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1 ‘My poor unfortunate wife’

The death of Ellen Langley was a death foretold.

On the morning she died, 1 May 1849, her husband, Dr Charles Langley, sent the following letter to his neighbour James Carroll, who was the town’s coroner.

Dear Sir – My poor unfortunate wife having died, after an illness of ten or twelve days, in which she was attended by Drs Quin and Kittson, and having heard insinuations as to the cause of her death – although her death was not sudden – yet I am most anxious that a strict investigation should be held, as I consider it due to the public, and also for my own satisfaction. May I therefore request you will consider it a case to hold an inquest, as my sole wish is to have a fair, open, impartial and public investigation into her death. I know you will get a respectable and impartial jury on the occasion …

It would soon be revealed that Dr Langley had written the letter three days before his wife had died.

In his anticipation of Ellen’s death, and of the rumours attaching to it, Dr Langley was not alone. On the same day that he drafted his letter to the coroner, James Jocelyn Poe, his wife’s nephew, had paid visits to the coroner and the police sub-inspector to request that an inquiry should immediately be held if his aunt should happen to die.¹

Death came to Ellen Langley at 6 a.m. on 1 May.

As Dr Langley noted in his letter to the coroner, his wife’s illness had been the subject of ‘insinuations’. Determined to put a stop to the unpleasant rumours, he evidently felt confident that an inquest at the coroner’s court would clear the air.

He was thoroughly familiar with the court’s procedures. As chief medical officer of the local dispensary for eleven years, and an occasional private practitioner for seven more, he had often prepared reports for coroners’ inquests. During the 1830s and ’40s, Tipperary was arguably the most violent county in Ireland; reports of its agrarian violence were a constant feature of the London papers.² For a Tipperary doctor, attendance as an expert witness at inquests, quarter sessions and seasonal assizes was a common (if onerous) part of the job. As early as 1839, Langley and his medical colleagues in Nenagh had complained to the House of Commons of being forced, under threat of ‘heavy penalties’, to attend coroners’ inquests, which involved ‘serious liabilities and a considerable sacrifice of time and personal convenience’.³

Disputes between labourers and tenant farmers, caused by destitution or the threat of eviction, brought a stream of violent deaths through Nenagh’s coroner’s court before and during the Great Famine. In the spring of 1849 almost 3,500 paupers crowded Nenagh’s four workhouses and a further 10,000 were on ‘outdoor relief’, assistance for those unable to gain admittance to an institution.⁴ The week after Mrs Langley’s death the Nenagh Guardian, the mouthpiece of the local landowning class, described the situation in stark terms. ‘Destitution is every day becoming more appalling and wide-spread in this fertile but pauperised union,’ it reported.

Groups of half-starved looking creatures patrol the streets daily, begging for food, and hundreds of men and women, who not many months ago were able-bodied and well-looking, might be seen covered with miserable rags, wending their way to the workhouse, either in slow straggling steps, or conveyed in donkey carts. There were 200 admitted into the Workhouses last week.⁵

Nenagh’s population, just over 8,500 in 1841, actually increased by 22 per cent during the years of the famine as the starving and dispossessed fled from the surrounding rural areas into the town.⁶

Dr Langley and his colleagues in the town described the results of violence in cold and measured scientific language.

In one coroner’s investigation in 1844, Langley had quickly summed up for the court the nature of the victim’s wounds, describing ‘an extensive effusion of blood on the surface of the brain under the dura mater caused by the rupture of the large blood vessels’. Prior to the victim’s death, he surmised, the man ‘was labouring under a severe concussion and compression of the brain’. From these injuries he inferred that death had been ‘caused by a blow or blows of a stick, which violence, although dividing the integuments of the head to the extent of an inch and a half, yet did not fracture his skull; he was insensible and speechless, and continued so to the period of his death …’⁷

He was equally matter-of-fact in March 1846, when assisting the inquiry into the fatal assault on 35-year-old farmer James Cane, recording ‘three wounds – one mortal … on the left side of the head, which fractured the skull, the broken bones driven into the substance of the brain, a flesh wound on left cheek, and a confused wound on left arm – which … were inflicted with a blunt weapon, and has caused death’.⁸

