PLAQUE UNVEILING AT MELLON'S SOUTH LOTTS ROAD, THIS FRIDAY 3PM

 

The Ringsend and District Historical Association in association with the Shelbourne Park Residents Association are delighted to announce a unique plaque unveiling. On Friday April 26^th 2024 at 3pm at Mellon’s Shop, South Lotts Road, a plaque, dedicated to the numerous movies, pop videos and documentaries made in the area from The General & In the Name of the Father, with the streets often doubling as Belfast, to Boyzone & The Shoos music videos and RTE documentaries including Marty Morrissey and Liz Gillis’s ‘Big Picture Show’ and the late great Shay Healy’s ‘The Dublin Village’ will be officially unveiled.

 

On the day a number of local celebrities and those who appeared in the various big and small screen moments including the Shoos will be in attendance.  The plaque in erected with the support of Mellon’s Shop, Courtyard Media, RICC, SPRA and the Ringsend and District Historical Society.

The ‘In These Streets’ plaque will be unveiled on Friday April 26^th 2024 at 3pm

MELLON'S SHOP, 56 SOUTH LOTTS ROAD, DUBLIN 4, D04 K665

For further media enquiries contact ringsenddistricthistorical@gmail.com

Refreshments kindly provided by Mellon’s.

The Dodder Mystery - 1900 Part Three

 Chapter Three

 

The Dodder Mystery took an unexpected twist on the next day Friday September 13^th when the body of Sergeant Hanily was discovered in his lodging room of the barracks with his throat slit, having taken his own life with a razor. Hanily who was single joined the DMP in 1881 and was promoted to Sergeant in March 1884. At an inquest held the following morning once again at the morgue on Londonbridge Road, the coroner was told that on the previous morning Ellen Byrne, the barracks chef had delivered breakfast to the Sergeant in his room in the station and he was quiet and in ‘a dull mood’.

 

At 10am he was called along with another Sergeant and a constable to Superintendent Whitaker’s office as there was an ongoing investigation in some lapses in record keeping at the station. His brother, who was visiting the city from his home in Ardagh, Longford deposed that his brother had told him during a visit earlier that week that he had been ‘knocked about by the Dodder business’ but the coroner was at pains to say that the only connection he knew that the Sergeant had with the case was the recovery of the body and the fact that he brought Margaret Clowry to the station in its aftermath. It was also stated that the Sergeant of recent weeks had become somewhat paranoid that someone at the station was trying to drug his food but even after a report was sent to the Dublin police commissioner there seemed to be nothing in the allegation.

The house with the conservatory looking out onto the 

River Dodder was once the City Morgue and the venue for inquests.

Shortly after the meeting in the Superintendent’s office the dying body of Hanily was found in his room. He had used his own razor to inflict a deep fatal wound to his throat. He placed the razor back on a bedside cabinet. A suicide note smeared in his blood was also found on the cabinet. In it he said he could not ‘bear being watched anymore’ and ended the note with the words ‘good bye’. A local priest Father Smith was called who delivered the last rights but before the doctor arrived some fifteen minutes later, Hanily was dead. The jury returned a verdict of having ‘committed suicide under temporary insanity’. His body was released to his brother Michael and it was transported to the Broadstone railway terminus and placed on a train to Roscommon where he was buried near the village of Kilcock.

 

An inquest chaired once again by local coroner Christopher Friery was convened at Irishtown Barracks and following the sensation of the Dodder Mystery, this second inquest was a newspaper sensation. The jury of fifteen mostly local businessmen was gathered in the station, they included four local publicans Joseph Lenihan, Thomas Ryan, Nicholas Walsh and James Murtagh. 

On Wednesday 14^th September 1900, Flower’s trial began in front of a jury of twenty three men. Flower decided against taking to the witness box and instead a statement was read by his legal representative Harrington. Before he refused to answer any questions that the coroner asked including,

‘Tell me did you know Bridget Gannon?’

‘I did not’ he answered.

Harrington then read Flower’s statement to the jury.

