A Conspiracy of Fear & Silence: The Maamtrasna Murders
About this episode
The episode explores the Maamtrasna murders of 1882 and the subsequent miscarriage of justice involving Myles Joyce.
In August 1882, a brutal mass murder in a remote valley in the west of Ireland shocked the world. At Maamtrasna, a family, the Joyces, were attacked in their home. The victims ranged from a teenage girl to an 80-year-old woman. The police quickly suspected that the killers had been neighbours and even relatives of the Joyce family. However, a motive was elusive. As wider Irish society was shocked by the killings, injustice was followed by injustice. Indeed, the trials would soon overshadow the crime itself, unfolding into one of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in the legal history of Ireland or the UK. In this episode, Margaret Kelleher joins me to explore this intriguing case. We dig into the dark events that unfolded in Maamtrasna in the summer of 1882 and examine why an innocent man, Myles Joyce, was sent to the gallows after a trial conducted entirely in English, a language he could neither speak nor understand. The episode reveals what we know happened in Maamtrasna on that fateful night and how perjury and a rush to convict rather than find genuine justice lay at the heart of this intriguing case. This is the story of how a brutal murder in an isolated mountain…
People in this episode
Host: Fin Dwyer
Guest: Margaret Kelleher
Topics covered
- Maamtrasna Murders
- miscarriage of justice
- Irish history
- crime
- political implications
Keywords
- Maamtrasna
- murders
- Myles Joyce
- miscarriage of justice
- Irish history
- crime
- political implications
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: The Maamtrasna Murders: Language, Life and Death in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
Places: Ireland, Maamtrasna
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