Mayo history: The Fighting Fitzgerald of Turlough
By Tom Gillespie
TWO-hundred-and-thirty-eight years ago this year the notorious George Robert Fitzgerald of Turlough, Castlebar, met his death on the scaffold.
Better known as the Fighting Fitzgerald, he was labelled by his contemporaries as a ‘reckless duellist’.
He was tried and convicted of killing a neighbour, and he was hanged on Castlebar’s Mall on June 12, 1786, aged only 39 years.
Author Pam Lecky in her 2016 publication ‘The Mad Fighting Fitzgerald’ described him as one of the most notorious characters of 18th century Dublin, who loved to duel so much that he would provoke fights with total strangers.
He is reported to have fought in 11 duels by the time he reached the age of 24.
He fought duels with Lord Norbury and Lord Clare and he once narrowly missed killing Denis Browne, a brother of Lord Altamont, when he fired a shot at him in the middle of Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street).
On one occasion George was involved in a sword duel through the streets of Castlebar. It commenced at one end of Main Street, and continued all along the street, ending on Ellison Street.
George Robert Fitzgerald was born in 1746, at Turlough House, the eldest son of George Fitzgerald and Lady Mary Hervey, daughter of Lord Hervey, Vice Chamberlain to George II.
His parents separated when he was young and he went to live in England with his mother and younger brother.
He attended Eton and joined the army in 1765 aged 17. He was part of the 69th regiment, which was stationed in Ireland, and fought several duels with both locals and with his fellow officers.
In one of these, allegedly fought over a woman, he was shot in the head and nearly killed, and only a swift trepanation - perforate his skull with a trepan - saved his life. It’s possible that this brain injury may explain his aggressiveness later in life. His father was annoyed enough at the incident to cut him out of his will.
George was left scarred but by no means unattractive. Though he was beneath average height for the time, and fairly slight of build, he did always impress those he met with his graceful bearing, and even those who hated him admitted ‘a more polished and elegant gentleman could not anywhere be met with’.
Aged 18 he visited the French court as a protégé of the Comte d’Artois, the King’s brother, but fell out of royal favour by fighting duels and using loaded dice at the gaming tables of Versailles.
George married Jane Connolly of Castletown in Co. Kildare who came with a dowry of £30,000. This led to an appeal for help from his father, who was in financial difficulties, and for the sum of £10,000 it was agreed that his father would pay him £1,000 a year for life, and also reverse the disinheritance.
After his wedding George resigned his commission in the army and moved to France, where within a year he had lost all of the remaining £20,000 gambling. Jane went back to England, while George stayed on in Paris for a while.
Eventually, however, his blatant refusal to repay his gambling debts caught up with him, and the Count d’Artois - the future King Charles X of France - had him thrown out of a gambling hall.
This effectively destroyed him in Parisian society - ironically the only remedy would have been to challenge Charles to a duel, but no mere commoner could presume to challenge a prince. Instead, he was forced to leave the country.
He moved to Dublin in 1775. It was here that his eccentricity and mania for duelling began to take full hold. He would knock the wigs off strangers in the street to force them to challenge him, or stand in the middle of the pathway so that one had to step into the mud to get around him, or jostle him out of the way.
The most bizarre thing he did was to adopt a pet bear, and take it everywhere with him, with mistreatment or mockery of the bear being, of course, grounds for a duel.
One story of the time has Fitzgerald fighting a sword duel in St. Stephen’s Green in the middle of the day, to the consternation of onlookers. Some called for them to be parted, but the consensus opinion was ‘let them fight it out; one will probably be killed, and the other hanged for the murder, and society will get rid of two pests’.
In fact, neither man was killed though one (it is not recorded which) suffered a wound that left him unable to sit down for a week. In fact, Fitzgerald seems to have avoided killing his opponents, whether through luck or through the knowledge that his known temperament would see him treated severely by the courts.
He was constantly at loggerheads with his father over money and the Turlough estate and on one occasion he handcuffed the poor man to his dancing pet bear for an entire day.
He was later fined and sentenced to two years in Castlebar Goal for this and for imprisoning his father in a cave on the family estate with, it was claimed, the same bear guarding the entrance.
He was eventually tried and convicted for the murder of Randal McDonnell, one of his neighbours, and was hanged at Castlebar on June 12, 1786.
It was said that before his execution he drank a whole bottle of port and then threw himself off the scaffold, but the rope snapped in two and he fell to the ground.
He told the sheriff to go and get another rope - but not from the same shop. But by the time a new rope was procured, he had sobered up and lost his nerve.
He went to his maker crying and begging for forgiveness.
His remains were removed to the family vault at Turlough where they were buried at midnight, as was the custom among the gentry at this time.