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The Carrickshock Incident, 1831

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The Carrickshock Incident, 1831 Culturaland Social History 2004; 1: 36–64 TheCarrickshock Incident, 1831:Social Memory and an Irish cause ce´le`bre1 Gary Owens Huron University College, University of Western Ontario This article examines the waysthat aviolent incident in Irish history has been rememberedand interpreted overthe past 170 years.The event occurred on anisolated roadin south Kilkenny in December 1831 when anarmedpolice column clashed with alargecrowd, resulting in the deaths of 17 people. Unlike most incidents of this kind, the majorityof the victims (13) were constables. The uniqueness of the occurrence madeit a cause ce´le`bre at the time and has helped to perpetuate its memoryin the locality eversince. As with larger,more familiar sites of memory,successive generations of local people have rememberedthe incident in variousways since the earlynine- teenth century. Their objects of remembranceand their understanding of the event have alsoshifted dramaticallyover time, suggesting that the process ofcollective memoryat the microlevel can beasvariedand complex ason the national stage. Culturaland Social History 2004; 1: 36–64 Though people would laterdescribe theevent as a ‘battle’, itbore littleresemblance toaset-piecemilitary encounter.Unanticipated and unorganized, itwas notable mainly for itsconfusion, its shapelessness andits stark brutality. ‘Abrief butdesperate deed of blood’was how ajournalist describedit when he visited the scene of theencounter a fewhours afterward. 2 Ithappened in acorner of thebarren townlandknown asCarrick- shock (carriag-seabhac ,‘thehawk’ s rock’) in southKilkenny around Addressfor correspondence: GaryOwens, HuronUniversity College,University ofWestern Ontario, 1349Western Road, London,Ontario, N6G1H3, Canada. E-mail:[email protected] 1 This isan expandedversion of the ConnellLecture delivered at the 2002meeting of the Economicand SocialHistory Society of Irelandat Mary ImmaculateCollege, University ofLimerick.It, inturn, originatedin apaperthat was part ofthe Celtic StudiesLecture Series at St Michael’s College,University of Toronto,in October 2001.I wish to thank HelenaIrish, JohnGaule and Pat Gaule– natives of Hugginstown, Co.Kilkenny – forsupplying me with importantpieces of local information.Dr Guy Beiner and DrGillian Smith read initial drafts ofthe paperand Iamgrateful for their helpful comments. 2 Kilkenny Journal ,17Dec 1831, as citedin The Times,20Dec 1831. Ó The SocialHistory Society 2004 10.1191/1478003804cs0004oa TheCarrickshock Incident, 1831 37 mid-dayon Wednesday,14 December 1831, atthe height of thetithe war. Thirty-eight armedconstables were guardinga hiredagent, or processserver, ashedelivered legal summonsesto tithedefaulters: that is, people –mostly Catholics –who hadnot paid the taxes levied upon themto supportthe local Churchof Irelandparson. Called outby the ringing of chapelbells, acrowd of more thana thousandmen, women andchildren surrounded the police asthey moved along aroad between thevillages of Hugginstownand Ballyhale. They wantedthe processserver, alocal mannamed Edmund Butler, whom they intendedto punishby forcing himto hisknees, beating him andmak- ing himeat his summonses. ‘ Give usButler!’they yelled repeatedlyto theconstables, ‘We’ll have Butleror blood!’The manin chargeof the column,Captain James Gibbons, amiddle-agedveteran of theNapo- leonic Wars who hadfought at Waterloo andwas a constabulary ofcer of six years’standing, doggedly refused. People andpolice soon foundthemselves squeezed tightly together in anarrow lane, or boreen, thatwas enclosed on both sidesby high stonewalls. The swelling crowd pressedin on theconstables, making movement in any directionimpossible. Suddenly,a young manlunged in among thepolice, grabbed theprocess server by hiscoat and tried topullhim toward the outside. A constable yankedButler back. Then, withoutwarning, someone hurleda st-sizedrock thatslammed into Butler’s skull. Hepitchedforward anddropped among thelegs of the constables, his papers ying about him. CaptainGibbons, astridehis horse atthe rear of thecolumn, shouted the order to re. Ahandful of constablesgot offrounds, but because they were packedtogether sodensely in theconstricted boreen, none couldtake proper aim, let alone reload. Withthat, people began to wrenchheavy rocks from thewalls and heave themdown uponthe constables. ‘The stoneshit each other [in theair] they were so thick’, recalledone who wasthere, ‘ theywere like ashower’. Othersattacked the police withpitchforks, clubs, hur- ling sticksand their bare hands.Minutes later, 13 constables– includ- ing CaptainGibbons –andthe process server EdmundButler lay dead or dying, mostfrom shatteredskulls andappalling stab wounds. Another 14 ofcers suffered severe injuries; only 11 of the38 came away unharmedor withminor scrapes.Of thecrowd, threewere killed andan unknown number injured. 