God-fearing Christians one and all,
I hope you’ll pray for me.
I had to end my youthful life at the age of twenty-three.
All for the crime of murder, I was condemned to die,
On the eleventh of November upon the gallows high.
Francie Hynes it is my name, good people for me pray,
Though I leave kind relations, who’ll mourn me today.
In fact all over Ireland they’ll sympathise and cry,
They’ll shed a tear and breathe a prayer, when they hear I have
to die.
They say I shot John Doolaghty - a thing I never done.
For much less crime than take a life, I never rose a gun.
My name he only mentioned as someone passed him by,
That was the only evidence condemned me for to die.
Good-bye my loving parents, to you I bid adieu.
I know your hearts will break for me, for I never did the crime.
But think of Our Saviour’s sacred wounds,
That were pierced the second time.
May God defend my chaplin, he did his duty well.
For night and day with me did pray, in my lonely prison cell.
On the day of the execution he was with me side by side,
To face that ghastly gallows erected I espied.
At length the fateful bolt was drawn, my young life
passed away.
And for the soul of Francie Hynes, I hope you all will pray.
And to the executioner those words to him did cry:
“Come draw the bolt, I’m innocent and ready for to die.”
At length the fateful bolt was drawn his young life
passed away.
Above the entrance to the jail the black flag did display.
To show that the soul of Francie Hynes from earthly cares was free,
To live with God and Mary, for all eternity.
Michael
Falsey talks to Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie about‘Francie Hynes’
“Sean Spellissey wrote of this:
‘The official version of the case against Francie Hynes is that
on the 9th August, 1882, John Doolaghty was found in a ‘dying
condition’ with a charge of snipe shot in his head on the roadside
at Knockanane, near Ennis. Before he expired, he is reported to have
said: ‘It was Francie Hynes who did it.’ It was later claimed
that the evidence amounted to no more than a squeeze of the hand of
Colonel Turner, County Inspector of the R.I.C., the constable who visited
the dying man at his death-bed and mentioned Hynes’ name. The
records of the case would seem to bear out the common belief that the
evidence for conviction was slight, and the conclusion could reasonably
be drawn that the prosecution owed its success to two factors: the troubled
mood of the times, when the forces of law and order were determined
to have a conviction; and the prosecuting skills of Peter the Packer.
The defence case rested largely on the evidence that Hynes had been
seen drinking in at Hassett’s Public House in Barefield four miles
away at the time of the murder and could not possibly have been present.
The police produced a runner to prove he could and the prosecution stressed
Hynes’s age 23, his height, 6 ft 3 inches and his ‘handsome
and athletic appearance’. Local legend has it that Barefield postmistress,
Maggie O’Dea; put her clock on by ten minutes in an effort to
save Hynes.
It was generally believed that the prosecution case was based on flimsy
evidence and that Francie Hynes, although believed to be connected with
the murder, did not actually kill Doolaghty. The verdict raised a general
outcry, particularly in the nationalist press. An article in the Freeman's
Journal suggested that the jurors were under the influence of drink
the night before the verdict was given (the prosecuting counsel Peter
‘The Packer’ O’Brien was said to have earned his
nickname for his ability to eliminate candidates who would be prejudicial
to his intended verdicts). Dwyer Gray, owner of the Journal, was summoned
for contempt of court and underwent a term of imprisonment rather than
pay a fine. Political pressure won out in the end: there was no reprieve
- Dublin Castle wanted a victim. The Francie Hynes murder case took
place at the time of the activities of The Land League, which has been
claimed to have had an influence on the determination of the authorities
to secure a favourable victory for law and order. There was said to
be a ‘terrorist’ element of the League active at the time,
referred to as ‘Moonlighters’ and, despite the lack of evidence,
there was political pressure at the time to make it desirable that Hynes
should be found guilty in order to show that the authorities were determined
to stamp out rural lawlessness.’
An article entitled ‘Songs
of Agrarian Strife’ printed in the ‘Old Limerick Journal’
sums up the contemporary attitude to such events presented Hynes as
‘A Moonlighter and assassin and most unsympathetic for the victim’.
Later accounts related how even the hangman Marwood believed Hynes innocent;
‘I never executed a finer man, nor a man with so much nerve. He
walked to his doom with the utmost composure and I cannot but admire
him.’ The remarks fuelled a story current at the time that Hynes
died to save a relation with a young family from the rope. After the
hanging a number of more credible suspects were named for the crime,
including one, who shortly after, emigrated to America and was said
to have ‘fainted when he was told of the execution’.
References:
Peter the Packer: a man of his times, Sean Spellissey, Dal gCais, no.
7, 1984. Songs
of Agrarian Strife, Pat Feeley in The Old Limerick Journal, Summer
Edition, 2001. Jim Carroll
Michael
Falsey 