Cover-Ups and Confusion: John Twiss Brought up for Trial

I say this, the jurymen should not bring me in through the evidence of a child – John Twiss, Speech from the Dock James Donovan, an emergency-man living in Glenlara, near Newmarket, Co Cork, was bludgeoned to death in the early hours of 21st April 1894.  John Twiss of Castleisland and Eugene Keeffe of Glenlara […]

‘Three Cheers for Castleisland’ – The Innocence of John Twiss

When John Twiss was arrested on 25 April 1894, within days of the brutal murder, at Glenlara, of caretaker James Donovan, he explained to officers that he and his sister Jane were financially dependent on the tolls of a local Kerry fair.[1]  The fair, he informed them, was imminent, and he asked if he could […]

‘Where is Glenlara?’: John Twiss of Castleisland, from a Cork Perspective

‘The dogs in the street knew John Twiss was innocent’ As the descendants of John Twiss, and the Michael O’Donohoe Memorial Heritage Project, await the outcome of the application for the Presidential Pardon of Twiss, hanged in 1895 for a crime he maintained he did not commit, a space is given here to reflect on […]

Death before Dishonour: John Twiss’s Speech from the Dock

I did not think that there was a juryman ever put a coat on his back would find me guilty A reporter of the trial of John Twiss in 1895 made the following assessment of him from his speech from the dock:   He was an ignorant man in the sense that he got no […]