Police detection in Ireland was still in its infancy in the 1840s. In London and Dublin, small detective forces had been created within the Metropolitan Constabularies in 1842, but in rural areas of Ireland, doctors alone could offer a scientific view on an unlawful killing, and perhaps deduce the weapon from the nature of the wounds inflicted.⁹ When Langley was called to examine the body of Jeremiah Halloran, a farmer who in 1845 unwisely intervened to stop a fight at a dance, he supported the witness who claimed to have seen the fatal blow. ‘On opening the head,’ reported the doctor, ‘I found a rupture of one of the blood vessels, and also a wound as if inflicted with a stone.’¹⁰

Even lawyers and judges, practised in challenging every kind of evidence, might hesitate before undermining a medical analysis. When in 1838 his assessment of a victim’s physical condition prior to an attack was called into question from the bench, the young Dr Langley had seen it as a ‘direct imputation’ against his character and applied to the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin to have the magistrate formally rebuked.¹¹ Quarrelsome and headstrong, he would not stand to have his medical competence publicly challenged.

At an inquest, it was the medical evidence that really counted. The circumstances of his wife’s death would be judged by his own colleagues. That, at least, was what long experience had led him to expect.

2 ‘Sworn to find a verdict’

At 11.30 a.m. on 1 May 1849, just five and a half hours after the death of Ellen Langley, the coroner, James Carroll, the police sub-inspector, Charles O’Dell, and a group of townsmen, largely merchants and tradesmen, assembled at Dr Langley’s residence on Barrack Street to commence the inquest. Dr Langley was present with his legal representative, John O’Brien, and a medical colleague, Dr Edward Kittson. A local solicitor, O’Brien Dillon, arrived with James Jocelyn Poe to represent Mrs Langley’s family.

Mr Dillon proposed empanelling fifteen, three more than required, ‘in case of any disagreement of the jury’. The coroner gave his consent and fifteen of the townsmen present were called to swear an oath on the Bible. Of these, only a single juror, Edward Davis, objected to being sworn. As a Quaker, he opted instead to make a solemn affirmation.

When James Acres was called to take the oath, Dr Langley objected. ‘The ground is,’ explained his solicitor, Mr O’Brien, ‘that Mr James Acres was married to a cousin of Mrs Langley’s.’ Acres was dismissed, and the swearing-in continued without further contention.

At forty-three years of age, Langley was, according to a contemporary description, five feet ten inches tall, of slight build, with a dark complexion and black hair that was starting to grey, and ‘a gentleman of substance and good social position’. A surviving photograph that likely depicts the doctor, taken a few years later, shows a good-looking man with an upright and dignified bearing. He wears a large necktie and crisply starched white shirt under a well-tailored waistcoat and jacket, and sports the elaborate sideburns fashionable in the mid-nineteenth century.¹

The coroner read out the letter he had received that morning from Dr Langley concerning his wife’s death, the rumours surrounding her illness, and his wish for an inquest. As he got near the end, Dr Langley stopped him.

‘The remaining part of that letter,’ he said, ‘refers to a person whose name it may be as well not to mention, and whom I wished the coroner not to summon.’

‘Very well, sir,’ said the coroner, ‘I will not read it.’

‘What is the date of that letter?’ asked Mr Dillon, solicitor to the Poe family.

‘It is not dated at all,’ said Dr Kittson.

‘When was it received then?’ said Mr Dillon.

‘This morning,’ said the coroner.

‘Mr O’Dell, have you anything to say about this?’ Mr Dillon asked the police sub-inspector.

‘I was called on by Mr Poe,’ he began.

‘A letter,’ Langley interjected, ‘was written by me three days ago, which Dr Quin saw, but I thought it premature to give any notice till her death.’

‘Mr Poe called on me also,’ said the sub-inspector, ‘to say that in the event of anything happening to this woman, I should consider myself under notice to hold an inquest.’

Left unresolved in this exchange was the question of why Dr Langley had drafted a letter referring to his wife’s death three days before she died, or whether it was more than a coincidence that he had done so on the same day that his wife’s nephew had gone to the police and the coroner to flag the need for an inquest.

The coroner instructed that the jury would begin the inquiry by viewing the body of the deceased in a room upstairs. The men filed up the dark, creaking narrow stairs at the rear of the house to Ellen Langley’s small garret room at the top. Filling the doorway and outside passage, they squinted through glaring midday light at the gaunt body laid out on the bed. There was no external evidence of any violence, no open wounds or scars, but rather a haggard female frame, the features reduced almost to bone. A cholera epidemic had recently swept through the town, producing a great number of emaciated corpses; on the evidence of what the jurors could see, Mrs Langley’s death was perhaps no different from a hundred others.

