War heroes, ancient harp and ‘Hanging Judge’

The new Tipperary Historical Journal opens with the fascinating story of the Castle Otway Harp, the oldest Irish harp surviving “in more or less complete state”.

Owned by the Otway family of Castle Otway, Templederry, the harp dates from the 16th or 17th century. Tim Boland - a regular contributor to Silvermines Historical Society’s ‘Mining the Past’ series - traces the history of the harp, which was famously played by blind musician Patrick Quin (1745-1812), “one of the last of the ancient race of harpers”.

The harp was purchased by Rev Samuel Jocelyn Otway around the time of the disbanding of the Dublin Harp Society in 1812. The instrument has ever since been known as the ‘Castle Otway Harp’.

After the burning of a number of gentry houses in the turbulent early 1920s, the Otway family decided to move the valuable contents out of their home and offer them for sale. Otway Castle was burned to the ground in August 1922 but before that, in May the harp was sold at an auction in Dublin. Its next recorded location was in Guilford, Surrey, in the late 1960s when it was photographed in the home of its owner, Robert Jocelyn Oliver Otway-Ruthven.

He subsequently donated the harp to Trinity College in Dublin, where it remains to this day. Sadly, Mr Boland notes, it is not accessible to the public.

NORBURY - 'THE HANGING JUDGE'

In ‘A Jovial Fox-Hunting Tipperary Gentleman - The Life of John Toler, Lord Norbury’, Solicitor James K Meighan contributes a biography of the Nenagh man still remembered by his reputation as ‘The Hanging Judge’.

Norbury (1745-1831), MP, served as Solicitor General for Ireland, Attorney General, and Chief Justice to the Court of Common Pleas for Ireland. “He was a lawyer and a judge but did not understand the law or have compassion for the individuals which he prosecuted or stood in judgement of, particularly if those individuals were Catholics,” the author notes.

“The severity with which justice was handed down during Norbury's tenure is startling. In a time of peace, and during one single assize, Norbury had the pleasure of sentencing no fewer than 198 men and women to death. On another Circuit, 100 were capitally tried; two were acquitted, one, a solider, who had murdered a peasant, was pardoned and 97 were hanged.”

Also nicknamed ‘Puffendorf’ for an extraordinary habit of inflating his cheeks at the end of every sentence, Norbury’s first act as Attorney General was the prosecution of those involved in the 1798 Rebellion. He was Chief Justice for 27 years. The most significant case he presided over was the prosecution of Robert Emmet in 1803, the circumstances around which the author relates in vivid detail.

BATTLE BETTER THAN BREAKFAST

Another profile of a prominent north Tipperaryman is contributed by Knigh historian - and Chairman of County Tipperary Historical Society - Danny Grace. In the first part of ‘John Hassett Gleeson: A Forgotten Tipperary Soldier and Fenian’, Mr Grace conveys the remarkably eventful though relatively short life of the Borrisoleigh-born man, who by his 30th birthday had served as a policeman in Dublin, a volunteer in the Papal army in Italy, and an officer in the Union forces in the American Civil War.

One of eight Gleeson brothers - possibly all of whom emigrated to America - the towering 6ft 4 Gleeson (1937-1889) participated in at least 35 military engagements in the Civil War, including the battles of Bull Run and Antietam; climbed the ranks from common solider to Major General in just four years, and featured prominently in the press; one newspaper said of Gleeson “He is a natural fighter and likes a battle better than his breakfast”.

Gleeson was also heavily involved in the Fenian movement and returned to Borrisoleigh after the war to take part in a planned rising in 1865. He was arrested on suspicion of seditious activities and spent time in Nenagh gaol before returning to the US to continue his Fenian activities.

LETTERS FROM THE FRONT

Staying with the military theme, founder of the very popular ‘Nenagh Military History’ Facebook page Michael Reynolds contributes an article on another local war hero, Oscar Percy Hennessy (1882 - 1962). Enlisting as a drummer boy at the age of 14, Hennessy went on to serve in South Africa in the Second Boer War and France in the First World War. He was awarded the Military Cross for saving the lives of four of his comrades at the 1915 Battle of Festubert, though he was badly wounded and lost the use of his right arm.

Hennessy wrote of his war experiences in letters sent home to his wife Agnes in Nenagh. The letters were published in local newspapers, making Hennessy very well known throughout Tipperary. He was honoured in 1916 with a special reception at Nenagh Lawn Tennis Club, attended by over a thousand people, while Anna Bolton of Cloughjordan wrote a 40-line poem titled ‘Ode to regimental Sergeant Major Hennessy’.

Having spoken to Hennessy’s descendants as part of his meticulous research, Mr Reynolds documents the costly contribution of this and a great many other Nenagh families to the war. He also provides insight into the the “stigma” that these families came to face because of that contribution; the Hennessys were reportedly forced to flee Nenagh after Oscar was threatened by the IRA. “His story reveals the period in Irish history when countrymen turned against each other as their loyalties became divided because of imperialism and nationalism,” the author writes of Hennessy.

THE HOLLYFORD RAID

Also of much interest to local readers will be Solohead man Michael Ryan's in-depth exploration of the death of Denis Quinlan up in Hollyford during the War of Independence.

Quinlan, of Upperchurch, was shot on February 13 1921 after a large force of military and police surrounded Hollyford Church. He was an innocent victim of the war, shot after attending Mass.

In ‘Local Memory, Black and Tans and a Court of Inquiry: the Death of Denis Quinlan’, Mr Ryan pores over evidence of the incident, and the question of whether Quinlan was killed by long-distance shot or one fired from relatively close range. His account includes an interview with the last person to remember the victim, Catherine (Kitty) Power, who died in 2011.

The above is just a summarised selection of the articles that appear in the 2021 journal, recently published by County Tipperary Historical Society. It can be purchased online at www.tipperarystudies.ie and is available in local bookshops.