Search Results for 'Denis Browne'

When the English forces regained control of Castlebar after the departure of General Humbert, the greater part of the County Prison on the Green was taken from the control of Governor Henry Moran and set aside for military purposes. Provost Martial William Clavroge assumed responsibility for the military section and military prisoners. Apart from a few common criminals, the prison population of 190 comprised captured Irish rebels, deserters from the British military and militias, and political prisoners such as John Moore.

The sound of artillery and musket fire has died away. Dead combatants and military ordinance are scattered on the Green in Castlebar. Outside the County Prison on the Green, the blood-soaked body of a lone Fraser Fencible lay dead on the steps – bludgeoned to death by French infantrymen.

Nineteen-year-old Anthony Gallagher was hanged on the Green in Castlebar on 29 August 1818. In 2018, I spent time at the National Archives searching for Gallagher while researching my history of prisons and capital punishment in County Mayo (Anatomy of a County Gaol).

Picture this – imagine if this week, our attorney general and chief justice, together with our most senior and respected legal counsel, solicitors, prosecutors, and supporting officials and clerks, abandoned government buildings and the Four Courts and made their way west to Castlebar.

On a chilly day in March 1788, John Howard rode into Castlebar on horseback. When he arrived in Dublin days earlier, he noted, ‘I shall set out next week for Connaught and other remote parts of this country, which indeed are more barbarous than the wilds of Russia’.