‘7 Irishtown, August 24^th 1900. I beg to report that between 8 and 9 on the 22^nd inst, I left this station off duty and in plain clothes for a walk. I went along Sandymount Road as far as Sandymount and returned by the Strand Road where I went into Walsh’s public house on Bath Street to have a drink and there I met Constable Toal and Simpson 38E and 101E about 8.30. We left about 10pm, I returning to my barracks. I know nothing about either Miss Clowry or the deceased nor never saw them. ‘

 

To back up this version of events his fellow officer Constable Simpson took to the stand and backed up Flower’s alibi by stating that he Flower in the hallway of Walsh’s pub at about 9.30pm and then Nicholas Walsh whose public house backed onto the barracks said that Flower was in his pub and drank a pint of porter and a half of malt whiskey before leaving about 10.30. According then to desk Sergeant Masterson, Flower returned to the barracks at 10.45pm. 

 

The case continued on October 2^nd as Flower appeared at the Southern Division Police Court and was remanded once again.

On Tuesday October 16^th , at Green Street courthouse, Mr. Justice Gibson recounted the facts before the jury and at 2.35pm after fifteen minutes deliberations concluded by saying that on the depositions as they stood a petty jury could not convict on the charge to which Flower had been returned. The Grand Jury threw out the charge and Flower was freed.  Disgraced Flower left Ireland never to be heard of again with rumours being that he immigrated to Australia. Margaret married County Meath born James Brady in September 1904 only for James to pass away just fifteen years later. But over forty years after the first news of the Dodder Mystery emerged, Bridget Gannon’s good friend Margaret Clowry dictated her dying statement and claimed that in fact it was she who had killed Bridget and now Flower. But we may never know the truth to the unfortunate demise of the young and beautiful Bridget Gannon.

 

 

Sources

Trevor James

Ken Harrington

The Irish Newspaper Archives

The National Archives of Ireland

The British Newspaper Archives

The Royal Irish Constabulary Forum

Garda Siochana Museum

The Dodder Mystery of 1900 - Part TWO

 The Dodder Mystery of 1900

Chapter Two

The following morning fourteen year old Paddy Keeffe from Bridge Street, Ringsend was making his way home along the south bank of the Dodder. Patrick was the middle son of the five children of Wicklow born Patrick and Kate Keeffe. The River Dodder rises in the Dublin Mountains near Kippure and meanders down sixteen miles to enter the River Liffey at Ringsend. The River Swan also enters the Dodder between Londonbridge Road and Lansdowne Road bridges. The section of the River Dodder from Lansdowne Road down to the Liffey is tidal.

 

As Patrick rambled home his attention was drawn to the river, which at the time was running about two to three feet deep. To his horror, he spotted the body of a young woman face down in the water, her lifeless head resting on her arm. After the initial shock, he quickly made his way down to Londonbridge Road, turned left and headed passed the Church of Ireland rectory and across Irishtown Road to the DMP Barracks. He informed the desk sergeant of his grim discovery and he despatched two constables to investigate. The two uniformed DMP men were that of County Armagh born Constable James Toal and Longford born Constable Henry Flower. They quickly made their way to the scene and were quickly followed by two more policemen Constable William Thomas (126E) and Sergeant John Hanily (7E). All four men were now at the point of the bank of the river where they could plainly see the body of the woman.

Local trader, dealer and cart man John Humphrey’s of 10 Keegans Lane, Ballsbridge was making his way along Newbridge Avenue where he noticed the four policemen standing. He turned and drove his cart down along the bank. A ladder attached to his cart was lowered down to the riverbed and Humphrey climbed down. He attached a rope to the limp female body which he noticed was missing her skirt. The four policemen above pulled the body to the bank of the river and it was loaded onto the back of the wooden cart with two policemen’s coats placed over the top and lower half of the body.

 

Humphreys led his horse along the bank of the river towards Londonbridge Road, with the makeshift hearse accompanied by Constables Flower and Toal. They crossed the bridge and immediately turned left over the river and then right onto the small pathway that led down to the city morgue. Flower briefly took a moment to lift the coat over the head of the body and gazed on the ashen faced lifeless body. He replaced the coat and continued his duty.

