Clodagh Finn: It’s too late for justice but we can remember Margaret 

One woman a week has died violently in Ireland since the beginning of 2023.

The anniversary on Wednesday of the suspicious death of Offaly woman Margaret McCarthy at the age of 26 will pass below the radar.

That’s easy to understand as she was killed 126 years ago. And time erases so much. Yet, it is important to recall her case because Margaret Mary McCarthy of Birr in Co Offaly did not get justice after she died of the injuries inflicted on her by her soldier husband in faraway Bermuda on February 8, 1897.

The stark truth of that leaps from the newspaper reports of the time which mention her broken limbs and severe head injuries, alongside utter disbelief that her husband, Colour-Sergeant Thomas McCarthy, might have been responsible for them.

He was charged with her murder but acquitted by a jury in Hamilton, Bermuda’s capital, on April 9, 1897. The four-day trial generated widespread interest because “of the very peculiar fact that the only direct evidence given against and for the prisoner was his own”, to quote the Larne Times.

In other words, the only version of events that was heard in court came from Colour-Sergeant Thomas McCarthy of the 2nd Battalion Leinster Regiment. He explained to the Chief Justice and jury that he had arrived back at his two-roomed quarters around 10pm on February 5. He tripped on the slop pail and, in a fit of fury, flung the bucket into an unlit room where it accidentally hit his wife.

“It appeared at the time that the man was in an irritable state. It might be that he had been drinking,” the Freeman’s Journal reported.

Margaret McCarthy had broken bones and severe head injuries.

The court also heard that the accused admitted to being quick-tempered, although much was made of the fact that he was a highly respectable man and showed deep remorse after the ‘accident’.

As the Leinster Reporter put it: “It is fair to the unfortunate man to mention that from the time of the fatal blow he was so much distressed as to be totally unable to sleep for several days; and his action altogether during that time was entirely consistent with that of an innocent man and no wilful murderer.”

In any event, Margaret Mary McCarthy died in hospital three days later, leaving a young child behind. Another child from the couple’s four-year marriage had died previously. The Midlands Tribune noted that the only consolation in the case was the fact Margaret was buried in Bermuda beside the body of her child on February 8.

The court heard nothing of the broken limbs or, as was previously reported in the bluntest of terms, 'that her brains had been dashed out'

“The whole case seems to have been played off as a tragedy when, in all instances, it looks like she was murdered,” says independent researcher Stephen Callaghan, who wrote of the case on his blog thebarracksquare.ie

“It’s a heartbreaking story and Margaret has been lost to history,” he adds.

Though, she is not quite lost because we can recall her case and look at how it was reported in a disbelieving media.

On April 10, 1897, the Leinster Reporter wrote of the “alleged appalling tragedy in the Leinster regiment”, saying it had stunned the local community from end to end.

It is interesting to note that Margaret’s brother, Thomas Price, served in the same regiment. He wrote to tell their parents, Henry Price, a shoemaker, and his wife, Jane, that Margaret had died after a surgical operation. He said “that he had the melancholy privilege of seeing her body lowered into the grave by sympathising comrades”.

Later, Quarter-Master Sergeant Haines broke the news “as gently as possible” that the death was occasioned by violence. Then further deeply disturbing details emerged, which the paper reported like this:

“The grim allegation being next ventilated [was] that there was not alone a murder but that the hand of the assassin was his who had sworn at the altar to protect and defend her while life endured.

“But the picture has a blacker die yet if it is true that he broke his wife’s limbs, and dashed out her brains: in short perpetrated the crime after a fashion which denoted that the executioner was a raving maniac.”

At the same time, the newspapers were at pains to point out the good character of Thomas McCarthy. When the couple married, at the age of 22, “it was a pure love match,” one said.

She was described as a tall handsome girl “of a peculiar bright disposition and extremely popular with a host of friends” while he “stood six feet one and a half inches high, and was a smart and promising young soldier”.

Stephen Callaghan takes up the story: “Shortly after getting married, Thomas was posted to the 2nd Battalion, Leinster Regiment, which was based in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. They stayed there until the battalion moved to Malta in November 1894. A year later, they moved to Bermuda.”

After the trial, Thomas McCarthy returned to his regiment but, says Callaghan, he was later discharged.

“Contemporary reporting of the incident raises many more questions than are answered, and perhaps if the same case was tried today, poor Margaret would have got the justice she deserves,” he says.

You would certainly hope so, or that at least the evidence heard in court would not be confined to the words of the accused. 

Then again, you have to wonder if attitudes towards gender-based violence have really changed that much in the last century

Just last month, researchers in the UK found that many specialist police officers still believe rape myths, such as the belief that a woman’s behaviour plays a part in her rape. “We investigate the victim more than the offence itself,” one senior police officer admitted.

Here, the number of sexual assaults on women is rising and one woman a week has died violently in Ireland since the beginning of 2023.

To highlight that appalling statistic, more than 1,000 people last week rallied in Lurgan, Co Armagh, in memory of Natalie McNally, a 32-year-old woman who was stabbed to death in her home in December. She was 15 weeks pregnant.

On St Brigid’s Day, another protest outside the Dáil in Dublin called for more measures to address the scourge of violence against women in our society.

There has been some progress, but it has been slow and tortuous. This week, for instance, the Defence Forces said it is looking for external consultants to deliver gender, diversity, and unconscious bias training.

That comes only after the incredibly brave Women of Honour group spoke of sexism, bullying, sexual assault, and rape in the Defence Forces in 2021.

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We are also due to get some much-needed new data when the Central Statistics Office publishes an up-to-date national survey on sexual violence in Ireland this spring, some 20 years after the first one.

The only register of all the women who died because of gender-based violence is Women's Aid's excellent Femicide Watch, which began in 1996.

What of all the women who died before that date, such as Margaret Mary McCarthy? I would like to see a database where her story is recorded. It’s the very least we can do for her.