Mayo history: Land grabbers and tramps

PART 3

By Tom Gillespie

AT Christmas 2008, my old class pal, Eddie Bourke, a native of Mountgordon, Castlebar, through his publishing company, De Burca Rare Books, sent me a copy of ‘An antiquarian craze’ - the life, times and work in archaeology of Patrick Lyons RIC (1861 to 1945), which was written by Belmullet native Máire Lohan (nee Carroll).

Sergeant Lyons served with the Royal Irish Constabulary from 1886 to 1920. While stationed in the west of Ireland, he developed a keen interest in documenting the field monuments he noticed on his patrols.

In one chapter in the book, author Máire recalls how Lyons was transferred to Ballyhaunis on November 1, 1894, where he was stationed for the next 18 years.

Lyons’ last reported duty as a sergeant in Ballyhaunis was on April 5, 1913, when he attended an inquest into the death of an itinerant painter, which took place in the barracks some time after his arrest for drunkenness.

The jury found in accordance with the medical evidence that death was due to congestion of the lungs and heart failure, having listened to a forcible appeal by the coroner: ‘What a great nuisance tramps are to the public. They come into houses to beg, they use abusive language if they are refused, and their constitutions are so debilitated from drink, hunger, and hardship that if a man removes a tramp forcibly from his premises he may fall dead at the door-step or die shortly after, and the man who lays hands on him may be charged with anything from assault to manslaughter.

‘Now if a shopkeeper would only have a little more spirit and backbone in them and stolidly and resolutely refuse coppers or assistance of any kind to those tramps and itinerant musicians we would soon be rid of the pest, because tramps cannot exist except for the money they collect from shopkeepers’.

During Lyons’ time in Ballyhaunis indignation by local tenant farmers against provisions of the Land Acts continually simmered beneath the surface.

It erupted on a number of occasions, particularly when a farm was ‘grabbed’ - the practice by which landlords sold their land to outsiders rather than to the Congested Districts Board for division among local tenants.

Throughout 1901 and 1902 the campaign against the grabbing of Island Farm, situated two miles from Ballyhaunis, was reported in the Western People.

Mass meetings were organised to protest against ‘the Corick inn-keeper, Francis O’Boyle, who grabbed this valuable tract of land comprising 430 acres, for the purpose of converting it into a huge grazing ranch to the detriment of the poor tenantry of the immediate neighbourhood who have to eke out a miserable existence on two or three acres of cutaway bog’.

As these meetings were illegal, hoodwinking the police was necessary and was reported gleefully: ‘At four o’clock the largest and most enthusiastic meeting of the day was held in the village of Island despite the vigilant efforts of mounted policemen on bicycles, who scoured the country armed with telescopes. The organisers left Knock, hastily pursued by a member of the ‘belted fraternity’ mounted on a ‘Rudge Whitworth’, and in order to keep the ‘wicket Leaguer’ in view he brought the much-talked-of stratagem of ‘scorcher’ into operation.

‘In this manner, every muscle straining, he reached a place called Greenwood, midway between Knock and the El Dorado of his dreams, when bang went his machine, whether from a fit of indignation at being used for so low a trick or not, your correspondent has not yet been informed; but however, ere this dutiful member of the force could arrive on ‘shanks mare’ to apprise his waiting colleagues of the Leaguers sudden descent on the place, a very successful meeting was held’.

Hostility against the police, that ‘belted fraternity’, sometimes took active form.

Sergeant Lyons charged Thomas Donnellon with furiously driving a horse, thereby endangering the lives of the public: ‘Three constables were with me on the public road and the defendant drove his horse and car most furiously down a steep hill, and when coming near us he swerved the horse towards us, so that we had to run up on the wall to avoid being run over.

‘They were coming in from Island Farm and as I wanted to identify the persons on the car I shouted to him to pull up but he would not. There was a political meeting to be attended that was suppressed.’

Even in this case, where the attack was directed at his own person, Lyons’ innate compassion is evident. When leniency was requested, Lyons said: ‘I have nothing to say against Donnellon, who is a good young chap, and I would like to see him get out of this as lightly as he possibly can’.

O’Boyle, the new owner of Island Farm, had to be given police protection as he and his family were subjected to hostility whenever they appeared on the farm.

Two youths were convicted of intimidation and, on the same day, ‘in anticipation of a political meeting', a contingent of police from Claremorris was sent to Ballyhaunis.

A few weeks later it was reported that ‘a large and representative meeting dwelt on the invading force of haymakers from North Mayo to do the needful for the Erris hotel proprietor.

'Mr. O’Boyle would very soon find out that it was an expensive luxury to be importing labour from Bangor Erris to save the hay on his farm.

‘On every occasion last year that the members of the Ballyhaunis and Knock branches attended to help in the good work of bringing home the turf, one hundred policemen were drafted into Island and district inspectors and county inspectors were there lounging by the ditches’.

In May of 1913 Sergeant Lyons had been notified to attend the next examination for the rank of head constable, to which rank he was promoted on June 1.

A week later he was posted to Arthenry, Co. Galway, as head constable and was replaced in Ballyhaunis by Sergeant Edward Carroll, who was transferred from Belmullet.

Concluded.