 

At the morgue the body was accepted by the local coroner Doctor Christopher Friery. Friery who had no medical training and before being appointed coroner for Dublin he maintained a successful law practice at Rutland Square West. The forty year old English born solicitor had built quite a reputation for himself on this side of the Irish Sea after settling in Dublin following his marriage to Dublin woman Mary. He had acted as an election agent for Redmondite Irish Nationalists and also became a newspaper celebrity when he acted for Maud Gonne in a libel action against Ramsey Colles.

When dealing with any unexplained or sudden death in Ireland in 1900, there was a strict legal path to be taken. Once the body had been discovered, the local constabulary, whether it was the RIC or the DMP, were obliged to notify the local coroner and the coroner would have the body either brought to the nearest morgue or in rural cases to the local public house in order that an inquest could be held on the deceased. He would then gather a jury of between twelve and twenty three local ‘respectable’ citizens together to examine the body, witnesses and hear relevant testimony before a verdict would be returned. Their verdict could be that of murder, manslaughter, suicide, justifiable homicide or killing by an irrational agent which usually was attached to a case where the culprit was deemed insane at the time of the crime[1]. The coroners role in investigating overlapped with the work of the police and the magistrate courts and often the attached publicity connected with an inquest impacted on the court trial for any crime committed, murder trials could last as little as a couple of hours as the inquest would be the basis of the prosecution.

 

Once the inquest verdict was announced it was up to the constabulary to arrest and charge any defendant and then a magistrate would examine whether there was a case to answer if there was the defendant would be sent for trial at the local assizes. A jury would be called upon to decide the fate of the case. Much of the complaints at the time both with inquest juries and trial juries that they were ‘loaded’ with jurors, often wealthy landowners and merchants, who would bring in a favourable verdict for the crown prosecution.

 

At the Londonbridge Road city mortuary, the coroner immediately asked the constables if they knew the identity of the young woman but they both said they didn’t. An autopsy was conducted on the unidentified body, deemed she died accidentally from drowning probably in the river at high tide which was at 9.37pm the previous night. An inquest was held with the only witness called being Sergeant Hanily. The Coroner asked him if any of the constables at Irishtown barracks could ‘throw any light on the death of this young woman’ and he answered ‘No’. The verdict was that of accidental drowning returned on the body. As there was no identification, no local reports of anyone missing and no one to claim the body she was handed over the Poor Union who provided the unfortunate with an unmarked pauper’s grave at Glasnevin Cemetery on the Northside of the city.

 

Before Maggie left Bridie the night before, she made arrangements to call on Bridie at 124 Baggot Street to catch up on all the gossip. But Bridie wasn’t there and the housekeeper said that her bed had not been slept in. Maggie headed towards Irishtown and met with Constable Toal who was back on his beat. Maggie asked if he had seen Bridie and he said he had not. She then asked where she could find Constable Flower and told her he had attended the Morgue in Irishtown at the inquest of a body found in the River Dodder.

With a sense of foreboding, Maggie jumped on a tram which trundled its way to Nelson’s Pillar on O’Connell Street. She walked down Talbot Street and onto Gardiner’s Street and up to number twenty and the home of Mrs. Annie Wogan, Bridget Gannon’s sister. Thirty eight year old Annie who was a widow and worked as a dressmaker had not seen Bridie and so the two ladies made their way back towards Northumberland Road and Mount Street Bridge, one of the last places Maggie had seen Bridie. On the bridge they met Sergeant Hanily and Maggie told him that Bridie had been out with Constable Flower the night before and now she was nowhere to be found, missing appointments and work. The Sergeant asked the ladies to accompany him down to Irishtown barracks where the Sergeant relayed the story to Inspector Byrne. He asked for Constable Flower to attend to the desk and then asked him if he knew Margaret Clowry or the identity of the dead woman that had been found earlier that morning in the River Dodder, he denied he knew either much to the amazement of Maggie.

 

Hanily and the two women then walked down Londonbridge Road to the Morgue where they met with the Coroner. After their story was heard, Dr. Friery immediately sent some of his staff to exhume the body from Glasnevin and return it to the morgue at Londonbridge Road. It took a number of hours before the body was back and ready for identification. Annie Wogan identified the body as that of her younger sister Bridget Gannon and the Dodder Mystery was born.

