Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate. Frank Thorpe Porter
from Old Kilmainham protracted his existence twenty-six years. It was effected by means which would not be practicable in any prison of the British Empire at the present time. Officials have become more respectable, and their integrity is protected from temptation by the intervention of a vigilant superintending authority, unknown at the period to which the foregoing narrative refers. It will, in all probability, occur to the reader that the two persons whose co-operation the gaoler considered as indispensable in effecting the escape of Martin Keogh, were the coroner of the county and the medical officer of the prison. Such a conclusion is almost inevitable. Still, a similar project could not now be accomplished by a similar combination. There have been, however, some inquests held in the same county (Dublin) which seriously compromised the coroner of the time and the medical man habitually employed by him, but none of them originated in a prison. It is right to state that they occurred anterior to the appointment of the present coroners and of their respective immediate predecessors. I shall recur to them in a subsequent page or two, when I come to the narration of some extraordinary incidents entirely within my personal knowledge and recollection. As yet I have placed no female character prominently before my readers. I shall proceed to introduce one; and however I may distrust my own powers of description, I feel that the mere facts which I shall detail will not prove uninteresting, especially as they refer to her whom I may term the heroine of the story.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This gratuitous cruelty did not cease when Old Kilmainham was taken down. Similar disgusting figures have been seen by me, on the door and walls of the condemned yard, in the present county gaol.—F. T. P.
CHAPTER III. MARY TUDOR.
Longevity, although desired by almost all human beings, is a subject of contemplation to very few. We attach, in general, a greater interest to an aged tree or an antique building, than to a venerable individual whose life may connect with the present time the stirring period of the American war of Independence or the awful period of the French Revolution. It is, perhaps, better for ourselves that as we attain old age we should meet with respect and care, without being sought as close companions by our juniors: we thus become habituated to think more on those who have gone before us, and of our own approach to that solemn moment which is to quench the socket-glimmer of earthly existence. Nevertheless, we occasionally meet with some whose mental faculties have not yielded to the attacks of time, in proportion to the effects produced by his inexorable hand upon the corporeal frame, and whose society is sought by many who observe that they can, even in the years of senectude, revert to their early days, and seek to enjoy the pleasures of memory by detailing to others the scenes through which they have passed, and the points of character they have noted. Such a person I can truly designate my father to have been. His frame was robust, and his general health very good, even after he had attained to fourscore years. Accident had rendered him lame, but his mind and memory were strong, and his disposition affable. Whilst he perfectly recollected the past, he evinced a warm interest in the present; and almost immediately after the opening of the Great Southern and Western Railway of Ireland, he sped from Dublin to Cork and back, merely to contrast the five hours' performance of the "Iron Horse" with the four days' journey of his early years. It was a great gratification to him to take a slow drive through Dublin, and recount to his companions, of whom I was generally one, the former appearance of places, and the habits and peculiarities of their occupiers; but no part of the city called forth his recollections more strongly than the locality of Christ Church Place. He never mentioned it by its present name; with him it continued "Skinner Row;" and it was no small pleasure to him to remark that the house in which he had lived and prospered at the beginning of the present century, was still remaining, whilst the entire of the opposite side of the "Row" had disappeared. He regretted the change even whilst he admitted the advantage of the alteration; but he could not refrain from reinstating in his imagination, and describing, the narrow-fronted houses within eighteen feet of the opposite dwellings, rising to a height which effectually precluded even half-an-hour's sunshine from reaching the thoroughfare. His mind reverted to the former tenants, jewellers, silversmiths, and booksellers, by which trades the "Row" had been monopolized; and it was more agreeable to him to recollect Dick Tudor, Tom Delancy, Jemmy Wilson, and many others, cleaning their windows and sweeping their shops, than to remark that such avocations, in the present day, had ceased to be incumbent on even the junior apprentices, and had devolved upon menial servants.
One evening he was enjoying the society of two or three convivial friends. He had taken a drive that day, accompanied by me, and had halted so long in Christ Church Place, that the hackney carmen might almost have suspected that he meditated an invasion of their stand. He enjoyed his drive and his dinner, and having attained to his second glass of whiskey-punch, he commenced, at the instance of his companions, the narration of one of his "Skinner Row" reminiscences.
Dick Tudor was a goldsmith and jeweller. He had the reputation of being the wealthiest man in the locality. He neither lent nor borrowed. His intercourse with his neighbours was very limited. He was a widower, and had an only child, of whom he was excessively fond. His tastes were in his business; he had a love for his art, and would execute a beautiful design for a smaller comparative profit than would satisfy him for second-hand plate or mere repairs; but his affections excluded every other worldly object, and were concentrated in his daughter, Mary Tudor.
She was about eighteen years of age at the time to which the commencement of the narrative refers, and although reared in a city, was as simple and unaffected in her manner as if her life had previously been passed on mountain heather or in mossy dell. She was a brunette of perfect features, and small but symmetrical figure. Her disposition appeared to be gay, and almost puerile, and none would suppose that in a trader's daughter, whose jocund smile and sparkling eyes seemed to seek and spread mirth around her, there was a latent intensity of feeling, and a determination of character, worthy of the noblest cause or of the highest lineage.
Skinner Row had its attachments, jealousies, and little diplomacies as fully as ever they existed even in more important localities. In one respect, it possessed a material for civic intrigue greater than could be found in any other part of Dublin in the last century. The Row commanded, in the Common Council, one seat for the Stationers' Guild, and two for the Goldsmiths. As to those objects of ambition, there was a certain fixed understanding—there should be no division outside their own precincts, and the members chosen should be men of the Row. Amongst themselves, intrigues, insinuations, or open opposition might be freely practised; but once they had determined on the man to be supported, every vote should go to him. Dick Tudor and James Wilson were the goldsmiths chosen for the Common Council, and the distinction thus conferred excited great envy in the mind of Tom Delancy, whose discontent was kept fully alive by his son, not on account of civic honours, but because young Christian Wilson had contrived to stand between him and the sun in the rays of which he wished to bask, namely, the eyes of pretty Mary Tudor.
Old Tudor and James Wilson were friends, not very intimate, but perhaps liking and respecting each other more on that account. Tudor's daughter and Christian Wilson were lovers, and the infrequency of their meetings only rendered their occasional interviews more delectable. The neighbours observed the attachment of the young people before their parents suspected its existence; but the moment Tudor perceived a preference evinced by his daughter for young Wilson, he sedulously endeavoured to prevent all future communications between them. He became suddenly anxious that Mary should visit some relatives in the County of Wexford, about whom he had for years expressed no interest. He thought change of air would materially serve her health, although no other eye could notice the slightest indication of illness, or even delicacy of constitution. Accompanied by an elderly female attendant, she left Dublin by a conveyance termed Good's Long Coach, which the proprietor, William Good, advertised as the perfection of cheap and expeditious travelling. It left the Ram Inn, Aungier Street, Dublin, on