John Blakely was arraigned for the murder of his son, Felix Blakely, a child of 6 or 7 years, at Armagh, on the 1st of March, by strangulation with his hands, and other violence. The prisoner pleaded not guilty. The prisoner being too poor to engage professional assistance, his Lordship assigned Mr Blacker as his Counsel. Ann Finlay: I know John Blakely, and knew a woman named Mary Turley. She and prisoner lived together, but she is not dead. They had four or five children, one of them was named Felix; he was the youngest but one. Mary Turley died in confinement of the second child after Felix. Only one of children is now alive – a little girl. I did not see Felix for two months before he was found dead. Before his death he and his father lived for a fortnight in William Rainey’s, Armagh. I sent the child home to his father, at Rainey’s, a fortnight before he (the father) said he took him to a lodging in the country. I sent the child home on a Sunday, and saw it alive, for the last time, on the following Tuesday, at Rainey’s. The child had had the small-pox, and afterwards a bowel complaint, for ten weeks before I sent him away – he had not then recovered. He lost the sight of one of his eyes in the small-pox. On the right foot the second toe decayed from the same disease. After the child’s death, I saw his body. After I heard the child was dead, I went to prisoner at James Mullholland’s, where he was working. I inquired if it was the dead body of Felix that had been brought in? He made no answer for about five or ten minutes. He then said ‘What could he do with it?’ The child. Sure he was tormented with the trouble it gave to every body – no one would take his week’s earning to take care of it.’ ‘John (said I) had you not (you should not have) done what you have done. I never brought a blush to your face (craved you) for all the trouble it gave me. I would have begged the world with it to take care of it.’ (Witness shed tears.) To Mr Blacker: I told prisoner that if he had killed the child, all Ireland could not save him, and that ‘he had better make his road good’. Before the child took the small pox it was a healthy, fine child. I know Mrs Rainey – she is a rather passionate woman. The report was, that she alleged she had no luck in selling anything in her shop, from the time it came about the house, because it was ‘bewitched like’. The opinion of the country-people is, that a bewitched child is a sickly one which has been left in place of a fine child taken away by the fairies. It was reported that Mrs Rainey advised the prisoner to take the head off the child, and throw it behind the fire. To a Juror. I am sister to the prisoner. [Witness here cried bitterly and there was a sensation in court.] Elizabeth Rainey: I am the wife of William Rainey, and live in Armagh. I keep a huckstry. The prisoner lodged in my house for about a month. He left me on the Wednesday after Shrove Tuesday. When he had been with me for about a fortnight, his sister sent a child to him and got its diet with him. It went by the name of Felix. On the Sunday evening before Shrove Tuesday, prisoner borrowed my apron, to put the child and left the house, between seven and eight. He did not say where he was going. He returned in the inside of two hours, without the child, but bringing back the apron. I said to him: ‘John what did the child say when you were leaving it?’ He replied that is said nothing. I said, if they give it a fire, and a bit to eat, it would not give them much trouble, and he replied ‘Not much’. He then asked me for a drink. I told him I had no water except what was hot in the kettle. When prisoner took it away, it wore an old flannel petticoat, with a patch on it – an old torn sarsnet coat – and an old calico bib – I never saw it alive after that night. I saw the dead body of a child in the Infirmary, nearly five weeks afterwards. I think it was that of Felix Blakeley. Dr Colvan. Ann Finlay (last witness), and a Mrs Magill, were present. The prisoner remained in my house till the Wednesday after he took the child away. To Mr Blacker: I live in Lower Irish Street, Armagh. I am married, and have 5 children, from 3 to 15 years of age. The child was bare and hungry-looking; it had the small-pox, and had got bad care in the disease. It had not the appearance of a child of seven years, being spent and sickly. It was old fashioned enough, however, both in look and conversation. It used to sit up on its ‘hunkers’ at the fire, like an old man. It did not appear an ‘idiot’ or a ‘natural’. When the child had been a week in my house, I began to wish its would provide another lodging for it. He said it was getting care enough; but that he had a very good place for it. I asked where