 

On the foot on this new information that the last person to see Bridie was a Constable of the police who had already denied knowing her, the coroner decided that a second inquest would be required and a second autopsy, a more detailed autopsy if as now suspected foul play had taken place. The story was now sensational. Dr. Friery enlisted the assistance of two imminent doctors, local GP John O’Donoghue and Dr. Edmund J McWeeney, a doctor at the Royal Hospital and a Professor of Pathology. Their opinion was that Bridget Gannon died from drowning in the high water of the Dodder but that she was unconscious before she entered the water. There was evidence of water in her stomach but there was water in her windpipe and lungs. To the doctor this indicated she did not struggle when she entered the water and was therefore probably unconscious before she entered the river. The contents of her stomach were examined and they included the remnants of the plums she ate earlier that evening. 

 

The coroner convened a second inquest where he would interview all the relevant witnesses to identify all the events leading up to the death of Bridget Gannon. Because his name was now front page news and associated now with the Dodder Mystery, Constable Henry Flower retained legal representation at the inquest. Mr. Timothy Harrington MP represented Flower, while Mr. Edward Ennis from the Ennis and Macken firm represented the interests of the Gannon family. Harrington was born in Castletownbere, County Cork and after a college education at Trinity College went onto to become a well-known barrister in the Four Courts involved in many high profile cases. In 1883 he became a member of the House of Commons representing Westmeath but in 1885 he was elected a Member of Parliament for the Dublin Harbour constituency. Edward Ennis was a thirty three year old solicitor born and bred in Dublin.

 

Proceedings were immediately interrupted on the Saturday morning when Harrington questioned the legality of a second inquest as the verdict of the first inquest accidental drowning still was a matter of public record. A second inquest would require the first verdict to be quashed. The Gannon family solicitors applied to the Four Courts in front of Mr. Justice Barton for a Nisi Prius of the first verdict. After some legal arguments and objections from Harrington, the coroner entered the witness box and after his evidence, Justice Barton quashed the first verdict as it was in the public interest allowing a new inquest to proceed.

 

That Saturday afternoon September 8^th a new jury of twenty three men was sworn in. The jury were transported to Clonsilla Cemetery where the body of Bridget once identified was buried by her family. The body for the second time was exhumed and the veil over the face removed in order that Bridget’s brother, Patrick officially identified the body of his sister in front of the inquest jury. On September 12^th the jury found that Bridget Gannon was murdered and Flower would be charged with ‘wilfully and feloniously killed and murdered Bridget Gannon’.

Two men who were fishing along the Dodder on the night of the death were questioned. Michael Moran from Keegan Cottages said that at 8.50pm between Ballsbridge and Lansdowne Road, two women passed him and he identified one of the women as Bridget Gannon, he said he did not know the other woman and was quizzed as to whether he was sure it was a woman and not a man with Gannon. He said under oath it was a woman. Joseph King of Pembroke Cottages swore that he was with Moran fishing but was unable to identify who passed them on the bank that night.

 

Flower was taken to Dublin Castle by the police in Irishtown. Superintendent Whittaker and Inspector Byrne were in attendance and considerable activity was visible among the heads of the Criminal Investigation Department. A consultation of the chief officials was evidently in progress and the police were in readiness to carry out whatever decision might be arrived at. The consultation lasted a considerable time, and Mr. Jones, Chief Commissioner, Mr. Mallon the Assistant Commissioner, and the other principal police officers were closeted with the legal advisers of the Crown. As result the deliberations at twenty past one on September 12^th Constable Henry Flower was charged by Inspector Whitaker with having ‘wilfully and feloniously killed and murdered Bridget Gannon. But there was to be another twist.

---

[1] Vaughan Murder Trials in Ireland

The River Dodder Mystery 1900

 

THE DODDER MYSTERY OF 1900

Chapter One

(OVER THE NEXT THREE DAYS WE WILL TELL THIS REMARKABLE STORY THAT IS STILL CLOUDED IN MYSTERY.)

