Stories from Old Newspapers
Saunder’s News-Letter 9 January 1787
About three weeks ago one Hassett, a farmer, of the
neighbourhood of Mountain Castle, County Waterford, was in a most violent and
cruel manner dragged out of his house by the Right Boys, and carried on a horse
barebacked twenty miles and upwards, to Newcastle, Co Tipperary, and there
buried, during the late first and snow up to his chin in a pit lined with
briars and furze, where he lay for a whole night. This barbarous cruelty was
inflicted by the Right Boys on this poor man, for having dared to break through
Captain Right’s proclamation, in having taken a farm before it had lain waste,
or had been in any other hands but the former lessee, for three years.
Informations were sworn shortly after against some of the villains, who were
known, before Sir John Keane, Esq., Cappoquin, one of his majesty’s Justices of
the Peace…but unless the unfortunate sufferer Hassett is protected, it is much
to be feared he may be murdered, as was lately one Dunn, near Johnstown, Co
Kilkenny, for attending last assizes at Clonmel to prosecute some White Boys,
who cut off his ears, as a punishment for taking his own tithes.
Note: The ‘Right Boys’ were a new version of the
‘White Boys’ and were established in 1785, led by an imaginary leader ‘Captain
Right’. The Boys committed attacks on agents, middlemen, tithe proctors and
others. They were denounced by the Catholic clergy.
