Mayo history: Fighting Fitzgerald is taken as prisoner to Castlebar Jail

PART THREE

By Tom Gillespie

ON July 15, 1939, The Connaught Telegraph republished an account of the character and eccentricities of the famous, or infamous, Fighting Fitzgerald, as he was known, as taken from a book entitled The Irish at Home and Abroad, published in 1856.

During a visit to London, George Robert Fitzgerald (of Turlough Castle) had made acquaintance with an Old Bailey lawyer, whom he had probably employed to defend him in some difference with the authorities.

Recognising in him available qualities, Fitzgerald proposed to him to become his privy councillor and legal advisor.

This man, whose name was Brecknock, accepted the office, and throughout his subsequent quarrels and encounters with the law and with adverse factions, Fitzgerald derived much ‘comfort and assistance’ from him.

The quarrel with MacDonnell had endured so long, and was accompanied by so many reverses, that Fitzgerald’s impatience and rancour urged him to extremities. He therefore consulted his privy councillor, upon the means of ridding himself of his rival and adversary without risking his own life.

“The matter is not difficult,” said Brecknock. “You are a magistrate; send one of your people to provoke MacDonnell to a breach of the peace, then which nothing is more easy. Let the man swear examinations against him before you; and upon these issues a summons or, if necessary, a warrant.

“When MacDonnell shall appear or be brought into your presence, commit him to the country jail. Send him off under an escort of your people, direct another party of your adherents to make a pretended attempt at rescue of the prisoner on the way; it will be then lawful for the escort to fire upon him.

“He will probably attempt to escape in the scuffle; but at all events, as none but your own partisans will be present, they can say that he did. You will thus safely and surely disembarrass yourself of a moral enemy.”

The advice was followed in every particular. Mr. MacDonnell was insulted: he horsewhipped the offender, was brought before Fitzgerald, and was by him committed to the jail in Castlebar.

A strong part of Fitzgerald people, including the Scottish settlers, was drawn up, and to them the prisoner was delivered for conveyance to prison.

Before they set out they were harangued by Brecknock, who escorted them to a faithful and courageous performance of their task in lodging the culprit safely in prison.

“Should he attempt to defeat the ends of justice by flight,” said Brecknock, “it will be your duty to shoot him, if no means less violent present themselves for preventing his evasion.”

The party them commenced their journey. Upon reaching the foot of a bridge, on their way, a group of men in a field which overlooked the road called upon the party to liberate their prisoner.

A refusal and other words ensued between the escort and the men who threatened a rescue. Stones were thrown. Mr. MacDonnell, it is said, made some movement which the guards affected to consider as an attempt to flight, and he was shot by Scotch Andrew.

He fell from his horse on which he rode, and was borne to the bridge and placed sitting against the wall, while the mock conflict proceeded. He died soon after, and in that position, I think.

This horrible event was said to give nearly general satisfaction, for it was hoped that Fitzgerald had, by his connection with it, committed himself capitally.

Full one-half of the gentry of the county were friends of MacDonnell, against whom no actual crime, and ‘only a disposition to riot’ and disorder were alleged, while Fitzgerald had, by his insolence, brutally and cruelly, and the terror he inspired, became the object of universal fear or hatred.

He and his legal oracle and his trusty bravo were arrested by order of the Government. The Crown lawyers were ordered to prosecute them, and they conducted the case con amore. The Attorney General, John Fitzgibbon (afterwards Lord Avonmore), pledged themselves to his conviction, and in fact George Robert Fitzgerald was doomed.

Impartial at the interval, that must have elapsed before he could be brought to trial at the Assizes, or fearing that though some error or failure of evidence the prisoned might escape punishment, the gentry rather than the populace of Mayo resorted to a proceeding similar to that which a short time previously occurred in Edinburgh, in the past of Porteus, rendered for ever memorable by Walter Scott, in his ‘Heart of Mid Lothian’, and in which possibly originated that famous trans-Atlantic process called trial by Lynch law.

They broke open the jail, forced themselves into Fitzgerald’s cell, and sought to murder him, and retired only when they believed he had been put him to death; but he recovered. There was little outcry, so general and intense was the execration in which the victim was held.

The Assizes were now drawing near, and the law-officers of the Crown were indefatigable in getting the case against the assassin of MacDonnell. They found, however, a deficiency of evidence in respect of one of the party whose conviction they were most solicitous to insure.

Against Scotch Andrew and Brecknock the proofs were incontestable; but they saw no means of connecting Fitzgerald with the crime without further aid.

They came to the extraordinary resolution, therefore of suffering the actual murderer to escape, in order to use his evidence against the accessories.

On the testimony, therefore, of Andrew Craig, alias Scotch Andrew, George Robert Fitzgerald and Breckbnock were convicted of the murder of Patrick Randell MacDonnell as accessories before the fact.

The prisoners were tried separately. I have heard that Brecknock sustained his reputation for astuteness in his own defence; but the proofs against him were overwhelming. Fitzgerald treated the proceedings against him illegal, but all the points made by his advocates were over-ruled.

NEXT WEEK: Fitzgerald was hanged in Castlebar.