Our Legal Heritage

Badge of the Royal Irish Constabulary On the 29th of June 1871, Royal Irish Constabulary inspector Thomas Hartley Montgomery robbed the Northern Banking Company in Newtownstewart, County Tyrone and murdered cashier William Glass.

Sir Cusack Patrick Roney, Illustration of the "Long Hole" on Ireland's Eye, where Sarah Kirwan's body was found On the 6th of September 1852, William Bourke Kirwan took a boat to Ireland’s Eye, an island off the coast of Dublin, with his wife of twelve years, Sara Maria Louisa K

On 15 August 1857, Maria Theresa Longworth and Major William Charles Yelverton got married in a Catholic Church near Rostrevor. They had previously married in Edinburgh on or about 13 April 1857 according to Scottish law; however, Theresa refused to cohabit with Major Yelverton until they were marri

On 9 June 1976, Marie and Noel Murray were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. In September 1975, Garda Michael Reynolds was fatally shot in the head while chasing two men and a woman who had robbed the Bank of Ireland in Killester at gunpoint. The Murrays were arrested and charged w

In 1830, Sir Jonah Barrington became the only High Court judge to be dismissed from office by the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Jonah Barrington was a lawyer, judge and politician born at Knaptou, near Abbeyleix. The fourth child of impoverished landowner John Barrington, he was immediate

John Toler, the first Earl of Norbury, earned his reputation as “the hanging judge” during his time as a particularly callous judge in Ireland in the late 18th and early 19th century. In a somewhat contradictory trait, Toler is often described as having those in his courtroom – inc

The Scold’s Bridle or Branks was a form of punishment usually reserved for women who resisted subordination and didn’t conform to being a quiet and virtuous wife. Women who were perceived as being troublesome – who gossiped, “nagged” their husbands, or who were acc

Our sister publication, Scottish Legal News, recalls a scandalous divorce case from just across the water. Donald Findlay QC has narrated an audiobook on the divorce case of the Duchess of Argyll – Allan Nicol’s Three Strand Pearl Necklace.

On 22 April 1983, Senator David Norris lost an appeal to the Supreme Court. He sought a declaration that that sections 61 and 62 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, and section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, were inconsistent with the Constitution. Under Article 50 of the Consti

Alice Milligan was born in a village just outside Omagh in September 1866, one of thirteen children. Her parents were Methodists of modest means, and whose success in the Irish linen trade brought the family to Belfast in 1879. In Belfast, Alice was educated at Methodist College along with her survi

On 7 June 1917, William Hoey Kearney Redmond was killed in the attack on the Messines Ridge during the First World War, serving as a major in the Royal Irish Regiment of the British Army. A famous Irish Nationalist, Willie came from a family of parliamentarians – his father, William Archer Red

After several decades as a military fort, and a much earlier history of being a monastic settlement, Spike Island was converted into a prison in 1847.

In January 1992, a 14-year-old girl discovered that she was pregnant. The girl, now known as “X”, had been subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of her friend’s father since the age of 12, and when her parents were on a trip to Lourdes in August 1990, he raped her for the first ti

Twenty years ago today, on Monday 15 March 1999, human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries. A bomb had been attached to the underneath of her car, and detonated when she pressed the brakes as she reached the bottom of the road from her home as she drove to her offic

Having witnessed evictions in 1885 which she described as the “wholesale destruction of the little houses of the people”, Maud Gonne said this “changed the whole course” of her life, transforming her from a “carefree society girl into a woman of set purpose”, dete