Tales of the R.I.C.

by Unknown

In Ireland the penalty for harbouring, keeping, or concealing a still or illicit spirits is £100, which can be mitigated to £6, luckily no lower; and from time immemorial the custom of the shopkeeper class of magistrate has always been to reduce every fine to the minimum, with the natural result that the peasants have come to regard the £6 fine as the legal penalty for the bad luck of being caught by the police. £6 is a mere fraction of the profits of a successful brew of poteen, and is looked upon in the light of a tax paid to the Government.

In one case a man was caught red-handed by the police with fourteen barrels of treacle, 200 gallons of wash, a complete still, and enough poteen to stock a fair-sized public-house. The man brought the £6 into Court with him, being certain he would be convicted and fined the usual amount.

But Mayne, the only magistrate on the bench, took a very serious view of the case, knowing the amount of crime and misery caused by this abominable drink, and fined the man £50.

Such a sentence had never been heard in Ballyrick Court-house within the memory of man; even the police received a shock, and a noise resembling a swarm of angry bees arose to defy the shouts of the police for silence and order. That evening, when Mayne returned to Ballybor, he was followed by a police car for many miles, but the peasants had not had time to organise their revenge.

About this time the magistrates of the district received letters from the I.R.A. calling upon them to resign their Commissions of the Peace, and giving them a time limit. The shopkeeper and farmer class, being threatened with that savage scourge in Ireland, a boycott, had no alternative but to resign, which they did at once with great promptness and unanimity. In most cases the gentry hung on to their commissions, but refrained from appearing on the Bench at a time when their presence might have made all the difference.

Very soon the Sinn Fein Courts in the Ballybor district were in full swing; the country people received orders not to appear at a Petty Sessions Court, and in a very short time every Petty Sessions clerk found himself completely idle. However, as a matter of form, Mayne attended every Court regularly, though the only people present were the police, the clerk, and himself, and their only work to say good-day to each other.

By now all the magistrates in the district had either resigned or feared to attend, and if only the R.M. could be frightened out of the country or removed, all Petty Sessions Courts would be closed, and the King’s Writ would cease to run in the country both figuratively and in reality. With this end in view, the Volunteers began to send threatening letters to Mayne, and on two occasions he was fired at when motoring back from holding Courts in outlying towns.

However, Mayne was made of the right stuff, and determined that as long as he was alive the usual Courts should be held throughout his district, no matter whether the people brought their cases to the King’s Courts or to the Sinn Fein Courts, which were generally held the day before a Petty Sessions Court was due in a town; and in order to provide cases he arranged with Blake to carry out a poteen raid on a large scale in the Ballyrick district, and that the cases should be tried at the next Court there. Blake duly carried out the raid, which was most successful, and the defendants were summoned to appear in Court, with the threat of arrest held over their heads if they did not turn up.

On the day of the Ballyrick Court Mayne set out, alone as usual, on his long drive about 9.45 A.M., and on reaching the level crossing found the gates closed, though no train was due to pass for several hours. After sounding his horn in vain, he went to open them himself, only to find that both gates were heavily padlocked.

He then made his way to the crossing-keeper’s house, which was about fifty yards up the line. The man’s wife, who was the only occupant of the house, told him that the gates had been locked that morning by the Volunteers, after the police cars had passed through, and the keys taken away. Determined not to be beaten, Mayne now got a heavy stone, and had actually succeeded in smashing the padlock on the near gate, when he was shot in the head from behind, and at once collapsed on the road.