THE LATE MR TALBOT, THE IRISH DETECTIVE.

Southland Times, Issue 1544, 1 March 1872, Page 3

THE LATE MR TALBOT, THE IRISH DETECTIVE.

Head constable Talbot, for whose murder Kelly has lately been tried and acquitted, seems, by the following account given of him in the Dublin Daily Express, to have been no ordinary man. At the age of nineteen he entered the constabulary, and his taste and talent soon introduced him to the detective department of that body. Finding his country education insufficient for his advancing position, he set to work to improve it. Observing the advantages the lawyers had over him when defending prisoners, he studied jurisprudence so that he could read an Act or prepare a case as well as most of them. Latterly, he had commenced the study of medical jurisprudence. Nor were other studies beneath bis attention. As a tinker he travelled with his budget, and made a good living at it too. He could make and mend shoes, undertake bricklaying, carpentry, slating, plastering, &c. ; all came as by instinct to him, and in farming he was ever at home. Nor were his accomplishments neglected. He played cards with the sharpers and knew their tricks, some of which he exhibited in open Court when prosecuting a gang which had infested a railway line. He could dance a jig or reel, court the girls, and tell a capital story or joke ; but all was acting, for beneath the sparkling surface there was the stern determination to accomplish a purpose unsuspected by any. He was "on duty," and for the detection of crime and protection of society he felt, no doubt, that the end justified any means. At the commencement of the i Crimean war he joined the Commissariat Department, and received a silver medal for his faithful services and ability in a position of trust which he occupied. When the Fenian organisation became so powerful and extended that in order to suppress it a thorough knowledge of tbe leaders and their movements was necessary, Talbot volunteered for the dangerous duty, and so well did he perform it that he received the highest praise at the close of the State trials from the Judges and Crown counsel. To detail his exploits would fill a volume, and through his means nearly 200 of the leaders and active men of the Fenian body in the district of Limerick and adjoining counties were convicted. Adopting the name of Kelly, he appeared on the banks of the Shannon as a water bailiff, became acquainted with the neighbors, was sworn into the Fenian Brotherhood, and was ultimately made a head centre. He was as good a Catholic as any of them, regular at Mass every Sunday, attentive to his confessional duties, and even partook of the sacred elements publicly. Little did the Fenians who came to the chapel to confess know, as they wero repulsed by the priest, that the big woman devotionally kneeling alongside with beads and book was noting every one of them, to report them to Dublin Castle that night. Talbot stopped at nothing, and through his information the Fenian conspiracy was frustrated and the lives of thousands of people saved, as well aa a vast amount of public money.