Book review: Revisiting a grisly death on Ireland’s Eye in Victorian times

An authoritative and very readable account of a case which would likely cause just as sensational a scandal now as it did in 1852

A file photo of Howth Harbour

SCREAMS rang out across Howth Harbour, around 7pm on the evening of Monday, September 6. 1852, and witnesses said the cries came from the direction of Ireland’s Eye, the small, uninhabited island less than a mile from shore.

That morning, fishermen had dropped William Burke Kirwan and his wife Maria to Ireland’s Eye, where William, described half a century later in the Weekly Irish Times as “an artist of no mean order”, said he would spend the day sketching the island, with its Martello tower and 8th century church ruins, and Maria, “a remarkably fine-looking person”, would take walks and enjoy sea swims.