Chapter One: Formative Days.
One spring day, young Tommy was a walking with Mr. Malever... down a lane, maybe it was back of the church. They chanced upon a Gypsy. She stopped them on the path. “Would you be after having your fortune told?” Malever laughed. He reached into his pocket and crossed her palm with a coin. She pocketed the coin and then took the palm of young Tommy into her hand. She studied it carefully. Then she took the hand of Malever and as she held it palm upwards the look on her face darkened. She shook her head and said, “one of you will be known all over the world and one of you will meet a dastardly end”.
In my family, facts are often regarded as an impediment to a good story. As I scribbled down the story that my elderly third cousin in Bangor, Co. Down was telling me, I also noted that it was a nice touch that the name Malever sounded so close to the word malevolent and it was also a neat bit to include the part about the known all over the world. After all, young Tommy would become so well known in the Far East that one of my third cousins in Kensington has a postcard addressed to: “TJ China”. Nothing more. It had been posted from Germany in 1900 by the Prussian Crown Prince Henry on a bet that it would arrive as speedily as a fully addressed letter. Henry won.
The very next day after hearing this story, I chanced upon an article in the archives at Armagh about agrarian unrest around Crossmaglen in the years 1835-1855. This was the same timeframe and neighbourhood where young Tommy had lived in the years after the Famine. This event had a profound effect on him. After all, he was only six years old when it started and the worst of it had played out in the years that followed. People died at the side of the road, their faces black from the ravages of cholera; friends of his family who were better circumstanced than many, had also died from contracting the dread disease as they volunteered at the soup kitchens which had been set up to feed the one third of the local population who had nothing left to eat. The focus of this article was the murder of none other than Robert Lindsay Mauleverer. Even though my Canadian ears had heard my Irish cousin say a name that sounded something like Malever, this was clearly the same man. Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction.
The newspaper and court records of the day described the riveting tale of how Robert Lindsay Mauleverer, a land agent for the Hamilton, Tipping and Jones Estate in the Crossmaglen area, had been murdered on May 23, 1850 as he was being driven to the Cullaville Train Station. The accounts varied wildly and depended greatly upon who was doing the telling. The Armagh Guardian, which was often accused of being the voice of landlordism, predictably defended the reputation of the victim. The Dundalk Democrat just as predictably stood on the side of the tenant farmers.
Mauleverer was the youngest son of Rev William Mauleverer, of Derryloren, Co. Tyrone. He had been born in 1811 at Maghera, Londonderry, and had continued to live there. To the inhabitants of Crossmaglen, this meant that he was an outsider. His occupation not only as an agent but also as a magistrate in Derry made him doubly suspect. On the other hand, even though his family were substantial landowners and had been for several generations, it was their first born son – his older brother Bellingham -who had got the better of it all. One of the coroners described the youngest Mauleverer as a man of enlightened and cultivated mind, retiring and amiable disposition.
The tale shed no light on why young Tommy would be out walking with him. It may have been that Mauleverer was there to collect the Jackson’s rent, which was often in arrears. It may also have been because one of young Tommy’s uncles, the Rev. Joseph Barkley was visiting. The two men were both born in the same place and in the same year and there would probably have been both social and business links between them. On the other hand, young Tommy may have simply chanced upon Mauleverer and - being the kind of nine-year-old boy that he was - had struck up a conversation. Certainly, Tommy’s mix of gregariousness and unbridled curiosity had stood him in good stead later in life.
At the time of his death, Mauleverer was about 40 years old, unmarried and had been staying at an inn at Crossmaglen for about a week as he collected rents and served writs. He had set out that day in reportedly good cheer, less than an hour before he was killed. His driver, Patrick McNally, testified that the horses - startled by gunshot – had galloped some thirty perches down the road before he could turn his jaunting car around. By the time McNally could get the horses under control, retrace his steps to Crossmaglen – a mile away –roust the local constabulary and return to the scene of the crime, Mauleverer was already lying close to death in the ditch.
