Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    A family affair? English Hangmen and a Dublin jail, 1923-54
    (University of St. Thomas. Center for Irish Studies, 2014-12) ;
    The genealogy of capital punishment in twentieth-century Ireland defies easy articulation, and several aspects of the practice appear especially perplexing in the absence of an appreciation of a precise historical context. It is puzzling, for instance, that Irish politicians couched arguments favoring the retention of capital punishment in terms of its perceived efficacy as a deterrent to potential subversives when the death penalty was imposed almost exclusively for non-political civilian murder. It is puzzling, too, that the taoisigh and ministers who were prepared to allow executions go ahead had not only been comrades with men executed during the revolutionary period, but in some cases, had themselves been sentenced to death. It is puzzling that the sanction was retained after Independence when one considers the "politicization" of capital punishment and the attendant public antipathy toward what was seen as an unfortunate colonial (and civil war) legacy; in the minds of many nationalists, hanging was nothing more than a manifestation of English tyranny. And, finally, it is puzzling that when the need arose to execute a condemned person in Ireland an English hangman was always contracted to arrange the "drop." This final puzzle may, however, be illuminated by a detailed examination of the men who discharged this grisly function.
      1527
  • Publication
    The Death Penalty in Post-Independence Ireland
    (Taylor and Francis, 2012-03) ;
    The history of capital punishment in post-Independence Ireland has received scant scholarly attention. This essay is an attempt to set out what can be learned about the executed persons, the executioners, and the politicians whose inaction (not reforming the law) and actions (deciding against clemency) brought the two former groups together. The death penalty was deployed strategically against IRA members during the early 1940s as part of a package of legal measures designed to crush subversive activity, but more usually its targets were murderers whose acts had no wider ramifications. One notable aspect of the Irish arrangements was that when a prisoner was to be taken to the gallows an English hangman was always contracted to arrange the 'drop'. Reflecting popular antipathy towards the practice the Irish state was unable to find a willing executioner within its borders.
      3739Scopus© Citations 11