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Law
and Critique Vol.III no.2 [1992]
IN THE TRACKS OF BRITISH JUSTICE:
THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF DENNIS DOOLAN AND
PATRICK REDDING, IRISH LABOURERS ON THE GLASGOW-
EDINBURGH RAILWAY LINE, 1841
by
WILLY MALEY"
Miscarriages of justice, particularly those involving Irish plain-
tiffs, are newsworthy items. They are also familiar events in
British legal history. The intensive media focus on recent cases-
the Guildford 4, the Birmingham 6, and the Maguire 7-- which
have shaken the very foundations of law in the United Kingdom,
may serve to instil a false sense of security in critics of the British
State and the judiciary that undergirds it. Behind the blaze of pub-
licity, there lurks a double danger. On the one hand, there is a sug-
gestion that British courts made mistakes, have learned their les-
son, and will be more circumspect in future. On the other hand, there
is an elision of past injustices, with the spotlight on the Birmingham
6, the first legal casualties of the present phase of the Irish war~
tending to eclipse earlier victims of British legal bias. By setting
out here the details of a mid-nineteenth-century anti-Irish court
University of Strathclyde. The research for this essay was undertaken in
the summer of 1990 while I was working as a writer-in-residence at
Milton Unemployed Workers' Centre in Glasgow. I presented my
findings in the form of a short paper at the Critical Legal Studies
Conference at Glasgow University in September 1991. The companion
piece to this academic presentation is a play entitled
Gallowglass,
first
performed at Mayfest 1991, and subsequently staged at the Strathclyde
Irish Festival in the Gorbals the following month. My chief sources for
the story were two brief pamphlets deposited in the Glasgow room of
the Mitchell Library
--
The Trial of Dennis Doolan and Patrick
Redding
and
A Description of the Execution of Dennis Doolan and
Patrick Redding--
together with all of the reports concerning the case
published in The Glasgow Herald between December 11, 1840, and
May 17, 1841. I would like to thank Alison Young, Peter Rush, Tony
Carty, and Peter Goodrich for comments and consideration.
212 Law and Critique Vol.III no.2 [1992]
case, I aim to remind critics of British justice that Irish lives were on
the line long before 1969.
On the morning of Friday May 14, 1841, a crowd of 50,000 gath-
ered at Bishopbriggs Cross, northwest of Glasgow, to witness the
execution of two Irish navvies convicted of the murder of an English
ganger. Dennis Doolan, of King's County~ and Patrick Redding, from
Tipperary, were hung at the scene of their alleged crime before the
largest mass of spectators ever gathered together in the West of
Scotland. The people on the ground were only part of the mass who
lined the road from Glasgow Cross to the place of execution. The
procession from Jail Square to the scaffold may have been witnessed
by around 120,000 persons. Indeed, some press reports put the total
figure for the day at a fantastical 200,000 people.
These numbers had turned out for the first public hanging in
Glasgow carried out "beyond the common place of execution" for over
70 years. The last man to be thus despatched was Andrew Marshall,
who, in 1769, was executed and hung in chains in Howgatehead, for
the murder and robbery of Allan Robert. In the case of Doolan and
Redding, the decision to carry out the sentence "furth of the common
place of execution" provoked a lively controversy in the Scottish
press. The execution was a major issue in terms of public order, with
rumours abroad of 10,000 Irish labourers ready to intervene on behalf
of their countrymen.
These controversial judicial killings took place against a back-
ground of industrial unrest on a key Scottish railway construction
dominated by Irish labour. The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway
Company had been set up in 1838. The line was finally completed, at
a cost of 1.25 million pounds, on 18 February 1842. On Tuesday
December 8 1840, during a period of agitation and uncertainty on the
line- with wages being cut, deadlines delayed, and contractors
failing to honour payments to workers- John Green, an English
ganger who had worked on the line at Kirkintilloch, and had
previous experience as a superintendent of labourers in Cheshire,
was placed in charge of a squad of Irish railwaymen at the Crosshill
Cut in Bishopbriggs. All of the labourers on this portion of the line,
barring two Englishmen, were Irish. The accident rate was high,
with something like seven fatalities per mile of track. Two days
after his arrival at Crosshill, on the morning of Thursday December
10, Green was ambushed and beaten to death on a temporary wooden
The Doolan and Redding Case, 1841 213
bridge on his way to work. He was the third ganger to be murdered
on the line in three months-- the others being at Monklands and
Kirkintilloch- and, with the perpetrators in those instances still
at large, the authorities were hell-bent on a hanging.
First reports indicated that positive identification of Green's
assailants was not going to be easy:
identification of the murderers is difficult or impossible, from the dark-
ness which prevailed at the time, and the similarity of dress worn by the
labourers
(Glasgow Herald,
December 11, 1841).
Great emphasis was placed on the apparent premeditative nature of
the crime. Although revenge was offered as the motive, the sum-
ruing up in court suggests that fears of a Ribbonist conspiracy lay be-
hind the determination of the authorities to secure a conviction.
