People, Place and Power – The Grand Jury System in Ireland

45 Records such as these can often be cross-referenced with newspaper accounts, especially where a case caught the public interest. Monaghan’s spring 1811 assizes received an extensive write-up in the Belfast Commercial Chronicle , giving details of the more gripping cases. The manuscript court book tells that Mathew Hoey, Mathew Valley and Catherine Duffy were charged with a felony, but gives no further details, but the newspaper fills in the story. The felony in question was the killing of John Ray. The defendants were found guilty of manslaughter, and were sentenced to be burned on the hand and imprisoned (Fig. 20). From the same newspaper we learn that Mary Cunningham was to be transported for seven years for stealing ten yards of corduroy, Henry Taylor was not guilty of ‘handing to Elizabeth Graham, spinster, a cake mixed with French flies, that she might eat thereof, with intent to deprive her of her reason’ and that Susan Trenor’s rape claim against Patrick M’Cann could not be heard as she failed to appear in court. 49 Fig. 20. Manslaughter sentence in Monaghan, August 1810. Belfast Commercial Chronicle, 20 March 1811, p. 4.