shoppers and diners, but this was not always so, for the building’s walls hold a dark and violent history. The castellated parapet, the towering belfry and two rusty hinges on the façade are all that remain of the building’s former life as the Old Gaol, and home to a gallows that was renowned as having the biggest drop in Ireland. The jail housed some of Roscommon’s worst criminals, many of whom were hanged there. One criminal managed to avoid the noose by offering to do the executions when the hangman didn’t turn up. Her name was Lady Betty, and she was the first hangwoman in Ireland.
Her real name was Elizabeth Sugrue, and before she came
to Roscommon, she lived in Kerry on a small, rented farm with her husband and
two sons. The 18th century was a difficult time for Catholic farmers
like the Sugrues. The Penal Laws denied them an education and an opportunity to
practice their faith, with a price put on the head of any priest who broke the
law by celebrating Mass. Many landlords cared little about their tenants and
mercilessly evicted them if they couldn’t pay the ever-increasing rent. It was
a time of great unrest in Ireland, giving rise to rebellion and attacks on wealthy
landlords.
Unlike most Irish Catholics, Elizabeth Sugrue was
educated and even owned some books. When she wasn’t working on the farm or in
their small cottage, she taught her husband and sons to read and write. She
also liked to draw pictures, which was an unusual hobby at the time, when most
Irish people didn’t have time for hobbies.
Disaster struck when Elizabeth’s husband died, and she
had to sell her books to pay for the funeral. Unable to pay the rent, she was
evicted and forced to walk the roads with her two sons, begging for scraps of
food. She picked up occasional work, reading or writing letters for people who
were illiterate, but the life of a beggar is no life for anyone, especially
children. When her youngest boy got sick, there was nothing Elizabeth could do
except cradle him in her arms on the side of the road, as his little life
extinguished before her eyes.
After that, Elizabeth sank into deep bouts of depression,
and started to lose her mind, which was understandable, considering what she
had been through. Though she loved her remaining son, Pádraig, she was often
impatient, cross, and at times, cruel to him.
Travelling
the roads of Munster, and then Connacht, Pádraig, now almost an adult, took it
upon himself to do his mother’s job of reading and writing for people, in
exchange for a few morsels of food. All the while, however, he dreamed of a
better life.
‘Some
day, I’ll be rich, Mother,’ he said. ‘And I’ll look after you in a big fancy
house with servants.’
Instead
of encouraging him, Elizabeth laughed sourly at her son’s foolish ambitions and
told him he’d never amount to anything.
When
mother and son found an abandoned cottage in Roscommon, they settled there, and
though they weren’t much better off than they’d been on the road, at least they
had a roof over their heads.
Pádraig
continued to read and write letters for people in return for a few pennies,
which he used to buy food for himself and his mother. When he had some to
spare, he put a penny aside for himself. From discarded newspapers, he educated
himself about the wider world, including America, which seemed to be a land of change
and opportunity. His mother, suffering badly with her nerves, became
increasingly difficult to live with, and often shouted and hit her son, until
he could take it no longer. When he had enough saved, he packed a bag and left
for America, leaving a note to say that he loved her and would return when he’d
made his fortune.
Elizabeth
screamed in fury and threw his note into the fire. Forced to defend for
herself, she started renting out a room in her home to travellers who couldn’t
afford to stay in a proper inn. Though she was angry at her son for abandoning
her, she was delighted to get a letter from him saying that he’d joined
Washington’s forces in the American War of Independence. He even left an
address for her to write back, which she did, as soon as she had enough money
to buy a stamp. Desperately, she waited for a second letter and when none came,
she feared he’d been killed in the war.
The
years passed and Elizabeth became more and more bitter at a world that had
stolen everything from her. One wet winter’s night, there was a knock on her
door and she opened it to a well-dressed man, standing with his horse in the
rain.
‘I
believe you take lodgers?’ said the man.
Elizabeth
did take lodgers but not ones as wealthy as this gentleman. She wondered why he
didn’t go to a real inn, but of course she didn’t ask. She wasn’t about to turn
down the opportunity to earn some money. Inviting him in, she said he could
have a bed, but that she had no money for food. Her eyes widened when the man
produced a pouch, heavy with coins, and taking out a sovereign, he told her to
go buy some. She dashed off through the rain and returned with enough food to
feed her whole neighbourhood.
After
they’d filled their bellies, Elizabeth showed the gentleman to his room, and
she went to bed but couldn’t sleep. All she could think about was the man’s bag
of coins in the room next door.
