'Barbarous atrocity' in Borrisokane

Finnoe murders feature in new Tipperary Historical Journal

This year's Tipperary Historical Journal (THJ) is out now and, as ever, features a great deal of new research on people and events throughout the county.

One chapter that will certainly stoke local intrigue is Daniel Grace's study of the brutal murders at Finnoe House, Borrisokane, in 1843. Five members of the Waller family were attacked in their home in an event described in the Nenagh Guardian of the time as a "heinous and barbarous offence against the laws of God and man".

The Finnoe members were reported on in newspapers throughout Ireland and abroad. The Dublin Evening Mail considered the event "the most barbarous atrocity perpetrated by monsters in the shape of men that ever, perhaps, occurred since the world was a world", while the Dublin Monitor believed it was "as bad as anything we read of among the bushmen of New South Wales".

The Knigh historian pores over the circumstances of the attack, following which Harriet Vereker and Thomas Waller - "notorious as an evicter and hunter of Catholics" - died from the injuries they sustained. Mindful of the various societal mores of the time, Mr Grace explores the likely motivation of the suspected attackers, most of whom came from the Portroe area, none of whom were ever brought to book for the shocking crime.

Also of interest in the 2023 THJ will be Gay Lowry's account of the more than 400 orphan girls sent from Tipperary workhouses to Australia between 1848 and 1850. Among them were girls from Nenagh and Roscrea workhouses, including an Ann Lowry, whom the author thought might have been one of his Tipp town ancestors, though she more likely hailed from Roscrea.

TIPPERARY 'MARY'

"She came from Ireland with the tide, and hailed from Tipperary... this maiden on Mersey's shore hooked a thousand hearts on seven seas and many more ashore... her curses made sailors flinch..." These lines are taken from the poem 'Mary', written in German in the nineteenth century by Georg Weerth, and translated and studied in this year's THJ by UL lecturer Joachim Fischer and Dromineer poet Eleanor Hooker.

The poem is based on Mary Burns (1823-1863), common law wife of the great German philospher Friedrich Engels. There is, however, nothing to suggest that Mary came from Tipperary and the county may only have been used in the poem for ryhming purposes. In this chapter, the authors seek to decipher the real Mary and point to evidence that Engels' partner was a strong advocate of the the cause of Irish nationalism.

The centrepiece article in the 2023 THJ is Denis G Marnane's in-depth analysis of the drive to build cottages for labourers in County Tipperary in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This was a slow and arduous process that encountered many difficulties along the way, not least among them the loggerheads between landlords and labourers. Even by 1901, a medical inspector's report on Nenagh noted that labourers comprised about a quarter of the population and lived in bad housing, contiguous to "piggeries usually kept in a filthy state and are a serious menace to public health".

Following a similar line is Padraig G Lane's look at the situation of farm labourers in Tipperary in the 1880s, including many demonstrations and "outrages" across the north of the county. Tipperary was in a state of disorder at the time and a particular plight for the labourer was his replacement with machinery. Demands were made for farmers to continue digging out potatoes, rather than ploughing them out.

ARSON IN LORRHA

In 'Arson in Lorrha Parish Chapel', Seamus J King sifts through Nenagh Guardian reports on a bizarre series of events that occurred in the 1870s. This culminated with an attempt to burn the Roman Catholic Church in Lorrha in May 1878. Two suspects, one of them the mother of a schoolteacher dismissed over a litany of incompetencies, were put on trial for the crime. Both were acquitted.

The Cashel historian illustrates the background of the events and the vengeful motivations for those involved in a classic case of entrenched tensions in a local community.

Templemore readers will find fascination in local man Donal J O'Regan's profile of Jerry O'Connell (1898-1985), a Castleiney native who became a publican of some renown in Dublin. Chairman of the Irish Vintners Association in 1949 and twice President of the Tipperary Men's Association in Dublin, Jerry ran a pub in Portobello that often hosted Tipp revellers visiting the city for a match.

Of easy and cheerful disposition, Jerry was also a deeply religious man who left behind him the longest will seen in 50 years of practice by the late Templemore solicitor John J Nash. He left £500 to each of the religious orders of Ireland, and the same amount each to the Holycross Restoration Fund and for the construction of the new church in Loughmore.

The above is but a selection of the contents of the 2023 Tipperary Historical Journal. An authoritative source of fresh research on the history of County Tipperary, this new - along with many previous - edition can be purchased online through www.tipperarystudies.ie and in local bookshops.