FROM THE ARCHIVES:
Most of the victims of the violence associated with the Land War of the early 1880s were not landlords but small tenant farmers who did not go along with the Land League's boycotting campaigns and found themselves denounced as "land grabbers". A correspondent in Loughrea, Co Galway, reported on the fate of one of them.
ANY STRANGER to the locality visiting the scene of the murder of Peter Dempsey at Hollypark on last Sunday morning would probably conclude that it was one of the most unlikely places in the world for the commission of a deed such as that which was perpetrated that morning. Large whitethorn trees, in magnificent bloom, are among the charming surroundings of a place which, it may be said, is part of the fine demesne of Mr Peter Blake, JP, of Hollypark, about 4 miles from this town. On Sunday morning Dempsey, with his two elder children, lovely girls, aged respectively seven and six years, proceeded from his own residence by a recognised path which led to Mr Blake’s farmyard, and through it to the Chapel of Kill, where he intended to hear Mass.
From ten to twelve o’clock on Sunday mornings this path is practically a thoroughfare for numbers of people who make it their way to Kill Chapel, and yet at such a time, and in such a place, a man comparatively young, proceeding with his two children to attend the service of his church, was shot down, and it is almost questionable whether the perpetrator of the deed will ever be rendered amenable to the laws of the country. From the point of view of the persons concerned in the crime– to commit the deed, and escape with impunity – no better site could be chosen, for they selected for their place of concealment a position from which they could see two hundred yards off the object of their vengeance, while they were themselves perfectly invisible to him, and they also knew that they had at their back a thickly-wooded retreat, extending more than a mile in the direction of this town.
They lurked beside what is called the monument gate, where they had on one side a wall overtopped by a tree in full foliage, and from that spot they had, doubtless, seen Dempsey coming in their direction across the meadow from the spar gate. Why they should have waited till he had his hands on the iron gate opening it for himself and his children to pass through is almost inexplicable, for with Snider rifles they might have been as certain in their aim at least a hundred yards off; but, in point of fact, they must have fired at a distance of not more than a few yards from him. One shot, a Snider bullet, passed through his body, as already described in the evidence of Dr Leonard, from left to right, perforating the spinal column in the centre, and through the posterior portion of the right lung. The medical gentlemen who made the postmortem examination think that death in this case must have been instantaneous, though one of the children says that when she asked him to get up, he said, “Oh, I am done.” Dempsey, for a man in his position, that of a gardener and small farmer, was well connected. His own brothers and other members of his family are respectable people, and his wife, now his unhappy widow, is highly respectable in appearance and manner. The four children were kept in a style which indicated the respectability of their parents. The funeral, which took place yesterday, was attended by the members and friends of both families, numbering about a hundred persons, who, with expressions of sympathy for the bereaved wife and children, followed to the grave the remains of the deceased, but it is sad to have to state that there are persons who can rejoice in a deed of savage barbarity, and who can give expression to their satisfaction by lighting three or four bonfires on the night of the murder. An old relative, his mother perhaps, who was bewailing his sad fate, cried out – “Oh, alanna, alanna, it is lying there you are, and it is a satisfaction to your neighbours.”
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