From the Westmeath Independent, 30 January 1909:
“COURT CRIER FOR 75 YEARS
A notable personality in the form of Mr Condy Boyle, Dungloe, Co Donegal has recently passed away. He was close on 100 years old, and had been court crier at Donegal Quarter Sessions for over 75 years, and an interpreter of Irish-speaking witnesses for a like period. He was also bailiff to the Marquess of Conyingham.”
The job of the court crier was to call out the names of cases in court. They also assisted the judges’ tipstaffs (personal assistants who walked before the judges into court carrying a staff) in keeping order in the court room.
Mr Boyle’s obituary in the Londonderry Standard of 22 January 1909 described him as being as of a genial and kindly disposition, and a great favourite with the chairmen of Quarter Sessions and County Court judges with whom he came in contact during his long career. He also acted as a process-server.
Mr Boyle was a staunch Conservative (as bailiff to the Marquess of Conyingham, could he be anything else?) and was known in the old days of open voting to drive from Lifford, where he was attending an Assize Court, to the village of Dungloe in order to record his vote for a Conservative candidate for election to the Glenties Board of Guardians.
Newspaper reports from 1888 also record Mr Boyle’s involvement in a controversy in Dungloe when he allowed the parish priest, the Reverend Walker CC, to hold a service for boycotted people in his house. As a result, there was an attempt by boycotters to physically exclude the Boyle family from the seats in the gallery of the Roman Catholic chapel, Dungloe, which had been held by them for years. Mr Boyle had a number of sons, and the would-be exclusion ended in a dramatic struggle which reportedly left the entire church gallery saturated with blood.
Interestingly, Condy’s father Charlie had in 1831 been accidentally shot and killed by police in a most unfortunate chain of events consequent on a dispute which arose in his informal but most respectable public house in Dungloe, in which a priest was likewise involved.
A gripping account of the circumstances surrounding Charlie Boyle’s death may be found in this article by Breandán Mac Suibhne published in the Irish Times of 30 August 2024 ,which also features a photograph of Condy himself.
Condy’s exact age at his death was recorded by the Banbridge Chronicle of 27 January 1909 as ninety-six. He would have started as a crier in 1834, not long after the events detailed immediately above.
Perhaps his appointment was by way of official recompense for his father’s death?
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