After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Ireland's Bloodiest Murders: Maamtrasna Murders

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

One summer night in 1882 the Maamtrasna Valley in the West of Ireland became forever notorious when three generations of the Seoige (Joyce) family were brutally murdered.What followed was a trial so full of colonial injustice that it turned a story of gory murder into something of national significance. From all the blood and cruelty, a man called Maolra Seoighe (Myles Joyce in English) emerges as a figure embodying the tensions and injustices of Ireland in this time.Anthony tells Maddy the story this week.Edited by Tom Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=afterdark&plan=monthly

The small rural townland of Maamtrasna, which translates loosely to the Path Across, can be found in County Mayo, Ireland. It is a brooding place, dominated by the black, glassy waters of Loch Mask and the great jagged shoulders of the Partree Mountains. It is as brutal as it is beautiful. It was in this ancient landscape that early on the morning of the 18th of August, 1882, a tenant farmer named John Collins, along with Mary and Margaret O'Brien, made their way to the house of their neighbour, Sean Shoaga, as they had heard disturbances coming from his house during the night.

What they found would stay with them for the rest of their lives. The door to Shoaga's home had been ripped from its hinges, making visible the naked corpse of Sean Shoaga. He had received at least two gunshot wounds. On a bed, in the corner, his wife Bridget lay dead, her face crushed with a blunt force wound to her right eye. Their 17-year-old son, Michal, fought for his final breaths on the bed beside his mother's body, choking on his own blood.

He would soon succumb to his wounds. In the inner room, the neighbours found the body of Sean's mother-in-law, 80-year-old Mauraid, who had been stripped and killed with a single blow to the head. Beside her, a 12-year-old boy, Patsy, stared straight ahead in shock. He was seriously injured, but would be the only member of the family to survive the brutal attack. News of the murders spread like wildfire. Speculation regarding a motive ranged from a feud over sheep to the illicit inner workings of a secret society. The Ma'am Trasna murders made the news in London too,

with the spectator commenting that their English readership should think of the murders as a reminder of, quote, the existence in particular districts of Ireland of a class of peasants who are scarcely civilised beings and approach far nearer to savages than any other white men. Welcome to After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. I'm Dr Maddy Pelling. And I'm Dr Anthony Delaney. And this episode, we're in 1880s Ireland. So, Anthony, we're met with this incredibly bloody, gruesome murder scene. We have a victim who's been shot. We have victims who are dead on the bed, having been, I think, beaten to death. There's someone still dying. There are people injured. Can you just talk us through the scene a little bit? Because it seems like complete chaos

that we're met with here. Yeah, and it would have been. So you're making your way up towards an Irish-touched cottage in the countryside. If you look around, there were probably other cottages in the distance. At this time at night, you'll see some lamps glowing in windows, but it's a fairly desolate place. Beautiful, but these cottages are all spread out. So your neighbour is not your next door neighbour, if that makes sense. They're across a few hills. They're a little bit in the distance. The door itself is ripped off the hinges. So it just kind of speaks to this violent intrusion. And the first person you come across is the man of the house, Sean Shoaga, who has been shot and killed on the floor. Now, when you enter a traditional Irish cottage, you are faced with

either one or two rooms. And this particular cottage has two rooms. And there would have been a living area that would have been also a sleeping area, potentially had some animals there too, depending on the time of year. In this case, I don't think there were animals present because it's not accounted for in any of the archives. And then an inner room, which we do have in this cottage, which means it was potentially a slightly larger cottage, which means they were more affluent than some of the people who are wandering the countryside, for instance. And within there, the mother-in-law, Morade, that's where she sleeps and that's where some of the children join her in there too. So the family are spread out

between these two rooms and it would have been a fire lighting in the main room. So you walk straight into the main room where those initial bodies are found. You don't want to get too gruesome about these things, but in such a small space, the blood would have been overwhelming. It really would have made quite an impact on people who are coming. And remember, the first people to see this are just neighbours from cottages nearby. They just come and this is what they encounter. So it's not police people. It's not someone who's doing an autopsy or anything like that. It's just their neighbours. So it's a really deeply shocking scene to this very rural, isolated community. But it's a story

that, as it unfolds, kind of takes us away from the initial scene, doesn't it? To sort of bigger conversations going on in Ireland at this time. Yeah, we begin with this scene, which is gruesome to say the least. But what it transforms into is a story about a man named Mel Rishoga, or a history, I suppose, about a man named Mel Rishoga, who becomes almost the embodiment of the tensions in Ireland, both in this local community and in Ireland more broadly. this local community and in Ireland more broadly. We're taken into a Dublin courthouse and then we return back to the west of Ireland to Galway Jail where these histories are played out. But it starts to become something much more than this kind of local gruesome murder and starts to have national significacies. Okay, so before we get into how this story is going to unfold and the sort of beats of it, can you just set the scene a little bit with the political landscape in Ireland at this time? It's 1882. We know that Britain has colonial rule of Ireland itself and large swathes of the globe.

