Timothy Connell – Murdered, on this Day

Yet another headstone that intrigued with its story – a headstone that shouted out to be place on the TO FIND OUT MORE list.

This headstone is located in Old Kilmurry Cemetery near Passage West. It is not my first blog post from my one visit – and will not be the last.
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​You gentle reader that do pass this way
attend a while adhere to what I say.
By murder vile I was bereft of life
and parted from two lovely babes and wife
by CAPTAIN STEWART I met an early doom
on board the MARY RUSSELL the 22nd of June
forced from this world to meet my GOD on high
with whom I hope to reign eternally. Amen.

I did wonder when reading if ‘murder’ was only in the mind and opinion of the grieving brother who erected the headstone to Timothy Connell.
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The web quickly led to HistoryIreland which educated that Captain William Stewart did kill Timothy Connell and six others .

​‘There were seven human beings with their sculls [sic] so battered, that scarcely a vestige of them was left for recognition, with a frightful mess of coagulated blood—all strewed about the cabin, and nearly a hundredweight of cords binding down their bodies to strong iron bolts, which had been driven into the floor for that murderous purpose. Some of the bodies were bound round about six places, and with several coils of rope round their necks, and all were in a state of decomposition, so that it required a constitution of no ordinary strength to bear up against the spectacle, and the effluvia that arose from a confined cabin.’
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However, the court held it was not murder – ‘not guilty, having committed the act while labouring under mental derangement.”

Captain James Gould Raynes, Francis Sullivan, John Keating, James Murley, James Cramer, William Swanson and stableman, Timothy Connell were bound and tied to the floor and attacked with crowbar and then an ax - but they were not legally murdered on board the Mary Russell.
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I think I am with Patrick Connell and his use of language.

​UPDATE – 2018.10.29

Thanks to Louvain Rees on Twitter, I read a very interesting article on the BBC News website on Murder Stones – headstones where the deceased has been murdered and the headstone contains details.

It makes reference to a book edited by Dr Jan Bondeson which featured a number of Murder Stones.
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I sense that this may make an appearance on my bookshelf at some stage…..