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‘Castleisland swam in porter … and drunkenness prevailed’

The Councillor Unseated for Plying Voters with Drink

When proceedings began at the courthouse in Castleisland at one o’clock on a warm summer afternoon in 1908, the room was described as being ‘packed to suffocating point and the windows had to be thrown open’.1 A large crowd, including several journalists, had gathered to hear a series of dramatic and sensational charges against the recently re-elected county councillor, John Kerry O’Connor, who was being accused by his election opponent, Denis J. Reidy, of winning his seat in the Castleisland Electoral Division by illegal and corrupt means. Among the charges brought against Councillor O’Connor were ‘bribery, corruption and intimidation of the greatest character, general treating, public houses kept open in every part of the constituency, and free drinks supplied’ to voters during the election campaign. The presiding magistrate, Commissioner Maxwell, was told that, because of the way O’Connor had procured many of the votes he received, Reidy was seeking his unseating by order of the court. Reidy also wanted the result of the recent election to Kerry County Council held in the Castleisland Electoral Division to be declared void. John Kerry – better known as J.K. – O’Connor was a prominent Castleisland businessman and a Justice of the Peace who presided over the Petty Sessions court hearings in the district. Ironically, given what was to follow, O’Connor had presided over a court hearing in which fourteen men were charged in connection with a brawl in Ranalough near Currow during the 1906 parliamentary election campaign which resulted in an electioneer and a local constable sustaining injuries.2

O’Connor was no political novice. He had been a member of the Tralee Board of Guardians and was elected a member of the first Kerry County Council in April 1899, representing the single-seat electoral division of Castleisland. In that poll, there had been a contest for the only seat available. Redmond Roche of Maglass, also a Justice of the Peace, had been declared elected by a margin of just three votes. An immediate recount sought by O’Connor produced the same result: 469 for Roche and 466 for O’Connor. On the day after the count, however, a ballot paper was found on the floor of the Grand Jury Room in Tralee where voting had occurred. A recount was sought again and all the ballots were examined by the local Under Sheriff T.C. Goodman and legal representatives. The newly discovered paper was found to be valid, as it bore the official stamp. O’Connor was duly elected with one vote to spare over Roche.3 O’Connor was a high-profile supporter of John Murphy, MP for East Kerry, in his political battles with his nemesis, Eugene O’Sullivan. The court hearing was told that O’Connor was a man of influence: a draper, a meal and flour merchant, a creamery proprietor and auctioneer who ‘had business dealings with the great bulk of the electorate, a great many of whom were deep in his books’.4

O’Connor retained his seat in the council elections of 1902 and 1905. He served on several local authority committees, including the Asylum Committee, and was a member of the Tralee and Fenit Pier and Harbour Commissioners. At the 1908 poll which has held on 3 June, O’Connor was challenged, however, for the single seat on offer by another local businessman, Denis J. Reidy. Reidy was active in the Irish Land and Labour Association and had strong political support in the division. O’Connor prevailed by 555 votes to Reidy’s 525 and he was declared elected by the returning officer, Maurice Moynihan. Reidy moved immediately to have the result declared void. The losing candidate believed that he had sufficient evidence to prove that the victor had achieved the result by illegal means. The court petition led to a sensational ten-day court hearing in which Castleisland was portrayed as being drowned in alcohol on a bacchanalian scale and rife with bribery, intimidation and political corruption. It was little wonder that the courthouse was packed to capacity as the court case began.

