THE McCANN CASE

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 976, 6 April 1911, Page 4

THE McCANN CASE

During the debate on the address-in-reply in the House of Commons on February 7, the McCann case was discussed. Mr Devlin, replying to Mr J. H. Campbell (member for Trinity College), said that from the moment this incident was first mentioned In the public press — and even now, with all the privileges of Parliament to defend these gentlemen—they had uot said who the priest was. He challenged Mr Campbell before the House to let them know the name ot the priest. He would tell him further that of his own knowledge the priest against whom these sinister insinuations had been made was prepared to take him or any of his impeachers into the public courts. He said the reason he could not name the priest was because the woman did not know him ! Let the House mark this. Documents had been published, statements had been made, and a priest’s name had been specially published as “Father C .” Who was

“Father C ?” Mrs McCann said she did uot know the name, Tne touching and elaborate and pathetic statement of this woman, written six weeks or two months alter the events referred to in it — written five days before his (the speaker’s) election in West Belfast —written and printed before the Lord Lieutenant ever received it, and sent out in shoals into the Fuglish and Scotch constituencies in order to produce a “tremendous effect” on the minds of Nonconformist electors in those countries. That was the statement made, and he (Mr Devlin) felt the pathetic character of this case. He regretted the necessity for intervention, but it would be proved that this was a wretched domestic quarrel between these people—one of the lowest and meanest domestic quarrels that ever came iuto an ordinary court, not to speak of the Court of Parliament. He had written to each clergyman connected with the church in the district in which she resided. He had asked that statements should be sent to him from these clergymen, and the only definite declaration made by any of them was to the effect that she herself sent tor this priest in order to exercise his undoubted influence as a priest in bringing peace into the family, to try to assuage the matter there, and in order to create domestic happiness in the home which they were asked to believe be entered in order to kidnap the children. Mr Devlin then referred to the declaration he had received from the priests of the districts. The first said that Mrs McCann called on him at the beginning of October, 1910, to see if he would go to settle some differences between herself and her husband. He went to her house at once with pleasure iu the hope of being able to do some good. That was his first visit. He found that their life was unhappy, that disputes had been frequent, and rendered necessary the intervention of the police. He (the priest) counselled peace. Contrary to certain statements in the press, he said it was absolutely false that he or any other priest took the children away. This declaration added that she left her husband in consequence of the disagreements and took lodgings iu Buckingham Street. The hon. gentleman passed to the statement of one of the curates, who said that in his capacity of priest he visited them for the first time in January, 1910. Neither then nor on any subsequent occasion had he informed Mrs McCann that she was not properly married or was living in sin, or that her children were illegitimate. He had had no part iu breaking up the borne, nor in bringing about the separation. The non. member, continuing, said he had received that morning by post a letter from some friend of McCann’s- It was in McCann’s writing. It told one of the most sordid tales of domestic misery that he had ever read. He did uot want to attack Mrs McCann. He was willing to give this letter to any two Protestant members of the House, and when they had considered the statements in the ‘memorial’ and the other documents, let them form for themselves a judgment as to whether it was not one of the most scandalous political dodges utilised by the men who, in order to slander and libel a nation, dragged iu miserable conflicts into the arena of Parliament to further their own scandalous objects. Mr Dillon, iu the course of his speech on the subject, said : It had been alleged that the children had been spirited away by a priest, lie did not believe there was a single word of truth in that, though that was one of the many things put before the House. He

believed that the children were taken away by their own father perfectly legitimately; at all events, he bad good reason to believe, although he could uot state that on his own knowledge, that the priest had nothing whatever to do with taking away the children. Nothing had been said to prove that the children were not removed by their father, who had a right to remove them. Next there was the alleged desertion of the wife by the husband. It was alleged that McCann deserted her under the orders of the priest, who persecuted the husband until he left his wife. Not one tittle of evidence had, however, been laid before the House in support of that. It was a monstrous thing that for political i purposes that debate should have been inaugurated by hon. members who had not produced one shred of evidence to support their allegations. There was a letter which he was told and believed was in the handwriting of McCann himself. That letter was in his hand, and hon. members could see it ; but the address had been torn off. It was a long document, giving a horrible history of a sordid, disgusting family life. In the very first sentence the husband said : ‘As the husband of the woman in the recent Belfast trial, I desire to say that the priest had no more to do with the case than the editor of the Irish News ; and to show you how utterly impossible it was for me to live in the same house with this woman’ —and he then went on to give a hideous picture of their life for several years. He found it impossible to live with her. Pie writes that her letter — or what was supposed to be her letter —to the Lord Lieutenant was all, or nearly all, ‘a pack of lies.’ He writes that he is not a cruelhearted man, as the Presbyterian minister would have people to believe ; Mr McCann was as well entitled to be heard in that House as his wife was, although he (Mr Dillon) did uot think either of them was entitled to have those ex-parte statements read in that House. The letter went on :