Can you give us a bit of the political landscape in this period? It's unsettled. So we have the occurrence of the land wars during the period from 1879 to 1882 or thereabouts. And the land wars are non-violent mostly, but not always, resistant by the Irish National Land League, of which my great-great-grandfather was a member. I have his little membership piece of paper, actually. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's kind of faded now, but I have it framed. So it's hopefully going to last another few centuries. But the aim of the Land League was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and to allow

tenant farmers, which made up a huge portion of the population, to own the land that they worked. They couldn't. They weren't able to do that under colonial rule. So the League supported boycotts of rent. They resisted evictions and they aided farmers. And I know my great-great-grandfather was involved in resisting evictions. There was land that hadn't been tilled that was going to involve the eviction of a family in the village where my family still live now. And from what I hear anecdotally in the family, he was one of the people that went and tilled the land and made sure that that person wasn't evicted. So it was a community amongst Irish farmers to try and have some ownership of the land. But I mean, interestingly,

I suppose County Mayo was the first place that the Land League had actually met and launched the land war on the 20th of April, 1879. So it has its roots quite deep in this part of Ireland, particularly, because remember, we're post-famine here. So the landscape of Ireland, particularly the west of Ireland, where Mayo is located, had not recovered financially. So these are desperate times for some of these people. And the landscape as well is kind of, I guess, soaked with the trauma of those previous generations who lived through the famine or didn't live through the famine, obviously in a huge portion of the population. Is there a feeling amongst the communities living in this area at this time that, you know, are these killings shocking to the community?

Are they coming at a time when violence, when death, when suffering and trauma is sort of commonplace? What's the reception of this event? I think both things are true, actually, in terms of it being shocking, but also it coming within a vernacular of trauma and violence and kind of the impact of Ireland being an outpost of the colony, despite its proximity to Britain. I think all of that is true. In terms of the normalcy of violence, it is a time during which there is a lot of unrest. So even when we're looking at the Irish National Land League, there is unrest there. There are skirmishes there. This is collective. This is community-based. There is a grassroots element. They are not armed necessarily, although there are times which they use farm implements to kind of arm themselves if they're confronted during one of their, when they're resisting evictions, etc. So they would see that as arming for defence, but with the kind of tools that they have to hand.

but with the kind of tools that they have to hand. So that's one element where there is a vernacular of resistance, I suppose would be the way to put it. Obviously, again, we come back to the insipid violence that the famine generated, where people were left to starve and people were left to wander the countryside, particularly in this part of Ireland. So in terms of almost that like walking corpse memory, it's in living memory in 1882. People will remember seeing those tragic figures around the west of Ireland. But the Mount Trastner murders was so brutal, as you kind of heard in that description there, that it actually made all those newspapers across the world, not even just in Britain. And actually, I have an image that was put out at the time, just after the Man Trasna murders. And it says, the murder of the Joyce family in Ireland. Now, I haven't been translating the surname. So I've been using the Irish surname, which is Shoaga. This is obviously from a British newspaper. So they do translate it into the Joyce family. But Maddy, since you're our resident art historian, would you describe what we're seeing

in some of these images? Okay, so the image that you've given me, Anthony, it's a black and white print, presumably from a newspaper. It has the feeling of maybe a novel illustration or something from a Penny Dreadful. It's pretty sensationalist. So it's a series of pictures kind of collaged together and they're made to look as though they a series of pictures kind of collaged together and they're made to look as though they are sort of separate pieces of paper, maybe stuck to a wall. And they're showing different moments in the Mantrasna murders. So we have, for example, on the left, there's a man, presumably one of the culprits or the culprit who is sneaking up a dry stone wall. one of the culprits or the culprit who is sneaking up a dry stone wall. In the central image we have Sean Showager who is being shot in the chest by this dark figure. We can't see his face.

