He voted at that election. He remembered the Sunday Mr Reidy was holding his meeting. On that day witness was in Mr J.K. O’Connor’s yard in the evening. Before he went into the yard, he was in the kitchen. He got whiskey from the servant girl. The kitchen was full and they were all getting whiskey … He had two pints of porter in the yard … It was taken from a barrel … Witness did not pay for the porter or whiskey nor did he see anybody paying for it. They all got porter.6
Culloty claimed he was told by Mrs O’Connor that she ‘would leave a pint for me every day for six months’, whereas Denis Reidy had only ordered one pint for him at some point before the election. Michael Brosnan told the court that he voted at Curranes and that prior to polling day, Mrs O’Connor came to his house to ask for his vote. There was drink available at the polling station:
Did you get drunk there? – There was drink all over the place [laughter]. I got drunk there anyway [more laughter].
In further examination, he said he got drink from Thomas Griffin, a son of Patrick Griffin’s, Mr O’Connor’s personating agent. He didn’t see Maurice O’Connor, high nor dry, at the barrel of porter [laughter].
Mr Serjeant Moriarty – Nobody was dry that day [laughter].
Witness – The day was dry, sir. [loud laughter].7
‘A gallon of whiskey’
A Mrs Murphy was working in the O’Connor’s kitchen on the Sunday evening prior to the election. She said Dan Murphy, a local publican, was there and was in charge of a barrel of porter which had come from Hartnett’s bar nearby. ‘She could not tell what time it [the barrel]was brought. She was in and out of the house during the day. How did it come in, “it didn’t walk in”’, questioned counsel.
Witness said she did not know.
Did you see whiskey given out in the kitchen? – Yes.
You had a bottle of whiskey? – Yes.
Did you know everyone you gave whiskey to? – I knew them at the time.
How many did you give whiskey to, thirty or forty? – Yes, the people that came from Brosna.
The porter came from Hartnett’s; did Hartnett come with it? – I could not tell you.
Who told you to order it? – I ordered it myself (sensation in court)
Who authorised you? – I know the men were coming in on Sunday and I went to Mr O’Connor and asked him what would I get. He told me to get whatever I wanted.
What did you order? – A half tierce8 of porter and a gallon of whiskey … I knew Mr O’Connor was holding a meeting in Brosna. There were a number of supporters with him. It was for the purpose of giving refreshments to the people that went to Brosna that I ordered the porter and whiskey in.9
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‘Seventy-three gallons of porter’
It wasn’t just in Castleisland establishments that alcohol was allegedly used to influence voters. Knocknagoshel, in which there were ten public houses in 1908, was targeted not only by O’Connor, but also by Reidy, the court heard. Daniel O’Connor, a publican in Knocknagoshel, supplied drink worth £7 17s to voters on Reidy’s orders, while his neighbour Simon Keane had a bill for £7 16s in the name of J.K. O’Connor and £2 9s in the name of Denis Reidy. Among the recipients of free porter on Keane’s books was ‘Dan the Bird’, who was described in court as a ‘local character’. Two other local men, Edward Devane and Cornelius McAuliffe, went to vote at Curranes and got drink at the polling station, they said. One of O’Connor’s agents, Bryan O’Connor, had taken porter, whiskey and port wine to the polling station – he tapped one of the porter barrels and ‘let them drink and be damned to it’. A bottle of special whiskey was reserved for the polling clerks on duty. As Justice of the Peace, J.K. O’Connor was in the advantageous position of being able to swear in the polling clerks in his own electoral division, which had five polling stations. One of those clerks was John Fitzgerald, who told the court that when he made his declaration of secrecy before O’Connor, he was told, ‘You’ll see me alright below.’10
One of J.K. O’Connor’s most prominent supporters, Daniel ‘Dan Spud’ Murphy, took the stand on the sixth day of evidence. He denied that the candidate had instructed him to give drink to voters. Murphy accepted that he took friends of his to Maurice Hogan’s public house on polling day and ‘at all events’ was responsible for the price of seventy-three gallons of porter. ‘Are you in the habit,’ the witness was asked, ‘of bringing people into other public houses and treating them there?’ ‘Well, once in a while,’ he said, to which the commissioner responded ‘Only at triennial elections’, to further raucous laughter. Murphy admitted he was fully willing to lose £30 or £40 to the election because ‘Mr O’Connor is a gentleman I highly appreciate.’ At times, the level of farce reached new heights: ‘The name of (witness) Margaret Callaghan was called. She’s dead, came a voice from the body of the court, and sad to say the announcement was received with a titter,’ reported the Kerry People.11 The chief prosecutor, Serjeant Moriarty, took ill halfway through the proceedings and was indisposed for several days. On the sixth day of the trial, the commissioner was forced to temporarily vacate the bench and allow the defendant into his chair – it was the day on which Petty Sessions would normally be heard and only the local magistrate, one J.K. O’Connor, could formally open and immediately adjourn the proceedings to allow the current business to continue.
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‘Unlimited drink in every village’
A.M. Sullivan rose to present the defence case on behalf of the sitting councillor. J.K. O’Connor, he said, was not defending himself against about eighty charges of bribery, undue influence and procuring personation for the sake of his county council seat; rather, he was defending his own person against such charges. Denis Reidy was indulging in unlimited personal accusations against his client, forty of which had been absolutely disproved by the evidence produced by the petitioner himself. It was a catalogue of crime of which J.K. O’Connor was ‘absolutely innocent’. O’Connor never ordered free drinks for his supporters in public houses, he never went into a public house during the election and where he learned of treating, he did all he could to prevent it:
The candidate was not the leader. He was used by every faction and party and his name was used as a weapon to best their own opponents. In this constituency at the time the election took place there were innumerable factions, political and personal, each of whom took up one of the candidates and used him in conducting his campaign against his enemy.
As soon as O’Connor heard of what was going on, he went to publican Richard Shanahan and said there was no justification for it: ‘I can beat that fellow (Reidy), three to one, and if the election is to be won by porter, I would prefer not to win it at all.’ The barrister continued, according to the Kerry People, in ‘convincing tones’:
Mr O’Connor could not stop it. In view of the provocation of Reidy himself it was impossible to stop it, and with the example before them of open houses it was impossible to expect that his friends would stand aside, and consequently this campaign of competitive treating commenced by Reidy, waxed hotter and hotter, culminating on polling day with unlimited drink in every village and where there was no village an unlimited supply of drink was served to all-comers. Competitive appeals to corruption.
‘A very ordinary episode in this country’
O’Connor, his defence counsel insisted, had never gone about ‘ladling out drink’ when canvassing votes. No evidence