“She says I asked her to change her faith on account of the way the priests were rating me. I never said anything of the kind. I did ask her to get married so that we could live like Catholics. She says that during the first thirteen months there was never a dispute about religion ; but there was never a day went by without a dispute.” Mr McCann’s letter sounds more genuine than Mrs McCann’s. Finally there was the evidence of the priest, confirmed by this letter, that when the unfortunate man took the child in his arms and brought it to be baptised, this delightful woman followed him into the Catholic church, and pulled away the girl whom he had got to hold the child as godmother and when he interposed she got hold of him in the church and pounded him with her fists, and the police had to interfere ; and that, finally, she went home and broke the windows of her own house. That was not a picture of a home of happiness and peace iuto which this diabolical man, this Mephistopheles, the Catholic priest, entered, and for the first time was the cause of disturbance and dispute. Apparently this was a domestic tragedy dragging on for years ; and he (Mr Billon) did not pretend to adjudicate upon the relative merits and demerits of Mr and Mrs McCann. They seem to have been an ill-mated pair, and, like many a man who went as peacemaker, the priest had been unfortunate. He did most sincerely say that he believed firmly that this case was au electioneering case, and that the public would never have heard of Mr and Mrs McCann had it not been for the elections. It was nothing short of an outrage to bring the matter before the House of Commons.

Commenting on the above, the Tablet says:—“lf Mrs McCann were at all a sensitive sort of person —which she very manifestly is not—she would by this time be praying to be saved from her Iriends. Not out of sympathy for her, but for purely political purposes, her ill-advised Orange champions dragged the case into the arena of the House of Commons ; and in the thorough and comprehensive airing which it received iu the Parliamentary discussion the humbug and hypocrisy which from first to last have marked this unprincipled agitation were fully exposed. We give elsewhere the substance of the vigorous and telling speeches made by Messrs Birrell, Dillon, and Delvin, the effect of which is to place this now famous case in a very unpicturesque, uot to say squalid, setting, and at the same time to vindicate the priests from the faintest imputation of interference with the ‘ happy home.' For the convenience of readers we

briefly summarise the main facts which were brought out in the House of Commons discussion. It was shown : (i) That, in the opinion of Mr Birrell, K.C., ‘ nothing would have been easier for Mrs McCann than to obtain in a civil court all the remedies she requires.’ (2) That before any priest made his appearance on the scene at all the domestic life of the McCanns was anything but happy, and the police bad to be called in frequently owing to their quarrels. (3) That every statement in Mrs McCann’s memorial to the Lord Lieutenant was specifically and emphatically denied by Mr McCann. (4) That the priests did nothing whatever to interfere with a ' happy home,’ but that, on the contrary, two of them were in the first instance sent for with the express view ol getting them to make peace. (5) That the Orange speakers were challenged again and again to name the priest who had, as they alleged, advised Mrs McCann’s husband to leave her, and the challenge was not taken up. Both Mr Devlin and Mr Dillon repudiated the assertion that a priest did this, and declared that if a priest were named he would at once test the matter in a court of law by taking action for libel. (6) That Mr Devlin has received specific statements from each of the three priests in the district to the effect that they had not persuaded or in any way induced the man to desert the woman, as alleged. (7) That the alleged desertion took place in October, and that the facts were then known to Mrs McCann’s friends, but no action was taken by them till December, five days before the West Belfast election, when —as one indiscreet partisan expressly stated —it would ‘be useful in stiffening up the waverers.’ If the priests did not persuade or induce McCann to leave the woman, the protestors have not so much as a vestige of a grievance against the Church ; and the whole agitation stands exposed — in Mr Devlin’s expressive phrase as ‘ a scandalous political dodge.’