In the days to come, parts of McNally’s version of the story quickly unravelled. The post-mortem did not support the story of gunshot wounds, rather: There were nine wounds on the right, the left and the back of his head. Some were contused and some were incised wounds. One of them was five inches long, another two inches, two of them were two-and-a-half inches and the others were smaller. The skull under some of the wounds was a mass of fractures, so much so that when the skin was removed, the bones fell asunder. It had been a particularly violent murder: his head was beaten with stones to pieces, his blood and brains strewn on the road. The coroner searched for a bullet wound, but found none in the brain. One of the wounds might have been produced by a gunshot, but on the opposite side of the skull there was no corresponding wound to show that a ball had passed through. Men who were close to the scene at the time and hard at work drawing the turf did not hear the report of the shot.
Subsequent court records revealed that few of the locals seemed particularly displeased with Mauleverer’s demise. Many even celebrated it. He was, after all, the same land agent who had ordered up to 300 evictions in the aftermath of the Famine. Amazingly, the coroner’s report went so far to state that the particular social conditions of the time had to be considered and that it could be argued that the death of one man was preferable to the deaths of hundreds exposed to slow but certain death by starvation. This side-stepped the reality that it was often the younger sons of landowners acting as agents for others, and not the landlords themselves, who ran the highest risk.
Ironically in this case, even the landlords seemed displeased with the dearly departed Mauleverer. Edward Tipping II, the son of the landlord that Mauleverer had worked under, washed his hands of him, “He was a very hard man, and I heard him say the best plan was "to break the tenants" to get rid of them and get better.”
In Urker at this time, the kitchen was the place to hang out. It was the one place that would be reliably warm and would have been where young Tommy would have absorbed the gossip of the day. Families like his observed none of the niceties of the “upstairs/downstairs” of the English middle class. Just as he did when he was a banker, his family ate with their hired help – unless it was a very special event when it was time to put on the dog. He would have been an absolute sponge through all of this. After all, hadn’t he and Mauleverer heard the malediction of the gypsy themselves? And he would also have heard that the Jacksons were amongst those who had cause for complaint against Mauleverer. In the weeks before his murder, he had ordered the bailiff to seize seven cows, four heifers and a bull belonging to Mrs. Jackson. Fortunately for the Jacksons, the livestock was subsequently rescued by a number of persons who drove them to Urker House. The neighbours then banded together and hid the cattle on their fields until the whole thing blew over. The fact that the Jacksons still had cattle to be destrained meant that they were at least better off than the neighbours of theirs, who didn’t even have a calf left for the bailiffs to seize.
Given that Thomas was gifted intellectually, he would have absorbed more than most nine year olds when it came to the politics and economics of these events. The parish of Creggan took its name from the Irish Carraig-an meaning the rocky waterfall. The part which was leased to the most impoverished tenants was also the most rock-filled and least fertile. Tenants did their best, but when they improved their fencing, drainage or buildings, their rent was “racked” up on account of of the increased value of the land to the landlord. Hence the term rack-rented. The Jackson family knew the effects of this all too well and had experienced in his father’s life-time how land could be lost as a result of theft by a pen. Tommy’s grandmother had been widowed in her late 20s and left with four young children to raise and had barely hung on. When young Tommy’s father was just turned sixteen and was the only male in the family, the lease on Urker had been reassessed and charged at a higher rate. Although she had hung on to Urker, there were other parts of her farms on other leased lands that had slipped from her grasp.
As Tommy grew up, he learned more of the context of all this. The returns per Irish acre had always been low in the parish of Creggan and the impact of this had heightened when new Free Trade legislation favouring the British was introduced and Irish exports were disadvantaged. When the Famine had hit, small farmers simply couldn’t produce enough to first feed their families and then pay the rents. A further legal wrinkle meant that Jacksons and others had additional legal and collection costs added to their leasehold payments. Because the Hamilton, Tipping and Jones estate was run by not one but three absentee landlords, fines for late payment were levied by all three. And then when the rents were in arrears, the struggle commenced between the three landlords on the one hand, the poor-rate collector and the collector of the county cess on the other. The result was that the tenantry were dreadfully impoverished, the land being all rack-rented, and being of a barren rocky character, as the name of the parish sufficiently indicates. Lowering the rents would have made both economic and compassionate sense, something that Jackson as a banker could reflect on, but since the landlords lived elsewhere they found it easy to be blinded to the plight of others.
