Tag Archives: James FItzmaurice

Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: On Moonlighters

This blog serial explored aspects of the 1888 book Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American, by journalist William Henry Hurlbert. Previous posts and other background material are available at the project landing page. #IUCRevisited

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“The ‘Moonlighters’ of 1888 lineally represent, if they do not simply reproduce, the ‘Whiteboys’ of 1760.”
–William Henry Hurlbert

Hurlbert was correct. The Whiteboys and Ribbonmen of the 18th century were forerunners of the late 19th century Moonlighters; shadowy, violent groups that struck against landlords and other establishment interests on behalf of Ireland’s rural poor and powerless. Hurlbert also quoted a land agent who referenced the Terry Alts, active in County Clare during the late 1820s, as “the Moonlighters of that day.”

These secret organizations also terrorized their own people, as was true among late 20th century republican and loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. Even today, 20 years after the Good Friday Agreement ended hostilities between the two sides, these groups “show no intention of loosening their grip of fear on the communities where they operate.”

From the 1879 start of the Land War, the Moonlighter moniker was applied to typically nocturnal raiders on farmers who threatened the agrarian agitation, either by paying their rent or leasing the land of an evicted tenant. Moonlighters intimidated people who were being boycotted for related reasons, and they settled family feuds and other local grudges. Their tactics included threatening letters and public notices; maiming animals, setting fires and other property damage; as well as assaults and murder.

“Moonlighters were reported as being organized as ‘bands’ or ‘companies,’ each under a captain,” historian Marc Mulholland wrote in a 2016 essay. “Their depredations were concentrated in the impoverished and rural west of Ireland.”

Hurlbert quoted an unnamed priest from the region, “a Nationalist,” who described the western counties of Clare and Kerry as “a solitary plague-spot where dwell the disgraceful and degraded Moonlighters … these insensate pests of society.” The priest’s letter to Hurlbert was written days after the Lixnaw murder of boycotted farmer James Fitzmaurice. Like many government officials, Hurlbert framed the crime as evidence of an “open alliance” between nationalist politicians and agrarian activists, and “the criminal classes in certain parts of Ireland.”

In another passage, Hurlbert wondered “why so many [agrarian] crimes are committed with virtual impunity?” He cited “two sufficient reasons” in answer to his own question: witnesses refused to testify, or tell the truth if they did; and juries “in nine cases out of 10” would not do their duty to convict the guilty.

To help overcome local intimidation and secure prosecutions, Hurlbert noted the trials of some accused Moonlighters were transferred from Kerry and Clare to Wicklow, 200 miles away on Ireland’s east coast. This is what happened in the case of two men charged, convicted and executed for the Fitzmaurice murder. Hurlbert did not report this outcome, which occurred within three months of the crime, and well before he published the book.

His west of Ireland letter writer excepted, Hurlbert complained that too many priests in the country were “not only disposed to wink and condone” the Moonlighters’ activities, “but openly to cooperate with them under the pretext of a ‘national’ movement.” This was “intolerable” for the church, he wrote, “and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy.”

An 1886 issue in the Illustrated London News.

NOTES: From pages 127, 183, 208-212, 268, 445-447, and 459 of Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American.  Marc Mulholland, “Political Violence” in The Princeton History of Modern Ireland, edited by Richard Bourke and Ian McBride, Princeton (N.J.) University Press, 2016, page 388.

NEXT: Bank deposits

Copyright 2018 by Mark Holan

Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: Lixnaw murder

This blog serial explored aspects of the 1888 book Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American, by journalist William Henry Hurlbert. Previous posts and other background material are available at the project landing page. #IUCRevisited

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“James Fitzmaurice took, for the sake of the family, the land from which [his brother] Edmund was evicted, and for this he was denounced as a ‘land-grabber’ and boycotted, and finally shot dead in the presence of his daughter [Nora].”
–William Henry Hurlbert

James Fitzmaurice was killed at dawn, 31 January 1888, at Lixnaw, County Kerry, about 175 southwest of Dublin, where Hurlbert awoke for his first full day in Ireland. The American journalist referenced the “hideous murder,” neatly summarized by his quote above, several times in the book he published later that year.