The coroner, thinking that the room in which they had been conducting their business in Dr Langley’s house was very close, suggested they relocate to the more spacious schoolhouse a few doors up the street to hear further evidence. As the jurors stepped outside, the air was unusually warm, a sudden change from the severe chill that for several weeks had prevented farmers sowing their crop of potatoes and, only days earlier, had killed famine migrants on the mail packet to Liverpool. Even the swallows, normally swarming on to Irish shores by mid-April, had failed to appear.²

Both Dr Langley and his wife’s nephew Mr Poe had provided the coroner with separate lists of people who might be interviewed to ascertain the exact cause of death, and an hour previously Mr Carroll had issued summonses via the police sub-inspector to request them to attend. When they had settled themselves in the schoolhouse, the coroner asked Mr Dillon (representing Mr Poe) to produce his first witness.

‘In consequence of the very brief notice we got,’ said Mr Dillon, ‘it is impossible we could have secured the attendance of all our witnesses, some of whom reside out in the country. It would be totally impossible for us to have them here at this hour, if indeed we could have them this day at all. Besides this there will be a post-mortem examination which will occupy some time, and it would facilitate the administration of justice more by adjourning the further proceedings to tomorrow.’

Dr Langley, however, was anxious to proceed. ‘All your witnesses are here but Thomas Pound,’ he said.

‘Well, he may be a very material witness,’ said Dillon.

‘The summonses were only issued at half past ten o’clock,’ said Mr Poe.

‘It is now only a quarter past twelve o’clock,’ said Dillon.

‘It is not my wish to hurry it on till you have all your witnesses present, I am sure,’ said Dr Langley.

‘Adjourn till three o’clock,’ suggested Mr Dillon.

‘If I adjourn at all, I will adjourn to tomorrow morning,’ replied the coroner. ‘This inquiry, gentlemen, stands adjourned to ten o’clock on the 2nd May.’

Each of the jurors was then bound in the sum of £10 to return at the stated hour, and the group dispersed.³

It was a peculiar sequence of events. The missing witness, Thomas Pound, was not a doctor who could speak to the circumstances of Mrs Langley’s illness and death. He was a man who had briefly worked as a servant for the Langleys, and had left their employment by the time of Ellen’s demise. Why, with a jury assembled and medical witnesses present, did Mr Poe’s lawyer wish to delay proceedings over the absence of Thomas Pound? And why did the coroner agree to do so?

Ellen Langley’s corpse remained in her deathbed in Barrack Street while the inquest proceeded in the schoolhouse. After the adjournment, a number of doctors came to the house and conducted a post-mortem examination.

Well after nightfall, a humble coffin was delivered to the house. Mary Clancy, the housemaid, followed her employer’s instructions to dress the body in a simple chemise and nightcap, and with his help placed it in the timber casket, which she lined with straw. Normally, deceased family members were laid out in the parlour prior to their interment, but Dr Langley did not observe the customary formalities.⁴ He and his servant carried the coffin outside to the yard at the rear of the dwelling, resting it between two chairs and screening it from the view of neighbourly eyes with a carriage cover. Here, amidst the clutter of outdoor things, it would remain for two days and nights.

At ten the following morning, the inquest reconvened in the schoolhouse on Barrack Street, a stone-faced building four bays wide and two storeys high. It was often used for public gatherings of one kind or another – the occasional lecture, or meetings of charitable and religious societies at the weekends. On the morning of 2 May, the classroom grew clamorous as it filled with solicitors, witnesses, police constables and journalists. The fifteen jurors, all middle-aged, clad in dark coats and waistcoats and tall straight hats, sat on the chairs normally occupied by the small class of Protestant children. Called to adjudicate by virtue of their perceived respectability in the community, many of them worked from premises in or near Castle Street, Nenagh’s main commercial thoroughfare, which ran perpendicular to Barrack Street.⁵

