High Noon at Sixmilebridge (1829)

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Paddy Casey
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High Noon at Sixmilebridge (1829)

Post by Paddy Casey » Fri Jul 04, 2008 8:55 pm

According to a report in the Liverpool Mercury etc (Liverpool, England), Friday, January 16, 1829, two well-armed factions totalling at least 2,000 in number assembled at Six Mile Bridge (sic), presumably for a showdown of some sort. Thanks to the efforts of the Roman Catholic clergy of the parish bloodshed was averted.

Do any of the historians on this forum know what this was all about ?

Paddy
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smcarberry
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Re: High Noon at Sixmilebridge (1829)

Post by smcarberry » Fri Jul 04, 2008 11:47 pm

The huge number involved suggests something along these lines:

"The Clare election in 1828 was a turning point. O’Connell, with the support of the forty-shilling freeholders, managed a huge victory against the government candidate. He was well supported by the clergy whose influence on the poor uneducated peasant class was enormous...At the final count, O’Connell was elected by a majority of about eleven hundred votes. The ascendancy party had suffered its first big knock since 1798.

The whole country was aflame. The British Government feared a rising and granted Catholic emancipation in April 1829. The franchise was, however, raised to 10 pounds which excluded the forty-shilling freeholders...."

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... daniel.htm

Sharon Carberry
Georgia

mcreed
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Re: High Noon at Sixmilebridge (1829)

Post by mcreed » Sat Jul 05, 2008 2:35 pm

There's an interesting account of faction fighting in "Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest, 1780-1914 by Samuel Clark and James S. Donnelly". Chapter 2 deals with "Caravats and Shanavests: Whiteboyism and Faction Fighting in East Munster 1802-1812" which says that
the period between 1760 and 1845 "saw a marked increase in faction fighting, a term which refers to pitched battles between bands at fairs and other public gatherings. The older feuds were largely territorial, but the new fighting often reflected more modern tensions, such as power conflicts between kinship-based mafias led by amibitious members of the middle class".
http://tinyurl.com/5tpw6y
Mike

Paddy Casey
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Re: High Noon at Sixmilebridge (1829)

Post by Paddy Casey » Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:14 pm

Thanks for this interesting information, Mike.

I can't get at the http://tinyurl.com/5tpw6y link because my security software says it is a spy site. That may or may not be the case. I don't know. But I can't get at it. Would it be possible to have the full link ?

Paddy

P.S. I was a keen user of tinyurl but now Firefox no longer offers it as an add-on and, when I updated to Firefox 3 it said that the new version of Firefox wasn't compatible with tinyurl so the latter could not be installed. This is a great pity because, as I say, I found tinyurl rather useful. P.

Paddy Casey
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Re: High Noon at Sixmilebridge (1829)

Post by Paddy Casey » Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:26 pm

Triggered by the keywords 'faction fighting' in Mike's posting I just found the attached newspaper cutting on a Select Committee report on crime in Ireland (Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (Dublin, Ireland), Wednesday, July 24, 1839). The verbatim evidence there tells us a lot about these battles and the participants. Thanks again, Mike.

Paddy
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mcreed
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Re: High Noon at Sixmilebridge (1829)

Post by mcreed » Sat Jul 05, 2008 5:36 pm

Paddy, that tinyurl (http://tinyurl.com/5tpw6y) refers to http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr= ... M#PPA64,M1

It's a very long link so I used a tinyurl of it instead.
Mike

M. McNamara
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Re: High Noon at Sixmilebridge (1829)

Post by M. McNamara » Sat Jul 05, 2008 10:08 pm

I'm from Sixmilebridge. I hadn't heard of or read about this incident, so thanks to Paddy for publishing it. I'm assuming it was a faction fight rather than a political gathering as the crowd was armed.
Sixmilebridge would not generally have been noted as a locale for faction fighting but that's probably because of a lack of research by modern local historians. Faction fighting appears to have been endemic in the other counties of Munster at the time and in West Clare, so I suppose it stands to reason that East Clare would be no different.