The Fitzmaurice murder fit Hurlbert’s narrative that the people who advocated on behalf of tenant farmers and Irish nationalism were lawless or misguided. He included Land League supporters, Catholic clergy, even British politicians.

“Mr. Gladstone [the Liberal British Prime Minister who in 1886 backed Home Rule for Ireland] would perhaps have hit the facts more accurately, if, instead of calling an eviction in Ireland a ‘sentence of death,’ he had called the taking of a tenancy a sentence of death,” Hurlbert wrote. Gladstone’s 1880 comment was generated by crop failures the year before, which meant many tenants could not pay their rent. The resulting evictions, often followed by starvation, was “very near to a sentence of death,” he said.

Three weeks after the Fitzmaurice murder, Hurlbert visited an estate in eastern County Galway. There, he touched a truth about this period of Irish history as he discussed the case with the wife of a landlord’s agent. “The tenants are in more danger than the landlords or the agents,” she said.

In Kerry and neighboring Clare, in particular, farmers and their families were targeted for boycotts if they leased land other tenants had been evicted from for refusing to pay high rents as part of the agrarian agitation, or if they fell in arrears for other reasons. Boycott activity ranged from social and economic ostracism to verbal harassment, threatening notes, livestock mutilation or physical assaults. Those who cooperated with police and other government authorities often experienced similar trouble.

Period illustration of the 31 January 1888 murder of James Fitzmaurice, witnessed by his daughter Nora. The family was boycotted in the Lixnaw community of Kerry.

On 28 July 1888, shortly after Hurlbert left Ireland, another land-related murder similar to the Fitzmaurice case occurred five miles east of Lixnaw. Boycotted farmer John Foran was shot point blank in front of his young son, instead of a daughter, in the afternoon, instead of at dawn. Their murders were among 262 agrarian crimes in Kerry during 1888, the highest tally of any county in Ireland for the year.

Two men were charged with the Fitzmaurice murder. Their trial was moved more than 200 miles away, to Wicklow, to avoid community bias. Both men were convicted and executed in April 1888, which Hurlbert neglected to mention in his book. Instead, he bashed the Irish nationalist press as “always putting in some sly word” on behalf of the two killers as it neglected the “poor girl and her murdered father.”

Five other people witnessed the Foran murder in addition to his young son, but they refused to identify the suspect in a trial that was kept in Kerry. The government dropped the case.

Both murders reverberated for years to come in legal proceedings and legislative debates about the land question in Ireland. They were raised during the special Parnell Commission hearings that began in the fall of 1888 about agrarian agitation in Ireland. They came up again in 1891 elections after Parnell’s extramarital affair became public and split the Irish Parliamentary Party.

It was through researching the Fitzmaurice and Foran murders that I first came across Hurlbert’s book, though it was hardly a primary source. For more details about both crimes and this period of Irish history, read my 2016 story, Nora’s Sorrow.

NOTES: This post is based on pages 127, 213, 251, 261 and 305 of Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American, and my earlier research of the 1888 Fitzmaurice and Foran murders. … (This post was updated to show the correct location of an estate where Hurlbert recorded the quote about Irish tenants being in more danger than landlords and agents.)

NEXT: Unnamed sources

Copyright 2018 by Mark Holan

Finding the missing passages of ‘A Deed of Blood’

Land-related violence in late 19th century Ireland was euphemistically known as “agrarian outrage.” Mutilating a rare political pamphlet about those crimes might be called librarian outrage.

For several years now I’ve been exploring Ireland’s Land War period, 1879-1889. In particular, I’ve focused on the 1888 murders of farmers James Fitzmaurice and John Foran, which occurred within six months and just a few miles of each other in the northern section of County Kerry. Both men were condemned as “landgrabbers” for leasing property after other farmers were evicted. In the case of Fitzmaurice, the previous tenant was his brother.