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Petitioning the courts to have the result of an election declared void was nothing new in Kerry or elsewhere – though none of the previous cases involved such a catalogue of porter-induced skulduggery at the polling stations. At the 1910 general election, for example, John Murphy, who was strongly supported by J.K. O’Connor, petitioned to unseat the winning candidate, Eugene O’Sullivan, the East Kerry MP, alleging vote rigging, personation and intimidation and the election was declared void. The 1911 local elections saw a former chairman of Kerry County Council, St John Donovan, petition for the unseating of Tralee publican, Thomas Healy, who had beaten him to the seat in the Ardfert division. The court heard charges of ‘an orgie [sic] of perjury’ as allegations of treating voters on the roadside and supplying drink to voters at a dance were made against Healy. Healy’s barrister was the Irish Parliamentary Party MP Timothy Healy, who said that there had been a ‘collusion of perjury between Mr Donovan’s relatives’ and remarked that ‘in this instance, it was not Satan reproving sin but Bacchus reproving booze’.5 The court declared Thomas Healy’s election, however, to be null and void.

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‘Intimidation of the greatest character’

The Castleisland case opened on Tuesday, 25 August 1908, at Castleisland courthouse before Commissioner Maxwell. Denis J. Reidy, the petitioner, was represented by his solicitor, David Roche, instructing Serjeant John Francis (J.F.) Moriarty, King’s Counsel – from Mallow and well known in political circles – and junior counsel Bernard Roche. J.K. O’Connor, the respondent, was represented by solicitor R.C. Meredith, who instructed A.M. Sullivan, King’s Counsel (later a member of Sir Roger Casement’s defence team when he was tried for treason in 1916) and E.J. (Ned) McElligott, his junior (later a Circuit Court judge; his family owned the Listowel Arms Hotel). The returning officer for the poll was Maurice Moynihan, who was represented in court by Joseph Mangan, solicitor. The court heard allegations that J.K. O’Connor had won his seat on the county council by bribing voters, supplying them with drink and intimidating them into supporting him. Barrels of porter had been placed at polling stations and Reidy’s election rallies were disrupted by personation and ‘gross rowdyism’. O’Connor’s wife, Hanoria, was one of his principal and ‘most active’ agents. She had distributed whiskey to voters on the canvass and had driven many voters to the polls on polling day. One voter alleged that she had received a shilling from Mrs O’Connor in return for a promise to vote for her husband. A few days before polling, witness Jeremiah McMahon described being canvassed by the O’Connors:

J.K. and his wife went into the house. He asked for a vote, and witness said he would give it to him. ‘He asked me on the road would I take a drink of whiskey … and I said I would. Mrs J.K. was there. I drank out of a tumbler with a handle on it. Mr O’Connor filled out the whiskey and I drank it.’ (Laughter). That was about the 26 May.

‘Terrorism’ of O’Connor’s supporters

The second day of the case opened with the sensational claim, made by Denis Reidy’s counsel Serjeant Moriarty, that on leaving the courthouse the previous evening, ‘three witnesses for the petitioner were beaten’ and subjected to ‘terrorism’ by O’Connor’s supporters. A man had been arrested and the commissioner warned that there could be no repetition of such behaviour. The long line of witnesses continued. Before voting at Knocknagoshel, witness Timothy Warren claimed to have been offered a ‘quarter of ground free for the year’ by an associate of O’Connor’s. Another man, Thomas Leane, claimed to have been offered a free return ticket to America. Several witnesses reported receiving but not paying for drink on the day of the election:

Michael Culloty deposed, in reply to Sergt [sic] Moriarty, that he lived about a mile from Castleisland. He voted at that election. He remembered the Sunday Mr Reidy was holding his meeting. On that day witness was in Mr J.K. O’Connor’s yard in the evening. Before he went into the yard, he was in the kitchen. He got whiskey from the servant girl. The kitchen was full and they were all getting whiskey … He had two pints of porter in the yard … It was taken from a barrel … Witness did not pay for the porter or whiskey nor did he see anybody paying for it. They all got porter.6

Culloty claimed he was told by Mrs O’Connor that she ‘would leave a pint for me every day for six months’, whereas Denis Reidy had only ordered one pint for him at some point before the election. Michael Brosnan told the court that he voted at Curranes and that prior to polling day, Mrs O’Connor came to his house to ask for his vote. There was drink available at the polling station:

Did you get drunk there? – There was drink all over the place [laughter]. I got drunk there anyway [more laughter].

