The massacre that Cork forgot: Four dead in bloodbath on Maylor Street

IN the annals of Cork history, few events have been so unspeakably horrific, so gut-wrenchingly tragic, that the city and its people simply wipe it from their collective memory.

But the massacre that occurred at 33, Maylor Street on the night of Thursday, September 17, 1914, falls into that sorry category.

In the family home, a deranged father, William Mullanny, murdered his wife Abina, his daughter Dolly, 18, and son Paul, 9, before killing himself. Another daughter almost died and some of his other children witnessed the bloodbath and narrowly escaped.

In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, an inquest was held, the four people were buried, and their names were not mentioned by the media again.

The city’s stunned, mourning people - already coming to terms with the start of the Great War a week before - could barely bring themselves to discuss what had happened. It became the tragedy that Cork forgot. Here is that story...

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William Mullanny was born in 1865, the son of a sailor, and the family lived in Harper’s Lane (now St Paul’s Avenue), running from Lavitt’s Quay to Paul Street.

When he was 21, he met Abina Brookes of Kinsale, who was 19, and they wed soon after. She was from an industrious family of second-hand clothes dealers and involved in the family business selling in the marketplace in Kinsale.

William was a cobbler, but after they wed in December, 1886, took a more active role in Abina’s business. Soon, they had an extra stall in the Coal Quay.

The couple also began to buy property - at first as a place to store the clothes, then as a means to supplement their income as landlords.

The Mullannys had their first child, Kate, in 1889 and would go on to have 12, of whom eight survived past their first year: Kate, Bridget (Biddy), Dolly, John, Walter, Lizzie, Paul and Christina (Dina).

They moved regularly to accommodate their growing family and after spells in Harper’s Lane, Lavitt’s Quay and Cornmarket Street, settled, in 1900, at 33, Maylor Street, off Patrick Street - a large four-bedroom house.

They had no neighbours, as they were sandwiched between a large Masonic Hall and a wine store, with a butter factory two doors down.

In the ensuing years, William’s drinking became problematic. He had stopped working and was living off the income his wife and eldest daughters brought in, as well as the rents. When drunk, he would return from Jim Barry’s pub down the road at 23, Maylor Street, and become physically abusive and threatening.

In December, 1911, he was arrested, charged at Cork Courthouse with two counts of assaulting his wife, and given two months’ hard labour in Cork male prison. Upon his release he returned to the family home, but matters deteriorated and at some point he moved into a bedroom in the house shared with his sons.

The first of the Mullanny children to leave home was Kate in February, 1914, when she married John Lingwood and went to live in St Finbarr’s Street on the southside of the city. Soon after, 16-year-old Walter left to join the Royal Navy.

There were six children left in the house when the next alarming incident occurred, in August, 1914. Again, police were called when Abina claimed her husband had threatened to kill her and pleaded with police to arrest him. In a statement to Sergeant McGloin, she said: “My husband is very much addicted to drink. On August 13, 1914, at about 8.45am, I came home. I had not slept at home the previous night, through fear of him.

“Immediately that I entered the house he made use of the filthiest expressions to me, and he said he would take my life and blow the head off me. I know he has a revolver. He is a violent man, and I am afraid that he will do me bodily harm, and I pray for a warrant for his arrest.”

Sgt McGloin arrested William and brought him before the Police Court. The resident magistrate, Robert Starkie asked if he had a revolver, but he vehemently denied it.

Mr Starkie ordered two police-men to accompany him and his wife to their home and search the premises. When the police returned, they stated they could not find any firearms.

The Magistrate told the accused he would be discharged by entering the sum of £10, to keep the peace and be of good behaviour. William agreed to this.

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A month later, on Thursday, September 17, William again went to Jim Barry’s pub but seemed unusually sober and quiet when he returned at about 11pm.

In the early hours, a neighbour heard shots but could not determine their location. The first inkling of the tragic events that had occurred in the night was when the children began to spill out on to the street at around 8am on the Friday and scream and shout for help.

Lizzie, 15, had a chest wound and was bleeding badly. While a neighbour called an ambulance, another ran to the nearby General Post Office where a policeman was always on duty. Constable O’Connor and Constable Sharpe raced to Maylor Street where they found Lizzie in the street, standing against a wall.

The house seemed quiet, so the police tended to her, gave her a drink of water, and waited until the ambulance took her to the South Infirmary for treatment.

The constables, along with Gus Groeger, a near neighbour and family friend, then entered the house and were met by a sight that would forever haunt them.

in a room on the first floor they found teenager Dolly lying dead. On the next landing they found the body of Abina, 45. On the top landing, on opening a bedroom door, Constable O’Connor found William lying with serious bullet wounds to the head, unconscious but alive. A revolver was grasped in his hand and O’Connor quickly took it and found it contained two live cartridges and two spent ones.

In the same room, the Constable found Paul dead on the bed.

On ascertaining no-one else was in the house, Constable Sharpe telephoned Dr John Booth, a doctor who lived in the South Mall, who arrived and determined there was no hope of saving William, 47. He died 20 minutes later without regaining consciousness.

Dr Booth briefly examined the other bodies, the house was locked up, and an inquest was scheduled for the next day at 3pm on the premises at 33, Maylor Street.

It was clear to all that William had, in an act of madness, shot his wife and two children and them himself. However, the trauma of that night for the children who survived was yet to be revealed.

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On Saturday afternoon, September 19, a large crowd gathered at the house and, on the jury being sworn in, the Coroner, Mr William Murphy, began taking statements from witnesses to the massacre, who included Bridget, 23, and John, 17.