Irishtown on the south side of the River Liffey is a residential suburb, home to what was described in the early part of the twentieth century as the lower class. Many of the local men were involved in fishing or working as Dockers at the nearby busy Dublin port. Local man Frank Byrne was a busy postman on August 22^nd 1900 with extra deliveries to the Sandymount area keeping him out well after ten p.m. that night. As he made his way home along the banks of the River Dodder, he noticed a man and a woman lying side by side between the New Bridge at Lansdowne Road and Londonbridge Road Bridge. This sight of a courting couple seeking some privacy along the banks of the river was not unusual as this area was often frequented by the ladies of the night in the company of soldiers stationed at the nearby Beggars Bush barracks and so he continued on his way home to rest his sore feet.

The wall plaster was cracked and crumbling, the picture of the Sacred Heart hung above the plain metal bed. The Priest dressed in his long floor length black cassock dusty from kneeling sat by the bedside with a set of rosary beads dangling between his clasped praying hands. Two women sit at the back wall silently swaying, keening and muttering prayers in the darkened room. Two flickering candles on a plain bedside table offered the only ray of light. They bathe the sixty year old woman in the bed in a gentle yellow glow of light.

 

The small tenement bedroom on Cuffe Street located near the twenty two acres of St Stephens Green was awaiting the passing of Carlow born Margaret Clowry. Sitting on a plain wooden chair, the back of a it broken was an impressively dressed forty two year old solicitor, his notebook on his lap and a pen poised to take dictation as needed from Margaret and the last embers of life still pass through her ailing body. It’s a damp and windy Thursday evening in the late 1940’s,

            ‘make sure you right this down, you’ll not get a second chance’

said Maggie, her voice croaking with emotion and pain. She lay silently starring at the plain ceiling, gathering her thoughts, waiting for a pain surge to subside as she then began to relate a story from almost fifty years earlier.

It’s Dublin as the new Millennium arrives in 1900. Queen Victoria has been to Ireland on a State visit in April, greeted enthusiastically by Union leaning Dubliners while many more especially in poorer Ireland still hold the elderly Queen responsible for some of the ills that befell Ireland during the Famine Years. The news of fatalities locally born men serving with the British Army in South Africa during the Boer War is the talk of the street corners and public houses as names daily appear in the Freeman’s Journal or the Irish Independent. But by August 1900, Margaret Clowry’s name would be at the heart of sensational events.

 

‘On August 19^th, I think it was a Sunday’

She began as the solicitor’s pen began to cross the blank pages,

‘I was walking along Northumberland Road with my friend Bridget Gannon. Bridie was a hard working parlour maid at the home of Ernest Harris, a well-known solicitor in Dublin along with his brother Walter. They lived at 124 Baggot Street, a street renowned for their beautiful Georgian style buildings. I myself at the time was between positions as a house servant, I had been working at Carisbrooke House on the corner of Pembroke Road and Northumberland Road and that’s where I first met Bridie a couple of years earlier when we were both in service there. Even though she was a couple of years older than me we got on very warmly and became friends.

 

I met up with my friend and we continued to walk past my old place of employment and onto Northumberland Road heading in the direction of the Grand Canal.’

 

Maggie and Bridie were walking along when two local Dublin Metropolitan Policemen (DMP), who were off duty and in civilian clothes, passed them on the street. Twenty nine year old Thomas Dockery, Constable Number 117E, was born in Roscommon but was now attached to the E Division of the DMP at Irishtown Barracks. Alongside him was thirty two year old Henry Flower, a native of Kilcommock, near Ballymahon County Longford who was born on August 14^th 1867 to William and Susan (nee Moran) Flower. He lost his father when he was just ten years old. The Flowers were a family with a long and proud service in the Irish police forces. When Flower originally passed out into the force, he was attached to C Division based near the red light district of Dublin off Montgomery Street, the Monto, on the Northside of the River Liffey. In 1899 he was transferred southside of the Liffey to E Division and Irishtown Barracks. The girls knew the two constables as initially Maggie went out with Dockery for a couple of years but their relationship had ended. Flower was very taken with Bridie, who was a very attractive woman, but their relationship, should there be one, would be much frowned on within Irish society at the time and would also cause family mistrust as Bridie was a Roman Catholic while Flower was an active Church of Ireland member. Interfaith marriages at the time were forbidden and relationships would cause ostracization within communities. The two constables began to walk behind the girls and after a bit of small talk, Maggie began to walk ahead of Bridie with Dockery walking beside her. About half dozen yards behind were Bridie and Flower.  

