A PICTURE OF IRELAND.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 4, Issue 1206, 17 October 1882, Page 2

A PICTURE OF IRELAND.

THE JOYCE FAMILY MOBDERS.HORRtBLE DETAILS.

Auckland, Ootober 16. The following details are to hand by the San Francisco mail ; As a picture of the condition of Western Ireland, the special correspondent of the "Irish Times" sends ut graphic Recount of the murdor of tha Joyce family, The locality in which the crime was committed lies in the wildcat and loneliest district o( tho moat remote regions of Connemara, and is almost inaccessible, owing to mounwin fastnesses and mileßof lake around whiohit is situated. The land here forms a purtimi of the ostite of Colonel Clements, whoso tonanlry in the Joyco county, uuuihering some three or four hundred,_ hfivo, with one or two' trifling exception, not paid a single farthing of rent during the last three years. John Joyce was one of these tenants. He was 45 yeavj of age, and some lime ago held a farm from the murlered Eur] of Leiirim, at a district in the foyce county called Deny Pavk, but he had been evicted. In 1877, then beinga widower with four children, he married he poor woman who phared bis tra"ie fiito. She was a widow, and at the time of the weddiin. was in the possession of a f»rm at Uvmt nana. Since then he had lived peaceably on tho farm, his mother, Margaret Joyco, aged 18; and his sons, Michael Joyce, ««ed 16, and Patriok Joyce, Ujtesidingin the same house with him, and his wife, Biidgol His eldest son, Martin, a young man of 20, lived at Olonbur, being a servant in the employment of George Hare, a f aimer, and to this circumstance he owes his escape from beinj one of the victims of the bloody tragedy. Happears that the Joyco family relived to bed at their usual hour, John Joyce and his wife sleeping on a miserable httlo bed composed of rags and straw, and placed in a slight recess in the wall a few feet from tho door on the left hand side as tho cabin is entered. The rest of the family slept in one bed, a wretched couch in an inner apartment, the old woman and one of her grandsons lying with then heids towards the little window, and Margaret and her other brother lying tn the contrary direction. By this means it was sought to enable four occupants of one bed to find room on a couch whioh was so smill that it had even to be lengthened by tbeplaeing of s barrel enduppoimost at the foot of the bed AH was quiet for the first few hours, and nothing occurred to disturb the reposiof the sleepers till about 1 o'clock iu the morning, when as Michael related with his dying breath, he heard shots, the door was taken off its hinges, and a number of armed assassins pmirod inln the cabin. His father was shot on. the floor, having sprang out ot bed, the wife was bludgeoned to death, and the inner room was then entered, and the feeble old grandmother attacked, and her skull crushed by a rain of blows, which left bone, blond, and bram one red mass of pulp. Michael was shot in the head and stomach and his sister was struck on the head by a blow which left her a corpse, and Patrick, tho younger ohild, was badly beaten over the head and face with a stick. To do their hellish work with greater certainty and more despatch the murderers lighted the room with a b toning piece of bog deal. Having completed their bloody and oruel murders, they departed, disappearing in the darkness from the scene where they had wrought such inhuman slaughter. Michael, wounded fafally and his bowels protruding through n bullet-rent in the stomach, orawled out of the bed in which lay tho copses of his grandmother and his sister, and went to the kitchen for a drink of water to quenoh the burning thirst that parched his tips, and added so greatly to tho agony he endured. He found his father lying dead on tho floor, and his stepmother dying in her bed, Terrified and faint, afraid to returnto thathorriblo bed, reeking with gore and ghastly with its (lead, trembling with dread to remain by the naked corpse of his father, feeling the pangs of death himself, he crept in by the side of his father's wife. She lay moaning, but, though her head and face had been beaten into a bloody mass, she did not dio till some time subsequently. At lonoth tusson of a neighboring favmer, named Collins accompanied by two j women, named O'Brien, who were coming to the cabin to borrow a pair of cards for wool-spinning, arrived at the door, and Collins entered. He saw the dead body of his noighbor lying stork and nsked on the clay floor, with,two bullet holes in his side. Alarmed at what he had seen, he did not advance further, but raised an alarm in the village, which lies in a scattered straggling form alone the valley and mountain sides. |fhe villagers soon collected, and a body of them entered the cabin. There they beheld a spectacle which beggars descrintion. They spoke to tho boys, who told their mournful tale as well as thoy could, and they counted the corpses that lay around them. At half-pastnine, o'clook, eleven men' went to the police hut at Finney, two miles aqrpss,the mountains, and told "hat ,they|Aid seen and heard. Two .Gonßtabplary;meu returned, with tnem, .and .Visited the oibiu, when they beheld a.sight of the most terrible character. Two dogs were in the bed where the bodies of the grandmother and granddaughter were lying, and they had eaten iJill the flesh off the left arm of the old woman, which was hanging over the bedside. The police tried to drive away the animals, which were a sort of sheepdog, but they had the greatest difficulty m doing so, as the dogs ran under the bed, evidently reluctant to leave their horrible feast of human flesh. When at length they were driven away they are said to havo become mad, and were destroyed by the inhabitants of the place.