Category: The Neighbourhood of the Four Courts

For the Good Friday that’s in it, this story from Saunders’s News-Letter, 7 June 1830:-

“DESPERATE OUTRAGE – For some months past, a person of genteel appearance has appeared in the streets, in various parts of this city, preaching to people, and according to his notions, following the life of one of the first preachers of the Gospel. He has generally held a small edition of the Bible in his hand, occasionally read a verse from it, and commented on his reading. In this inoffensive pursuit, he has been frequently attacked by mobs, but the most dreadful we yet have heard of took place on Saturday evening near the Four Courts. The mob not only attacked with stones and dust, but attempted to throw him over the Liffey wall. Some humane persons, at the risk of their lives, brought the unfortunate man to the head office for protection, where he remained for some time until the mob was dispersed. Of what religious denomination can those persons be who thus behaved to a really unoffending being? Is it possible, with reference to the country, that they were Irishmen?”

Indeed, the mob may not have been Irishmen – or, in fact, men – at all. Having regard to the date, location and general description of the attack, the fishwives of Pill Lane, who did not take kindly to strangers treading on their centuries-old territory, would seem to be the primary suspects.

It is heartening to know that this poor well-intentioned man was able to find in the Four Courts a place of temporary succour and refuge!

Picture Credit: National Library of Ireland

The Dublin Correspondent of the Belfast Newsletter, 13 January 1862, writes:

“I should chronicle the departure to his rest of a worthy and venerable citizen of Dublin, who saw in his time many an opening day of Term, and whose richly-stored memory was fraught with numberless anecdotes of the Irish Bar in its palmiest days, and of the old Four Courts in the Cathedral Close, where his career as wigmaker to the courts commenced some seventy-seven years ago.

Mr Peter Lavallee, to whom I allude, died a fortnight since, at the advanced age of eighty-seven years, and was, in many respects, a remarkable man. Descended from a highly-respectable Huguenot family, forced from France by the troubles arising out of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he, during the course of a long life of honourable industry, amassed a large fortune.

He was almost self-educated, but, possessing a fine literary taste, and intimately acquainted with several European languages, he collected a considerable and valuable library. He enjoyed the friendship of the great lawyers who have adorned our annals for the last sixty years, and with him have died full many a racy jest, and the recollections of countless interesting incidents in the lives of eminent judges and jurists who have long slumbered in the dust.”

The same Mr Lavallee is described by Denis Florence McCarthy, in ‘Poets and Dramatists of Ireland’ (1846) as possessing “an amazing fund of anecdote connected with this localities of Dublin, and with English and Irish literature generally.”

Mr Lavallee’s only other appearance in the newspapers was on 22 September, 1842, when he gave evidence at an inquest into the death in her lodgings of Bridget Catherine Belfield, widowed mother of a soldier in the 40th Regiment. He stated that he had known Mrs Belfield forty-five years, and considered her a proper, sober and moral character, never tipsy; she had outlived her friends, and had little support save what he contributed; she had complained of late, and expressed that she felt low. The deceased was ultimately found to have died by the visitation of God.

Mr Lavallee’s wig shop was situated at 27 Arran Quay, Dublin 7, convenient for lawyers and judges to drop in for a chat, and perhaps borrow some books from his considerable library!

Saunders’s News-Letter of 31 December 1802 reported that

“[t]here is… a talk of casting a very broad bridge over the river in front of the Four Courts, which shall form an open area equal to the extent of the building; there will afford an opportunity to our architects of showing their genius by making various designs.”

A bridge in front of the new Four Courts certainly made sense from an aesthetic point of view. However, on 16 May 1808, a letter was published in the same publication saying that

“a bridge… exactly opposite the Four Courts… would be a national impropriety… it would be a nuisance to the Four Courts….a street as proposed, to run up from this bridge direct to High Street… would run from the lowest part of Dublin, the river level, straight to the highest part of it, in the middle of High Street… a coach drawn by six horses could not ascend it… a coach to be drawn up such a street, would require a windlass in the middle of High Street, to draw it up there…”

The bridge did not go ahead, but until the late 20th century, as shown in this illustration by Flora Mitchell, there was a gap on the quays immediately opposite the Four Courts, offering to the imaginative gazer a sense of what might have been!