A MOTLEY CREW

True Tales from Ireland’s Criminal Past

True stories of the strange, the grim and the unforgettable lives that passed through Irelands courts and jails in the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies.

Irelands criminal history is filled with more than notorious villains and heroic rebels. It is crowded with people who stumbled, schemed or sang their way into the record books: balladmakers arrested for sedition, children forced into dangerous trades, women punished for survival, drunk jailers, unlucky fugitives, illicit marriages, and hangmen whose reputations linger longer than those they executed.

A Motley Crew brings these stories together in all their strangeness and humanity. From escapes that bordered on the unbelievable to punishments that now seem cruel or absurd, the book explores how ordinary lives collided with extraordinary laws and how poverty, chance and sheer mischief often dictated a per