Taking
a knife from the kitchen, she stole into his room with the stub of a candle to
light her way. Her visitor was fast asleep so she rummaged in his belongings
but couldn’t find the pouch. Then, she noticed a leather cord hanging out from
under his pillow. It made sense that he would keep it there. Would she be able
to remove it without waking him?
Her
hand trembled as she gently pulled the cord, feeling the weight of a pouch of
coins coming with it. Inch by agonising inch, she manoeuvred the pouch out and
almost had it free when the man woke and grabbed her wrist.
Instinct
and fear kicked in, and she plunged the knife into the man’s neck. In seconds,
he was dead.
Elizabeth
pulled out the pouch of sovereigns and then thought about how she’d dispose of
the body, but first, she decided to check his belongings for more valuables.
She
gasped in shock when she found a letter with handwriting that she recognised –
her own! It was the letter she’s sent to Pádraig. Trying not to think about
what this meant, she rummaged through the rest of his stuff and found a diary.
She flicked through the pages to the most recent entry.
I have finally arrived in Roscommon and
tomorrow I shall visit my mother. I know she won’t recognise me after all these
years but it will be good to see her again. I won’t reveal my identity until
I’ve spent a night with her. That will give me a chance to see if she’s
mellowed with age. If she has, I will look after her in luxury for the rest of
her days, like I promised I would.
Elizabeth’s
scream woke her neighbours.
‘I’ve
killed my son!’ she roared, sobbing with tears and hugging Pádraig’s lifeless
body.
Filled
with grief, rage and terror, she shrieked into the night, like a demented banshee,
until some of the neighbours entered her hovel and came face to face with the
horrific spectacle of a mother weeping over the son that she’d murdered.
Elizabeth
was arrested, imprisoned in Roscommon Gaol, tried, found guilty of murder, and
sentenced to death by hanging.
On
the morning of her execution, a huge crowd had gathered in the square before
the Old Gaol. Some were spectators, there to be entertained by the grisly event.
Other were friends and family of some of the twenty-five sheep-stealers,
cattle-rustlers and shop lifters standing before the gallows. A few of the
prisoners, from a gang called the Whiteboys, seemed to have a lot of support
from the crowd. The Whiteboys were a secret society who disguised themselves in
white robes and carried out attacks on landlords who treated their tenants
badly.
The
prisoners lined up at the dangling noose but there was no sign of the hangman.
‘He’s
sick,’ a messenger said, but the sheriff didn’t believe a word of it. He knew
the hangman didn’t turn up because he was afraid of the Whiteboys.
Half
the crowd called for blood, while the other half called for the prisoners to be
released. The sheriff could do neither. Nor could he return them to the jail
because their cells had been set aside for new prisoners. Try as he did, he
couldn’t find anyone to perform the hangings.
Then,
a lone voice called out. ‘Spare me life, yer honour. Spare me life an’ I’ll hang
them all.’ It was Elizabeth Sugrue.
The
sheriff, though dubious about letting a woman do the job, was desperate, so he
agreed. One by one, Elizabeth hung the prisoners, and seemed to take pleasure
in doing so, despite the cries of hate she received from the Whiteboy
supporters, who threatened to kill her. Afterwards, the sheriff knew it would
be unsafe to release Elizabeth into the public, so he offered her a permanent
position as hangwoman of the jail.
She
accepted, and took up residency in the building, taking to her new role with
relish. For efficiency, she even had the gallows moved from the square to
outside her room on the third floor. Prisoners would enter her room and be
sketched by her, before being noosed and pushed onto a platform outside.
Elizabeth would then pull back a lever and the convict would plummet to his/her
death below.
In
her room, Elizabeth displayed the charcoal portraits of all the prisoners she
had executed. She became known as Lady Betty, due to her interest in art,
reading and writing, and the fact that she was a little more refined than
everybody else in the prison.
She
was also known to have enjoyed flogging convicts for the public and displaying
corpses of rebels outside the Old Gaol, which made her one of the most hated
women in Roscommon, where people referred to her as the ‘Woman from Hell’.
Though
she was pardoned for her own crime in 1802 as payment for her services to the jail,
the public’s hatred of her eventually caught up with her. In 1807, a prisoner
who had been breaking rocks in the prison yard as punishment, struck her over
the head with a stone and killed her.
She
was buried in an unmarked grave inside the prison walls, but long after her
death, her ghost was said to haunt the jail, looking for one more neck to
noose. Her name was used to threaten naughty children in Roscommon for years.
‘If you don’t be good, Lady Betty will get you.’
Lady
Betty likes to draw
The
face before it drops the jaw.
Pray
to Jesus that she might
Not
smile upon your face tonight.
From
the play, Lady Betty, by Declan Donnellan