3 Although clashesbetween armedauthorities and groups of civilians were depressingly familiar eventsin pre-famineIreland, this brief encounterseems to standapart from mostof theothers. Besidesthe extentof itscarnage – 17 deadand scores badly injuredin thespace of afewminutes – itis remarkable chiey becauseof who itsvictims 3 This descriptionof the incidentis basedmainly upon the depositionsof surviving constablesfound in the NationalArchives of Ireland,Chief Secretary’ s Ofce, RegisteredPapers (hereafter NAI, CSO,RP), 1831,K-25. Culturaland SocialHistory 2004 1 (1) 38Gary Owens were. Unlike other encountersof thiskind in whichcrowds usually bore thebrunt of theviolence, mostof thecasualties at Carrickshock were policemen. Whatwas more, theirattackers did not use rearms. Nevertheless, theCarrickshock incidentis nota prominentevent in Irish history. For one thing,it lacked some of thefamiliar prerequisites: contemporaries recordedno actsof uncommonbravery; no stirring words spoken before, during,or afterthe ghting;no participants boasting thatthey had won amemorable victory. Nor didthe incident have momentousconsequences: it did not bring about theabolition of tithesor even changethe way thatthey were collected.It is not surprising, therefore, thatin mostgeneral histories of nineteenth- centuryIreland the affair is literally afootnote, ifit is mentionedat all. Butto people in thelocality ithas always been muchmore thana footnote. Itwas when History witha capital‘ H’came to theirneigh- bourhood; whensomething extraordinary happenedthat set their communityapart from other places.For more thana centuryand a half,they and others would interpretthe incident through poems, songs, pamphlets,paintings, sculpture, novels, speeches,rumours, pub- lic demonstrations,folk tales,commemorative monumentsand yards uponyards of newsprint.These were themeans by whichpeople tried to makesense of whathappened in thatmuddy laneway on that December morning andto communicateit to others. They were expressions of collective remembering, whathas come to be called ‘social memory’. The ways thatsocieties remember theirpasts have become asubject of intensescholarly interestof late,particularly among historians of France, Britain, Russiaand the United States. 4 The impactof this phenomenonupon Irish historiography canbe gaugedin ahostof recentstudies that have examinedhow latergenerations constructed andutilized some of thecountry’ s more prominentsites of memory – thesiege of Derry, the1798 rebellion, thegreat famine, the 1916 rising chiefamong them.Without exception, they have shown how ‘Big Events’drift in andout of public consciousnessover timeand are inter- pretedaccording to thechanging needs, preoccupations and percep- tions of successivegenerations. Their researchsuggests, in other words, how some dominantsites of memory have worked in anIrish context. 5 Buthow have less conspicuousevents such as Carrickshock been popularly imaginedand portrayed? How have people in small, some- 4 Oneobserver even suggests that akindof ‘memoryindustry’ now sets the agendafor historicalscholarship. Kerwin Lee Klein, ‘ On the Emergenceof Memory inHistorical Discourse’, Representations ,69(2000) pp. 127–50. 5 Seeespecially Ian McBride(ed.), Historyand Memory inModern Ireland (Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, 2001), and TheSiege ofDerry inUlsterProtestant Mythology (FourCourts, Dublin, 1997); KevinWhelan, ‘’98After ’98: ThePolitics of Memory’ inKevinWhelan, TheTree of Liberty: Radicalism, Catholicism and the Construction of Irish Identity,1760– 1830 (CorkUniversity Press,Cork, 1996) pp. 133–75; JamesS. DonnellyJr, TheGreat Irish Potato Famine (Sutton, Gloucester,2001); and Ma ´/r´/n n´/ Dhonnchadhand TheoDorgan (eds), Revisingthe Rising (FieldDay, Derry,1991). Culturaland SocialHistory 2004 1 (1) TheCarrickshock Incident, 1831 39 timesremote localities depictedand commemorated incidents that theyperceived as notable? How didtheir expressions of remembrance differfrom thoseof people living outsidethe community who rep- resentedwhat might be calledthe hegemonic or nationalinterpret- ation of theevent? How, ifat all, didimages of extraordinary occasions in alocality’s pastchange over time? Suchquestions are more easily askedthan answered because, despite burgeoning interestin thecon- structionof memory generally, Irish historians have barely begun to examine how theprocess operated at themicro level. 6 The paperthat follows is intendedas a preliminary steptoward that end. It is partof awork in progress thatuses a single eventin asmall community– theCarrickshock incident– toexplore wider issuesof memory, public violence andpolitical culture. I Inthe same way thatcertain ideas about themore
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