Two-thirds of them were members of the rising Catholic middle class that was beginning to challenge the political and economic hegemony of Ireland’s Protestant elite and had begun to assume increasingly genteel manners and aspirations. Rody Spain, James O’Brien, Anthony Nolan and Edward Davis were rival linen and woollen drapers whose shops were on Castle Street. James Hanly, an ironmonger and hardware dealer, James Roche, a trader in wine and spirits, and Edward Jones, a coach maker, were their near neighbours. John Dwyer was a provision dealer, selling everything from saddlery to stationery, and, for a period, held the contract to supply milk to the workhouse; like several of his fellow jurors, he was also a town commissioner, responsible for the recently introduced gas lighting and street paving. Richard Cunningham was a saddler and harness maker on Castle Street. William Gleeson and Bryan Consedine were in the boot trade. Besides the lone Quaker, Mr Davis, there were three Protestants among the fifteen. Joshua Cantrell, who was appointed foreman of the coroner’s jury, was a town commissioner and the only member of the group who sat on the Grand Jury, an elite group of largely Protestant landowners who fulfilled some of the functions later performed by county councils. Cantrell resided in the wealthy Summer Hill area on the north side of the town. The other members of the jury from the town’s Protestant minority were Benjamin Barrington, who imported steam-powered machine-ground coffee from London, and Henry Harding, a leather dealer with a premises in Silver Street.⁶

Dr Langley arrived with his sister, Mrs Lydia Jackson, and her daughter Fanny. Nine years earlier, Lydia, who lived in Limerick, had sent Fanny, then aged three, to Nenagh to live with her brother and his wife, who were childless.⁷

James Carroll, an elderly man who had served as coroner for at least twenty years, was formal and officious in his role. He was an ironmonger and hardware dealer, and had no specialist legal or medical expertise. Like the majority of jurors he had summoned, he was a Catholic. His position, unlike others in the magistracy, was an elected one.⁸

‘Gentlemen,’ he began, ‘the first thing for us is to hear the evidence of the medical gentlemen, as a great deal depends on their testimony.’ He proposed starting with Dr O’Neill Quin, who ran the medical dispensary at Silvermines, a small village south of Nenagh.⁹ Quin was distantly related to Ellen Langley through his wife, Harriet.¹⁰

Dr Quin testified that, at Dr Langley’s request, he had visited Ellen Langley on 16 April, a fortnight before her death. ‘She consulted me,’ he said, ‘for a complaint under which she thought she was labouring, but which I found not to exist.’ Again at the request of Dr Langley, he visited Mrs Langley on 22 April, ‘and found her suffering from severe diarrhoea, attended with excessive debility’. ‘Her disease not abating,’ Dr Quin continued, ‘Dr Langley wished for a second medical gentleman, and Dr Kittson saw her with me on Tuesday, the 24th April; she complained of fullness of stomach, which was soon succeeded by vomiting of green bilious matter; the bowel complaint and irritability of stomach continued from that time to the period of death, assuming quite the character of English cholera.’¹¹

A familiar ailment to any experienced jury, ‘English cholera’ was not cholera at all, but referred to a range of other diarrhoeal diseases, usually viral in origin, that would today be called gastroenteritis. English cholera often struck the urban poor in the summer months. It was understood to be distinct from what was known as ‘Asiatic cholera’ – cholera proper, caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae – which was rampant in various parts of Ireland, including north Tipperary, in the spring of 1849.¹² English cholera drained fluid from the system, producing ‘thirst, cramps … collapse, suppression of urine, imperceptible pulse, and, in short, all the symptoms of [Asiatic] cholera’.¹³ The doctors’ decision to specify English rather than Asiatic cholera in the case of Ellen Langley was likely due to tissue damage not normally associated with the latter.¹⁴

Dr Quin noted that the conclusion he and Dr Kittson had drawn on 24 April was supported by the post-mortem examination he and four other doctors had made in Barrack Street the previous day. Two of these doctors, Dr Finucane and Dr Spain, he said, had been specially selected by James Jocelyn Poe, nephew of the deceased, to represent Mrs Langley’s family.¹⁵

Conscious that the doctors’ post-mortem report was likely to contain graphic language, Mr Carroll indicated that the ladies present, Dr Langley’s sister and niece, may wish to leave.

After they had done so, Dr Quin proceeded to read out the report:

The external appearance of the body presented nothing unusual – on opening the chest we found both lungs extensively diseased, with large tubercles of long standing on each – the posterior portion of the right lung very highly congested. The heart of natural size, but soft, and containing some fatty deposit. On opening into the abdomen, we found the liver enlarged, particularly its left lobe, but presenting otherwise a healthy appearance. The stomach presented nothing unusual externally – the under surface appeared healthy, and contained about two ounces of thick viscid fluid. The spleen was enlarged and congested. The small intestines and peritoneal covering presented patches of recent inflammation, which we think sufficiently accounts for the diarrhoea under which she laboured, and ultimately caused her death.

