AN IRISH ABDUCTION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1341, 16 May 1885, Page 3

AN IRISH ABDUCTION.

The abduction of an heiress from Couaty Tipperary is reported. One Sunday evening, five armed men entered the house of a wealthy farmer named Hayes, living near Thurles. Hayes was seated at the kitchen fire with the members of the family, including a daughter, a girl 20 years of age, when the band of abductors entered. One of them presented a revolver at him, while the others seized the girl and carried her off in the direction. of Cappawbite, a district which has obtained notoriety for its lawless acts. They took her to a farmhouse where she was detained until the next day. The only motive for the outrage .which can be conjectured is that she has a fortune of £IOOO, and it is supposed that some of the party hoped to induce her to give her hand to him with the money in it, but when released she gave information against her captors, and the police speedly; arrested four of them. Until the practice was put down by penal legislation it was a common thing in some parts of Ireland for a lover to carry off a girl, and thus to compel the parents to agree to the match and give such a dowry as the parties might demand. The last remarkable case of abduction in Tipperary was that of Mrs Arbuthnot by Mr Carden, a gentleman of property, who took her out of a carriage of Lord Gough’s as she was returning from church on- a Sunday, He was prosecuted, with the full concurrence of, the lady, who did not reciprocate his passion, and suffered two years’ imprisonment.