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The ‘Cleansing’ of Bull Lane, 1878

From the Freeman’s Journal, 1 March 1879:

“During the past few months, quietly and unknown to the general public, a work has been in progress in Dublin calculated to materially benefit the city.  By a judicious use of the authority vested in them and a rigid exercise of their legal powers, the police have succeeded in thoroughly cleansing that den of infamy, a disgrace known as Bull-Lane. 

The existence of this moral plague spot has been for very many years a shame to civilisation and a disgrace to Dublin.  The alarming increase in the number of robberies, thefts and minor offences committed by the male and female denizens of Bull-Lane, and in addition the number of violations of the law concealed by them, impressed the police authorities with the absolute necessity of thoroughly clearing the place of its criminal inhabitants, and after two months’ hard work they have succeeded in doing so, and at the present moment any one may walk from end to end of Bull-Lane without in any way being molested or insulted.  It would rather remind one at the present time of a street in the city of the dead, for all the houses of ill-fame, which numbered nearly twenty, have been closed up and are now untenanted.  

This moral campaign has been carried on under the direction of Superintendent Devin, and has been conducted on the simple principle of, to speak plainly, making the place too hot to hold its animal population.  Two policeman, relieved at stated periods, were placed on duty at the end of the lane, and a close watch kept on everyone entering and leaving it.  By this process the police were enabled to detect an immense number of breaches of the Licensing Acts, for the illicit drink trade was carried on here with greater briskness.  Each week convictions were obtained against the proprietors and frequenters of the houses of infamy, and they were sent to prison for terms extending from a week to two months.  Meanwhile every stranger who attempted to go up or down the lane was stopped and questioned by the police, informed of the nature of the locality, and warned that if he had money or valuables of any kind on his person he ran a considerable risk of being robbed.  Almost in every case this had the effect of turning such persons back and of preventing others from going near the place.  

The result was that the unfortunate girls who dwelt in the lane were compelled to fly from it, and each day saw several of them, together with such wretched property as they possessed, take to flight.  It is pleasing to state that very many went to charitable institutions in the city to atone their former errors by repentance and amendment.  One of the most important features in the entire work has been the breaking up of the community of idle ruffians called ‘bullies’ of whom there were no less than seventy-six in the lane, living by robbery and the proceeds of infamy of the unfortunate women.  Some idea of the magnitude of the work effected may be formed when we state that the police counted 207 unfortunates living in the locality, and as many were in various parts of the city at the time the census was made, the number may fairly be increased by 150.   Thus is Dublin rid, let us hope for ever, of an abode of crime unsurpassed by any similar spot in the cities of the kingdom.’“

A rather uncharitable and sanctimonious article as regards the ‘unfortunate girls’ referred to!

What the Freeman doesn’t mention, is the location of Bull-Lane very close to the back of the Four Courts. You can see it marked with an arrow between Greek Street and Fishers Lane on the map below.

The lane and its buildings are long-gone but this satellite image makes it easy to work out what has replaced them.

Yes, Hughes Pub, where barristers love to drink, stands just at that point where Bull Lane opened onto Pill Lane (now Chancery Street).

Of course, a street like Bull-Lane could not exist without customers. Brothel quarters tended to be located near prospective clients. Presumably quite a few persons with business in the courts were happy to avail of the services offered by its ‘houses of infamy’?

If Jack the Ripper had visited Dublin in the 1870s, Bull-Lane might have been his Whitechapel, and indeed the above cleansing was preceded by a number of tragic murders. I hope to cover these, and some of the other stories of Bull-Lane, in later posts.

In the meantime – who would have thought the term ‘bully’ had origins so close to home!

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Future Supreme Court Judge Unsuccessfully Sued for Negligent Driving, 1924

From the Dublin Evening Telegraph, 4th and 5th March, 1924:

Miss May McConnon, a typist, residing at the Gaelic Hotel, Blackrock, Dundalk, claimed £3000 damages against Mr Cecil Lavery, barrister-at-law, for personal injuries caused, as alleged, by the negligence of the defendant in the management of a motor car near Dundalk.

The Plaintiff gave evidence, in which she stated that she was getting off her bicycle near Hearty’s cottages on the main road between Dublin and Dundalk, in order to borrow a bicycle pump, when she was struck from behind by the motor car.  At the time she was struck she was near the footpath.  She heard no horn sounded.