The bullet leaving the gun is kind of, you know, the shot being fired is illuminating the face of the victim. There's terrible scenes everywhere, scenes of violence taking place but also the sort of damage done to the bodies. And in the bottom right corner, we have an image of the same shadowy figure in jail. So this is a kind of, I guess, a narrativized fictional or semi-fictionalized version of this crime, presumably circulated, certainly in Ireland, I'm guessing in Britain as well. Is that right? Anthony's nodding for the listeners at home. And to me, it just screams of that kind of Victorian sensationalist reporting, the blurring of lines between factual journalism

reporting current offence and the kind of penny dreadful treatments that some of these stories get. And I can see that this is going to become a case of notoriety across Britain, not just in Ireland. Yeah, I think that sums it up perfectly, Maddy. That kind of scene of chaos, there's darkness, there's hidden identities, and a wealth of violence. And so as they try to unravel these pictures that you've just described in real time, because of the locality and the landscape where these murders occurred, they're going to start looking inward first. And as we'll see, that local community is the first place to come under suspicion as the authorities try to solve these cases. Following the assassination of Cavendish and Burke months earlier, the authorities were under significant pressure from Westminster to find the culprits of the Mount Trasna murders.

They were keen to reiterate that they were in control in Ireland. Such was the profile of the murders that the Lord Lieutenant, Earl Spencer, visited the crime scene himself. He reported privately to Queen Victoria that it, quote, He reported privately to Queen Victoria that it, quote, is incredible to believe human beings could live in such a hovel. Within three days, ten men had been arrested. They were Maelra Shoaga, his brothers Marcin and Pogin, and his nephew Tom. Their neighbours Porrick, Michal and John Casey were also arrested,

along with Porrick Shoaga, Tom Casey and Anthony Philbin. The trial of the first three men, Mailra, Pádraig and Casey, took place at Dublin's Green Street Courthouse. The entire proceedings were conducted through English. However, Mailra Sioaga only spoke Irish. It was his native language. He could not fully understand the nature of the accusations made against him, and as a result, had no meaningful defence that he could offer at his trial. Not only this, but large elements of witness testimony and evidence had been falsified, unknown to the accused. The three men were found guilty and sentenced to hang. Under the advice of their parish priest, Father Micheál MacGay, the remaining men pleaded guilty in order to avoid the hangman. They were sentenced to penal servitude for life by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Earl Spencer. So we have these incredibly brutal murders that take place in an ordinary home in a relatively

rural setting. And it's not immediately obvious who has committed them, but now we have some culprits caught, brought to trial and sentenced. And they appear to be drawn from the same community as the victims were. So we've spoken a little bit about the legacy of the famines in this part of Ireland, but what was life like for Irish peasants in the 1880s when these arrests are being made? What were the lives of these men in particular like? Grim in many ways. I don't want to just sum it up like that. It's very easy to just say that there was bleakness all around at this time. We'll talk about some of those elements in a moment. Obviously, there would have been a sense of community. Certainly, I know that from my own family history that even in those hard times, the community did actually come together and try and

protect and resist together. But we are still talking, as I've mentioned before, about a post-famine Western seaboard that hadn't seen any significant economic improvement since the famine and the land wars certainly exacerbated this. So there is significant poverty in this part of Ireland for Irish peasant farmers at this time. Some would have not been able to sustain their land and they would have just wandered the country looking for food, looking for work to try and eke out some kind of a survival for themselves, potentially ending up in a workhouse. The main faith, of course, is Catholicism. So that is, I think, over at this point in time, over 90% of the population. In the case of this particular area, County Mayo in Mount Trastna, it's called what we would refer to as a Gaeltacht area, which means that Irish is the dominant language there. And what I find fascinating about this is it's so easy to forget now that the vast majority of Irish people speak

English as their first language, that in the 18th and 19th century, there was this very long period of kind of transitional bilingualism where, you know, translation, interpretation, and kind of creative manoeuvres were the norm with people who were trying to understand the world that was shifting and changing around them. And sometimes it's useful to remember that kind of linguistic barrier when we talk about the frustrations of Irish peasants, particularly again in the West of Ireland, when we talk about the frustrations of Irish peasants, particularly, particularly again in the West of Ireland, when they're coming up against colonial rule, which these people do, which Mel Rishoaga does. So he is an Irish speaker. He's put in this courtroom

and the proceedings are all conducted through English. So he is essentially cut off from any form of understanding of what's going on. It's so key, isn't it, to their identity and how they interact with the sort of colonial administrative system. The very words that come out of your mouth, it's how you express yourself in the world. It's how you can maybe gain power, how you can articulate your own boundaries, your own desires, all of that. And of course, in a court of law, it's how you can articulate your own boundaries, your own desires, all of that. And of course, in a court of law, it's how you can defend yourself or defend someone else. And it's, I mean, it's so key to this case, isn't it? That the men who are arrested do not speak

