The Execution in Tullamore Gaol.

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 188, 16 August 1870, Page 2

The Execution in Tullamore Gaol.

On Friday morning (the 27th ult.) at eight o'clock, Lawrence Shiels, aged 24, and Margaret Shiels, aged 29, brother and sister, were hanged in Tullamore gaol for the murder of Patrick Dunne, committed exactly three months ago. The awful event is thus described by a writer in the Dublin freeman: —

Perhaps in this land of swift and sudden bloorl Miere never was so bad a deed for so poor a cause. This brother and sister actually murdered the man for nothing. There had been a wordy jealousy about a path to turfcutting. In time it grew into hatred, was proved by assault, avenged in murder, and culminated in execution. The two beings who were hanged this morning, a brother named Peter, and an aged and infirm father, lived together, and .managed some forty acres of land. The woman had always been of quick temper, high passion, turbulent in words, and threatening. It is stated that she had been feared and avoided. Patrick Dunne, aged 30, married, and supporting his widowed mother, was a hired servant; and in his disputes about the path and the turf merely protected what he believed was his employer's right. Peter Shiels assaulted Dunne, and was sent to gaol for six months. Margaret Shiels made no secret of her intent. She said she would shoot the man when her brother came out. Her neighbours, hearing her dreadful threats, tried to soothe her, and advised her to go to the priest. The woman replied that she would hold a basin on one's breasb while a man cut his throat. The fiend was roused in the woman, and was never laid. She seems to have taken her younger brother Lawrence into the bloody business. I cannot help thinking that the impunity which follows many Irish crimes hardened this unhappy pair in their murderous design. The young man openly took a broken pistol to a blacksmith, who repaired it for a shilling. He bought caps and shot in the town. A knife was sharpened for him. And the murder of Patrick Dunne, perhaps suddenly conceived, was thus of deliberate malice determined. There was really nothing to palliate this savage revenge. The imprisonment of their brother was not unusually long; and his assault must have been furious to warrant six months' incarceration. On Saturday evening, the 26th February, Dunne passed the brother and sister as they stood on the road to Toher. He bade them good night, and they replied with a bullet. The woman shot him twice. His throat was roughly hacked with a knife. The pistol was broken, but not until they had shot him eight times. He was then huddled into a drain hard by, and left with life enough to live in agony. He was taken up, made a dying declaration before a magistrate, and expired in a few hours. He charged his death on the two Shiels. With the carlessness of consequence which they had shown from the first, they left the pistol and the knife on the ground. Here was evidence circumstantial. The man fled to Queenstown as. an emigrant, but was arrested at the ship. The woman went home to her old father. .... The days that seemed dreary and interminable seemed swift as night came on, and " the span" narrowed and fled from time as May 27 approached. The woman, whose youth had lent to her cruelty and unrelenting vigour to her revenge an abiding passion, now yielded to the solicitations of religion, and prepared for her miserable end. Her brother from the first had shown signs of contrition. He seemed afflicted while his sister was stubborn, and was more keenly sensible of his unhappy position. But when every hope was broken, and doom was as certain as death itself, they become one in the awful preparation. The clergy were with them always, and fortitude and calm took the place of anguish and dispair. They saw their relatives, for friends they had few. They parted from them calmly and without a tear. They spent last evening in prayer, and retired late to sleep the last sleep of earth. The young man slept through the night, but the woman rose at four. She prayed fervently, and waited in r.olemn quiet the coming hour. The Rev. Dr. Kane, the parish [priest, the Rev. Mr. Leonard, the Key. Mr. -3-affney, and the Key. Mr. Flood, cinates, came to them soon after six. At seven they went into the chapel, and Mass was celebrated. Half-past seven was told by the booming of the gaol bell, which the law directs ' shall sound for the hour in wh"ch the execution is done. Now a black flag is hoisted from the capital in front of the prison, boding of the dreadful work within. Now a man of broken gait, his face hid in crape, his eyes glaring through rudely slashed holes, comes throughthe little door. And now a man with his hands pinioned and a priest at either side; and now a woman with her hands pinioned and a priest at either side. The man's face was young, but " care sat on his faded cheek." His pinioned arms but the more broadly opened his great chest and showed his stalwart form. His brows ran in a deep black line across his forehead. His hair lay negligent and wild. His lips were faded and moved in prayer. His sister, square and strongly built, spoke in a firmer tone, and her supplication was heard above them all. Each walked without assistance the hundred yards to the gallows, but when a curve brought the thing full in view Lawrence Shiels faltered for an instant and looked b-hind. The Litany of Saints was continued, but his responses were fitful and broken. His sister, with unshaken voice, and face that never paled, walked on. They now knelt down and made an act of contrition. The woman arni-pinioiied as she was, rose without assistance. She did not observe the way whereby 'she might have walked erect to the drop, but quietly stooped to half her height under the bar in front, then turned round, and looked straight into her grave. She prayed loudly all the time. The young man shook hands with tbe gaolers, and then with the clergyman, and walked on to the drop. Mutuall they turned and" grasped the nearer hand of the other, and so they stood together. The hangman was nervous and disturbed. His crape had become awry and he did not see well. He pinioned the hands of Margaret hields, and included in the folds of her dress the rope which hung beside her. He then pinioned the man, and tbey neither seemed to blench. The error noticed must be undone. The women's dress is loosed, and the rope withdrawn. Now Shiels looked at his sipter, and at the ten men who silently stood by. The hangmrn, all distraught, was walking down the step 3 into the vault when he was recalled. He came back, enlarged the noose, and put the rope on the woman's neck, adjusting the knot to the side; he did the same for the man ; and then put on their whit* caps. At this Bupreme moment the

words of the absolution were heard ; then the booming of that dreadful bell; then the bolt was drawn, and the hangman fell upon his knees; and Margaret and Lawrence Shiels were gone to their great account. We all knelt down, and prayers were offered for the repose of their souls; and the Litany was recited, and the Miserere and the De Profundis. In half an hour there was but little stir below, and there was a sigh of the violent deed that had been done. Later in the day an inquest was held, death certified, and duly recorded. Their malefactor's grave wa3 ready, and received them ; and what niayhap began in a look, a word unkindly spoken, was ended m death and degradation.— Bwjlish Paper, June 10.