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
Very soon after my appointment to the police magistracy, there was a
person named Jones convicted of being deeply implicated in the Ribbon
system. He was not committed for trial from the Head Office, and I was
not officially connected with any of the proceedings in his case. After
he had been sent to another hemisphere under sentence of transportation,
I heard casually from a professional man, on whose statements I placed
the utmost reliance, that Jones had acknowledged to him being the person
by whom the statue of King William in College Green was blown up in
1836. There was no prosecution instituted as to that extraordinary
affair, and I notice it only on account of the statements subsequently
made, and an incident which may be considered of an amusing character.
Two women of a disreputable class were standing at the corner of Church
Lane in College Green just after midnight. A man whom they had not
previously observed, descended quickly from the statue, and having
crossed the rails which then intervened between the pedestal and the
thoroughfare, he ignited a fuse which had been previously connected with
some explosive substance placed between the figures of the steed and the
rider. The man rapidly decamped, the fuse burned quickly, and there was
an explosion which was heard in almost every part of the city, and by
which the figure of the monarch was completely separated from his horse,
and thrown into the public carriage-way, several yards from the
pedestal. It was reported that a respectable citizen residing in the
immediate vicinity, who had been suffering for some time previous from
disease of the heart, rose from his bed in hasty alarm, and almost
immediately dropped lifeless. Jones, according to the statement of my
informant, subsequently tried to cut the head off the prostrate figure,
but was deterred by the approach of a party of police from College
Street. I believe that those who examined the figures of man and horse
expressed a decided opinion that the explosion had not been effected by
gunpowder, and the statements of the acknowledged delinquent denied that
gunpowder had been used, but without his specifying what material had
effected such an extraordinary result.
SURGICAL ASSISTANCE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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