At this time, Mauleverer was serving so many unpopular evictions that the bailiff had started to refuse to enforce them. A new bailiff had to be hired and he never set out without a contingent of burly men. Their movements were watched and, when they made their appearance in the country, the alarm was given and every house closed, and thus every man on the estate has for some time past maintained a state of siege. The bailiff had to start using police backup on a regular basis and also have his men armed with pickaxes, crowbars and such. Frequently, these enforcers took to levelling houses. The Jackson’s house was one of those that was left untouched.
The Petty Sessions case concerning the Jacksons came up on the Saturday before Mauleverer’s death and was dismissed on the grounds that the summons had not been properly served, but Mauleverer wasn’t about to let go so easily. He said, he would make a new distress on Jacksons when the cattle would be found on the land, and if he could get nothing to distrain, he would mark a writ against him. The “him” being David Jackson, the father of young Tommy. Witnesses did not see any cattle on the land since.
Mauleverer’s most appalling alleged act of insensitivity occurred about twenty minutes before his death. A poor widow with but four pence to her name had come into town in order to buy a bog ticket, a kind of licence that Mauleverer sold which authorized the cutting of turf. She was tuppence short of the usual six pence price, but without access to the turf she would have no fuel for heat or cooking. Mauleverer peremptorily refused, and dismissed the woman with a malediction. She returned without the ticket, and probably communicated to her neighbours the result of her application, while he, in a few minutes after returning to Mr. McDonnell’s [the innkeeper’s] handed him the tickets, saying: “Give these to whom you like. If you get money from them, so much the better. If not, it is no matter.” In his later years, the young Tommy, who would have heard that story, delighted in striding into the market-place at Crossmaglen where this had supposedly happened, to toss sovereigns into the air, much to the glee of the youngsters who dashed around, picked them up and squirreled them away.
Although that story was the talk of the town, there was still some measure of sympathy for Mauleverer, some of it from unexpected sources. The Parish priest (Catholic) expressed the most sincere sorrow for his fate and, in order to testify this feeling, suggested that he and the inhabitants of the place may be permitted to accompany his remains on their removal from the town, as a mark of their respect and esteem. More predictably, Mauleverer’s eldest brother, Bellingham, defended him in a spirited letter to the editor: the character of a brother wrapped in a bloody shroud laid in an untimely grave from the cold calumnies and unjust aspersions you have so unsparingly heaped upon him ... my brother never pulled down a house never ejected nine helpless innocent babes. Nay nor never ejected a single individual young or old on the estate of Messrs Hamilton Tipping and Jones for whom he was a land agent.
Character aside, Tommy’s walking companion had been between a rock and a hard place. He had been appointed by the Court of Chancery, but had no power to reduce rents. There is evidence that he had actually prevailed upon his landlord bosses to lower the rents and in many cases had succeeded. Ironically, many of the writs that he served in the week before his death were for purposes that probably even served the long term interests of the affected tenants, but the law was so arcane it was likely beyond the comprehension of many.
After the death of Mauleverer, even though circumstances did improve somewhat for the tenants, threats continued to be recorded against many of the agents and “strong farmers” in the region. Many of them were relations of Tommy’s, or else long time friends of the family. Understandably, no jury dared to bring in a conviction against the perpetrators and their supporters. They knew all too well that if they did, they risked being the next targets. Just as there was never a conviction for Mauleverer’s murder, there were no convictions for most of the threats, assaults and murders connected to the agrarian unrest in the region. Several of these events also involved attacks on other Jackson family and friends.
