BY JOHN FITZGERALD
(Part One)
Callan Court was a lively place in the 19th century, with some decidedly oddball cases keeping the police and local busybodies occupied. Following his retirement, local newspaper correspondent Peter Roughan collected transcripts of old hearings that struck him as being a bit off the wall or amusing.
In 1861, we find a few “rare characters” appearing before Judge Pat Cody.
Jack Reilly from Galway was a frequent visitor to the courthouse, always in the company of policemen whose repeated warnings to change his lifestyle fell on deaf ears. Jack had travelled the country and boasted that he was “peeler-proof” in every part of Ireland except Callan.
In Ballyragget, Johnstown, Urlingford and Freshford, he had outwitted them, and even in Callan, he claimed, it took ten constables to take him into custody. He was a professional step dancer and self-confessed sheep stealer. Jack spent many a night in Kilkenny jail and in Callan’s “Black Hole”, a place of detention not noted for comfort, good food, or sanitation.
Though a small man, Jack Reilly fought the “peelers” tooth and nail and batons often had to be used to restrain him.
A woman called “Sugar” Hanrahan was up for beating an ass with a shillelagh. When asked for her name and address, she described herself as a “lady of the roads.”
She said she felt alone in the world because her husband was away in Garryricken to do a little “honest ferreting.” She had no idea when he would be back. “I was lonely yer honour” she said, grasping her shawl, “and I bate that auld ass cause me mind strayed owing to me lad not being with me.”
The judge fined her a bob for lashing the donkey, but imposed a more severe penalty when “Sugar” responded to the fine by calling him a “Hoor’s Ghost” and expressing the hope that he would choke before the day was over. For these words of anger, she received a 48-hour spell in Kilkenny jail.
Not only that… she would have to walk to Kilkenny under police escort and then serve her sentence. There would be a changing of the guard at Cuffesgrange to relieve the constables, but “Sugar” had to walk the whole way without a rest.
A wandering man nicknamed “The Screw” moved into an unoccupied thatched house on Green Lane and claimed Squatters’ Rights. He appeared in court one day on a charge that he “did willfully and furiously ride a piebald ass up and down Green Street, to the disaffection of law-abiding bystanders.”
His defence was that he was riding home with a few herrings that he bought at the cross, for his dinner, but that the ass hated herrings and was attempting to run away from the smell of them. This man got off with a warning, but the judge promised to come down hard on him if he failed to exercise proper control of his donkey.
Many locals were fined for not having logs tied around the necks of vicious dogs. It was mandatory to restrain certain dogs in this way with wooden logs to prevent them from posing a serious risk to public safety.
A log-encumbered dog would be slowed down considerably if it gave chase, and you had a better chance of escaping over a wall or into somebody’s house. A Mr. Kennedy of Green Street, described as a harness maker, was charged with letting his ferocious bulldog out on the street without a heavy enough log attached to the animal.
The dog did have a log, but the court ruled it was too light for him, weighing only a pound and a half. Mr. Kennedy promised the court that he would replace the dog with one that could wear the pound and a half log.
Dogs at the time were more plentiful than wooden logs in Callan…
