Mysterious poisoning of animals in Tourmakeady back in 1894

By Tom Gillespie

ONE-hundred-and thirty-years ago this week the residents of Tourmakeady were in a state of ‘intense excitement and terror’ owing to the renewal of an attempt by some unknown person or persons to exterminate all the dogs, in a manner involving imminent danger to cattle and pigs, and especially young children.

So reported the Tourmakeady correspondent of The Connaught Telegraph on January 20, 1894, where the matter was investigated by Dublin Castle and the local district police.

The report went: While the people were in bed the person or persons went around and scattered poisoned pieces of meat and bread at the very doors of the houses in the streets and the little gardens adjoining their houses.

The first dogs out in the morning found the poison and immediately succumbed. So deadly was the nature of the poison, that it operated with fatal effect in about 10 minutes.

Some pigs had a narrow escape. The only cow of a very poor man named Pat Cusack is supposed to have been poisoned in this shocking manner.

Within a few hundred yards of the owner’s door the cow picked up something when driven out in the morning, and immediately stretched back and died with apparently the very same symptoms and appearances exhibited by the poisoned dogs.

It is well known that some cows will pick up almost anything - pieces of cloth, bread, turf, sticks, etc. - and those affected with cruppaun (as are very many mountain cattle) will actually pick up stones and try to chew them.

But the most serious thing in all this business is that not only pigs and dogs and cattle, but even young children may pick up these poisoned pieces of bread and meat and eat or chew them.

So alive are the poor people to the dangers which surround them in this way that no one dare open his door in the morning to let out a dog or a pig or even a child until he has first made a search round his house to know if the nocturnal visitor had been about since the family retired to rest.

Such a state of things is simply intolerable and must inevitably lead to serious consequences if the executive authorities will not grapple with it in an important and effective manner.

So far they seem to have taken the matter up warmly enough. A special inspector was sent down from the veterinary department of Dublin Castle to undertake a post-mortem examination on Mr. Cusack’s dead cow. It is understood he found all the organs thoroughly sound and he took away the stomach to have the contents analysed for poison, being unable, otherwise, to account for the cause of death of the cow.

The country and district inspectors of police have also visited the scene of the outrages and made inquiries, and inquiries have been made in Ballinrobe as to the purchase of poison in the shops there.

Mr. William O’Brien, MP (who took lead role the Irish Land League and the United Irish League) will probably have something to say on the matter shortly, in a place where he must be answered, and in the meantime he will be afforded the opportunity of seeking for himself and expressing his own opinion at a public meeting, which is to be held in Tourmakeady, and to which it is intended to invite him, together with Mr. Byles of Bradford, and the member for the division.

Such conduct as poisoning poor people’s dogs and cattle in this base and cowardly manner must be put down.

On several previous occasions similar onslaughts were made on these harmless little sheepdogs, and scarcely a year passes that numbers of them are not stealthily poisoned in one way or another.

Two dogs, for instance, were poisoned, one after the other, on poor Pat Cusack, who has now lost his only cow. The poison was laid at night on each occasion at the gable end of his house and some of it was found there by his wife beside the dead dog in the morning.

Everybody acquainted with mountain districts knows that to a small farmer in a mountain holding his little sheepdog in almost invaluable. He is worth half dozen hands to him on many occasions, and he prizes and values him just as much, if not more, than any lord of the soil, his pointer or setter.

In fact one could scarcely inflict greater hardship on a mountain tenant that to destroy his dog, miserable and all as the poor little animal may appear; for that reason it is not unusual to see those men actually sometimes driven to tears when they find their dogs so treacherously poisoned.

And no wonder, for without his dog they are utterly helpless in many instances to collect their sheep off the mountains.

In addition to having lost the licence money they paid, which many of them can badly afford, they have to wait a considerable time again before they can obtain and train up another dog, which means that they must procure extra help in some way in the meantime to do the work which they so easily performed themselves before with the aid of the dog.

The whole thing has come to this now, that whoever it is that is instigating this continual war on the people in this matter must be brought to light and if the law of the land cannot touch him his conduct must be held up to the contempt and execration of every high-minded and honourable man in the country.