Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police MagistratePorter, Frank Thorpe
History
Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate
Porter, Frank Thorpe
Crime -- Ireland; Criminals -- Ireland; Ireland -- Social life and customs; Porter, Frank Thorpe, 1801-1882
The residence of the late Dr. Graves in Merrion Square was robbed
several years ago, by the thief's entrance at the windows of the front
drawing-room, which had been left unfastened. The balcony did not appear
accessible by ordinary means, but was easily attained from that of the
adjoining house. Brennan was sent to examine the premises, and he at
once perceived the traces left by a soiled foot in climbing by the
pillars of the hall-door next to Dr. Graves's; he then walked over to
the rails of the square, and found marks which satisfied him that some
person had recently crossed; amongst the bushes there were a few heaps
of twigs, the parings or prunings of the shrubs; and beneath one of them
he discovered an excavation or _cache_, in which was a quantity of the
stolen property. At night he lay down at a little distance from the
place, and was not long there before a person approached and proceeded
to take up the property. At the rails he was giving it to an associate,
when, on a signal from Brennan, some other constables came forward, and
the burglars were secured. They were subsequently convicted and
transported.
A FALSE ACCUSATION EXPOSED.
I have known several instances in which innocence has derived complete
protection, even from the inconvenience of any arrest or personal
interference, from the tact and intelligence of members of that force,
to which a most greedy appetite for convictions is freely attributed.
About ten years before I became a magistrate, a considerable portion of
the County of Cork was a scene of disturbances, which might be fairly
termed insurrectionary. Amongst other outrages which were then
perpetrated, was the murder of a clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Hewson, who was
shot on the high road, and in the open day, in the vicinity of Bandon.
No clue was obtained whereby the guilty parties could be discovered, and
the offence has never been punished. In the year 1842, a soldier in a
regiment stationed at Fredericton, New Brunswick, stated to his officer
that he had been concerned in the crime, and he named two persons as his
accomplices; the man was sent home and brought up before me for
examination. A detective informed me that he had been, at the period of
the murder, orderly to the constabulary officer at Bandon; that he had
been at the scene of offence very soon after its commission, and that he
wished to be present at the examination of the self-accused prisoner. To
this I acceded, and the soldier detailed that on the day and at the hour
when the clergyman was murdered, he and two men, whom he named, met the
unfortunate gentleman on his way home, that one of them seized his
horse, and the other shot him with a blunderbuss; that they immediately
fled, and he made a statement of where and how they spent the remainder
of the day. The detective, whose name, if I recollect rightly, was
Benson, by my permission asked him, "Which of you backed the horse, and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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