William Keogh (1817-78)

Life
[William Nicholas Keogh; Rt. Hon.] b. 7 Dec. 1817, Galway; ed. Mountjoy School, Dublin, and TCD; bar 1840; Conservative MP Athlone, 1847-56, and sole Irish Catholic at Westminster; QC, 1849; co-fnd. Catholic Defence Association with John Sadleir and George Henry Moore; joined the Irish Independent Party, 1852; seconded William Sharman Crawford’s Tenant Right Bill in Westminster, 1852; accepted Liberal office as Solicitor Gen. of Ireland after the Irish party had destroyed the conservative ministry of Lord Derby, 1852; denounced by Charles Gavan Duffy and others; embarrassed by embezzlements of his friend John Sadleir [q.v.], 1856;
 
served as Attorney-General and Judge of Court of Common Pleas, 1856 [var. 1857]; sentenced the Cormack brothers, Daniel and William, to death in the case of an assassinated land-agent (one Ellis) - both protesting innocence on the scaffold and widely known to be so, 1858; with Justice Fitzgerald, Keogh presided over trial of the Fenian T. C. Luby and the others of The Irish People incl. John O’Leary, Charles Kickham and O’Donovan Rossa whom he sentenced them with noted ferocity, 1865; awarded Hon. DLL (TCD), 1867; his verdict of ‘undue intimidation’ unseated Col. John P. Nolan, Home Ruler in Co. Galway election petitition, with three Roman Catholic bishops and 31 priests being reported to the House for undue influence, 1872; became a life-long object of Home Rule outrage;
 
he wrote, with M. J. Barry, A Treatise on the Practice of the High Court Chancery in Ireland (1840); also Ireland Under Lord Grey (1844), Ireland Imperialised (1863), and An Essay on Milton’s Prose Writings (1863); he was lampooned as “Murrurty” in William O’Brien’s When We Were Boys (1890); d. and bur. in Bonn, after a period of illness; became the object of a malicious rumour to the effect that he lethally attacked his valet at Bingen-am-Rhein and cut his own throat with a razor afterwards - thus joining Sadleir in the list of anti-national suicides;. ODNB DIB DIH
 

Note: Some corrections to the received biography were supplied in a letter to The Irish Times (5 Aug. 2002) by his descendant Brian Keogh - as attached. Details of the execution of the Cormack brothers has been added at the suggestion of James O’Brien in a correspondence ith Ricorso about Canon Sheehan [q.v.] There is an extensive entry on Keogh in Wikipedia - online; accessed 03.09.2023. ]

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Commentary
Thomas Keneally, The Great Shame: A Story of the Irish in the Old World and the New (Chatto & Windus 1998) - on the trial of the Fenians, 1865: ‘The special commission appointed by Dublin Castle to judge the Fenian in Dublin and Cork was headed by Solicitor-General William Keogh, of the betrayers of the Tenant Rights Movement, and J. D. Fitzgerald - both Catholics. “To the outside world, especially the countries in sympathy with Ireland,” wrote Kenealy, “this might have seemed fair on the part of the Government.” But [John] Kenealy and the others knew that Billy Keogh had a few years before sent brothers named McCormack to the scaffold in Tipperary, “when it was well known they were innocent of the crime charged”. The government charged the Fenian with Treason-Felony, under the same statute which had been rushed through Parliament in two days for the purpose of convicting John Mitchel in 1848. In Green Street courthouse in Dublin, the approaches blocked off by dragoons at either end of what was a narrow thoroughfare, Thomas Clarke Luby was the first to be placed on trial before judges Keogh and Fitzgerald. He was defended, as the Young Irelanders had been, by Isaac Butt, QC.’ (p.431 & ff.)

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References
Dictionary of National Biography notes that he was denounced by the popular party for accepting office; accepted commission on Fenian trials ... &c.; d. Bingen-am-Rhein; perpetuates the nationalist press’s charge of suicide.

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, pp.254; 258 [helped destroy Independent Irish party by breaking pledge not to take office in Lord Aberdeen’s coalition, 1852-55; notorious for ferocity of his remarks and sentences against Fenians when special commissioner at their trials; committed suicide, like Sadlier; bye-words for unsavoury behaviour and treachery]; implied in reference to the Independent Irish Party, in Davitt, 1904 [277 n.7].

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Notes
Charles Gavan Duffy gave an account of Sadleir and Keogh in his speech of resignation for Irish politics, declaring that they had had made their own party within the Independent party and won the ironic title of Pope’s Brass Band by noisy opposition to Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. Duffy’s speech is paraphrased by Bendict Kiely his book on William Carleton (Poor Scholar (Talbot Press 1947; rep. 1972, p.151.)