the place was. He replied in Mick Duffy’s, in Bannbrook’, or ‘in the Shambles’, I forget which. After I shut my shop of nights, I sometimes have a crack with my husband and a neighbour. We don’t tell old stories, about fairies and so on: how should I know any thing about fairies? (laughter). I never said any thing to the prisoner about fairies, I merely said to him that his child was ‘not right-looking’, and that it should be with me no longer; if it had had good clothes, it would have been like other children. I never called it a witch. I heard my children say, that, when it was up stairs, it used to sing foolish little songs, and that it played little tricks among the ashes, and was ‘bringing wee things (fairies) about the fire’. I don’t know what ‘wee things’, or ‘wee people’ are. I never saw the deceased child do more than play a little trick, as if to the frighten the others. I often asked the prisoner to be allowed to give the child a halfpenny-worth of bread in the day, but he did not say he would permit me. I never told him the child would come to no good; but that if it got care it might thrive. He complained of it, and asked what he would do with it; and I told him he should let his sister keep it, and give her a shilling a week for doing so. I swear, that I never said to him, that I would take of f its head, and throw it behind the fire. Prisoner said that his sister should never get it. He had given the child its supper, before he rolled it up in my apron. Abigal Magill. I lodged in Rainey’s house, on the night that the prisoner took the child away. After he returned, he came to my room, with a candle in his left hand, and asked me for a drink of water. I told him where to get it, and he lifted two tinfuls with his right hand, which trembled in the act. I desired him to take a drink to the child. He said he left it in the country. I never say the child alive, after that; but I saw its body in the Infirmary, after the doctors had sent for me. Before it died, there was a pearl on the right eye, and two of the toes had grown together in the small-pox. To Sir T. Staples: I saw the united toes of the dead body, and often while it was alive. (Witness described the clothes found on the body, and said she was sure they were the same as the child had worn when alive.) To Mr Blacker: When the prisoner told me he had left the child in the country, I had suspicions about it. I never heard quarrelling between Mrs Rainey and prisoner, about the child. I didn’t pay any heed to the idle stories of people who said the child was ‘so and so’ (a changeling)’. Robert Woods. I know Miss Lodge’s grounds, about a mile from this town. I was there on 2[n]d April, about eleven o’clock. In the gripe of a ditch, I observed the dead body of a child. It was wrapped in old clothes, and covered with some tufts of grass and fog. I went to Mr Pooler, Miss Lodge’s gardener and told the circumstance. I next went to Rainey’s, steward to Miss Lodge. A man of Rainey’s and I went to the ditch. In the course of the day an inquest was held on the body. Dr Colvan attended. I saw the body removed from the ditch. There was an old, dirty cloth wrapped round the head, old flannel rolled round the body and a black cloth round its neck. I heard that the body and its clothes were removed to the infirmary. Joseph Barbour: I carried the dead body of a child from Miss Lodge’s side of Mr Dobbin’s dam, to the Infirmary, and delivered it to the doctors. John Colvan, Esq. I am a physician and surgeon. On the 2d April last, I saw a dead body in Miss Lodge’s grounds. The body was that of a child, of probably five or six years. I re-examined the body at the Infirmary. It had the appearance of having been dead for a considerable time. Putrefaction had commenced on the abdomen. It was a cold, dry time of the year, and the place where the body was found was a cool one. It might, therefore, have lain for a longer time than we could reasonably suppose. I named eight or ten days at the time of the inquest, as I was pressed for an opinion, but I thought it might have been dead much longer. My opinion is, that the child’s death was occasioned by external violence. The tongue protruded partially from between the lips and teeth. From these marks, and from the apparent weak state of the child, I not only concluded that its death had been a violent one, but I was even led to form an opinion as to the mode of its death. The skeleton was that of an emaciated child; and, apparently, a little violence would have occasioned death. The wounds appeared to have inflicted by some hard blunt substance. The might have been caused by a fall or a blow. I observed, on the right side of the head, the cicatrix of a large ulcer, which had