English or certainly exist in, as you say, this kind of this moment in time when there's almost a sort of bilingualism where maybe people speak Irish as their first language and know the occasional word of English or, you know, are struggling to communicate with English speakers. And to me, that just, it seems a bit suspect, right? That these men are not able to defend themselves. They're not able to offer an explanation of, you know, where they were, their involvement or non-involvement in the murders. It's extraordinary. It's colonialism, I guess. That's what it is. It's the effect of... It's so interesting because you talked about identity

there. And I was just thinking as you spoke about it, what was Mel Reshoega thinking of himself in the witness stand in 1882. What was his identity amongst... How did he feel about himself? How did the assembled group feel about him? He was this oddity in his own country because of colonial rule. And sometimes we talk on After Dark a lot about scary things or frightening things or frightening events in history, but actually, sometimes the real things that are archivally grounded are the most petrifying of all. Because can you imagine that sense of isolation, that sense of hopelessness where you know your life is on trial, but you don't even know what they're saying to defend yourself. And I think that was specifically acute for

Mailrout because I think some of the others, as we'll see as the story progresses, had some command of English, but for Mailrout it seems that he almost exclusively spoke Irish. So he particularly is lost as this goes. And that to me is petrifying, but it's there in the archive. And of course, as you mentioned at the start of this episode, the way that the men who are arrested are represented in the press, particularly in the British and English press, is this being, what was the phrase, more savage than any other white men. And not only that, but they're compared to other races, aren't they? This sort of colonial language is used to describe them in these terms as being, quote unquote, barbarous or uncivilized. Yeah. I mean, you get contemporary,

about this specific case, you get contemporary comparisons between the people in the West of Ireland and the Maoris and Polynesian people as well. Which is not a sort of untypical comparison, that in the 18th century, you get antiquaries writing about some of the archaeology in Ireland and comparing ancient and prehistoric peoples in Ireland with, for example, the Native Americans. So it's a kind of colonial language that already exists, but it's fascinating that it's being sort of engaged here. And persisted in well into the 20th century when Irish immigrants were coming over to London specifically. But I think England generally, often there would be signs in lodging houses saying,

no blacks, no dogs, no Irish. That's something that we were very acutely aware of growing up. And that's a 20th century manifestation of this kind of colonial mindset, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. The crime scene itself, when it's uncovered, is obviously a bloodbath, really.

And there's been gunshots, there's been maybe beatings. Maybe there's multiple people involved in meeting out some of these injuries and multiple weapons. So what is the evidence that's gathered that leads the authorities to make the arrest that they do? It seems a little bit random to me that these men are gathered up and accused of the murder. I guess. So a gentleman called Anthony Shoga, along with his brother, John, and his nephew, Paddy, they came from the adjoining parish of Cap-en-Acrae. And they were three miles from the murder scene. That's about the distance between the areas. But they went to the police and they had this kind of almost unbelievable tale as to how this had happened. Now, Anthony Shoega was a cousin of Sean Shoega, so the murdered man. So he does have a horse in this race, so to speak. And this faction of the Shoega family went to the police and they gave a sworn statement

that they had followed, they didn't say how they'd become aware of this, but that they'd followed a group of men that night and that they had seen that those men were then joined by other men and they saw them approach Sean Shoega's house at Mount Trasna. So this is a group of people coming forward within a few days saying, actually, I can give you all of the names because I saw them the whole way going into my cousin's house. They hid behind a bush, apparently, which, I don't know, testimony, that's all very kind of narrative, isn't it? That feels a little... It feels very gothic and Penny Dreadful-esque, actually, which is interesting. And it feeds into what you were describing when you were describing the image earlier,

that kind of almost a heightened narrative, yeah, as you say, Penny Dreadful version of what had occurred. They said that they hid behind this bush and they stayed outside and then they heard shouting and screaming. And this is, so Anthony Shoga testified