The large number of participants (if accurate) would indicate some central organisation at work. 2000 participants would have come from a very wide area measured in 10s of miles radius. I initially thought that 2000 people assembling for a fight was a wild exaggeration but then I found the following:

The following is taken from a website on Irish music (of all things!); http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/SG_SHA.htm

SHANAVEST AND CARAVAT
Irish, Air (2/4 time, "with spirit"). D Major. Standard. One part.
In Joyce's Ancient Irish Music (p. 32) there is a different air with this name.
Joyce (1909) observes that "Shanavest" and "Caravat" were the names of two 'fighting factions', or gangs, in and around Co. Kilkenny, about the beginning of the last century (c. 1800). Shanavest signifies an old vest, while Caravat is a cravat; they were tokens denoting the different gangs who would fight each other at fairs, markets and meetings of all kinds throughout the 1700's and even into the mid-1800's. Other ‘gang’ names were the “Black-feet’ and ‘White-feet’, ‘Three years old’ and ‘Four years old’. “When I was a boy (c. 1845) I often witnessed a furious fight with sticks and stones, between ‘Three years’ and ‘Four years’, at the fairs of Ardpatrick and Kildorrery...” (Joyce, 1873).

***

The groups grew out of agrarian unrest. The Caravats were primarily a Whiteboy organization who recruited the poor in autonomous local gangs. They pitted themselves against the middle class with intense hostility, and had an internal structure that rewarded loyalty and solidarity. A recorded version of the Caravat oath goes:

***
To be true to each other and our friends, to attend all meetings
when warned, no cause to excuse absence but sickness, of which
sufficient proof must be given, to keep all secrets, to suffer until
death rather than betray each other or whatsoever may be seen
or heard of our cause, and to stand by each other at all fairs
and patrons.

***

The Shanavests who opposed them were a middle class anti-Whiteboy movement, who inhabited much the same geographic area as the Caravats. They rallied around the cause of Irish nationalism and condemned the Whiteboys as anti-nationalist. However, the Shanavests were smaller in number and as a consequence tended to loose out in the faction fights between the two. From 1806 to 1811 the Shanavest and Caravat conflict raged across large areas of Tipperary, Waterford, Kilkenny, Limerick and Cork.. Its violence was unprecedented with clashes between the two groups often involving firearms and frequent deaths. At the end the conflict was reduced to faction fights, gang fights, with allegiance to a political cause more and more a transparency.

***

Faction fighting was not only between rival gangs. In fact, the incident that produced the greatest death toll, with over 200 people killed and several hundred injured occurred between clan groups in a faction fight at Ballyveigh Strand, County Kerry in June, 1834. A 19th century account goes:

***
It had been rumored that a faction fight was going to happen.
On 24th of June, 1834, on the occasion of the Ballyeagh strand
horse races on St. Johns Day, the Lawlors/Mulvihills encountered
the Cooleens. The battle was fought with special sticks called
Blackthorne sticks or cudgels. Some were weighted with lead
and were not used free swinging but were held in the middle to
protect the elbow. An estimated 1,200 of the Cooleens crossed
the Feale in boats from the north and were then in what was
considered Mulvihill/Lawlor territory and was in itself considered
provocative. The Cooleens attacked the Mulville/Lawlor people
who were generally imbibing with poteen and whskey. The invaders
came forward in lines with about 20 women on the sides with aprons
full of stones. The authorities tried to stop them from coming but
were unsuccessful. At first the Cooleens got the upper hand since
half of their adversaries were still in their tents having a good time
with their whiskey. Gradually the Mulville/Lawlor faction got organized
and about 1,500 of them counter-attacked. They drove the invaders back
into the water and won the day.


***

Paddy Casey
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Re: High Noon at Sixmilebridge (1829)

Post by Paddy Casey » Sun Jul 06, 2008 11:05 am

Thanks to you all for these elucidations.

I've started to go crosseyed reading those meaty extracts from "Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest, 1780-1914" by James S. Donnelly Jr., Samuel Clark off the computer screen so I've ordered the book from Amazon (€16.81 incl. postage).

This kind of well-researched material interests me not only as social history per se but also as essential background to understanding one's own family history, i.e. the social waves and pressures which influenced the lives of our families very directly.

Again, thanks to you all.

Paddy

Luke McInerney
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Re: High Noon at Sixmilebridge (1829)

Post by Luke McInerney » Mon Jul 07, 2008 3:09 pm

I think that this incident is recorded in Ignatius Murphys' bookk ''The History of the Diocese of Killaloe'' and is likely to have been the event where Fr Thomas McInerheny, PP of Feakle, deterred a crowd from rioting during agitation around the times of the Clare election. Fr McInerheny was rewarded by a silver chalice for his efforts by a landlord.

cheers,


Luke McInerney

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