Ribbonism was ostensibly an Irish peasant movement whose members
were united in secret societies and wore a green ribbon as an emblem.
The Ribbonmen movement was a form of popular resistance to
English landlords and employers, and, in particular, to the forcible
eviction of tenants from the land. There was probably more shadow
than substance to their purported machinations in the West of
Scotland, but the Scottish constabulary was in many ways the
brainchild of Sir Robert Peel, who had served as Chief Secretary in
Ireland from 1812-1822, and a central plank of its activities was the
policing of the Irish immigrant community. Its detectives had to
justify their existence. Where a political conspiracy did not exist,
one could easily be invented.
A conspiracy theory was evident from the first reports. The
Glasgow Herald
of Friday, December 11, 1840, declared:
That the murder was a combined and premeditated one admits of little
doubt. Green had only come to this superintendency two days before,
but a report had been spread that he was strict and harsh in the former
works which he had overlooked, and the determination to rid them-
selves thus cruelly of one whom they might consider a sharp
taskmaster, is the only reason which can be given for this heartless
action. Another proof of it is, that the unfortunate deceased was
attacked by a shower of stones on the previous evening.
The following Monday, the paper declared with confidence:
That the murder has been the result of a conspiracy, organized
according to the principles of Ribbonism, is now beyond a doubt
(Glasgow tterald,
Monday, December 14, 1840).
214 Law and Critique Vol.III no.2 [1992]
On the morning of Friday 11 December, Henry Bell, Sheriff-
Substitute, and Mr Salmon, the Procurator-Fiscal, had gone out to
the woods near the Crosshill Cut with a company of the 58th foot
under Captain Hutchinson, and a party of Sheriff and Police
Officers headed by Lieutenant Ross. They rounded up the majority
of the Irishmen Green had ganged over, and brought them to the city
in half a dozen omnibuses. A total of 28 Irish labourers m all wear-
ing teetotal medals rather than green ribbons -- were taken into cus-
tody. Six were detained, though not formally committed to stand
trial for the murder. One of those questioned, James Hickie, a native
of County Carlow, implicated himself and two of his fellow work-
ers- who were also fellow lodgers at a cottage in Auchinairn- in
the murder of the ganger. As a direct consequence of Hickie's state-
ment, a reward of £100 was offered for the apprehension of Dennis
Doolan, who had been discharged from his employment the day
previous to Green's murder, and had since absconded. A reward of
£50 was subsequently offered for the arrest of Patrick Redding.
By this time there were three possible motives for the killing of
Green in circulation: popular reaction to a harsh overseer -- Green's
reputation preceded him; revenge on the part of an individual
Doolan was dismissed the day before the murder: and an Irish
political conspiracy -- rumours of Ribbonism were played up by the
police and the press. Once Doolan was portrayed as the ringleader
of a Ribbonist gang, all three motives manifested themselves in one
12qan.
By Monday December 21 the
Glasgow Herald
had abandoned
the notion that it was too dark to see on the morning of the murder:
It has been distinctly made out that five persons were on the bridge at
the time, two of whom actually committed the murder... The murder
was committed by a heavy kitchen poker, taken from Gray's house on
the morning the deed was committed.
Neither the missing poker, nor any other murder weapon, was ever
found.
The police hunt for the two Irishmen was a national one, with
false arrests in Dublin and Portpatrick. A report in the
Dublin
Register
announced that a man was being held there on suspicion.
John Carr, a native of Kildare answering Doolan's description, was
questioned at length in Henry Street before being released once his
identity, and innocence, was established.
The Doolan
and Redding
Case, 1841 215
On Friday January 1, 1841, the
Herald
told its readers that
there was:
little doubt that Doolan actually inflicted the blows with a poker~ and
there is at the same time good reason to believe that one of the men
now in custody was the person who jumped upon the body of Green,
while he lay under the merciless strokes of Doolan.
Reporting Doolan's arrest on Monday January 25, 1841, the
Herald
was indiscreet, to put it mildly. Doolan was taken on the roof of a
lodging-house on the evening of Wednesday January 20 by officers of
the Liverpool constabulary acting on information received from
Michael "Smoker" Byrnes, an acquaintance of the fugitive Irishman.
According to the
Herald,
Doolan:
was dressed in a blue jacket, or lumper's coat, with canvas trousers, but
it is expected that the bloody garments which the accused is said to
have worn when Green was murdered will yet be got.
So much for being innocent until proven guilty. The "bloody gar-
ments" in question were, like the murder weapons, never recovered.
On Monday March 1, the
Herald
reported the arrest of the third
man wanted in connection with the Crosshill Murder. Patrick
Redding was taken near the quarry he was employed at near
Austonley, West Riding of Yorkshire. Between Doolan's arrest and
the apprehension of Redding legal pressure was placed upon the
Herald
to refrain from divulging details of the case or imputing guilt
to those detained by the police. The newspaper was consequently
much more muted than it had been in its account of Doolan's deten-
tion:
We are in possession of the particulars of the apprehension, but as it is
the express desire of the gentlemen who conduct the criminal
department in this establishment, that no detailed statement of the
circumstances inferring the guilt of any prisoner should go forth,
whereby his case might be prejudged before trial, we are unable at
present to communicate the circumstances involving Redding.