Cross-examined by Mr Wood KC, the plaintiff denied that she was standing, holding her bicycle, and that when she was mounting it, it wobbled out in front of her.  She did not remember the defendant saying to her ‘Why did you get up on your bicycle like that?’

Dr JV O’Hagan stated that the plaintiff was admitted to the Louth Hospital.  She had a wound on the right side of the scalp, two deep wounds on the left thigh and numerous abrasions. 

Surgeon McArdle gave evidence of having examined the plaintiff about the middle of September.  On that occasion she collapsed in his hall at 78 Merrion Square.  He expressed the opinion to her doctors that she had sustained a severe shock to the brain and spinal cord.  He saw her again in November when she appeared to be worse.  She was suffering from nerve degeneration and was at present in a deplorable condition.

Mr Wood KC, addressing the jury on behalf of the defendant, said that the defence in the case was that there was no negligence on the part of Mr Lavery, and there was no damage caused of the momentous character stated as the result of what happened on the road on the date mentioned.   The defendant, who was an expert driver, was driving along a straight, wide road, having his car under absolute control, and the plaintiff, who was in front, seemed to the defendant, as it were, to get off the bicycle, and then wobbled out in front of him.   His car caught her.  It was immediately brought to a standstill, and he contended that the accident was not caused by any negligence on the part of the defendant, but by an irregular operation on the part of the plaintiff.

Sir William Taylor said that he saw the plaintiff on October 16, 1923, in Mr McArdle’s house in Merrion Square.  All the wounds were practically healed, except one on the little finger of the left hand.  On Saturday last he saw her in a home in Upper Mount Street, and on examination failed to find any organic lesion.

The defendant gave evidence, and said that he was driving at about fifteen miles an hour on the left side of the road, which was about 25 feet wide.  He saw the girl on the left-hand side of the road with her bicycle.  She was off the bicycle.  He kept a perfectly clear course, and just as he was passing her she seemed to lift herself into the bicycle and came across the bonnet at the car.  There was no question of avoiding her, and the only thing he could do was stop the car, which he did.  The front of the car came against the bicycle and plaintiff was between the front wheels.  It was not true that she was under one of the wheels and that the car had to be lifted to remove her.  He said to her: “Why did you come out across me like that?” but did not receive any reply. 

The jury, after an absence of one hour, found that the defendant was not guilty of any negligence.”

A very young Mr Lavery, appearing in the Irish Independent as winner of the John Brooke scholarship.

Mr Lavery, son of an Armagh solicitor, had previously featured in the Irish Independent on the 27th June 1915 as winner of the John Brooke Scholarship for that year. He had a large junior practice and took silk in 1927. He subsequently became Attorney General and Leader of the Irish Bar.  A note in the Belfast Telegraph on the 17th April 1950 on the occasion of his appointment as a Supreme Court judge stated that his name had featured on one side or the other in almost every important case at the Eire Bar.

An older Mr Lavery KC snapped by Tatler at Leopardstown Races, shortly before his appointment to the Bench.

Road traffic accident claims – later temporarily stalled due to petrol shortages during the Emergency – continued to be a increasing source of revenue for the Bar for the next decade and a half.

The Belfast Telegraph of 30 October 1925 contained a report of another High Court case in which one Mary O’Connor, of Fair Green, Dundalk, claimed £500 damages from the Reverend Bernard Maguire, Parish Priest, as compensation for personal injuries caused to her by the alleged negligence of the defendant in the management and control of a motor-car which had knocked her down at the junction of Earl St and Francis St, Dundalk.

The case, subsequently settled for £55 and costs, must have called up some memories for one Mr Lavery BL instructed as Junior Counsel for the defendant!

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An Aggrieved Apprentice, 1874

From the Freeman’s Journal, 16 December 1874:

“To the Editor of the Freeman.