that he could not distinguish the screams of the women from those of the men, which is interesting, right? Because it's a comment on the kind of manliness and the ways in which life is kind of rendered meaningless. And I don't

know, it says something about the way his cousin Sean was kind of unmanned or something. I mean, he was killed, so ultimately it's much worse. But it brings that element of drama to it. Okay, so it looks like it is a blood feud then between communities that have something in for each other. I mean, what's the motivation here? I still don't, I can't really grasp what is at the heart of these murders. You know, there's groups coming forward saying they've seen another group moving through the landscape in the dark. They followed them. They've hidden in a bush. It all sounds a little far-fetched. What's the motivation here?

At the time, there were two rumours that were probably based in some fact going around. One was a livestock issue, which had kind of infiltrated the family, the Shoagas, that there was this divide between sheep ownership, possibly. Then there was this other idea that as part of the Irish National Land League, there were secret societies within the Land League who were maybe in conversation with people they shouldn't have been, or that they were kind of betraying the cause, whereas other people... So it wasn't necessarily this very unified movement overall. It became a little bit more unified, but there were these splinter secret societies, as I say.

And those were two of the rumours that were going around at the time that this family, the Shoegas, had split, along with the Casey's, had split down the middle because of some elements around either land ownerships, secret societies, or livestock ownership. But the men are found guilty despite, and that testimony is really key, you know, they're taken to Galway Prison. So they're brought back to the west of Ireland, which is near to their home. County Galway is relatively near to Mayo. And, you know, they arrived back on a cold December evening in the West of Ireland. And there must have been something, I don't know, once you arrive home and you're faced with the reality of what's about to happen to you, two of the three men, Paldrick and Casey, they testified that, yes, they had actually been involved in the murder.

So they said, yes, look, we were. But in their admissions, they stated that Mailra Shoaga was absolutely innocent of the crime. So Mailra had said that he was innocent anyway, because he didn't know what they were talking about. And he'd been saying, look, I was in the bed with my wife. I didn't go anywhere. He didn't say this in English, but he was adamant the whole time. But it was when these other men said, look, yes, we did, we were involved and we will hang, but he wasn't and you should let him go. In fact, one of them was quoted as saying, it is the greatest murder in Ireland that ever was if he is hanged. He wrote that in English. So that's how we know they had some English language skills. And they also said that some of the guilty parties remained free.

So Mailer was there innocently, but other people were still out and about having been involved. So the group that are initially arrested sort of admitted their guilt, and everything's sort of collapsing a little bit. And what's interesting to me is that Mailer is presumably he's in court with the others being accused of this, and he doesn't speak English. And presumably the whole time he's defending himself and saying, no, I didn't do this. And it's fascinating to me that it gets to this point where the others have confessed and he's still not acquitted, right? He's not given his freedom.

No, the statement is seen to be of enough importance that it goes right to the top. So it goes to Earl Spencer. And there was an assumption that Mailer was going to be free. And this is why the Mount Trostner murders now centres an awful lot around Mailer Shoga, because he becomes this figure of kind of colonial tyranny, I guess. And apparently Earl Spencer, when he heard that the two other guilty parties had said that he was innocent, he said that the law must take its course. So it doesn't feel like the law is taking its course here. That's quite an empty statement, really, isn't it? Really interesting. So it's fascinating to me that it's Melrose who's innocent or he's claiming that he's innocent and the others are claiming he's innocent innocent that he becomes the figure that everyone fixates on not necessarily the victims who've died in this really kind of horrific way that's really you know been splashed around in the newspapers that actually this case starts to take on a different dynamic and it's one that isn't so concerned with the

gore and the violence of what's happened, but with the political context, the social context of colonial Ireland at the time. Yeah, he starts to take on almost, although this is all based on fact, but he starts to take on a mythic quality where he is wronged. And I think there's something a little potentially distasteful about this kind of blood feud and infighting. So therefore, yeah, the victims who, you know, this is pretty gruesome stuff. There are children and elderly people in this house who are victim to this gruesome, gruesome murder. I don't want to get too graphic about it, but it really would have been a bloodbath. It's a small Irish cottage and you walk in that door

