Thurles Information

It happened 150 years ago this year and of the seventeen men publicly executed outside North Tipperary’s County Gaol in Nenagh, between 1842 and 1858, the true story of William and Daniel Cormack is one of the few that still remains fresh in folk memory, not just only here in County Tipperary and on the island of Ireland, but also in the USA, Australia, England and Canada.

I first heard about the Cormack Brothers as a small boy living in Co. Wexford and when I arrived here, to reside in Co.Tipperary in 1975, over the next 23 years, I listened intently to the constant and various arguments and debates, with regard as to their true guilt or innocent.

"Guilty or Innocent?" Reprinted

Then in 1998, a marvelous book, entitled appropriately ‘Guilty or Innocent?‘ by author and Tipperary historian Nancy Murphy, appeared on our book shelves. Now for the first time, lovers of history and Tipperary folklore, had compiled together and easily accessible to them, the full factual details of the Cormack Brothers trial, their execution and their exhumation.

The book was the outcome of years of extensive research, carried out painstakingly by the author, into newspapers, official and private correspondence, the Trant Papers, the Petitions for Reprieve, Parish Registers, Poor Law Rate Books and other land records. The book put together, accurately and for the very first time, the known truth, without bias. Not surprisingly the book was sold out within weeks of its original publication date and up until this week was commanding figures of in excess of €64 to €130 in just secondhand condition.

Now, due to popular demand Relay Books, Tyone, Nenagh, Co.Tipperary have agreed to republished ‘Guilty or Innocent?‘ in a limited edition, to meet the renewed interest in the Cormack Brother’s fate this year, being the 150th anniversary of their death.

The Cormack Brother’s murder trial is too complex to discuss in this blog, but Chapter 18, of this well researched book, examines aspects of the Cormack Brother’s case to be questioned, under the following headings :

Were the members of the Grand Jury correct in sending the Cormack Brothers for trial?
The conduct of the investigation as revealed in the trials;
The conduct of the trials by prosecution, defence and presiding Judge;
The quality of the evidence and consequently whether the second Trial Jury was justified in their verdict;
Were there grounds for appeal, for a case stated by the judge for judgement by the Superior Court, and ultimately for mercy by the Lord Lieutenant?

Finally, and leaving the law aside, has the widespread belief in the Cormack Brother’s innocence been justified? The author quotes the indirect evidence for this and leaves a conclusion to the reader.

Within the last few months, the tiny village of Loughmore,Co.Tipperary, native parish to William and Daniel Cormack, have marked the anniversary of their execution and exhumation, by an impressive and evocative recreation of the 1910 funeral of the brothers exhumed remains. They also staged a play, “The Cormack Brothers”, in the parish centre over seven nights, playing to full houses and standing room only.

The limited republished edition of ‘Guilty or Innocent?‘ in paperback, retails at just €12.90 plus €2.00 for postage and packing.

This book is an excellent read for factual history lovers and if you enjoy a story where ‘truth is stranger than fiction’, you can now obtain a copy of this publication from any of the following retail outlets:- Bookworm,Thurles. -  J.Walsh, Main St., Templemore. John Ryan, Bookshop, Friar Street, Thurles. The book is also available from Relay Books, Tyone, Nenagh, (Email relaybooks@eircom.net.)
Take it from me this book is one good read.

Those of us who have tried to trace personnel killed, missing or injured during World War One will have found this task difficult, to say the least. However, now, for those of you searching for information on Tipperary soldiers the task has become much easier, due to the publication of a new book entitled “Tipperary Casualties of the Great War”

The author, Dublin born Tom Burnell, now resident in Holycross, Thurles, Co.Tipperary, has penned a remarkable factual history of all the Tipperary men who died during World War One or just after, while in the service of the British,  Australian, New Zealand, American, Indian, Canadian, South African armies. Details of those Tipperary men linked with the Royal Navy and the British Mercantile Marine are also detailed.

This book, painstakingly and accurately brings to light, for the first time, information previously held on dusty shelves in forgotten archives and reminds us of the true meaning of sacrifice.

In an interview with Thurles.Info the author Tom Burnell speaks about his early life and times and what inspired this much needed and very readable publication.

“I consider myself, indeed, blessed to live here in the most beautiful rural village of Holycross, County Tipperary, one of Irelands most holy places. This village is a peaceful location and so remote from the many wartime locations, now household names, found in Europe.