Cover of the 1888 pamphlet.

Cover of the 1888 pamphlet.

In the 1880s, the Irish National League (or Land League) was waging a campaign to break the grip of absentee landlords, who controlled hundreds of thousands of acres. Farmers were told to refuse paying their rents until the League negotiated lower rates and other rights. When landlords evicted tenants for these or other reasons, the League provided financial assistance and housing. It also declared that the acreage should not be leased by other locals and remain fallow.

Because Fitzmaurice and Foran did not abide these strategies, they were condemned by League officials and subjected to social and economic ostracism, or boycotting. Notices of their offenses were posted near the leased property and at local market places. Each man received limited police protection, but both fatally waved off the security. (Read my piece on the Foran murder for The Irish Story.)

The 68-year-old Fitzmaurice was shot point blank by two assailants near Lixnaw, Kerry, on 31 January 1888. His daughter Nora, about 20, witnessed the murder in the “cold grey dawn of morning,” according to a 16-page political pamphlet, “A Deed of Blood,” published a few weeks after the crime.

“A Deed of Blood” was produced by the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, an alliance of Irish businessmen, landowners and academics who sought to preserve the existing political ties with Great Britain. The group was formed in 1885 to oppose efforts by Charles Stuart Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party to win land reform and limited domestic autonomy, called home rule.

The pamphlet featured original reporting and quoted from newspaper coverage of the Fitzmaurice murder. It appeared in mid February 1888, shortly after two men were charged with the murder, but before their trial, conviction and execution by hanging at the end of April. For the ILPU, the crime was “yet another link … added to the strong chain of evidence connecting the National League with the latest murder in Kerry.”

Probably only a few hundred copies of “A Deed of Blood” were ever printed and distributed, most likely in London and Dublin. Two copies of the pamphlet are listed on WorldCat, the online global library catalog: one at the Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame, the other at the University of Manchester Library in the U.K.

I obtained Notre Dame’s copy of the pamphlet through an interlibrary loan and was disappointed to learn that “some pages [are] cut,” according to the library’s notes. A total of three paragraphs are clipped from two pages, creating a gap-tooth effect that also disrupts the narrative flow on the opposite pages.

So I reached out to the University of Manchester to obtain intact copies of the four mutilated pages. Here are the missing passages:

  • Cut from the bottom of page 10 is a reference to the 12 June 1887 resolution against Fitzmaurice by the Lixnaw branch of the National League, which was “unanimously adopted.” The missing section at the bottom of page 9 describes “threatening notices” against Fitzmaurice posted near the disputed property on 6 April 1887.
  • The cut section at the top of page 11 continues the resolution against Fitzmaurice from the bottom of page 10. It is attributed to the 18 June 1887 issue of the Kerry Weekly Reporter. Missing from the top of page 12 is the headline ‘The Landlord’s Story,’ which quotes from a letter by Mr. S. M. Hussey.
  • Cut from the middle of page 11 is the text of an October 1887 resolution against the future victim, which calls on the public to show their “disapprobation of the conduct of James Fitzmaurice, who has been so base and inhuman as to grab his brother’s land.” From the middle of page 12 is part of Hussey’s letter that Edmond Fitzmaurice’s farm “seemed hopeless” because “he either could not or would not pay his rent.”

The ILPU later republished the pamphlet in a collection of its works from 1888, but without small details such as the drawing shown below. This version is available online through the Hathi Trust Digital Library.

I’ve sent copies of the four intact pages of the University of Manchester pamphlet to the University of Notre Dame with my interlibrary return. I know this isn’t the type of text many readers or researchers seek on a regular basis. When they do, however, they should get the full story of “A Deed of Blood.”

Page detail from 'A Deed of Blood.'

Page detail from ‘A Deed of Blood.’