the North Wall, Dublin in the vicinity of its famous 100-ton electric crane above. Two boys nearby raised the alarm, and rescue operations were immediately undertaken by the S.S. Rebecca, but it was not possible to save him in time.

It sounds like Mr Morrison had a lot on his plate – law exams are bad enough without trying to evade assassination at the same time! And one suspects he may have been suffering from PTSD as well… though the tone of the report above leaves open the possibility that witnesses may not have been telling the full truth about the final moments of of the young man who New Zealand’s Paihatua Herald, reporting on the incident, saw fit to describe as ‘Sinn Féin’s most hated foe.’

Mr Morrison was not the only person with links to the legal profession to die mysteriously in 1921 – the sad and now apparently almost entirely forgotten story of the assassination of eminent Dublin KC William McGrath is covered at 10.39-14.40 and 28.48-36.47 of the slidecast below. Dangerous and divisive times!

Photo of Mr Morrison here: https://lnkd.in/etn3iKe9

North Wall photo from www.dublinportarchive.com

Barrister’s Vacation Ends in Litigation, 1885

The charming Cotswolds town of Tetbury, Gloucestershire, the scene of the ill-fated vacation the subject of this post, via Selling Antiques.

Adapted from the Irish Times, 25 and 26 March 1885:

“The Reverend Henry Peter Higginson brought a motion for final judgment to recover £27 10s from Thomas Hewson BL, who is a member of the Irish Bar, claiming that he had asked Mr Hewson on a visit to Tetbury during the Long Vacation to provide him with legal assistance, that Mr Hewson had given him no services, and that he had paid all Mr Hewson’s expenses – railway fare, car hire, hotel bills and theatre tickets – while in London and elsewhere.  The sum claimed by the Rev Higginson also included a debt owned by Mr Hewson to a tailor, which the Rev Higginson said that he had purchased because he had introduced Mr Hewson to the tailor and also because he intended to sue him, in order to put an end to annoyances which Mr Hewson was giving him by letters and postcards.

Mr Hewson BL, in a replying Affidavit opened by the Rev Higginson’s counsel, stated that the Rev Higginson had originally been a clerk in the Custom House, Dublin, who had joined the firm of Dickie and Co and subsequently absconded without giving any account of the funds placed in his hands.   He was later ordained by a Colonial bishop.  After having been in Zululand, America and other distant countries, he returned, and Mr Hewson saw him in Dublin.  The Rev Higginson said he was in feeble health, and asked Mr Hewson to go over to England to assist in preparing a suit for a divorce from his wife, which he was then bringing, and success in which was necessary to his getting employment in the Church of England.  Mr Hewson also claimed that £45.5s was due to him including 25 guineas in the nature of fees.

The Master of the Rolls – I must say that if any publicity is given to statements of this kind which have nothing to do with the application, and which I say are scandalous, it is the fault of the plaintiff who insists on having them read.

Mr Sherlock BL, counsel for the Rev Higginson, replied that Mr Hewson had made charges against his client which were nothing less than vindictive untruths.

The Master of the Rolls – There are two ways of conducting a case.  One is influencing the judge to decide a case on the facts.  If you think I am likely to be influenced in deciding a case by the counsel who opened the motion having stated that it was a vindictive motion, you may endeavour to disabuse your mind of this action.

Mr Gerrard BL, Counsel for Mr Hewson BL, said the entire case was peculiar.  Mr Hewson accompanied the Rev Higginson on the journey from Ireland, and the latter’s funds running short Mr Hewson paid all the Reverend’s travelling expenses, so that £26 was really due to him.  

The Master of the Rolls, in giving judgment, remarked that he did not express an opinion as to whether it was proper for Mr Hewson to claim his fees, but he had yet to learn that there was anything to prevent an Irish barrister who had done work in England recovering the money for the work done, if it were done under contract.   It was clear that there was a dispute about the money, and the writ had been obtained in Dublin two days after the assignment of the tailor’s debt in London – in hot haste.  It would, therefore in his opinion be a gross abuse of the powers of the court to give judgment in such a case without a full hearing, even if the assignment of that debt was perfect.  He must therefore, dismiss the motion for final judgment with costs.”    

The Master of the Rolls, Andrew Marshall Porter, as depicted by the Graphic shortly before his appointment in 1883, via ebay.

Characters in these stories have a way of coming up again thereafter, and such was the case with the Reverend Higginson.   According to a story in the St James’ Gazette of 22 December 1887:

“Great excitement was caused in Parliament Street, Dublin, about nine o’clock yesterday morning, by the report of a pistol being heard from a cab, which was driving through the street at the time, followed by a noise as if a severe struggle was taking place inside.   It appears that Captain JJ Dunne, stated to have been formerly governor of Castlebar Gaol, and a prominent Home Ruler, now residing at Chelsea Gardens, London, and Mr Henry PHW Melville, described as a clergyman, at present stopping at the Grosvenor Hotel, Westland Row, were driving in a cab when an altercation took place between them… in the course of the dispute Captain Dunne drew a pistol from his pocket and fired at Mr Melville.  The ball lodged in the thick rug which Mr Melville wore and did not penetrate the flesh.  Mr Melville was formerly known as the Reverend Henry Peter Higginson.  After being divorced from his first wife he married again last year to the Honourable Mrs Charlotte Whyte- Melville, widow of the celebrated novelist Major George John Whyte-Melville, and assumed her name.

Mr Melville, who is about forty five years of age, deposed, in reply to Mr McLaughlin BL: I left Paris yesterday for London and came to Dublin.  On arriving this morning at the Kingstown pier, I saw the defendant there.  He came to the first-class carriage which I entered at the station, and he said ‘Where is my daughter?’

Mr McLaughlin: Is it a fact that you had run away with his daughter when she was acting as paid companion to your wife?

Mr Melville:  She came away with me.  She is twenty-eight years of age.  The Defendant asked me where his daughter was, and I said I had left her at Holyhead.  He said ‘You are my prisoner, if you stir, I will put a bullet through your head.  I said I wanted an explanation, but he made no reply.  On arriving at Westland-Row, he insisted on taking charge of my Gladstone bag and said ‘You go before me’  I did so, and entered a cab, he came in also… The prisoner then pulled out his pistol and fired the revolver at my stomach…”

The Higginson-Whyte-Melville marriage did not long survive the above, with an acrimonious court case subsequently ensuing in the courts of England and Wales in which Mrs Higginson-Whyte-Melville sought to set aside a substantial settlement she had previously made in her errant husband’s favour.

Peter Henry Higginson (no longer Whyte-Melville) made a third marriage to Mary Chavelita Dunne in Detroit, but any wedded bliss was short, as the groom died shortly afterwards.   It appears that the former Reverend changed his religion before his death, as his obituary described him as having died peacefully, fortified by all the rites of the Roman Catholic Church.  Far from sinking thenceforth into oblivion, his youthful widow changed her name to ‘George Egerton,’ took up her pen and went on to considerable fame and fortune in the London literary world.

Captain Dunne’s daughter, in her later incarnation as the famous novelist George Egerton, via the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Mr Hewson, a strong supporter of tenants’ rights during his time at the Bar, ultimately became a magistrate in Bray, where he briefly caused consternation by suggesting the repeal of the Sunday Closing Act.  A keen fisherman, he sensibly decided to spend future holidays close to home at Greystones, often described as the Law-Library-on-Sea due to the number of barristers who gravitated there during the summer months, occasionally writing to the newspapers to share details of his piscatorial endeavours.

His dealings with the Reverend/Mr Higginson-Whyte-Melville go to prove the truth of the aphorism that barristers should never combine work and vacation!