SIR – Would you kindly insert the following in the interest of the grievances of attorneys’ apprentices.  The facts are briefly these:- In the second week of last month a sessional examination was held at the Four Courts to test the knowledge of the apprentices who attended the professors of law lectures during the preceding year.  No official announcement of the result has yet been afforded, and the apprentices who then went in for examination (I myself being of the number) are, comparatively speaking, left in ignorance.  Of course if any one goes into the secretary’s office he will be there informed as to the result, but we have no notice posted in that part of the solicitors’ building allotted to notices referring to solicitors’ apprentices.  Is anyone to blame for this apparent negligence?  Law students have informed me, so have medical students, that they are always officially acquainted with the results of their examinations.  Surely apprentices should take some steps to protest against such a state of things. – Yours obediently,

AN APPRENTICE.”

A prescribed course for testing the attainments of intended apprentices, and the fitness of those seeking to be admitted, had been introduced by the Incorporated Society of the Attorneys and Solicitors of Ireland in 1861, following a report of the Council of the Society. 

The 1887 Lecture Theatre.

Lectures and exams took place in the Solicitors’ Hall, Four Courts (now the Law Library), which premises were adapted in 1887 under the supervision of Alfred E Murray, Architect, to incorporate a purpose-built theatre suitable for the purposes of lectures.  All persons who have worked in the Law Library will recognise the ceiling of this theatre!

The concern of the apprentice who wrote the 1874 letter does not appear to have been that they did not receive their marks, but rather that the absence of an official posting of all marks meant that they were not able to assess their marks relative to the rest of their class. 

Accusing the Society of negligence, however, seems a bit strong.   

Of course no good deed goes unpunished, and law students are a competitive bunch, but still a few eyebrows must have been raised – no wonder that the apprentice letter-writer preferred to remain anonymous!

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A Barrister’s Right to Walk Unobstructed, 1893

From the Cork Constitution, 17 April 1893:

“STRANGE CONDUCT OF AN IRISH BARRISTER

CHARGED BEFORE THE MAGISTRATES WITH STREET OBSTRUCTION

Mr William C Hennessy, barrister-at-law, Tralee, was charged by Constable John Foster with obstructing the footpath on the Grand Parade, at four o’clock on Friday evening.  Mr Hennessy had been arrested and remained in custody during Friday night.  He was not, however, asked to appear in the dock. 

Mr Hennessy applied for an adjournment, as he was anxious to be represented by a solicitor, and anxious that the case should be tried on a convenient day.  He complained that he was not allowed out on bail on the previous evening.  If he had been allowed out on bail he would have been in a position to instruct a solicitor and able to go on with the case that day.  He could not get a note sent to the Recorder of Cork, and he was twenty-one and a half hours in custody.  He now asked the constable under what Act he brought the charge?

Constable Foster – He was walking along the Grand Parade yesterday evening close by the shops, and everything he met outside the doors he tossed further into the flagway.  I saw him take balls of goods, carpets and trunks, lying outside the doors and knock them down on the footpath.  There was a crowd after him.  I cautioned him, but he told me he would persist in doing it.

Mr Humphries (chief clerk) – I suppose Mr Hennessy was quite sober.

Constable Foster – He was.  I told him I should have to arrest him, but he defied me.

Mr Hennessy – Well, I suppose the case will be conducted regularly.  What is the charge.

Constable Foster – Street obstruction.

In reply to Mr Humphries, the constable said the shopkeepers whose goods had been disturbed were not in court.  He himself witnessed the acts of the prisoner when he knocked down the goods at the door of Mr Lynch’s furniture shop, Grand Parade.

Mr Hennessy – They were obstructing the footpath; not I.  If a crowd of rioters choose to follow me I can’t help them.

Mr Humphries – You only arrested him when he said he would persist in doing it?

Constable Foster – Yes.

Mr Hennessy – Does he know it is illegal to block the footway with goods?  Answer yes or no.

Constable Foster – They were not blocking the footway.

Mr Hennessy – Is it true that there was a bale of carpets separated by a foot from the shop in my way?

Constable Foster – I did not see.

Mr Hennessy – What did I knock down then?

Constable Foster – A carpet outside Lynch’s.

Mr Hennessy – Did these goods interfere with my passage.

Constable Foster – They did not, they were quite close to the door.

Mr Hennessy – We will have this point thrashed out as in Tralee and Killarney.  Did I go out of the direct line I was walking in to interfere with the goods? I never go out of the line I take and did not in Tralee or Killarney.  Under the circumstances I have to ask for an adjournment of the case to a date that will be convenient for the magistrates.  I want to get the case tried out.  I have to be in Tralee where we are trying the same points on Monday.