denuded the bone. The right eye was completely blind, from a disease we term stapholema or projecting humour, and the left eye was also injured from opacities of the cornea. Two of the toes on the right foot had run together, in healing from small-pox. It was I and an apprentice of mine, Mr Davidson, who lifted the body out of the ditch, and undressed it on the field. The clothes on the upper part seemed as if pinned round it; but those on the lower part were put on as they had been worn. To Mr Blacker: the body lay in the ditch with the face up. I did not find internal marks to occasion death. If the child had been exposed to the inclemency of the air, for a short time, it would probably have died, after the infliction of the injuries. The wound betwixt the eyes was not a superficial one. The blood was effused into all the structures down to the bone, which was injured but not broken. In the other wounds, the blood was also effused into all the structures. I thought the wounds the only visible cause of death. John Reavey. I live in Portadown. In April last, I heard of a man’s having killed a child at Armagh. I saw a person answering the description passing through Portadown, and gave information to the Captain of the Police, who ordered a party of his men to go with me. The man I refer to was the prisoner. When he saw us, he escaped into Mr Shillington’s timber, but was captured on the Lurgan road. He told Capt. Locke, that he lived in High Street, Newry. I saw him again in the Police barrack. Capt. Locke warned him not to say anything that might commit himself. My brother and I, Mick Cromey, and Corporal Daly, of the Police, were present with him in the barrack, afterwards. Mick Cromey and my brother asked him why he had killed the child. We could not get him stopped from making declaration of the facts. He gave himself two or three names – one of which was Turley. He also said he had been bred at Sheepbridge. John Wilson, Sub-Constable. It was I who arrested the prisoner. I found him lying in a Mr Boyd’s garden, at the end of Portadown, on 27th April. I told him there was a charge against him, and asked him where he lived. He said, in Newry, or its neighbourhood. He denied that he ever lived at Armagh. Mr Blacker, for the defence, argued, that the evidence did not bear out the second count of the indictment, alleging strangulation as the cause of death; and quoted from Sir Gregory Lewin’s Reports, in support of his argument. He also submitted, as to the first count, charging the death as occasioned by throwing the deceased down to the ground, etc., thereby giving him a mortal wound, that it did not appear, in the evidence of the surgeon, whether the mortal wound was occasioned by a blow, or by a fall on the ground; nad he referred to a precedent given in the work already referred to, to she, that this would not be sufficient to sustain the account. Dr Colvey recalled. My opinion as the cause of death is this, that if life was lingering, after the violence, it may have been finished or accelerated by the inclemency of the weather. The witness’s depositions were then read, where it appeared that he had alleged exposure to the inclemency of the weather as one of the causes of death. Dr Colvan – to the Court. The tongue of the deceased protruded, which indicated suffocation – not strangulation. Strangulation is considered as effected by placing a substance tightly round the neck. Suffocation may be caused by pressing the hand against the throat, and squeezing the wind-pipe. Choking is properly the stopping of the oesophagus, by the presence of some extraneous substance. Sir T Staples quoted from 5 Carrington and Paine 121, as reported in Roscoe on Evidence, 650, to show the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the indictment, so far as regarded the acceptation and admitted meaning of the terms choking and strangulation. Mr Hanna, Q.C. cited from Roscoe, 651, to a similar effect. The court held the precedents good, but did not wish to preclude the prisoner the benefit of a future consideration of the point raised by his Counsel. Mr Blacker then addressed the jury briefly on the part of the prisoner. No witness were called for the defence. His Lordship began his charge to the jury, and his recapitulation of the evidence, at five minutes past three o’clock, and concluded at a quarter past four. At five minutes to five the jury returned to Court with a verdict of guilty. The prisoner did not evince any particular concern when the verdict was announced. He preserved a dogged, listless air during the whole trial; and on one or two occasions we caught him smiling, while chatting with a policeman and the jailers in the dock. Anon, ‘County of Armagh Assizes’, 1
