Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate

by Frank Thorpe Porter

The residence of the late Dr. Graves in Merrion Square was robbed several years ago, by the thief's entrance at the windows of the front drawing-room, which had been left unfastened. The balcony did not appear accessible by ordinary means, but was easily attained from that of the adjoining house. Brennan was sent to examine the premises, and he at once perceived the traces left by a soiled foot in climbing by the pillars of the hall-door next to Dr. Graves's; he then walked over to the rails of the square, and found marks which satisfied him that some person had recently crossed; amongst the bushes there were a few heaps of twigs, the parings or prunings of the shrubs; and beneath one of them he discovered an excavation or cache, in which was a quantity of the stolen property. At night he lay down at a little distance from the place, and was not long there before a person approached and proceeded to take up the property. At the rails he was giving it to an associate, when, on a signal from Brennan, some other constables came forward, and the burglars were secured. They were subsequently convicted and transported.

A FALSE ACCUSATION EXPOSED.

I have known several instances in which innocence has derived complete protection, even from the inconvenience of any arrest or personal interference, from the tact and intelligence of members of that force, to which a most greedy appetite for convictions is freely attributed.

About ten years before I became a magistrate, a considerable portion of the County of Cork was a scene of disturbances, which might be fairly termed insurrectionary. Amongst other outrages which were then perpetrated, was the murder of a clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Hewson, who was shot on the high road, and in the open day, in the vicinity of Bandon. No clue was obtained whereby the guilty parties could be discovered, and the offence has never been punished. In the year 1842, a soldier in a regiment stationed at Fredericton, New Brunswick, stated to his officer that he had been concerned in the crime, and he named two persons as his accomplices; the man was sent home and brought up before me for examination. A detective informed me that he had been, at the period of the murder, orderly to the constabulary officer at Bandon; that he had been at the scene of offence very soon after its commission, and that he wished to be present at the examination of the self-accused prisoner. To this I acceded, and the soldier detailed that on the day and at the hour when the clergyman was murdered, he and two men, whom he named, met the unfortunate gentleman on his way home, that one of them seized his horse, and the other shot him with a blunderbuss; that they immediately fled, and he made a statement of where and how they spent the remainder of the day. The detective, whose name, if I recollect rightly, was Benson, by my permission asked him, "Which of you backed the horse, and overturned the gig into the ditch at the road-side?" to which the reply was, "I did." He then asked, "Which of you cut the traces?" The response was, "L—— did." He proceeded, "Which of you struck the poor woman who saw the murder, for screaming?" He was answered, "P—— did." The interrogator then declared to me that the fellow was telling a tissue of falsehoods, for the horse had not been backed into the grip, and the vehicle was not a gig, but an outside jaunting-car; that the traces had not been cut, neither was any woman near the place assaulted by the murderers. Subsequent inquiries established the fact, that one of the persons accused in the soldier's confession was, at the period of the murder, apprentice to a cabinet-maker in Cork, a reference to whom and to whose books showed that the party sought to be implicated had been in his master's concerns during the day of the assassination, and for a considerable time previous to and after the transaction; and it appeared that the statement had been made for the mere purpose of its fabricator being sent home from service in a regiment with which he was discontented, and in which he had acquired a most disreputable character.

EXTRAORDINARY GRATITUDE.

The discharge of magisterial duties with firmness and impartiality occasionally evokes expressions of approbation from those by whom proceedings may have been instituted or closely observed, and may even elicit a complimentary notice from an editorial pen. A deep sense of gratitude for the exercise of magisterial functions is not so frequently avowed or ascribed. I am therefore disposed to bring before the reader the circumstances which, in a very public place, produced a compliance with a request of mine, accompanied by the expression, "Anything that I could do for you, Mr. Porter, if it was even to put my hands under your feet, should be a duty and a pleasure, for I can never be too grateful to such a worthy magistrate as you." This was said by a station-master of the Great Southern and Western Railway named Duffy, in 1851, in reply to an application for a coupée carriage for a friend of mine who was going to Cork with his wife and daughter. The guard of the train was directed by Mr. Duffy to be most attentive to the party. My friend subsequently remarked to the guard that the station-master evinced a great anxiety to please me. "So he ought," was the reply; "the poor fellow is married to a real incarnate devil, and Mr. Porter sends her to gaol whenever she is brought before him." Habitual intemperance, with concomitant violence, occasioned the frequent incarcerations for which the delinquent's husband felt so grateful.

A SALUTARY REFORMATION.

About the time to which the last anecdote refers, I was applied to, on a Monday afternoon, by a gentleman who asked and obtained a private interview. He was in a high social position, and possessed an ample fortune. He stated that his wife had lapsed into habits of intemperance which rendered his life wretched, and estranged him from association with his friends, to whom he could not bear to have her deplorable tendencies exposed. When inebriated she was excessively violent, and did not hesitate to assault the domestics, and that on the preceding evening she had assaulted, in his presence, a female servant, with a poker. I told him to have her summoned by the servant for the following Thursday, and I had three o'clock mentioned as the hour for hearing the complaint. The lady did not attend, and on proof of the service of the summons and a sworn information of the assault, I issued a warrant for her apprehension. She was brought before me after all the other business of the next day had been finished, and I required her to give bail in two sureties to keep the peace, and in default of such, to be imprisoned for three months. At Grangegorman, she was not compelled to associate with the other prisoners, and the matron's attention was invited to the case. At the termination of the second month, her husband, who had received frequent letters from her, felt confident that she had become reformed, and I discharged her at his instance and on his surety. I afterwards met them frequently in society. I have seen her at viceregal parties, and never observed the slightest appearance of, or tendency to, her former indulgence. I do not believe that she ever relapsed; but whilst I am happy to notice a complete reformation, my satisfaction is alloyed by the reflection that it was the only instance of such a change that I ever knew to occur.