BY JOHN FITZGERALD
PART ONE
The events surrounding the murder of Callan man, Patrick Devereux, in 1828, and the hanging of two men convicted of the crime, still cast a shadow over the town.
The multiple tragedy was sparked off by a series of brutal evictions in Clonygarra, a townland in Coolaghmore parish, just outside Callan. In the spring of 1828, Viscount Clifden decided that five families on his land should be removed because they had fallen behind in their rent payments.
Clifden was among the most hated landlords in the South East. He showed no mercy to his tenants. Without warning, his agents came battering at the doors of the small cabins at Clonygarra.
Men, women, and screaming children were dragged out of their homes and forced to watch as the “crowbar” gangs set to work. The cabins were leveled and set alight.
This action freed about 40 acres of land that the Viscount handed over to Patrick Devereux. At the time, people who took possession of such farms were despised and condemned as “land grabbers.” They were seen to be thriving at the expense of evicted tenants.
Devereux was unpopular in Callan even before the evictions at Clonygarra. He was rumoured to have murdered his wife and eluded justice thanks to his “friends in high places.” A few weeks prior to her untimely and violent death, neighbours had seen him savagely beating her.
A bully
He had the reputation of being a bully in all his dealings with people. He was always armed in public and carried a whip that he used to lash out at anyone who dared criticise him. Whenever cattle strayed unto his land, he shot them or drove the animals into Poulacapple bog, a veritable no-go area in those days.
Unfortunately for Devereux, three of the people affected by his “land grabbing” at Clonygarra had paramilitary connections. The Russell and Cody families had never accepted British rule in Ireland and swore allegiance to a code of unwritten rules governing land transactions called the “Rock Laws.”
The Whiteboys, a clandestine organization that had declared war on absentee landlords and their agents, had drawn these up.
Seventy-year old James Russell was an agitator and staunch Republican who had always stood up for the rights of tenants. Now his family was destitute after a heartless eviction. His anger knew no bounds.
In September 1828, he and his two sons, Mark and Edmond approached Pat and Tom Cody, who were equally embittered by their ordeal. Having discussed their plight, they agreed that Devereux should pay dearly for his acquisition of their land and the destruction of their precious homes.
The five men plotted to kill Devereux and dump the body in Poulacapple bog. If they had proceeded as planned, they might have gotten away with the murder. But events took a different course. Shortly after noon on September 26th, Patrick Devereux arrived at Clonygarra to check on his field of crops.
Unluckily for him, the Cody brothers happened to be working nearby. Mark and Edmond Russell were also in the vicinity. The four men spotted Devereux as he sat down on a wall to light his pipe. His gun lay on the ground beside him.
The men rushed over to him and a vicious row ensued. One of the men grabbed Devereux’s weapon as another pushed him to the ground. Undaunted, he leapt to his feet and broke Tom Cody’s nose. Mark Russell’s jaw was dislocated in the melee.
But James Russell had heard the commotion and decided to intervene. He charged at Devereux, shouting: “land grabber scum”. Russell was armed with a large wooden mallet that he had been using to break sods.
He struck Devereux repeatedly with the mallet until his enemy was almost unrecognizable.
Loyalty to cause
In the heat of the attack, the five men had forgotten that other people were present in the vicinity and would have witnessed the murder. Foolishly, they hoped that loyalty to their cause and Devereux’s reputation would tilt the balance in their favour. The hated Callan man would not be missed, they surmised.
They had grounds for so believing. In his entry for September 26th, the famous Callan diarist, Humphrey O’ Sullivan, referred to the murder in terms which reflected badly on the victim. He recalled having visited the area the previous month and speaking to “a poor bare-footed woman” who had suffered at the hands of the deceased man.
Pointing to a potato garden, she said: “I set those potatoes, but Patrick Devereux will dig them”. She took O’ Sullivan through a field of wheat and remarked: “My family sowed the seed, but Devereux reaped the crop, my curse on him.”
With great bitterness, she told the Kerry-born schoolmaster about how her husband built a cabin for their family, only to see it razed to the ground by Devereux’s thugs.
The assassins made no effort to conceal the body. They dumped the bruised and battered corpse in a ditch close to the Tipperary border.
Next day, the police swooped on almost every household in Coolaghmore parish. Scores of people were arrested. The Russells and Codys were interrogated at length about the murder. But nobody would co-operate with the investigation, even though most people in the district knew or suspected who the culprits were…
(To be continued)
(My book Callan in Words and Pictures is available from Amazon)