A reporter described the scene as “particularly pathetic”, the survivors “cried piteously, and the screams of John and Bridget, whose escape from death was so narrow and providential, were heart-rending in the extreme”.

Bridget, in reply to District Inspector Walsh, confirmed her father had come home about 11pm and seemed sober. That day, she, her mother, and Dolly had been supporting the family by selling clothes at the market.

William went to the pantry outside where he used to keep a revolver, and she heard him unlock the door and later lock it again. Bridget next heard him go to the front door and bolt it, and she told her mother: “There is something up.”

Bridget was sleeping with her mother when she was woken at about 2am on hearing Dolly screaming and crying: “Oh my Lord, I am shot.” Her father then broke into their bedroom door.

As quick as she could, Bridget jumped out of bed and went underneath it. Her mother called out: “Biddy, what is the matter,” to which her father replied: “I will let you know what is the matter.”

Abina at once got out of bed and her husband fired two shots at her and she fell on a trunk and breathed heavily. He lit a candle, reloaded his revolver and, on leaving the room, remarked chillingly: “There are two more to be shot.” He then went and shot Lizzie - who survived -and Paul, who was asleep in his bed.

The apparently random nature of the killings may be explained by the fact the crazed William believed some of the children were not his own

He then ran downstairs looking for Bridget, and with that she ran upstairs and hid under his bed, on which her brother Paul lay dead.

It occurred to her he would never think of looking for her there. Her brother John came to her and pulled down the quilt so she would not be seen.

When William came back into the room, he gave John a letter and said: “Here is a letter, give it to your aunt.”

Horrifically, William then slept in the bed with his dead son while Bridget tried to remain quiet underneath it.

In the morning, he got up and had a look at his dead wife, and when he returned, Lizzie was moaning and asking John to come and save her. Her brother pleaded with her father not to shoot Lizzie and thus saved her. William asked John to get a glass of water as he felt sick.

Having drunk it, he noticed Dina talking to Bridget under the bed, so she decided to come out. She asked her father if he was going to shoot her. “No,” he said, “I want you to take care of them. You are my daughter. The others are not.” He then went into his bedroom and shot himself.

The coroner asked Bridget if she ever saw a revolver in the house and she told him three or four years earlier, while her father was on an excursion, she burst open a drawer in the outhouse and saw it. He also had at one time a double-barrel shotgun. He threatened them several times.

Bridget said people used to say her father was mad, but she could not see anything wrong with him.

The next witness, John, 17, stated he was in bed when his father came home. He shared his bed with his little brother Paul and his father had also been sleeping with them of late. When William came home that night, John was reading in bed and his brother was asleep next to him. His father put the light out and went downstairs.

John fell asleep only to be woken by the sound of three gunshots. He got up and saw smoke coming from his mother’s bedroom. His father was coming up the stairs with a revolver in his hand, passed John without comment, and went in and shot Paul as he slept.

“He went to the next bedroom and shot Lizzie,” added John. “She was screeching and roaring that she was shot, and I said to my father ‘Shoot her and put her out of pain’.” He said: ‘No, she will die in a few minutes’.” John’s father told him to go to bed and get some sleep, then brought up a letter, telling him “not to give it to anyone but my aunt”.

The envelope, produced in court, contained a note stating ‘A brother’s request to a sister’ along with three receipts in connection with burials of members of his family in St Joseph’s Cemetery.

John went into heart-breaking detail about how he had helped saved Lizzie. His father went into her room and said he was going to shoot her again, but her pleading seemed to have an effect and William hesitated; John pleaded with his father not to shoot Lizzie, he agreed and left the room.

John said his parents did not get on and confirmed his father had a revolver.

William’s sister, Mrs Rose Cahill, was the final witness and said she did not think he was right in his mind for some time. “He used to talk at random, and one could not rightly understand what he was saying.” She did not know him to utter threats to his family, but on Sunday night he told her he was going away to France. She believed he would as he and his wife were living unhappily for a number of years.

Coroner William Murphy called it “an appalling tragedy that had struck consternation into the hearts of the community where they were unaccustomed to such occurrences”. He was nearly 30 years a coroner, “and never remembered such an appalling calamity”.

The funerals took place amid heart-breaking scenes. The eldest child, Kate, went against her father’s last wishes and interred her mother and siblings in her husband’s Lingwood family plot in St Joseph’s cemetery on Tory Top Road. The large crowd were testament to the high regard in which Abina was held.

The next day, in a much quieter ceremony, William was interred in the cemetery a few hundred yards from his wife and children. None of the surviving children attended.

POSTSCRIPT Bridget married James Neary, a soldier in the Connaught Rangers stationed in Crosshaven. They later relocated to Wales and had four children, one of whom emigrated to California. Bridget died in the U.S state in December, 1964.

Christina moved to Wales with Bridget and there met her husband Walter Webb, the son of a miner. They wed in 1929 and raised a family in Bedwellty. She died in London in 1992, aged 84.

Walter had some sort of breakdown after the tragedy and was discharged from the Royal Navy but seemed to get his life back together, found work with British Rail, married, and raised a family. He died in London in January, 1967.

Lizzie recovered from her wounds and went to work in the UK, but eventually returned to Cork where she died in July, 1978. She was buried in the Lingwood plot with her mother and siblings.

John moved to New York within six months of the massacre. He took up art as a therapeutic tool and sent some of his paintings to an old neighbour in Maylor Street, Michael Malloy - who had been on the inquest jury and befriended John after the tragedy. John died in 1960, aged 63.

As for the house at 33, Maylor Street, it was demolished when the Merchant’s Quay complex was built in the 1990s and nothing remains to remind us of the terrible tragedy that occurred there in September, 1914.