Mysterious crown jewels

Press, 22 October 1983, Page 17

Mysterious crown jewels

An elderly woman’s recent telephone call to the Dublin police has revived one of the greatest mysteries in Ireland’s history — the theft of the Irish crown jewels from Dublin Castle 76 years ago. The still-unexplained mystery has all the elements of a classic “whodunnit” — money, intrigue, politics, famous names, and sex. Two people concerned with the safety of the jewels met violent deaths and a third disappeared. The saga began on the morning of July 6, 1907, when a safe in a heavily guarded tower in Dublin Castle, the seat of British rule in Ireland for centuries, was found open. The jewels were gone; and they have not been seen since. The mystery has resurfaced periodically, such as in 1948 when an area near Dublin was combed after a fortune-teller said the jewels were hidden there, and again in 1960 when a similar flurry of searching produced nothing. Then, last month, police and the national museum were contacted by an elderly woman who said she had been taken as a child by her grandmother to a spot outside Dublin and told the jewels were

From

COLIN McINTRYRE,

Reuter, in Dublin

buried there. The anonymous caller said she had been sworn to secrecy for two generations but the recent death of her father had released her from this promise. Although the police were inclined to treat the matter as a hoax, the museum was impressed by the woman’s detailed information and ordered a full-scale search. A field in the mountains southwest of Dublin was intensively searched by police armed with metal-detectors and shovels, but nothing was found. However, the police announced the search for the jewels would continue. The jewels — a star and badge encrusted with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, and reputed to be worth more than $4.5 million, were given to the Order of Saint Patrick by William IV of England in 1830. They have no connection with the ancient kings of Ireland who ruled the country until the twelfth century. The Order of Saint Patrick,

founded in 1783 by George HI of England as a perk for the Irish ascendancy, was a select body of knights appointed by the crown. The jewels were worn by the sovereign when visiting Ireland. The recent approach to police by the woman, whose family was reported to have been involved in Ireland’s independence struggle, reinforced speculation that the theft was the work of Republicans out to embarrass the monarchy. The theft took place only days before Edward VII was due to visit Ireland, where he would have worn the jewels at ceremonial occasions. However, a big question remains — how could anyone have entered and left unnoticed the most secure part of the most secure building in Ireland? Speculation that it was an inside job has.raged ever since. Prime suspects at the time were three heraldic officers and an assistant appointed to look after the jewels. There were suggestions that one of them, Sir Arthur Vicars, was a homosexual and might have been blackmailed into taking

part in the theft. Another herald, Francis Shackleton, brother of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, was in London at the time of the theft, but was reported to have prophesied just 48 hours before that the jewels might be stolen.

Scotland Yard detectives were called in to investigate and submitted a report naming the person or persons they believed were behind the theft. Nothing more was heard and the report itself vanished. The mystery was not over, for within a few years three of the four heralds either died in violent circumstances or disappeared. In 1914, the body of assistant herald Pierce O’Mahony, a cousin of Sir Arthur Vicars, was found next to his boathouse in western Ireland, blasted with both barrels of his shotgun. Three years later Shackleton, who had been sentenced to five years’ jail for fraud, was released, took an assumed name, and vanished.

Then in 1921, Sir Arthur Vicars was dragged from his house in western Ireland, a sign hung around his neck labelling him as a spy and informer, and shot.