Yet even in this peaceful place, there are the ‘graves of the fallen‘ from the Great War of 1914 -1918. Indeed, there are few places in Ireland that do not contain the resting-place of at least one such serviceman. Some came home wounded and died here, while others may have died in England of wounds received in France, the Dardanelles or Flanders. Over 400 of the 1400 Tipperary men who fell in this conflict have no graves at all and their commemorations remain as small inscriptions on Memorials to the Missing in foreign lands. They fell while in the service of the British, the Canadian, the Australian Imperial Force (A. I. F.), the South African, the Indian, the New Zealand and the American Armies. Some were sailors serving in one of several navies including the British Mercantile marine.

I was born in Finglas in the 1950s, long after the Great War had ended. Like most Dubliners, I was the offspring of a Dublin mother and a father, latter  from far outside the Pale and known in Dublin as a ‘Culchie’.  My father originated from a little place called Camas, in County Galway, close to Meelick, Eyrecourt.

In the late 1940s, after the Second World War, he gave up the drudgery of farming life. At that time our family was farming and also selling turf cut from the Meelick bogs and sent by canal barge to Dublin. It was here they obtained the best price. In the summer of ‘49 he left his plough stuck in a furrow and with a fiver in his pocket headed off  for the Capital City, Dublin. Here there was a chance of some future, more work and more music. My father was a talented musician and soon formed the Galway Rovers Céili Band with the world famous Joe Cooley. He also got a job with the Lucan Dairies and afterwards with Kennedy’s Bread in Parnell Street opposite the ‘Hill’ Saturday morning market.

In the 1950s Finglas was still rural and surrounded by farms and fields and lots and lots of places for a kid to explore. The village was a small place with one shop, a post office, a bank, a church, a few pubs, a dentist and a few other shops, the details of which now escape my memory. However I do remember playing music in The Duck Inn opposite The Drake Inn and I played here years afterwards with the music I had inherited from my Dad.

In those days it was customary for Roman Catholic families like ourselves to kneel down each evening and say the Rosary and as my father had a special devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary this was included in our nightly devotions. It’s well I remember the whole family, my parents, four brothers and two sisters, kneeling down in front of high backed wooden chairs, saying the decades of the Rosary just before bedtime. The coal fire burned bright in the corporation tiled fireplace grate, burning our backs as we studied our shadows on the wall and counting each decade on our fingers.

At the end of it all my father would invite each of us to add our own special dedication of three Hail Mary’s to anything we liked. I don’t remember any of my siblings particular dedications, but what still remains vivid in my mind is the special dedication of three prayers that I specifically wanted to be said. Indeed, I was most insistent  I wanted three Hail Mary’s said for all the soldiers who died in battle (no matter where that battle was or which side they were on) who had no-one to say a prayer for them when they took their last breath. As a child I could not understand why a soldier about to die, without a priest to say the final absolution or the last rites, could not die ‘proper’. Did that mean that men who died on the battlefield without the last rites would never see heaven?

I remember my Father initially staying silent for a short while absorbing my request. I am sure he remembered his Granny sticking the long handled fire shovel into the roasting coal cinders “lest the ‘Black and Tans‘ called” and as she would confirm she “would sort them out”. Anyway, my father agreed, “Three Hail Marys for all the soldiers who died with no-one to pray for them” he said.

We all said the three Hail Marys and I was satisfied. I must have been about 8 years old or so at that time. My special dedication would now be done many times. My father was a special man and very tolerant. After a few years, the feeling of the lost and forgotten souls began to dig deeper and I decided to amass the largest collection of “War Dead” databases, currently available in Ireland, so that I could assist those searching for information on their kinsfolk and acquaintances.

The idea of some brave soldier dying in a foreign field, his people not knowing where he had died, where he had been buried or why he had been buried in that particular place, to me, did nothing to validate well earned respect. It was during the summer of 2005 and 2006 my wife, Ruth and I decided to visit all the Tipperary cemeteries and record the Great War graves contained in them.

If no-one else cares to remembers them at least they will be remembered here in this book -” Tipperary Casualties of the Great War“.

This book is currently available from “Bookworm” email – info@bookworm.ie

Carlo (Charles) Bianconi was born in Tregolo, in the Lombard Highlands, near Como, Italy on September 24th. 1786. A wild youth and showing no real talent at school, his father paid for him to be sent on an eighteen month apprenticeship to art dealer Andrea Faroni. Faroni with Bianconi and three  other apprentice boys in tow, Giuseppe Castelli, Girolamo Camagni and his friend Giuseppe Ribaldi crossed the French  Alps and France on foot in 1801, eventually arriving in Dublin in 1802.