with the doors ripped off the hinges. And yeah, it's unpleasant to say the least, but it's mail-read that emerges from the kind of myth of all this, through the myth of the violence. And another reason is, well, the reason is because of this kind of, as you say, colonial rule and oppression. And funnily enough, there was research carried out in the archives by a historian called Shona Korean, who found that Earl Spencer had actually compensated, shall we say, three of the alleged eyewitnesses to about £1,250 at the time, which is about €160,000 today. So it really does feel like that kind of imperial rule inserts itself to fabricate what it needs to do. Okay, so on the one side, on the colonial side,

you have a potentially corrupt system, or a system that's evidenced as being corrupt, that is building a narrative of infighting. These peasants are violent. They don't know what's good for them. They're having these petty feuds. Everything's very localised, very quote-unquote savage. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you've got the figure of Melra that emerges from this as almost an Irish hero, or at least someone onto whom is projected these ideas of resistance to this colonial power, right? So they're kind of two separate stories in a way. Yeah, and as a Gaelgore, he becomes kind of the embodiment of Ireland in a way during this, you know, this is the height of, as you said,

at the beginning of this conversation, this is the height of empire. And here's this Irish peasant farmer who only speaks Irish, who is proclaiming his innocence and they can't understand him and he can't understand them. And he becomes this real kind of significant figure during that time. I'll move on to the next part of the story and we'll see where this goes. I'll warn you, it doesn't get any better. The Galway Express reported that the executioner, Mr. William Marwood, travelled from England to oversee the execution of the Irishman. On the scaffold at Galway Express reported that the executioner, Mr William Marwood, travelled from England to oversee the execution of the Irishman. On the scaffold at Galway Prison,

Mail returned to make a final, fresh plea of innocence to the hangman. During this appeal, the rope that held the noose around his neck became entangled between his wrist and his body somehow. Marwood, unaware of this, made the drop, but as Mail Rash Shoaga fell, it quickly became apparent that all had not gone to plan. According to eyewitnesses, the drop had not been sufficient to break Shoaga's neck. Instead, he struggled his way to a painful end. Marwood kicked the body with his boot and dragged the rope back and forth in order to hasten death. The Nation newspaper

recorded, through this fearful mishap, it is believed that his death was a terrible one. Melra Shoaga's last words are recorded as, What a bad way to go. Yeah it's it's bad isn't it the incredible brutality of that and i think it's a reminder as well that you know we talk a lot on this program about sort of state executions and hangings in particular in the 18th and 19th centuries. And often they seem quite efficient and not sterile, but there's a certain sort of process to them that often, I guess, kind of removes the bodily presence of the person who's being killed. And here we have that really inserted back into the story. And, you know, it's incredibly brutal. His last words are published as being in Irish, not in English. Is there a translation offered and will you translate them

for us? There is a translation offered. I'm not going to offer it only because I think he's had his words taken from him already. Those words are translated widely on the internet, and they're not his only last words. It's much longer than that, but if I'm not going to translate them, there's no point in offering the full thing here. But if you want to know what the translation is, then totally go online, look for Mel Reshoga's last words. I find the telling of his history is interesting because his name is constantly translated into the English version, even in Irish publications, which I find interesting. I'm like, don't take his name is constantly translated into the English version, even in Irish publications, which I find interesting. I'm like, don't take his name as well as his kind of, well, his life, literally, particularly because he was innocent. And for me, language becomes such an important

part of his history and that trial and that moment in time. And by the way, two generations later, all of Mailra's descendants only spoke English. They did not have Irish at all. That's interesting. Yeah. So it just kind of goes to show the speed with which that colonial... If you were in the east of Ireland, if you were in Dublin or some of the more metropolitan areas, then that had already occurred. But in the west, even now where there are still strongholds of Gaelguri, then it was having an impact within the next couple of generations. So no, for that reason, I think I'll leave his last words or a section of his last words, ar a tolm é aga mocht. I'll leave those

in his own language, I think. So what can this case, the murders, the trial, and this story of an innocent man going to the gallows. What can it tell us about Irish history more broadly, about colonialism in Ireland more broadly? What's the sort of the resonance of this case? Why should we pay attention to it other than the fact that it is a miscarriage of justice at its heart? Yeah, and I think that's why it's endured, right? Because it does come at a particularly crucial point in Irish history, post-famine, both pre-1916 rising and pre-1922 civil wars. And it encapsulates ideas that are lingering around the land league, some of the tensions

