Frank McNally's narrative (An Irishman's Diary, January 14th) on the paucity of native Irish hangmen down the years, brings to mind one of the last of this ilk in the person of Limerickman James Ryan, who for 26 years sent numerous miscreants to their doom in the early 19th century.
This was an era of great political unrest, and public executions were commonplace, none more so than in Limerick, a hotbed of agrarian agitation.
In typical Limerick style, Ryan was nicknamed Stretcher, a nice touch of gallows humour.
Originally from the outlying Murroe, he was the most reviled man in the city and surrounding counties due to the fact that in an era of packed juries and prejudiced judges, many of those executed would have been convicted on tenuous grounds.
Stretcher, therefore, as the perpetrator of the final and terrible act of the law, was, not surprisingly, a much-maligned figure and went about in fear of his life.
Kevin Hannan, the great local historian, tells us that Ryan, who lived in Rhebogue, was hated and shunned, and was eventually forced, by the wrath of the people, to seek sanctuary within the walls of the county gaol. There the governor engaged him in doing odd jobs around the prison in between his professional engagements.
These were tough times, the severity of the law extreme, and capital punishment the norm. The 1820s was a particularly tempestuous decade. Limerick historian Maurice Lenihan described the era: "The wail of sorrow was heard in many a humble household, whilst the hulks were crowded with the victims of the law, and the gibbet groaned under its human burdens."
Lenihan, referring to hulks, was writing of the ships transporting those contravening the Insurrection Act to Australia.
An example of this savage punishment was that in May 1823, at the Rathkeale sessions, 21 defendants were found guilty and sentenced to seven years' transportation. Their crime? They were absent from their dwellings for two nights running.
They say August is a wicked month, and this was certainly true in 1821, the year the Limerick Gaol, in what is now Mulgrave Street, was officially opened. On August 3rd, five men were publicly executed by Stretcher for the murder of Thomas Hoskins, Esq; another five met their doom two days later, on August 5th. They were convicted for the murder and robbery of Henry Sheehan, a post-boy conveying the mail between Rathkeale and Shanagolden, all having admitted their guilt.
On August 10th, Jeremiah Rourke was hanged for firing a shot at Robert H Ivers, a county magistrate, and on August 17th, two more miscreants departed this world at the hands of Stretcher for burglary and the taking of arms.
In March 1823, despite being defended by Daniel O'Connell, Patrick Neville and James Fitzgibbon were hanged for the murder of Richard Going, Esq.
Fitzgibbon, it was reported, suffered much, owing to the ineptitude of the hangman.
It was hardly Stretcher; he would have been a highly experienced executioner at that stage.
Gallows Green in nearby Singland was the original place of execution before the opening of the gaol, and in 1819 one of the last hangings carried out there by Stretcher was that of John Scanlan, convicted of murdering his young wife, Ellen Hanley, alias the Colleen Bawn, commemorated in opera, play and book.
His accomplice, Stephen Sullivan, was soon to follow his fate a few months later.
Seemingly Stretcher liked to play to the gallery and was none too pleased when the place of execution was moved to the front of the newly opened gaol in Mulgrave Street, maintaining that the Fairgreen was capable of holding many more spectators.
The Limerick Chronicle announced in the summer of 1836 the demise of Stretcher. “This morning, James Ryan, who had been executioner for this and adjoining counties for the past 28 years, breathed his last in the County Gaol, at the advanced age of 86 years, having up to the moment of his departure, retained all his faculties.”
For those who would have wished the hangman harm, and they were many, it was now too late, but revenge of a morbid nature was to be extracted on the mortal remains of the deceased, as the Limerick Chronicle on May 19th, 1836, reported: “A brutal exhibition was made in St Patrick’s churchyard, where a number of persons disinterred the remains of the old executioner, James Ryan, from the grave where he was buried a fortnight before, and having forced open the coffin, tied a straw rope around the neck and dragged the body out of the churchyard amidst shouts and execrations, and threw it into a boundary ditch or dyke. His remains were gathered up by the police and reinterred in the same grave.”
But there was no limit to the abhorrence of the hangman.
Despite constables keeping a night and day watch on the grave for a fortnight the hangman’s remains were again disinterred, the mutilated body again taken up and dragged along St Patrick’s Road after a horse.
For the second time, police gathered up the remains but this time they were reinterred in the grounds of the County Gaol, where Stretcher was finally laid to rest amidst the bodies of those whom he had, for a total of 28 years, despatched to eternity.