As fans of James Joyce celebrate Bloomsday and Ulysses, evidence has emerged of a horrific attack in Dublin that is likely to have influenced an earlier work by the author.
Details of the manslaughter of a woman by her husband in Dublin almost 150 years ago found strong echoes in 'Counterparts' by Joyce which he included in his book of short stories, 'Dubliners', written four decades later.
Peter Reilly was described as a low-sized, stout man of 43 years of age, with nothing in his appearance to indicate ferocity or a tendency to commit an act of such terrible violence as that with which he had been charged.
The inquest opened at Jervis Street Hospital. The first to give evidence was Catherine Skene, the victim’s mother, who described the scene she saw when she arrived at the house:
"I went to the bedroom but there was no light in the place. It was about one o’clock on Wednesday morning.
"I told Agnes to light a match, and then I saw my daughter lying on the floor in a pool of blood. She was quite naked. Her head was under the shelf of the dressing table.
"I went to take a quilt off the bed to cover her but Reilly would not allow me. I then took off my cloak and spread it over her.
"I called him either a murderer or a monster and asked him to come to an hospital in order to get some assistance. He bid me take her where I liked."
The second witness to give evidence was Philip Reilly, described as "a fine intelligent boy of about eleven years of age":
"On Tuesday night last my father brought myself and my younger brother to the pantomime at the Theatre Royal. When the pantomime was over we went to John Mulligan’s public house, Poolbeg Street, where my father met a friend of his named Hughes with whom he had some drink after which the friend brought us home at about 11 o’clock.
"Hughes waited till the door was opened by my brother, Peter, who is going on six years of age, and then went away.
"My father came in with us but afterwards went out for a short time, about three minutes. When he came in the second time my mother went to hide from him under the bed.
"He took off the big coat he has on him now and pulled her out by the hair of the head and beat her about the ribs.
"After beating her into a fit he desired my little brother to throw water upon her as she lay upon the floor.
"After she was on the floor she never spoke a word but was working in a fit. After the fit, Dada kicked her in the back, the side and under the ribs.
"I saw blood on the floor and about her dress. I saw her when [I was] in the kitchen thrown by my father against the grate; that cut her above the eye … I think mother had a little drink that night.
"After that, he dragged her by the hair of the head into the bedroom. I then saw him kicking her again. He then took the candle and was going to set fire to her but her petticoats were wet and they would not burn.
"He then pulled her over to the fireplace when her clothes would not take the fire and laid her back across the fender and put her head under the grate. There was a fire burning at the time."
Philip Reilly then told the jury that his younger brother, Peter, cried in the bed and his father went to beat him.
While his father was out of the room, the boy pulled his mother away from the fire.
"After that, father kicked mother and I heard something inside her crack … I went then for my grandmother and she came along with my Aunt Agnes to the house."
Peter Reilly pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to serve 20 years penal servitude.
James Joyce’s short story Counterparts recounts the adventures of a disenchanted clerk, Farrington, who returns home drunk after a row with his employer and beats his son.
The story has several common traits to the actual assault perpetrated by Peter Reilly on his wife in 1868.
Both involve a man leaving Mulligan’s drunk and returning home to commit a terrible assault on a family member.
The theatre, the grate, the beating of a child, the nobility of the child, the darkness of the house, the description by Joyce that Farrington’s wife bullies him, and the association of the real and fictional wives with religion are other lesser elements that connect the two stories of fact and fiction.
There are, however, marked differences. The attack by Farrington arises from a build-up of tension throughout the day.
The attack by Reilly appeared to have come from an instantaneous surfacing of anger. Reilly’s wife is seen to have provoked him. No such accusation could be made against young Tom Farrington.
The assault by Reilly occurred 15 years before Joyce was born, but the horrific nature of the story is likely to have made it a talking point in Dublin long afterwards.
Although there is no proof that Joyce was influenced by the real event and, in fact, such cases were not unusual, it is worth noting because of the number of similarities between the attack by Reilly and Joyce’s narrative in Counterparts, most notably Mulligan’s.
