Mayo history: ‘Your rope is not fit to hang a dog’ - some last words of Fighting Fitzgerald
PART FOUR
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.
It stated:
There was not, I believe, any horror veined at the mode by which George Robert Fitzgerald (of Turlough Castle) was brought within the grasp of the law; nevertheless, the feeling with regard to him was precisely that expressed by Voltaire in the case of Lally Tollendal: “Every man in Ireland has a right to put him to death, except the executioner.”
A judge of the land, speaking of Fitzgerald’s execution, said: “They have murdered the murderer.”
On June 12, 1786, the convicts were hanged from a scaffolding employed in the erection of the new jail in Castlebar, which was yet unfinished. Fitzgerald, on being brought to the place of execution, recognised the presence of nearly every single gentleman of the county, including the high sheriff, the Hon. Denis Browne, brother of the Earl of Altamont (subsequently created Marquis of Sligo), who might be said to be his friend, at least he was his neighbour, and only his equal.
The guard was composed the corps of volunteer cavalry, of which George Robert Fitzgerald himself had been the captain!
The culprit was made to mount a ladder, and the rope was drawn over a board fixed under its edge. It was placed around the neck of Fitzgerald, who displayed much levity. He was, in fact, half drunk with wine and spirits.
Giving vent to his excitement, he jumped from the ladder, and although slight and light, the tension of the rope over the edge of the board caused by its fall snapped it. He came on his feet, and after a moment recovered the shock, and said to Denis Browne: “Mr. Sheriff, your rope is not fit to hang a dog.”
Another was produced; but the delay was so long that the fumes of the wine or brandy he had swallowed evaporated, and a collapse ensued.
He now trembled. In this state he was compelled once more to mount the ladder, however, on standing on it, instead of now anticipating the executioner, he prayed the sheriff repeatedly for time, pretending an expectation of a reprieve. In this way an hour passed.
At length, at the given signal, he was turned off and died.
Every word I have written of this unhappy man is unfavourable to him. It is just, however, to add that I have never met any person who knew him and did not express the belief that George Robert Fitzgerald was mad.
The grounds of this belief were the apparently constitutional wrong-headedness he displayed. Miscreant though he were, an amount of sympathy was expressed for him, towards which the illegality of admitting the evidence of the principal against his accessories, went for much.
Mad or not, he was eccentric. Being out hunting one day, a fox led the party into a churchyard, or other enclosure, which brought him to a standstill. It was bounded on one side (that by which the fox escaped) by a six-foot wall; outside was a precipice of 20 feet.
“I will bet five hundred guineas,” said Sir Samual O’Malley, “that no man here will clear the wall.”
“Done!” said Fitzgerald; and putting spurs to his horse, he leaped it. The poor animal was killed but Fitzgerald, reserved for another fall, escaped, and without a broken bone.
While in London 40 years afterwards, attending to his parliamentary duties, Dick Martin lived in modest lodgings in Manchester Buildings, closed to Westminster Bridge, ‘in order to be near the House', he said, but although the possessor of estates larger than several of the German Principalities, he was compelled to this comparative shabbiness. Being esteemed by his own countrymen, he was much visited, and had really attached friends.
Among the latter, strange to say, was Major Fitzgerald, son of the old antagonist, George Robert (and now a magistrate of Middlesex). Dick’s petit lever was literally an undress one. He ‘received’ in his bed chamber, and frequently on the entrance of a visitor rose from his couch and gave audience, promenading the while sans-culotte - almost ‘sans everything’.
One Monday, about the year 1824, Major Fitzgerald called on him, and entered his dormitory sans-ceremonie. Dick turned out and conversed with him for some time, as they walked up and down the room, upon indifferent topics.
At length, Dick, suiting to the discovery of evidence, said: “Look here, Major. See what your good father did for me on the streets of Castlebar,” pointing to the scars of a sword wound through and through his body.
Soon after, he paid a visit with some similar intentions to Mr. (afterwards Sir Richard) Nagle, at Jamestown House, Co. Westmeath; but the interview terminated civilly, with, however, indications that Fitzgerald was not in his right mind.
They knew him too well to risk the consequences of disobedience. Never was knave more absolute that he. His hunting stud was one of the best in the country.
For exercise and to test the qualities of a magnificent horse he had lately purchased at a large price he desired a groom to mount, and leap him over a wall in the neighbourhood of his residence. The horse was faced at it, but on arriving shied, or balked it.
“Dismount,” said Fitzgerald to the groom; “even a horse must do my bidding, or suffer for it.”
Then, taking out a pistol, one of his usual travelling companions, he shot the animal on the spot.
Everything was seized in Ireland in those days in an anti-Catholic spirit.
I have heard a precisely similar opinion pronounced respecting two unfortunate Irishman who suffered capital punishment in London early in the previous century.
These were Colonel Despard, executed for high treason in May 1803, and Bellingham, the assassin of Mr. Percival in the lobby of the House of Commons in 1812. All the circumstances prove, however, that they were respectively non compos mentis. At the present day they would be merely ‘shut-up’.
Concluded.