In further examination, he said he got drink from Thomas Griffin, a son of Patrick Griffin’s, Mr O’Connor’s personating agent. He didn’t see Maurice O’Connor, high nor dry, at the barrel of porter [laughter].

Mr Serjeant Moriarty – Nobody was dry that day [laughter].

Witness – The day was dry, sir. [loud laughter].7

‘A gallon of whiskey’

A Mrs Murphy was working in the O’Connor’s kitchen on the Sunday evening prior to the election. She said Dan Murphy, a local publican, was there and was in charge of a barrel of porter which had come from Hartnett’s bar nearby. ‘She could not tell what time it [the barrel]was brought. She was in and out of the house during the day. How did it come in, “it didn’t walk in”’, questioned counsel.

Witness said she did not know.

Did you see whiskey given out in the kitchen? – Yes.

You had a bottle of whiskey? – Yes.

Did you know everyone you gave whiskey to? – I knew them at the time.

How many did you give whiskey to, thirty or forty? – Yes, the people that came from Brosna.

The porter came from Hartnett’s; did Hartnett come with it? – I could not tell you.

Who told you to order it? – I ordered it myself (sensation in court)

Who authorised you? – I know the men were coming in on Sunday and I went to Mr O’Connor and asked him what would I get. He told me to get whatever I wanted.

What did you order? – A half tierce8 of porter and a gallon of whiskey … I knew Mr O’Connor was holding a meeting in Brosna. There were a number of supporters with him. It was for the purpose of giving refreshments to the people that went to Brosna that I ordered the porter and whiskey in.9

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‘Seventy-three gallons of porter’

It wasn’t just in Castleisland establishments that alcohol was allegedly used to influence voters. Knocknagoshel, in which there were ten public houses in 1908, was targeted not only by O’Connor, but also by Reidy, the court heard. Daniel O’Connor, a publican in Knocknagoshel, supplied drink worth £7 17s to voters on Reidy’s orders, while his neighbour Simon Keane had a bill for £7 16s in the name of J.K. O’Connor and £2 9s in the name of Denis Reidy. Among the recipients of free porter on Keane’s books was ‘Dan the Bird’, who was described in court as a ‘local character’. Two other local men, Edward Devane and Cornelius McAuliffe, went to vote at Curranes and got drink at the polling station, they said. One of O’Connor’s agents, Bryan O’Connor, had taken porter, whiskey and port wine to the polling station – he tapped one of the porter barrels and ‘let them drink and be damned to it’. A bottle of special whiskey was reserved for the polling clerks on duty. As Justice of the Peace, J.K. O’Connor was in the advantageous position of being able to swear in the polling clerks in his own electoral division, which had five polling stations. One of those clerks was John Fitzgerald, who told the court that when he made his declaration of secrecy before O’Connor, he was told, ‘You’ll see me alright below.’10

One of J.K. O’Connor’s most prominent supporters, Daniel ‘Dan Spud’ Murphy, took the stand on the sixth day of evidence. He denied that the candidate had instructed him to give drink to voters. Murphy accepted that he took friends of his to Maurice Hogan’s public house on polling day and ‘at all events’ was responsible for the price of seventy-three gallons of porter. ‘Are you in the habit,’ the witness was asked, ‘of bringing people into other public houses and treating them there?’ ‘Well, once in a while,’ he said, to which the commissioner responded ‘Only at triennial elections’, to further raucous laughter. Murphy admitted he was fully willing to lose £30 or £40 to the election because ‘Mr O’Connor is a gentleman I highly appreciate.’ At times, the level of farce reached new heights: ‘The name of (witness) Margaret Callaghan was called. She’s dead, came a voice from the body of the court, and sad to say the announcement was received with a titter,’ reported the Kerry People.11 The chief prosecutor, Serjeant Moriarty, took ill halfway through the proceedings and was indisposed for several days. On the sixth day of the trial, the commissioner was forced to temporarily vacate the bench and allow the defendant into his chair – it was the day on which Petty Sessions would normally be heard and only the local magistrate, one J.K. O’Connor, could formally open and immediately adjourn the proceedings to allow the current business to continue.