The Cormack Brothers: The following entry in the "Genealogy of the McCormack Family" by John P. McCormack at the Clare County Library website gives an account of the sentencing and execution of the Cormack (or McCormack) brothers on 11 May 1858 - taken from an unnamed Australian source - as follows:

Daniel and William (Mc) Cormack of Loughmore, near Templempore, Co. Tipperary, were executed at Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, in 1858 for the murder by shooting of one Ellis. There was no evidence, beyond motive, of their guilt, and their execution was one of the prime contributory factors in the Fenian rising shortly afterward. Their remains were re-interred at Loughmore in 1910, when a huge concourse of people attended in defiance of English government, then in power. A slab on the handsome vault erected to receive the remains bears the inscription given hereunder:

“By the Irish Race in memory of the brothers Daniel and William Cormack who, for the murder of a land agent named Ellis, were hanged at Nenagh after solemn protestation by each on the scaffold of absolute and entire innocence of that crime, the 11th day of May 1858. The tragedy of the brothers occurred through false testimony procured by gold and terror; the action in their trial of Judge Keogh, a man who, considered personally, politically, religiously and officially, was one of the monsters of mankind; and the verdict of a prejudiced, partisan, packed and perjured jury. Clear proof of the innocence of the brothers afforded by Archbishop Leahy to the Viceroy of the day, but he nevertheless gratified the appetite of a bigoted, exterminating and ascendancy caste by a judicial murder of the kind which lives bitterly and perpetually in a nation’s remembrance.”

The tradition that God signified His wrath on the day of execution by sending down an appalling deluge is commemorated in the following song. The anniversary day is invariably wet and dismal.

"The hanging of the Cormack brothers":

In the year of fifty eight, my boys, that was the troublesome time
When cruel landlords and their agents were rulers of our isle.
It was then that Ellis was shot down by an unknown hand.
When the news spread round Killara that Trent’s agent he was shot,
The police were then informed and assembled on the spot.
They searched every field and garden, every lane and every shed,
Until they came to McCormack’s house where two boys were in bed.

They accused these boys of murder from information they had got
From the coachman who was driving at the time that Ellis was shot.
They said that they were innocent, but 'twas all of no avail.
They were handcuffed and made prisoners and conveyed to County Gaol.
At the Spring Assizes these two young men stood their trial in Nenagh town.
By a packed jury of Orangemen, they were guilty found.
The judge addressed the prisoners. He asked what they had to say
Before he signed their execution for eleventh day of May.

“In Mill Killara we were reared, between Thurles and Templemore,
Well known by all inhabitants around the parish of Loughmore.
We’re as innocent of shooting Ellis as the child in the cradle do lie,
And can’t see the reason, for another man’s crime, we are condemned to die.”
The execution it took place, by their holy priest reconciled, their maker for to face.
Such thunder, rain and lightning has ne’er been witnessed since
As the Lord sent down on that day, as a token of their innocence,
That their sould may rest in heaven above as their remains rest in Loughmore.

The song, which is incomplete, was said to have been written by a man named McCarthy. The actual murderer of Ellis was said to have been a man named Gleeson from the Templemore area.
—Available online; accessed 19.08.2024.

Correction of record - Brian Keogh, Esq., writes (The Irish Times, 5 Aug. 2002): ‘[...] In 1878, Keogh was a sick man. That autumn he travelled to London to consult a specialist, who informed him that his liver was hard, his heart was enlarged, and he was in a stressful state, and advised him to take a holiday cure on the continent of Europe. Judge Keogh took the consultant’s advice and went to Germany, where he had friends. He died there on September 30th, 1878 at 17.00 hours. / Here in Ireland, the newspaper owners, who were against Judge Keogh, reported that he had committed suicide by cutting his throat at Bingen on the Rhine. This piece of political history surrounding the place and cause of Keogh’s death has been perpetuated until this day. Having teased out the facts, the writer has discovered that the judge actually died receiving the last rites at Bonn, where he is buried. No mention of suicide. / Judge Keogh and his wife purchased a vault at Glasnevin when their daughter died in 1871, aged 25 years, and intended that they would be laid to rest there in turn - indeed, Keogh made it known in his will that he wanted to be interred in the vault; but because of the hatred that some in Ireland stored for Keogh, his family feared that if his remains were returned to Ireland his coffin would be tipped into the Liffey. Judge Keogh’s widow, with his family’s agreement, purchased a plot at Bonn and a landmark monument is placed at his resting place. It is unusual for Bonn because it is of a Celtic design and bears the inscription: “To the Honourable William Keogh. His friends and all who admire him.” I have received an official death certificate from Bonn verifying the fact that he died there. … &c.].’ (See full letter, attached.)

Homes & chattels: William Keogh lived Bushy Park, Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow (a house owned later by Chris de Burgh); also in Glencairn, Sandyford, Co. Dublin (in Murphystown); a dg. Mary Josephine Keogh m. Justice James Murphy, an older man (obit. 1901). Subsequently all the wine ordered by Keogh in shipload consignments, including vintages such as Chateau La Fitte, was removed to Glencairn, which was sold to Boss Croker on the death of Murphy. Keogh and his son-in-law were members of an exclusive judges’ club necessitated by the times [i.e., in view of their unpopularity]. (Information supplied to RICORSO by Brian Keogh, Esq., writer of the Irish Times letter of 5 Aug. 2002 - as attached.)

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