Maamtrasna Murders - Legal Injustice

Myles Joyce
Myles Joyce
(drawing from book, "Maamtrasna, the murders and the mystery.")

Clár

Baile/Home
Gaeilge
English

Westminster Debates 1882-1885

James Joyce (1907)
Tim Healy (1929)

Pictúirí/Pictures

Mapaí/Maps

Poem (Gaeilge) & Song (English)

Cartlann/Archive

Nascanna/Links

Comóradh 2012
(Nóta Buíochas, Pictiúirí & tuairiscí/Acknowledements, Reports & Pictures)

Na Nuachtáin ag an am/Contemprorary Newspapers! Nuachtáin an lae inniú ag NASCANNA againn/Today's Papers included in our LINKS page Nuachtáin
Turascaíodh na dúnmhairithe seo go foirleathan sna nuachtáin ar fúd na cruinne.
Scríobh James Joyce píosa faoi i 1907 i "Il Piccolo della Sera." nuachtán i dTrieste na hIodáile.
Bhí an cás seo luaite ag Tim Healy, an chéad Seanascal ar Shaorstát Éireann , i leabhair dá chuid i 1928 comh maith.
The murders and the trial attracted world wide interest and were reported on in many newspapers!
The writer James Joyce wrote a piece in "Il Piccolo della Sera," a newspaper in Trieste in Italy in 1907.
Tim Healy, first Governor General of the Irish Free State also wrote about this case.

'No ingenuity can exaggerate the brutal ferocity of a crime which spared neither the grey hairs of an aged woman nor the innocent child of 12 years who slept beside her. It is an outburst of unredeemed and inexplicable savagery before which one stands appalled, and oppressed with a painful sense of the failure of our vaunted civilisation.' (Times Londain, 20 Lughnasa 1882).


Hangman Marwood
Marwood

IRISH ASSASSINS HANGED

Three of the Joyce murderers expiate their crimes.
Myles Joyce protests his innocence

Galway, Dec 15 - Patrick Joyce, Myles Joyce and Patrick Casey, the three men convicted of participation in the murder of the Joyce family, at Maamtrasna, on the night of the 17th of August last, were hanged in the jail here at 8 o'clock this morning.

The weather was raw and cold. The prison inside and outside was heavily guarded. Myles Joyce protested his innocence to the last. The three prisoners heard mass a few minutes before the time set for the execution. They refused to partake of breakfast. They ascended the scaffold with a firm step. Casey, who had uttered a moan at the first sight of the gallows, mounting the steps two at a time. Before the drop fell Myles Joyce spoke in Irish, as follows: "I am going before God. I was not there at all and had not hand or part in it. Lord, forgive them that swore against me." He continued to reiterate his innocence to the end.

The drop fell at 8:25 o'clock simultaneously for all three men. Myles Joyce alone struggled slightly, there being some hitch with the rope. His dying speech was delivered with much vehemence. He was still speaking when the drop fell.

At the inquest following the execution it was proved the the necks of casey and Patrick Joyce were fractured, and that Myles Joyce died of strangulation. The doctor who examined the bodies of the three men deposed that Myleas Joyce must have struggled for two or three minutes. It was shown that after the rope had been adjusted around his neck he turned and addressed the reporters, thus disarranging the ropw, The jury severely censured Marwood, the hangman, for his carelessness. (New York Times 16 Nollaig 1882)