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‘Unlimited drink in every village’

A.M. Sullivan rose to present the defence case on behalf of the sitting councillor. J.K. O’Connor, he said, was not defending himself against about eighty charges of bribery, undue influence and procuring personation for the sake of his county council seat; rather, he was defending his own person against such charges. Denis Reidy was indulging in unlimited personal accusations against his client, forty of which had been absolutely disproved by the evidence produced by the petitioner himself. It was a catalogue of crime of which J.K. O’Connor was ‘absolutely innocent’. O’Connor never ordered free drinks for his supporters in public houses, he never went into a public house during the election and where he learned of treating, he did all he could to prevent it:

The candidate was not the leader. He was used by every faction and party and his name was used as a weapon to best their own opponents. In this constituency at the time the election took place there were innumerable factions, political and personal, each of whom took up one of the candidates and used him in conducting his campaign against his enemy.

As soon as O’Connor heard of what was going on, he went to publican Richard Shanahan and said there was no justification for it: ‘I can beat that fellow (Reidy), three to one, and if the election is to be won by porter, I would prefer not to win it at all.’ The barrister continued, according to the Kerry People, in ‘convincing tones’:

Mr O’Connor could not stop it. In view of the provocation of Reidy himself it was impossible to stop it, and with the example before them of open houses it was impossible to expect that his friends would stand aside, and consequently this campaign of competitive treating commenced by Reidy, waxed hotter and hotter, culminating on polling day with unlimited drink in every village and where there was no village an unlimited supply of drink was served to all-comers. Competitive appeals to corruption.

‘A very ordinary episode in this country’

O’Connor, his defence counsel insisted, had never gone about ‘ladling out drink’ when canvassing votes. No evidence had been produced to place the successful candidate in a public house with any voter. One publican, Mrs Nolan, had admitted to charging drinks at election time to whatever candidates were contesting, with or without their approval. Nobody had done so with J.K. O’Connor’s sanction, O’Sullivan contended. As for the large crowd enjoying refreshments at O’Connor’s on the evening of the Brosna meeting, there was nothing in the law that said a man couldn’t treat friends and supporters in this way after a day of electioneering. And what was wrong with offering somebody a drink? ‘Will you have a drink?’ was as common as saying ‘Good morning’. His client, Sullivan continued:

met many people, and they spoke … about the crops and weather, and eventually the election came down. After a friendly conversation with a man, when one had his luncheon basket besides him, what was more natural than that he should ask the man to take a little sup of whiskey. That was a very ordinary episode in this country.

Rejecting all charges of bribery, Sullivan dismissed some of the sworn statements of witnesses, which incidentally hadn’t been produced in evidence, but had been procured in that ‘great, grogging, affidavit factory, Hussey’s public house’. ‘You might imagine,’ Sullivan continued, ‘the inducements there held out for people to sign their names to affidavits.’ As for Mrs Hanoria O’Connor, who admittedly ‘talks a little much’, she had been accused of bribery despite simply offering a friend clothes in an act of Christianity a full twelve months before the election.