Bridie was a strikingly good looking woman, five foot seven inches which was quite tall for the period. While in mostly good health, Bridie was attending St Patrick’s Duns Hospital for treatment of eczema on her arms. Just after quarter part ten on that autumn Sunday evening the couples went their separate ways. 

 

The following Wednesday Bridie arrived at St Stephen’s Lane at the dwellings where Maggie was currently living. Maggie was living at Number 5 Stephens Lane, a lodging house run by Mary Hayes with as many as ten mostly servants staying at the house at any one time. While Bridie’s leisure time off from work was sparse, she would be off that night. She asked Maggie is she would join her that evening for a walk as she had a prearranged meeting with Constable Flower and she did not want to meet him on her own. She hoped to stop gossip on any possible relationship with a protestant but in early twentieth century Ireland for a girl or woman to have a policeman as a husband was highly desirable and sought after.

 

Later that evening Maggie walked up to the corner of Fitzwilliam Street and Baggot Street close to where Bridie lived and worked. Wexford born Mary White was the housekeeper for the Jewish businessman Ernest Harris and said later that she saw Bridie leave just after seven o’clock. She was dressed in her best, a black skirt, a pink striped blouse, a dark mantle with a fur collar and a white sailor’s hat with a black band. She was in good form.

 

The two friends walked along Baggot Street speculating on how the night might go. Bridie may have been in confusion as she had approached her local parish priest for some guidance but he advised that she stopped seeing anybody who may not have been of the same faith as she was. At the top of Warrington Place at Baggot Street Bridge, Flower was awaiting his date. He had left Irishtown police station just after seven o’clock. He walked up Bath Avenue, passed Beggars Bush British military barracks and onto the banks of the Grand Canal at Percy Place. After the briefest of introductions, the three crossed the bridge and onto Upper Baggot Street and as the ladies ate a small punnet of plums that Flower had bought them in a shop just over the Bridge, he slipped into Davy’s public house on Baggot Street at the junction of Waterloo Road.

 

Barmen Eddie Byrne and Malachy Dwyer were on duty on that Wednesday afternoon August 22^nd 1900. Both men who were Tipperary natives worked for William Davy also a Tipperary native. Twenty one year old Malachy would later recall that the off duty constable, whom he recognised as having frequented the pub in the past, had just one pint of porter which he drank very quickly and left the pub where he rejoined with Maggie and Bridie.

 

They continued to walk until they reached Carisbrooke House at the corner of Northumberland Road, the house to their left, across the road to their right the Trinity College Botanical gardens and Ballsbridge and the River Dodder. Flower obviously did not realise that Maggie Clowry was no longer working for Arthur Pollen and his family. Pollen was a former Indian Civil Servant and now a non-practicing barrister who lived in this stunning corner house with his wife Flora and their daughter Sybil. Flower turned to her and said,

            ‘Are you going in? If you want to take a broad hint’

It was just after 8.30pm.

 

Maggie no longer wanted to play gooseberry, being left out of the intimate conversation taking place between Flower and her friend. She said her goodnights and watched as Flower and Bridie crossed the road and continued to walk down Lansdowne Road in the direction of the nearby railway station. Maggie later recounted that she met another local police detective McManus who walked back up Pembroke Road with her as far as Baggot Street Bridge.

 

John Atwell was a hard working employee of the local Pembroke Council whose headquarters were in Ballsbridge. He was the night watchman at the Lansdowne Road railway station and level crossing. Just after 9.30pm he noticed a man and a woman crossing the tracks heading towards Newbridge Avenue. The timing would indicate that this was Bridie and her gentleman but Atwell would later identify the couple as Constable Dockery and another young woman named Lizzie Kavanagh. Lizzie Kavanagh was described as a fallen woman who had been convicted and fined for being a street walker, a lady of the night.