They set up shop near Essex Street Bridge in the now Temple Bar area of Dublin and the young Bianconi continued to serve his apprenticeship as a street picture-seller equipped with just one word of the English language, the word “buy“. The price of his wares he demonstrated by holding up his fingers to prospective clients, one finger represented one penny.

Later the same year he was sent, weekly, with four pence to cover his expenses, down into rural Ireland. Leaving Dublin on a Monday morning with his pictures he travelled on foot through Munster and Leinster selling his wares and organising his route, thus ensuring to be back in Dublin, to his employer, by late Saturday night. From actual records, we know he was arrested in Passage East, Co Waterford and held in jail, over night, for selling pictures of, the then  British number one  enemy, Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1804, on the termination of his eighteen month apprenticeship, he decided not to return home but took to the road selling pictures and frames for himself, carrying his wares in a large box, strapped to his shoulders. The box according to Bianconi himself weighed approximately thirty pounds in weight.

He set up his own shop two years later in Carrick in 1806, but later transferred this business to Waterford and later still to Clonmel Co. Tipperary, where in 1809 he opened at No.1 Gladstone Street as a first class “Carver and Guilder”.

He was a frequent visitor to the Ursuline Convent in Thurles where he admits to being well fed by Reverend Mother Tobin.It was during his travels he met the first love of his life and with the permission of her father sent her to be educated in the Ursuline Convent, Thurles. This love however was never to fully blossom, as his student fell in love with another and Bianconi sadly was forced to give up all pretensions to ever making her his wife.

It is said that ‘necessity is the mother of invention‘ and surely Bianconi is evidence of this fact. Travelling on foot around Ireland, carrying his heavy materials, and often walking twenty to thirty miles each day in the course of this work, quickly demonstrated to Bianconi the great need for a cheap and reliable integrated transport system. It therefore came as no surprise that in July 6th 1815 the first Bianconi two-wheel horse drawn cart, carrying three or four passengers went into commission from Clonmel to Cahir, thus introducing the beginnings of the  first ever integrated transport system,  into Ireland.

Travel on one of these “Bians” as they were to become known, cost one-penny farthing a mile. Such demand was there for his transport that over the next 30 years a huge network of communications were established, with Clonmel, Co Tipperary as its hub. Huge employment was also now created from this growing transport business. The year 1833 saw the “long car” go into production from his coach building premises in Clonmel which enabled him to carry up to twenty passengers, plus cargo and mail deliveries for both  British and Irish Post Offices. Here in Thurles, his depot was situated in O`Shea`s Hotel which today trades as McLoughneys, a ladies clothing boutique. The stables where he fed and changed his horses between journeys still exists, relatively unchanged, to this very day and  are situated at the rear of Ryan’s Jewellers shop, Liberty Square, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.

In 1832 Charles Bianconi married Eliza Hayes the daughter of a wealthy Dublin stockbroker. They begot one son, Charles and two daughters Kate and Mary Anne. Kate died in 1854 and her brother Charles ten years later in 1864. The other surviving daughter Mary married Morgan John O`Connell. In 1864 Morgan O’Connell, nephew of Daniel O`Connell (The Liberator), had succeeded to his mother’s property in Clare known as the McMahon Estate. On February 21st. 1865 he married Mary Anne Bianconi, then aged twenty five (died 1908). Mary Anne, in her own right, was the authoress and compiler of several books including the life story of her father (Charles Bianconi, A Biography).  Her new husband Morgan was a regular companion of William M.Thackeray,  both, indeed, were members of the “Old Fielding’s Club” as was  Charles Dickens.

The advent of railway in 1834 brought home to Bianconi the realisation that his coaching business had now only a limited future. He immediately began to buy shares in the different rail lines as they were being built. He began to sell his coaches and long carts to his employees who had worked for him. He, himself, became a director in Daniel O`Connall`s newly founded National Bank and  between 1843 and 1846 he became a Councillor and was twice elected Mayor of Clonmel, co. Tipperary.

It was at this time, also, he purchased the one thousand acre property known then and now as Longfield House, in the parish of Boherlahan, Cashel, Co. Tipperary, where he resided for twenty nine years and died in 1875 aged 89, a millionaire. He is buried in the family mortuary chapel in Boherlahan, Cashel, which he designed and partially constructed himself.
Legend states that as he breathed his last breath a phantom coach and horses were heard coming up the drive of his much loved Longfield House.