that exist within members of the land league, within the Irish population themselves, as well as the tensions that exist between the Irish population and colonial British rule. It also, of course, highlights elements of imperialism in Ireland, that kind of act of oppression, the interference in justice, the fact that justice is meted out here in a language that is not native to the country, but is deemed, quote unquote, civilized and the way that the law should be run. It tells us about resistance to British rule in Ireland from the Irish population, and not just British rule, but landlordism. And those two things are not always necessarily synonymous. They're entwined, landlordism and imperial rule,

but many landlords would have counted themselves as Irish, but they would have been basically from a different wave of colonisation, particularly from the 17th century onwards. So it gives a little bit more of the back history there. And then crucially, and I think this is becoming more and more of an issue in Ireland at the moment, it tells us something about the history of our language, the language that we would otherwise be speaking. And there's now a huge growth in younger people approaching the Irish language again, despite the fact we study Irish in school from the time we're about five until we're 17. So that's it. And it's mandatory. We have to do that. People are coming to the language now for more kind of personal

reasons and reasons that connect them to their past, I think. And this case has it all. It's all there, all encapsulated within Mel Reshoaga. And I think that's why he has endured and this history has endured. But the focus has come, I think, predominantly towards him because of what he represents. And people are still talking about this case right up until 2018, right? Yes. It's had different points over the last kind of 200 years where people have thought this needs to be thought of again and looked at again. So for instance, shortly afterwards, just a couple of years afterwards, two of the informers came to the Archbishop of Tewam, Dr. McEvely, and they admitted, they confessed that they had given false evidence and that

male Rishoaga was innocent. And this is in 1884, right? Like just two years afterwards. Yeah, yeah. So that happened. But then again, that was kind of brushed aside. Charles Stuart Parnell asked for a full inquiry into the case, but authorities refused to act. And Parnell was the leader of the Irish party. But then on the 4th of April 2018, the President of Ireland, President Michael D. Higgins, pardoned Mail Rush Oiga. And that really made headline news. Because he had been convicted, he remained convicted of the murder of five members of the same family 140 odd years earlier. And actually, presidential pardons in Ireland are not a very common thing. There's only been, I think, five since 1937. So it really did capture the imagination of Irish people in 2018 and again,

helped that legacy of Mailrose to endure. I think one thing that I'd like to speak about before we wrap up in this episode is the victims themselves. And they sort of disappear a little bit from the story because this sensational trial and the questions of injustice that follow it. What do we know about the family themselves and how are they remembered today? We know very little and they are remembered as a narrative tool, if that makes sense, which is kind of dehumanising, but we'd need to be honest, I guess, with their portrayal. If you say the Mount Trasna murders, I think the first thing that will come to someone's mind is that bloody scene that we encountered at the start, and then Mel Rishoaga. So actually,

now that I'm thinking about that out loud, that is six innocent people, right? So the first thing that pops into people's mind are the innocent elements to this. So that's interesting. Nonetheless, when I was growing up, I knew about the Mount Raston murders, but I didn't know any of the victims' names. I didn't know that they were members of connected families. I didn't know that it extended across generations, three generations of the same family. Although I suppose that's not that unusual, particularly in Irish cottage living at this particular time, increasingly they become this kind of horror story. Something that is so fascinating to me is the fact that you're talking about this case as being an incredibly famous case that you grew up knowing about, and it's kind of this horror story.

And I have to say, as someone who grew up in England, I've never heard of this. And I think that says so much about historical narratives, how they're passed down, and the sort of colonialism that's still, I guess, inherent in the stories that we tell. Yeah. And I guess the ways in which Irish history generally, as you say, is communicated outside of Ireland. I know this is a very specific case, but probably most people don't necessarily know about the land wars or the land league or any of those elements. So it's not just the kind of micro history of Melrishoga, but the larger factors that are at play here as well. It's an interesting case, but for me, the most striking thing about it is how petrifying it is in its truth. You know, again, we often talk about these stories and myths that build up and yeah, sure, there's a little bit of

myth-making going on around MailRef specifically, but this is all archivally based in truth. These murders did happen on that desolate landscape in the West of Ireland. These people did come and find that door ripped off its hinges. These are the experiences of Irish people in the west of Ireland. These people did come and find that door ripped off its hinges. These are the experiences of Irish people in the past. And there's something particularly petrifying about that, I think. Absolutely. I think that's probably all we have time for today. So thank you so much for listening to After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. You can catch our other episodes coming out every Monday and Thursday, and you can follow us along wherever you get your podcasts. Well, thank you for listening

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