O’Neill Quin, M.D.

Edward Kittson, Surgeon.

George Frith, Surgeon.

John Finucane, M.D.

Thos. Spain, Surgeon.

The evidence of tuberculosis would not have come as a great surprise to the doctors. The incidence of the disease was generally lower in Ireland than in the rest of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century, but suddenly doubled during the period of the Great Famine.¹⁶ It was not unusual for chronic sufferers to survive many years and ultimately die from an unrelated illness.¹⁷

When Dr Quin had finished reading the report, Dr Langley addressed his medical colleague directly – a freedom that was a distinctive feature of the coroner’s court.¹⁸

‘Will you tell the jury,’ he asked Quin, ‘whether you can swear, to your own knowledge, that she laboured under pulmonary disease for several years previous to her last illness?’

‘You will allow Mr Dillon to examine first,’ objected the coroner, referring to the Poe family’s lawyer, ‘and then you can offer whatever suggestions you please.’

‘All that I can say is this,’ said Mr Dillon, ‘that from the various reports that were afloat both previous to and subsequent to Mrs Langley’s death, her immediate relations thought proper to call for an inquest. Dr Langley also thought proper to call for an inquest. I think it was due to both of them that an investigation should take place, and on the part of Mrs Langley’s family I have now to express our satisfaction at the post-mortem examination read by Dr Quin. It is the foundation of all, and on it I think the jury can find their verdict. They cannot go beyond it.’

Mr Dillon had evidently had a change of heart – or of instructions – since the first morning of the inquest, when he had argued for an adjournment on the grounds that the Langley’s former servant Thomas Pound was not available. Following the post-mortem report, and the testimony of Dr Quin, there was no reference to Pound and the other witnesses; in the view of the Poe family’s lawyer, the medical evidence was all the jury required.

‘To avoid medical terms, and in order to be as simple as we can,’ said Dr Quin, ‘the verdict might be “died of bowel complaint”.’

‘Gentlemen,’ said the coroner, addressing the jurymen gathered together on one side of the room, ‘do you agree to Dr Quin’s evidence – is your verdict that she died of bowel complaint?’

There was a moment of murmuring between them. ‘Dr Kittson ought to be examined,’ suggested Mr Jones, the coach maker.

‘Sure he corroborates me; his name is added to the other gentlemen,’ responded Dr Quin.

‘That is only on the post-mortem examination,’ said Jones. ‘We should like to hear his evidence.’

‘No necessity,’ said the coroner firmly.

Mr Dillon said he would call no other witnesses.

‘The verdict may be that Mrs Eleanor Langley came by her death from bowel complaint,’ said Dr Quin. (Though known as Ellen, she had been christened Eleanor.)

‘It is the jury must find a verdict,’ protested the juror William Gleeson; ‘it is you who are finding one now.’¹⁹

Eight people, including two further doctors, household servants, a shopkeeper and a clergyman, were waiting outside to give evidence, and the jurors were surprised that these witnesses – whom many believed critical to establishing the veracity of the rumours circulating in the town – were not to be heard.²⁰ There was further agitated murmuring as the room was cleared to allow the jury to consider the matter for themselves. They were locked in and expected to remain there until they had agreed on a verdict – one based on nothing more than the evidence provided. But there were other things on their minds – above all, those rumours regarding the illness and death of Ellen Langley. One leading theory was that Mrs Langley had been poisoned by her husband. When news had got out of Mrs Langley’s death, word spread that her husband had been arrested. Although this was not true, it probably reflected the state of public feeling concerning Dr Langley’s relationship with his wife.²¹ The jurors knew they must resolve the question of this death not just to their own satisfaction but to that of their wives, their neighbours and even their customers.

The jury sent out a request that they be allowed to scrutinize in greater depth the inquisition paper (the written statement they were expected to sign), the written evidence of Dr Quin, and the post-mortem report. The coroner ruled that such documents could not be allowed to leave his possession. Mr Jones, the juror who had been sent to enquire after them, retired to the conference chamber empty-handed.