Mr Humphries – There are a number of statutes to prevent the obstruction of the footway.  You are a lawyer learned in the law.  The constable is an officer, and could not see the goods knocked about, even though they obstructed.

Mr Hennessy – I am unconscious of doing anything except turning them over.  Some of the trunks I lifted carefully – with a mother’s care (Laughter).

Case adjourned.”

Whatever punishment was inflicted on Mr Hennessy did not stop his crusade against street obstruction.  On the 31st July 1893 he appeared again before the Cork Police Court summonsed by Mrs Elizabeth Mayne, Patrick Street, for having on Wednesday last wilfully and maliciously broken a crate of china outside her shop in pursuance of a line of conduct that he had been carrying on in Cork (and from the sounds of it, Tralee and Killarney) for some months past.

In reply, Mr Hennessy described the pathways in the city as a disgrace to Zululand, said that the first rule of the common law was that the King’s highway could not be blocked and he would assert his right to walk the public pathway whatever the consequences.  He had the greatest confidence in the Cork Bench and would leave himself in their hands.

The Cork Bench, on the other hand, held that Mr Hennessy had no right to act has he had done and fined him 20s and 35s compensation.  Mr Hennessy then asked to have a case stated and he also objected to one of the magistrates, Mr Roche, adjudicating the case as he was mixed up with commercial affairs in certain houses involved in the prosecution.  He also suggested that the penalty should be increased in order that he might be able to appeal.

The Bench granted the application and increased the amount of the fine to 21 shillings..

An obituary in the Kerry Evening Post of 15 June 1898 contains some interesting information in relation to Mr Hennessy’s background. The son of William Maunsell Hennessy, antiquary and Keeper of the Records in Ireland, it had been thought that a very bright future lay before Mr Hennessy when called to the Bar sixteen or seventeen years previously, but the illness which had killed him (consumption) had led him instead to what was described as ‘a curious existence in a weak and witless way’ in Dublin, Cork, and Tralee before the recovery of his senses in the last year of his life had coincided with failing bodily powers.  

The writer tactfully omitted reference to Mr Hennessy’s street obstruction campaign of 1893 and his preceding arrest by Scotland Yard in Listowel in 1892 for issuing worthless cheques drawn on the Dingle Branch of the National Bank (he was subsequently discharged by the Bow Street Magistrates Court after hearing evidence that he had lost his way after the death of his father and sister and a broken engagement).  The obituary closed by describing Mr Hennessy at his best: full of the keenest wit, well spiced with pungency and leavened with a love of the ludicrous, as much the life and soul of the company when supping with histrionic friends in London as when eating his Christmas goose with friends in Ballymacelligott.

Poor Mr Hennessy!  Some might say that he was a man ahead of his time – and a hero to today’s daily commuter!

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Ormond Quay Prison Break, 1784

From the Hibernian Journal; or, Chronicle of Liberty, 16 July 1784:

“Yesterday in the afternoon, a number of the prisoners, confined in the New Gaol, found means to break into the sewer that communicates from the prison to the Bradogue River, or water course that falls into the Liffey at Ormond Quay; several of them have been re-taken and conducted back to their old lodging, but better secured.  About sixteen it is thought are escaped; a guard is positioned at the mouths of the Bradogue, and at the different grates and necessaries in Pill Lane through which this water course runs as it is supposed several of them are still concealed within.”

The New Gaol would have been Newgate Prison situate at ‘Little Green’ beside Green Street Courthouse.

The Bradogue meandered around a bit, flowing underground from Grangegorman to North King Street and Green Street before reaching the quays. Its primary outfall was at Ormond Quay (below), but according to a news report in the Dublin Evening Mail of 26 June 1857, a tributary flowed under the Four Courts, re-emerging at Arran Quay.

The 18th century drainage system must have been rudimentary, and the stench faced by the escapees appalling.

Could some or all of the sixteen prisoners who failed to emerge at Ormond Quay have expired under the Four Courts then in the course of construction, thus contributing to its very persistent drainage problems?

More digging needed to find out!

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