http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2478-9777
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Abstract
The murder of Maria Kirwan by her husband William Kirwan is one of the most significant Irish homicide trials of the nineteenth century. An important case in both British and Irish legal history, it helped to bring about a criminal court of appeal. An extraordinary amount of original trial and legal documents have also survived giving a unique insight into the background of the case. As such, an analysis of the media coverage is particularly revealing. With this context, it is possible to look at the factors driving the news as well as the underlying ideologies of the newspapers that covered the trial and its aftermath. Using 1052 pages of coverage gathered from a keyword search of the British Newspaper Archive, this article looks at three main areas of reporting—the autonomy of the Irish press, the state of the Irish justice system and attitudes towards domestic violence.
ORCID
Abigail Rieley http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2478-9777
Notes
1 Swiss born François Benjamin Courvoisier (August 1816–6 July 1840) was a valet convicted of murdering his employer Lord William Russell. Around 40,000 people attended his execution including both Dickens and Thackeray. FRANCOIS BENJAMIN COURVOISIER, Killing > murder, 15 June 1840.
2 ‘Declarations of Innocence by Convicts’.
3 London Evening Standard, 31 December 1863.
4 Hansard, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 127:963.
5 Chibnall, Law-and-Order News, x–xi.
6 Anon, ‘Murder of Maria Kirwan on Irelands Eye’
7 Evidence of Theresa Kenny confirming her relationship with and children by Kirwan, Anon., ‘Prosecution Brief’, 113.
8 Evidence of Margaret Campbell, ibid., 27.
9 Evidence of Margaret Doyle, ibid., 72.
10 Evidence of Catherine Kelly, ibid., 33.
11 Evidence of Margaret Gillas, ibid., 70.
12 Armstrong, Report of the Trial.
13 McMahon, Homicide in Pre Famine and Famine Ireland, 13–15.
14 Conley, Melancholy Accidents, 61. Conley has produced several valuable studies on the nineteenth-century courts, including her examination of the treatment of women by the courts No Pedestals: Women and Violence in Late 19th Century Ireland (1995) and Certain Other Countries: Homicide, Gender and National Identity in Late Nineteenth Century Ireland, Scotland and Wales, in which she also examines how homicide trials can throw a spotlight on underlying societal issues.
15 King, ‘Making Crime News’.
16 Crone, ‘Publishing Courtroom Drama for the Masses, 1820–1855’.
17 See particularly Certain Other Countries for a comparative study.
18 Vaughan, Murder Trials in Ireland, 1836–1914, 42.
19 Ibid., 14.
20 Evidence of Henry Davis Report of the Trial, 41.
21 ‘Melancholy Accident’.
22 ‘Melancholy Occurrence at Ireland’s Eye’, The Advocate: Or, Irish Industrial Journal, 8 September 1852.
23 ‘Melancholy Occurrence at Ireland’s Eye’, London Evening Standard, 9 September 1852.
24 Evidence of Michael Nangle, Anon., ‘Prosecution Brief’, 17.
25 ‘The Late Case of Drowning At Irelands Eye’, Evening Packet and Correspondent, 9 October 1852.
26 Evidence of Maria Byrne, ibid., 30.
27 O’Brien, ‘Journalism in Ireland’, 16.
28 ‘The Late Mysterious Case of Drowning At Ireland’s Eye’, Freeman’s Journal, 16 October 1852.
29 ‘The Tale of Mystery’, The Examiner, 23 October 1852.
30 ‘The Late Mysterious Case of Drowning on Ireland’s Eye’.
31 ‘Charge of Murder’.
32 ‘The Charge of Murder Against an Artist’.
33 Evidence of Thomas Larkin, Anon., ‘Prosecution Brief’, 29.
34 ‘Commission of Oyer and Terminer’.
35 All three papers ran a short paragraph explaining that the case was ready to start but carried their main trial reports over the next day or so.
36 ‘Ireland’, London Evening Standard, 8 December 1852.
37 Evidence of Margaret Campbell, Armstrong, Report of the Trial, 14.
38 Ibid., 32.
39 Ibid., 34.
40 Ibid., 60.
41 Ibid., 58–64.
42 Ibid., 81.
43 Ibid., 82.
44 Ibid., 91.
45 ‘The Tenant Right Bill’.
46 ‘From Our London Correspondent’.
47 ‘Extraordinary Trial for Murder’.
48 Ibid.
49 Vaughan., Murder Trials in Ireland, 1836–1914, 297. The ‘matters put forward’ that Crampton was referring to are affidavits gathered by solicitor John Boswell in support of Kirwan. The affidavits were published widely in various newspapers and Boswell also published them in pamphlet form as The Defence of William Bourke Kirwan condemned for the alleged murder of his wife, and now a convict at Spike Island.
50 ‘The Case of the Convict Kirwan’.
51 ‘Reprieve of Mr Kirwan: The Power of Public Opinion and the Press’.
52 The Case of Mr. Kirwan’.
53 Dennis, ‘Kirwan’s Case’.
54 Saunders’s News-Letter, 1 January 1853.
55 ‘The Convict Kirwan’.
56 ‘Ireland’, The Morning Chronicle, 27 January 1853.
57 Ibid.
58 ‘Kirwan the Murderer’.
59 Grace. ‘The Convict Kirwan’.
60 Hitchens and Allison, ‘To the Editor of Saunder’s News-Letter’.
61 ‘The Trial of Mr. KIRWAN, at Dublin’.
62 ‘The Case of Mr. Kirwan’.
63 The Convict Kirwan’.
64 ‘The Kirwan Case’, The Examiner, 1 January 1853.
65 ‘The Murderer Kirwan’.
66 Vaughan., Murder Trials in Ireland, 1836–1914, 97.
67 ‘CORONER’S INQUEST (SIX-MILE BRIDGE). (Hansard, 16 November 1852)’.
68 ‘Law Intelligence’.
69 Gavan Duffy, My Life in Two Hemispheres, 1:27.
70 Inglis, The Freedom of the Press in Ireland, 1784–1841, 221. O’Connell had used his speech to blame the press for failing to support his new repeal society. They responded by refusing to cover the speech. Duffy’s then editor, Michael Staunton, who ran the Morning Register tried to respond but was shouted down.
71 O’Brien, ‘Journalism in Ireland’, 15.
72 There are several accounts of Dublin journalists acting together as a group dating back to the 1820s, see O’Brien ‘Journalism in Ireland’ for more detail. For later examples see Dunlop, Fifty Years of Irish Journalism, 72–3. Fellow journalist Matthias McDonnell Bodkin was also enthusiastic about that camaraderie in both his autobiography Recollections of an Irish Judge – Press, Bar and Parliament and his novel, White Magic.
73 Orwell, ‘Decline of the English Murder’.