After some minutes, the door opened and the various parties were allowed to return to the main schoolroom. Bryan Consedine, although not the head juror, was the first to voice the group’s sense of disquiet. He was a strong-willed man who would, later that same year, publicly challenge decisions made by both the Poor Law Guardians and the Catholic Church hierarchy.²²

‘We will find no verdict,’ he said to Mr Carroll. ‘We adjourned from yesterday to today for the purpose of hearing evidence, and now you refuse to bring [the witnesses] forward.’

‘I suppose you are not going to find your verdict upon public rumour,’ said Dr Langley.

‘Why not produce the witnesses?’ asked Mr Harding.

‘It is the business of the jury to find the cause of death,’ said another juror. ‘The jury are not satisfied with the information they have received.’

Further voices added their dissent, and, according to the reporter from the Nenagh Guardian, ‘the greatest confusion prevailed’. The Tipperary Vindicator described the men ‘conversing with the doctors and each other in several groups around the room’, their voices conveying ‘much earnestness’, and ‘a high tone’.

Mr Carroll struggled to make himself heard. ‘Gentlemen,’ he cried, ‘are you likely to agree?’

Their response was emphatic. ‘No! We’ll give no verdict.’

James Jocelyn Poe, the 42-year-old nephew of the deceased, now moved to speak. The eldest of five children of Mrs Langley’s older sister Frances and her husband, the town’s Protestant rector, the Rev. James Hill Poe, James Jocelyn was a tall, slim, good-looking man, with lustrous dark hair. The jurors would have known him as vice-chairman of the Nenagh Board of Poor Law Guardians and as land agent to the Earl of Orkney and his own cousin, Lord Bloomfield, as well as the heir to his uncle’s estate of Solsboro outside the town. Given his stature in the locality and his position as the representative of the deceased, he may well have thought that his opinion would settle the issue. He decided to confront directly the theory that, he would have assumed, underlay the jurors’ disquiet: that Ellen Langley had been poisoned.

‘I have not said a word yet on the subject,’ he began. ‘Irritation of the stomach might produce the diarrhoea under which the deceased laboured. I got two medical gentlemen to assist at the post-mortem examination, Drs Spain and Finucane, to see if any symptom of poison could be found in the intestines. From the result of that examination I am perfectly satisfied no poison was found in the body. As next of kin to the deceased I do not press the matter any further after the testimony of the medical gentlemen.’

Perhaps fearing that he appeared confrontational, he made an addendum to this short address:

‘I do not say anything of what may be the feeling of the jury.’²³

Mr Poe’s desire to conclude the inquest on the medical evidence alone must have puzzled the jurors. Next to him, but silent, was his 72-year-old father, the Rev. James Hill Poe. As the town’s senior Protestant clergyman, he was a key figure in its public affairs. An active participant on the famine relief committee, which he occasionally chaired, he enjoyed good relations with his Catholic counterparts. But some tensions remained. Although he tolerated freedom of religious worship, he had firmly opposed Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for the political emancipation of Catholics when that question had arisen.²⁴ Now, he found himself sitting in the coroner’s court, looking on as a body composed largely of Catholic merchants sought to hear evidence that might shed light upon his family’s private affairs. While the evidence of doctors was seen as scientific and impartial, the testimony of other witnesses – servants, in particular – could prove embarrassing.

Mr O’Dell, the district sub-inspector of police, was less circumspect. ‘As this matter has occurred in my district,’ he said, ‘I beg to state I have used every exertion I possibly could to obtain the witnesses, and they are now in attendance if you wish to examine them.’

‘Let us have them,’ urged a voice from the jury.

‘Any allegation that may be made,’ Dr Langley announced defiantly to the jury, ‘I am ready to meet it. I do not wish the matter to go any further, for if it is proceeded with, private circumstances will come before the public which will bring up evidence hurtful to the living as well as injurious to the memory of the dead. The jury are sworn to find a verdict according to the evidence brought before them, not on the reports they may have heard, or the stories of servants and gossips, and you have, I think, sufficient evidence to ground your verdict upon.’²⁵

‘It is a vicious taste for notoriety that would require it,’ added Dr Quin.

THE DOCTOR’S WIFE IS DEAD

Andrew Tierney

THE DOCTOR’S WIFE IS DEAD

A Peculiar Marriage, a Suspicious Death, and a Murder Trial in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

PENGUIN IRELAND

Contents

List of illustrations

Prologue: Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, 3 May 1849

Part One

1

‘My poor unfortunate wife’

2

‘Sworn to find a verdict’