{"id":7577,"date":"2021-03-10T19:13:26","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T01:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7577"},"modified":"2023-12-09T19:25:21","modified_gmt":"2023-12-10T01:25:21","slug":"mfdj-03-10-2021-colleen-bawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7577","title":{"rendered":"MFDJ 03\/10\/2021: Colleen Bawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Gentle and Pleasant Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/h3>\n

The tragic story of the \u201cColleen Bawn\u201d has been the subject of books, plays, films, songs and at least one opera but it is based on fact.<\/p>\n

The girl was Ellen Hanley and she was brutally murdered at the young age of 15 in mid-July 1819\u00a0years ago.<\/p>\n

As a result of her mother\u2019s early death and her father\u2019s remarriage, she was raised by her maternal uncle, a farmer who lived near Croom, Co Limerick.<\/p>\n

By all accounts she grew into a beautiful girl with such a gentle and pleasant disposition that the neighbors called her the Colleen Bawn (“fair maiden”).<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, her looks drew the attention of a local member of the minor aristocracy called John Scanlan, who was a former Royal Marine and a heavy gambler.<\/p>\n

He paid a visit to her house on the pretext of sheltering from the rain and was given a hospitable welcome, as was the practice of the time in the countryside. Following that initial introduction, he secretly visited the girl a number of times and asked her to marry him.<\/p>\n

It is probably no surprise, given her trustful nature, that she would have fallen for him. His wealthy background must have promised security and the prospect of living in the \u201cBig House\u201d would have seemed attractive to someone of modest means.<\/p>\n

He told her that his family was opposed to the union but that would change and persuaded her to elope with him. In addition, he convinced her to take the dowry of \u00a360 that her uncle had put by for her, something she was very reluctant to do. Fatally for her, they left her uncle\u2019s farm late on a summer\u2019s night in 1819.<\/p>\n

The details of what subsequently happened may be found in Marian Broderick\u2019s very interesting book,\u00a0Bold, Brilliant and Bad: Irish Women from History<\/a><\/em>, published in 2018. She recounts that a young Protestant clergyman met Ellen Hanley on a passenger boat on the Shannon and that she told him how sorry she was to have left her uncle\u2019s farm and that her new husband was drinking and gambling her dowry away.<\/p>\n

The same clergyman told of how a few weeks later, his friend the Knight of Glin, a magistrate, had to preside at a dispute over the ownership of a fine green silk cloak which a Maura Sullivan, sister of Scanlan\u2019s loyal servant Stephen Sullivan, had got possession of in suspicious circumstances. During this dispute, it was revealed that Scanlan\u2019s new wife had disappeared.<\/p>\n

Shortly after this, a body tied with rope washed ashore from the Shannon. The Knight of Glin and his clergyman friend went to investigate and it turned out that the young boatman who was taking them recognized the rope on the body as his own. He\u2019d lent it to Scanlan and Sullivan a few days before. The body was identified as that of Ellen Hanley.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the search for the two men that followed, it was rumored that Sullivan had fled to America. Scanlan was found hiding on his parents\u2019 property. Despite the best legal representation his family could pay for, he was convicted of murder and hanged. Sullivan hadn\u2019t gone to America and was arrested during the following year. Following his conviction, he admitted he\u2019d carried out the killing but claimed Scanlan planned it. He also revealed the gruesome details: he took the young girl out on the Shannon, beat her to death, tied up the body, weighed it down and threw her overboard. He, too, was hanged for the murder.<\/p>\n

The Colleen Bawn is buried in Burrane graveyard, near Killimer, Co Clare, thanks to the kindness of Peter O\u2019Connell, a local schoolmaster who had just acquired a grave there and took pity on the unfortunate girl and her family.<\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0The Irish Times<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Death Scene Du Jour!<\/h3>\n

One of my favorite books is\u00a0Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective\u2019s Scrapbook<\/a>. \u00a0It is exactly what it says it is: a bizarre and oft-disturbing scrapbook collected over the years by Los Angeles area police detective Jack Huddleston, whose career spanned from 1921 to the early 1950\u2019s.\u00a0 Here\u2019s an excerpt from the book:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Gentle and Pleasant Yet Truly Morbid Fact! The tragic story of the \u201cColleen Bawn\u201d has been the subject of books, plays, films, songs and at least one opera but it is based on fact. The girl was Ellen Hanley and she was brutally murdered at the young age of 15 in mid-July 1819\u00a0years ago. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts","category-ghastly"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10177,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7577\/revisions\/10177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}