A watch torn from its fob at the time of Green's murder turned up in a
pawnshop near Huddersfield. The pawnbroker recalled it being de-
posited by a man with an Irish accent, but could not identify
Redding. This was hardly conclusive evidence, since Irish immi-
grants were the principal clientele of pawnbrokers in the industrial
areas of Scotland and England, but Huddersfield was considered suf-
216 Law and Critique Vol.III no.2 [1992]
ficiently proximate to Austonley to incriminate Redding, and the
mere mention of an Irish accent confirmed his guilt in the eyes of the
authorities.
Given the presumed political nature of the crime, the crown ap-
pointed the Solicitor-General, Mr Maitland, to conduct the case for
the prosecution. The trial itself lasted only 12.5 hours. This was
justice at its most summary. The court heard 21 crown witnesses.
There was no defence. The 15-man jury was composed of small
Protestant employers, hardly likely to be sympathetic to the cause
of Scottish labour, let alone Irish labour. Despite a shortage of
hard evidence, the jury found Doolan and Redding unanimously
guilty as charged. The verdict was reached in the face of a clear
contradiction between the charges and the medical evidence. The
charges read out in court against the accused stated that they did:
inflict several blows upon the head and body of the said John Green,
and did fell him to the ground, and did repeatedly jump upon and kick
him while he was lying on the ground, and did otherwise abuse and
maltreat him, by all which, or part thereof, his skull was fractured, and
he was mortally injured, and was reduced to a state of insensibility, and
soon thereafter died.
Yet the medical evidence submitted by Dr James Corkindale main-
tained that:
neither on the trunk, nor on the limbs was there any mark of violence
except that there was an abrasion of skin on the little finger of the left
hand, and that the large bone of the fore finger of the same hand was
fractured without any wound of the flesh.
In directing the jury toward a verdict, Lord Moncrieff, the presiding
judge, emphasised the religious and national identity of the accused:
"These men are strangers in our country; they differ from us in reli-
gion." Once a unanimous verdict of guilty was returned, the Lord
Justice Clerk, recommending a public hanging- "that the example
may have its effect in time to come"-- made explicit what had been
implicit throughout the trial:
It is a crime which, I am happy to say, is of rare occurrence in this part
of the kingdom. It is a crime, however, by no means rare in another
part of her Majesty's dominions, of which those prisoners are natives;
and I am very much afraid that the brutal conduct which is exhibited in
so many counties of that land, and the frequent escapes from justice
which there take place, have not at least been the means of deterring
The
Doolan and Redding Case, 1841
217
them from entering into the case of deliberate murder which has so
long engaged the attention of the court.
In passing sentence, Lord Moncrieff again underlined the religious
and national differences between Scotland and Ireland, reminding
the Irishmen that they were "of a different religious persuasion
than the majority of the people in this place." The hidden agenda of
anti-Irish racism surfaces not only in the conduct of the court, but in
the coverage of the case. The illiterate Hickie in particular was
held up as the perennial "thick paddy." When informed that he
had been found guilty "art and part", and was to be recommended to
mercy, he is reported to have asked "who's she?"
The Catholic hierarchy wanted to avoid a confrontation be-
tween Irish labourers and Scottish police at all costs. Consequently,
Bishop Murdoch advised the Irish labour force to stay away from
the execution, and they obeyed the Church. The awful spectacle
passed without incident. The executioner, who refused an assistant
in spite of the fact that this was a double hanging and a public one,
was paid the princely sum of £24 for his labour. He was reputedly
later fined £5 for a lawful killing, leaving him with £19 for his
morning's work. Redding, in whose hands the signal was placed,
died instantaneously. Doolan took twenty minutes to die. At one
point he brought his knees up to his chest. Amid allegations of de-
liberate strangulation, the hangman attributed the protracted suf-
fering of Doolan to a rope that was stiff and new, and asked "Didn't
the other go down kindly?" The final bill for the day was £210.
This figure must be weighed against the sum of £100 raised for the
families of labourers killed on the line.
The Springburn Railway Murder was one of the biggest Scottish
stories of the last century, bigger than Burke and Hare, or Baird and
Hardie. With its catalogue of false arrests, forced confessions, cir-
cumstantial evidence, and prejudicial reporting, this case proves
that it is yesterday's news to hear that justice is in the balance when
Britannia tips the scales. In the wake of the execution of Doolan and
Redding, the Glasgow Herald of Monday May 17, 1841, wished
"that the names of Doolan and Redding may soon be forgotten, and no
successors revive their crime." This paper is offered as a corrective
both to sensationalism and forgetfulness.