Mayo History: The Trials of the Threshers in 1806
By Dr. Michael M. O'Connor
Imagine our attorney general, chief justice, and the most senior and respected legal counsel, solicitors, prosecutors, and supporting officials and clerks abandoning government buildings and the Four Courts, making their way west to Castlebar.
They travel by horse and carriage, escorted by a troop of armed dragoons.
The occupants of the carriages are armed with short swords, knives, and pistols; the coach guards carry blunderbusses slung across their shoulders.
Everyone of consequence in Mayo is in Castlebar to witness or participate in the upcoming spectacle.
To complete the image, the long-abandoned and derelict home of the Land League, the Imperial Hotel on the Green, is open, trading under a different name and doubling as a Bianconi coach station.
It is December, so the days are short and the nights long and dark. There are no lights on or around the Green after dark, save for candlelight in windows and the faint glow of turf fires.
There is a significant military presence in the town.
The public houses are full of raucous patrons, intrigue, and government spies.
This was the scene in Castlebar in December 1806, where, just over eight years earlier, the forces of the Crown were humiliated by Humbert’s Franco-Irish forces.
Shortly after, the Green and the prison that once stood there became a theatre for revenge, in the form of courts-martial, transportations and executions.
On December 8, 1806, a special commission convened at the courthouse on the Green in Castlebar as part of a government-led initiative to suppress a secret society known as the Threshers.
Lord Chief Justice William Downes and Charles Kendal Bushe, Solicitor General, attended.
Drawn from the impoverished Catholic farming and labouring classes, the Threshers were an outlawed group whose origins lay in opposition to tithes and priests’ dues, but later broadened their activities to encompass wider social and economic protests.
Their principal weapon was intimidation, and when that failed, violence. A new courthouse in Castlebar opened that summer on the Green, proximate to the prison.
The travelling entourage visited several counties, but the number hanged at Castlebar was higher than elsewhere, owing to the influence of Denis Browne. Browne was still in 1798 suppression mode.
Forty threshers were held at the prison on the Green, including a group charged with the murder of the thresher and informer Thady Lavin. Lavin gave the authorities twenty-nine names, most from the Tooreen – Moygowna areas.
Lavin was scheduled to appear as a witness in the trial of several threshers. After a gaol-break was foiled on 10 November, relatives of those in prison conspired to kill Lavin.
The court began its business on Monday, December 8. A non-Catholic jury was sworn in advance of each trial. Denis Browne was outraged when the jury returned a not-guilty verdict in the first trial, that of James McPhadeen of Manulla.
Many of those tried later in the week were less fortunate. Coll Flynn, Laurence Flynn, Charles Flynn, Thomas Horan (O’Hara), Daniel Regan and Daniel Callaghan were found guilty and sentenced to death for the murder of Lavin.
All but Callaghan were hanged on Saturday, December 13. Two others were hanged for other offences connected to the Threshers some days later.
Five others had their death sentences commuted and were transported to New South Wales. A man named Ginty was hanged in connection with the Lavin murder in 1813.
He fought the hangman for one hour before being forcibly hanged. Edmund Durneen, the man who brutally murdered Lavin with a hatchet, was hanged on the Green in 1830.
He was convicted principally on the evidence of Daniel Callaghan and Thady Lavin's wife, Margaret, who had survived the 1806 attack. Daniel Callaghan avoided the gallows in 1806 when he agreed to become an informer.
The court concluded its business on December 13. As the entourage departed, spectators gathered on the Green to witness five hangings.
It was reported that the remaining two hangings were delayed until the Christmas period to maximise impact.
The Trials of the Threshers is an important episode in the history of Castlebar and Mayo.
The threshers did not go away and were soon followed by ribbonmen and other secret societies.
The response of Denis Browne and Dublin Castle officials evidenced their deep concern about a return to the disturbances of 1798 - examples had to be made of those who did not fear to speak of ninety-eight.
(Extracted from Dr. Michael O'Connor's book, 'County Mayo – A History of Imprisonment, Capital Punishment & Transportation. Part 1: Anatomy of a County Gaol').