 

The grassy area between Londonbridge Road Bridge and the Herbert Bridge along the edge of the Lansdowne Road rugby grounds along the banks of the River Dodder was well known as having been frequented by prostitutes for their illegal activities earning hard earned cash from the soldiers based at Beggars Bush Barracks. Atwell also recounted that shortly after this couple crossed over three soldiers crossed in the opposite direction including a Colonel and a soldier who was loud and seemed to be the worse for wear from the consumption of alcohol. The mystery was about to unfold when young Paddy Keeffe from Bridge Street in Ringsend would make a gruesome discovery.

Part Two Tomorrow

The Novel Race Through Irishtown

 The Novel Race Through Irishtown

Trevor James

How long would it take you to go from Beggars’ Bush barracks to the Pigeon House fort? Google maps estimates it would take 14 minutes by car, 15 minutes on your bike or 58 minutes walking. Google maps doesn’t give the time on horseback but on February 8th 1834, Mr. Robert Prendergast from Lacken, Co Tipperary wagered 100 sovereigns that he could ride from the gate of Beggars’ Bush barracks to the messroom door of the Pigeon House fort in under 5 minutes. The event had been announced in the morning papers and crowds gathered to line the route - down Bath Avenue and over the wooden London bridge (presumably he didn’t have to stop to pay the toll due at the time), over the strand, to the Devonshire (or Murphy’s) bathing wharf and up onto the South wall, and thence to the fort. (I’m not sure where the Devonshire bathing wharf was, but Ordnance Survey maps of the period show Murphy’s baths on the strand close to where Strasburg terrace is today). When people heard of the venture, many thought it was a hoax and couldn’t believe that anyone could ride such a dangerous and crooked course in that time.

 

The race was supposed to start at one o’clock but there were a number of delays and the crowds became restless and some drifted away, although there was still heavy betting on the race. At four o’clock there was a flurry of activity at the gates of Beggars Bush, and at ten minutes past four Prendergast set off at a gallop. Within two and a half minutes he had reached the wharf but his horse was exhausted from crossing the heavy wet sand. But Prendergast had anticipated this and had a second horse ready at the wharf. He jumped of the exhausted horse, leapt onto the fresh one and dashed on, galloping through the winding lanes leading to the fort entrance and reached the mess-hall door with fifteen seconds to spare. The newspapers reported that he seemed ‘a little shaken by the work’ but quickly recovered. The hundred sovereigns may have hastened his recovery.

Prendergast’s exploits seemed to have encouraged others to try their hand, and two weeks later Dr. Douglas Mahon[1] narrowly failed to break the five minute barrier, again changing horses at the wharf. Enter Edward Poyntz[2], a young ensign in the 59th Regiment of Foot, and son of Vice Admiral Poyntz. Edward backed himself, giving two to one, to complete the course in five minutes but using only one horse. There was great excitement at this and many felt it couldn’t be done. Heavy betting ensued and Poyntz stood to lose a tidy sum. Crowds gathered on the route and at four o’clock Poyntz set off on his chestnut mare to great cheers. Down Bath Avenue, through Irishtown, across the wet strand, up the slip, the horse exhausted but still game, still galloping, along the South wall, through the circuitous windings into the fort. Racing for the finish line he was forced to check his mare when another rider accidentally crossed his path but he reached the mess-room door and stopped the time-keeper’s stopwatch. Four minutes forty seconds!

But before any bets were paid out there was a ‘steward’s enquiry’. There was some error in the stop watches and the matter had to be referred to umpires who decided in Poyntz’s favour. Winner all right!

 

(Footnote: Poyntz’s later career makes one wonder if the winner was all right. He was convicted of several counts of forgery and fraud and sentenced to ten years transportation)

---

[1] Dr. Mahon was an assistant surgeon at the Pigeon House Fort

[2] According to The Peerage website :Edward Henry Poyntz was born on December 1^st 1812. The was the son of Admiral Stephen Poyntz and Frances Lydia Brace. He gained the rank of Ensign in 1832 in the 59^th Regiment. He gained the rank of Lieutenant in 1834 and in the same year married Mary Massy. He was promoted to Captain in 1841and retired from the military in 1848. Poyntz died in July 1880.