In these circumstances, it is hard to know what the face of true justice might have looked like. In all likelihood, Mauleverer’s murderer was Brian Hanratty, a man who was not a tenant but who had been hired to carry out the murder of the hated agent. If so, then the story of the widow and her bog ticket could not have been the cause of the murder. Allegedly, £250 had been collected well beforehand to pay for the deed. Some of this money was intended to cover court costs but some was misappropriated and Hanratty was only paid £70 for his part. Although the jury was convinced of his guilt, they had only circumstantial evidence. He was cheered by crowds upon news of his acquittal and soon after emigrated to America.
After the murder, the Dundalk Democrat reported: ... that the murder has produced much good in the neighbourhood of Crossmaglen. In the aftermath, the new agent was directed by the landlords to offer —all arrears to be forgiven, byegones to be byegones, the landlord to appoint a valuator and the tenants another for the purpose of fixing a fair rent on the land. The thinking behind this was that there are no arrears due, for ... this year's rent was paid long ago. The rents charged were so far beyond the value of the land. The best land is worth not more than £1 an acre at present and the land around Crossmaglen is not worth more than 5s. to 7s.6d.. The commentary continued: Murder is a dreadful price to pay for justice. Had these concessions been made twelve months ago, we firmly believe that Mr. Mauleverer would be alive today
A couple of years after this murder, young Thomas’ beloved mentor and uncle, Rev. Daniel Gunn Browne -- a passionate advocate for the rights of tenants -- testified at the Crime and Outrage Committee about a speech that he had given:
Q: Did you, upon that occasion speak, as you felt, severely of the conduct of landlords?
A: I do not think I ever spoke severely, either then or at any other time.
Q: There are degrees of severity?
A: Yes, as you are well aware…
Q: Did you on that occasion speak of landlords as exterminators?
A: I do not remember that I used the term; but if I had used the term, I do not think it would be contrary to the fact.’
Eliza Jackson, even though she had been on the receiving end of landlord’s abuses, had a more nuanced position than her brother-in-law, no doubt influenced by the fact that she was at the same time in the possession of leases which involved unpaid rents owed to her by others.
Over the next few decades, many of the relations of young Tommy sold up and left, even though their roots in the region stretched back to the mid-1600s and possibly earlier. Many of them heeded the assessment of the Crown solicitor who admitted that he knew of no place “in which Ribbonism is worse than at a place called Crossmaglen”. The Jacksons were one of the minority of Presbyterian farmers who stayed put and it is an indicator of how attached the adult Tommy would be to his childhood home. He named his home at The Peak in Hong Kong: Creggan.
Young Tommy was not the only future HSBC employee to share a family connection to the murder of Mauleverer. Gordon Holmes Stitt, the future manager of HSBC in Shanghai, was a grandson of Gordon Holmes - the Sub-Inspector who investigated the murder and who also showed up on the scene while Mauleverer was still breathing but incapable of speech. Alexander Stitt, another relation of this Gordon Holmes Stitt served on the jury for this trial as did a grandfather of Samuel Gilmore, a future employee of the HSBC London office, hired in 1894 and posted to Shanghai in 1898.
It intrigued me to read how the ancestors of these future HSBC bankers regarded the state of Crossmaglen at the time of Mauleverer’s murder – at least in public. Their language is dated, but the expression of their sentiments would not be out of place in a 21st Century Chamber of Commerce press release:
We can refer to the magistrates who have presided at the Crossmaglen Petty Sessions for the last ten years as to the general peaceful character of the district and the amenableness of its inhabitants to law fairly administered. These enlightened worthy functionaries have often during the period in question expressed themselves in terms of praise and even admiration of the good conduct and peaceful demeanour of the inhabitants, considering their poverty and privation.
It may be telling that although these men described the region as peaceful, the next generation of their families didn’t stay put. Perhaps they were not sharing the truth that was in their hearts. Perhaps, they were already paving the way for their sons to leave. Perhaps, the perception of peace, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.