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‘Without the slightest foundation’

When John Kerry O’Connor was finally called to the stand on the eighth day of the hearing, he strenuously denied all charges. He had no knowledge of drink being supplied to voters at polling stations. On the canvass, yes, he treated friends who travelled with him to ‘a nip of whiskey’, but he never entered a public house in order to influence his constituents and never engaged in bribery at election time. He also rejected that he had anything to do with damage caused to Denis Reidy’s home on 3 May by a group who had been plied with drink. He had ordered some refreshments for his supporters on the evening of the Brosna meeting, but denied knowing anything of Dan ‘Spud’ Murphy’s acquisition of another tierce of porter for those present. He was upstairs with friends on the evening in question. When the respondent concluded his evidence, it was left to E.J. McElligott, O’Connor’s junior counsel, to summarise his client’s denial of all charges:

Mr J.K. O’Connor came into this court not for the purpose of retaining his seat but for the purpose of vindicating his character, and vindicating the character of his wife, who was dear to him, from the shocking, gross and malignant charges heaped and piled up against him without the slightest foundation, and he has succeeded, in vindicating his wife’s character, his own character, and in doing so he had achieved everything he had to achieve.

There followed much applause in court.

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‘Holding the crowded court spellbound’

‘The “judgement day” in the now famous Castleisland election petition,’ wrote the Kerry People correspondent, ‘brought an immense crowd to and around the precincts of the Courthouse, and the decision was awaited with the keenest interest. The language in which the decision was given was worthy of the best traditions of the Irish bar, Mr Commissioner Maxwell holding the crowded court spellbound.’12 Maxwell noted that over the course of nine days, J.K. O’Connor had faced over 100 distinct charges in a case of ‘magnitude’ and ‘gravity’: forty-five charges of treating, eleven of public houses alleged to be open for the free distribution of drink to voters, two cases of undue influence and duress, seven of illegal hiring and five of personation. The hiring of transport for taking voters to the polls, with the knowledge of the respondent, had not been proved. The charges of personation at the polling stations had not been proved. Two charges of undue influence had failed. In relation to the bribery charges, it was the view of the court that ‘personal bribery’ had not been proved. Charges of bribery against Mrs Hanoria O’Connor were ‘groundless’. However, the allegations that J.K. O’Connor had treated voters by ‘keeping an open house’ had been amply proved against the respondent and several others too. The commissioner recalled a reference by the successful candidate to his belief that he would prevail by a margin of three to one, but the closeness of the result, a margin of just thirty votes, ‘showed it was a nearer matter than he thought’.

‘Shameful and shameless corruption’

Commissioner Maxwell did not find the evidence in relation to treating in public houses to be credible. While O’Connor claimed he had cautioned publicans like Richard Shanahan and Dan Murphy not to supply drink to voters in his name, at least £100 worth of drink had been given out in the councillor’s interest. Maxwell ‘did not think the amount Mr O’Connor would have to pay (had he had to pay for it), would influence him in warning publicans not to give drink in his name … He did not want to be plainly and conclusively identified with the treating’. He concluded:

If Mr O’Connor then wanted to prevent this, the wise and proper course for him would have been to publicly denounce the practice; and, if by doing so he lost the election, he would have gained the respect of all honourable men in the place. The excuse offered by some of the respondent’s agents was that he was not to be drowned in a flood of porter, that there was open treating by the other side – in fact, it was aptly described by counsel as ‘competitive treating.’ There was, undoubtedly, competitive and indiscriminate treating.13

‘It is no part of my duty,’ Maxwell concluded:

to deal with this case from the point of view of enforcing sobriety, or preaching a sermon to the voters, nor to persons who are present here in court. I think Father Matthew himself might be daunted by the task in Castleisland [laughter]. But I will say this. The law is very jealous of electoral purity. An election is not an election unless it is the free uninfluencing choice of the voters, and the serious question to my mind from a moral point of view about this case is the state of public opinion in this question of treating … There has been, so far as treating, both specific and general is concerned, shameful and shameless corruption in this constituency, and it is a matter for tears rather than laughter that such a thing would occur. And I would appeal to the people of Castleisland, for their own sake, for the sake of this beautiful county of Kerry, where every prospect pleases, to recollect that the purity of election is essential to the success of Local Government … it makes any man who loves his country sick and sorry to hear the evidence that has been given in this court.

