HC Deb 08 April 1875 vol 223 cc496-7
MR. SULLIVAN

asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, If his attention has been called to the following statements in the Dublin "Daily Express" of the 27th ultimo:— When the six prisoners (charged with the murder) arrived from Tullamore Jail, there were more than four thousand persons in the street, who, as the car passed up the village, made several fierce attempts to wrest Peter Claffey, the principal prisoner, from the hands of the police. The air was rent with cries of "Lynch the murderer," Blood for blood,' and other yells of a similar description. The house where Claffey resided was wrecked, and the windows and doors broken. The prisoner's name was erased from the sign-board, and that article was then painted one half red and the other half black Claffey's effigy was dragged through the place on a cart, and hanged opposite his own door. … Two men who expressed sympathy with the prisoners were set upon and only saved from death by fifteen of the constabulary who succeeded in bringing them to the barracks; whether this is the same case as that recently referred to by him, in which a man named Regney, who had served an ejectment, was shot while attending a wake; and, whether any information has been received at Dublin Castle corroborating the above statements of the "Daily Express" as to the state of popular feeling in King's County in reference to this agrarian murder?

SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH

, in reply, said, the ease alluded to in the Question was the same to which he had recently referred in the House. His attention had been called to the statement and also to another paragraph of the report which the hon. Gentleman had omitted, from which it appeared that on this occasion the Crown Solicitor enjoyed what he feared had been the exceptional satisfaction of being on the popular side. The account was exaggerated in some points, very much so in the number of the crowd collected on the occasion; but undoubtedly a demonstration of the people was made in favour of the murdered person and against the man who was supposed to have committed the murder. How far that demonstration was due to the fact that the murdered man was very popular among his friends he was not in a condition to state; but he hoped, if it arose from detestation of the crime committed, the best proof of the existence of that healthy feeling would be that what had happened would afford sufficient encouragement to persons able to give evidence to come forward and aid in securing the conviction of the offender.