Mayo history: All criminals in the country don’t sleep on plank beds!

PART TWO

by Tom Gillespie

IN February 1902, Claremorris born Conor O’Kelly, the first chairman of Mayo County Council, was released from Castlebar Jail after serving a two-month sentence.

The Connaught Telegraph gave comprehensive coverage to the event in their edition of February 22 of that year.

After his release a mass meeting was held in Castlebar Courthouse at which Mr. O’Kelly gave this address:

Fellow Nationalists I am glad that the day has come when the people may hold their meetings in the old fortress of the ‘garrison’.

I am glad the day has come when we, the common people, can take possession of our public courthouse without fearing that any man may say us nay (cheers).

Fellow Nationalists, I can assure you in all sincerity that I am so embarrassed by this ceremony that I am at a loss for words to suitably acknowledge it.

I am not going to deceive myself into acquiescing in all the kind of words that have been spoken about me in these eloquent addresses which have just been read (a voice ‘You are worthy of it’).

I am afraid that they show the weakness which Irishmen always betray in matters of this kind - the tendency to flatter and exaggerate, which is a fault, perhaps, after all, on the better side of our nature; but there is a certain danger after all in excesses and kindness of this kind.

You must know that in all these unchastened by the experience of years there is a certain assurance and self-sufficient that, fed upon flattering notices of this kind, is apt to develop abnormally, instead of being held under.

I hope that notwithstanding all the kind things which have been said about me, I am not going to lose my head - I am not going to forget myself - and that I am going to bear myself as I have always done, with becoming humbleness and modesty.

I leave Castlebar Jail, as I entered it, unchanged in my views of grabbers and grabbing (cheers). I have done penance for my sins - it is true (laughter), but I feel no contrition for them (laughter), and I still believe the way to deal with grabbers at public meetings is not by veiled hints to vague suggestions in order to escape the Coercion Courts, but, so to speak, to bring down on them the chastisement of public scorn and repudiation (cheers), and to care little whether the Coercion Courts do their best or their worst (here, here).

I dare say that Mr. Wyndham, by locking me up in Castlebar Jail (groans of Wyndham), I dare say he fancied he would induce a change in those wicked political views of mine, but if he were so innocent in his anticipations and calculations, which were so innocent and childish, he must be doomed to disappointment. (Here, here).

Now, fellow Nationalists, might we for a moment let our minds go back to that trial - that travesty that was called a trial - in Castlebar in December last.

Well, according to the judgement of that ablest constitutional lawyer in the land - the Lord Chief Baron, a man who soars above all political and partisan views, and who might well be called (the highest and grandest testimonial that could be tendered to a judge) a just judge - that man has declared that the whole proceedings were illegal and wrong, and that the Coercion Court of Mr. Starkie and Mr. Bell (groans) was far more illegal than the meeting they were called upon to try was alleged to be (hear, hear).

Fellow Nationalists it is not, I ask you, a wasteful expenditure of public funds that we should be paying for judges for the King’s Bench £20,000 a year to decide matters of law which two promoted policemen can try in 10 seconds (heat, hear), and deliver their sentence in as many words (cheers).

Why, as a matter of fact, when out Counsel, Mr. Cherry, objected to the constitution of the court in Castlebar, Mr. Starkie looked at Mr. Bell and Mr. Bell looked at Mr. Starkie and neither of them for one moment uttered a single syllable in that court abroad (hear, hear and laughter).

Neither of them uttered a single syllable to justify the unheard of decision to which they came; they simply decided in their own minds that they were merely Punch and Judy Justices who should respond to the gentlemen who pulled the wires in Dublin Castle (applause).

They would decide that they had jurisdiction where the Lord Chief Baron held that they had not power to administer an oath or examine a witness. If Mr. Wyndham fancied he was going to humiliate us by sending us to Castlebar Jail he was mistaken (hear, hear).

If Mr. Wyndham is not going to modify our conduct for the future surely he must find consolation somewhere. I dare say his large and generous mind will find ample compensation in the reflection that he condemned myself and my four colleagues to the status of criminals for a couple of months or so, but as far as I am concerned, he will find equal disappointment there.

I know the one objection that some of my friends have to going to prison is having to associate with a certain class of people - they object to the company they will have to meet. I confess that although I sympathise with that feeling I do not share it.

Any man who has spent, as I have, six months in the House of Commons, mixing with the spotless ones who have figured in the uncleanly chapters of diverse courts, mixing with gentlemen who have figured in the New Zealand meat and Australian horse scandals, any man who has mixed with those gentleman for 12 months, during one session of Parliament, is absolutely unconcerned and indifferent as to whether brand of human nature he comes in contact.

Fellow Nationalists I have mixed with these hypocrites and liars on the Treasury bench and I know what they are, and after that experience the truth has begun to press itself upon me that all criminals in the country don’t sleep upon plank beds (loud applause).

Read part one here.