IN MARCH 1985 THE IRISH DEMOCRAT CARRIED A CONTRIBUTION OF MINE from which I have gathered a few crumbs-
March 1799 CLONMEL, Co. Tipperary A teacher of French, named Wright , was awarded £500 against Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, High Sheriff of Tipperary. Fitzgerald had had Wright flogged, without trial, and his defence was that the flogging was necessary “to inspire terror and extort confessions.” Wright had pleaded loyalty to the Crown.
!985 BELFAST A teacher named Bernard O’Connor of Enniskillen was awarded £5,000 against the Royal Ulster Constabulary who held him in Castlereagh Barracks in 1980. They forced him to stand on his toes, with knees bent and hands stretched out in the air. They relieved the monotony of this exercise by kicking him, punching him and hurling him across a room, followed by running on the spot, and doing press-ups, sit-ups. He soiled his underpants during this abuse and his captors forced them on his head.
He was made to pick cigarette butts off the floor with his mouth. A track-suit was tied over his head and his nose and mouth were blocked until he fainted. His RUC tormentors made unlikely allegations on the sexual proclivities of the Pope.Awarding damages Mr Justice Murray virtually blamed him for his own sufferings, as he had refused to sign a false confession prepared for him by his captors. Mind you, O’Connor had never protested lpyalty to the Crown’.
On the day O’Connor was awarded £5,000 another plaintiff was awarded £50,000 in another Court in Belfast in a libel case against the British periodical The Economist.
I don’t know the name of the Plaintiff in this case, but like Bernard O’Connor, he was a Catholic. He was a newly-appointed High Court Judge, injured by the suggestion that there were other lawyers better qualified for elevation to the bench, but that he had been favoured because of his adherence to Rome. Weighty evidence was called in support of the Plaintiff’s claim and the Chief Justice of Northern Ireland was a witness on his behalf.
So important was the case to the Realm, that THE TIMES of London devoted an Editorial to it. And so trivial was the O’Connorcase that it got no mention in it whatsoever.
In 1799 £500 would have been more than ten years’ wages for a teacher.
Anyhow isn’t it wonderful to life in the 21st Century and to enjoy Egalitarian Justice and the abolition of Deference?
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