Hanged for Murder

Twenty-nine people convicted of murder were hanged by the Irish State: the executions were carried out in Mountjoy by the Pierrepoint family. The last met his fate in 1954 but the often shocking stories of these men and one woman have been largely forgotten. Here, for the first time, are their tragic stories, some in graphic detail.

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Between 1923 and 1954 the Irish state executed twenty-nine people convicted of murder. Almost all executions were carried out in the hanghouse of Mountjoy Prison by members of the Pierrepoint family. The often shocking and fascinating stories of these men and one woman have been largely forgotten. Their remains lie behind prison walls as strange testaments to an abandoned form of punishment. Among those buried in Mountjoy are Bernard Kirwan, convicted of killing his brother, though a body was never conclusively identified. Kirwan’s presence in Mountjoy Prison and his execution inspired Brendan Behan’s play `The Quare Fellow’. Also there lie Henry McCabe, convicted of killing six people in a house in Malahide, and Annie Walsh, convicted of murdering her husband for compensation money. Few had ever been convicted of a crime before each was convicted of the most serious of all. The voices of some seem to whisper from the unmarked graves that it was not they who carried out the crime as doubts remain about the safety of some of the convictions. `Hanged for Murder’ tells their stories, some in graphic detail, for the first time.