The commissioner hoped that the people of Castleisland, and of Kerry generally, would ‘exercise self-control’ and would learn how to use local government for their own good and for the good of their county and country. Finally and most importantly, he found that J.K. O’Connor was guilty of ‘corruptly supplying drink to voters for the purpose of corruptly influencing such voters’. He said he would report O’Connor’s agents and those publicans who supplied drink to voters to the High Court. He added that Denis J. Reidy was himself guilty of a similar charge. The election was declared void and he ruled that the respondent and petitioner should incur their own costs in the matter. He listed the names of the many individuals who would be reported to the High Court and, as the Kerry People correspondent concluded, ‘the protracted proceedings terminated’.

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Despite all his efforts to unseat his opponent, Denis Reidy did not take up the seat now left vacant by J.K. O’Connor. John Laurence Quinlan of Bridge Street, Tralee, previously a member of Tralee Urban District Council, who had lost his seat on that body, was co-opted to the seat. Quinlan was a member of a Castleisland family and a cousin of Patrick and William Quinlan, who were both secretaries of Kerry County Council. In November 1908, J.K. O’Connor appeared before magistrates in Tralee for the offences alleged to have been committed in and around Castleisland in the weeks before the county council election. However, by a majority of eleven to two, informations were refused and the matter would not be heard. The result ‘was received with a loud cheer’.14

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‘A wave of porter’

There is only one known occasion on which a local authority election result in County Kerry ever troubled the members of the House of Lords at Westminster. The bacchanalian behaviour during the election campaign in the Castleisland Electoral Division in 1908 made it to the floor of the chamber a few years after the controversy. On 14 March 1912, the 7th Earl of Mayo, Dermot Robert Wyndham Bourke, rose to call the attention of the government to the position of certain magistrates in Ireland, including J.K. O’Connor of Castleisland, who, along with magistrates in other parts of the country, had been convicted in court of various charges and who, he argued, should be removed from their roles as a result. The earl described O’Connor’s misdeeds to his fellow peers:

Mr O’Connor is a justice of the peace for the county of Kerry and stood as a candidate for the county council for the division of Castleisland. That election will long be remembered, because Castleisland swam in porter, and treating and drunkenness prevailed. So bad was it that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kerry, in the Lenten Pastoral, referred to it. He said: ‘Another matter which a sense of duty compels me to mention is the manner in which some of our local elections are conducted. The language used, instead of being informing and elevating, is grossly personal, lowering, and demoralising.’ And he concluded: ‘Worse still, some of these elections are conducted without even an appearance of public decency. They become the occasion of wholesale drunkenness, and sometimes even of violence.’ Mr O’Connor, at the Castleisland election, headed the poll. He is a most successful merchant in that town, and a wave of porter – you can describe it as nothing else – landed him safely on the county council bench. He headed the poll with a majority of thirty votes. But, alas! there was an election petition. Mr O’Connor appeared as respondent, and this was the result of the Commissioner’s finding – he found that the respondent had been guilty of corruptly supplying drink to voters for the purpose of corruptly influencing such voters, and that the respondent was also guilty of corrupt practices, and he declared the election void.15

Coverage of the case in The Kerry People, 29 August 1908.

The earl wondered why, in keeping with the law, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland had not been informed that O’Connor, as a magistrate, had not been removed from the post when he was found guilty of ‘corrupt practices at an election’. Another peer, the Earl of Desart, claimed that O’Connor had only been removed from the bench in 1911 and that he had exercised judicial functions between 1908 and 1911. Responding, the Paymaster-General, Lord Ashby St Ledgers, said that for some reason the fact was not brought to the Lord Chancellor’s attention. Subsequently, ‘in view of a decision given by Mr Justice Kenny in another case to the effect that the office of a magistrate was ipso facto vacated from the date of the making of the report, the name of Mr O’Connor was removed from the Commission’.