DISPOSAL OF KIRWAN'S PROPERTY.

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papers, and who knew him and Maria Theresa Kenny well, writes me to say:

"Kirwan, about sixteen years before conviction, was tried in Green Street, Dublin, for a felonious assault on Miss Jones, but was acquitted. I afterwards saw Miss Jones and the notorious Kenny, patients together in the same ward, in the South Dublin Union Workhouse."

Kenny soon after this went to America, with her children.

She may have been assisted by the Government to do so, for Kirwan's property was seized by the Crown.

I am informed that Kirwan's property in the city of Dublin realized £2,500. There were a number of books and paintings found in the house in Merrion Street, which did not belong to him, and which the Crown restored to the proper owners. But I know he sometimes borrowed pictures to copy. A lady tells me that a picture belonging to a friend of hers was found there, which had been neither borrowed nor lent.

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EXTRAORDINARY STORIES.

Kirwan, in 1847, obtained an assignment of

property belonging to a gentleman named BowRhyne Property," in the county

yers, called the "

Longford, which yielded a clear profit rent of £125 a year. He procured this assignment for the nominal consideration of £800, and a life annuity of £20 a year to Bowyers' wife, who had been his cook. Bowyers and his wife disappeared soon after the signing of the deed. Mrs. Bowyers was "found drowned," in the Bog of Allen. Five or six men were employed, for sixteen or seventeen days, digging up the garden of Kirwan's former residence, in Parwell Place, Grand Canal, looking for Bowyers' body. Report says, "several

human bones were found buried there."

The most extraordinary stories are told of Kirwan. He had a taste for anatomy, and was a good anatomical artist. I am credibly informed— but I cannot, and will not believe it—that "he dissected and made anatomical drawings of parts of the body of his own mother." This would imply a devotion to science of which the world could not

PERSONAL DESCRIPTION.

45

furnish a like example. A man may murder his wife, or eat his wife, as a cannibal chieftain once did, after hearing a lecture on the sin of polygamy -but to dissect the body of one's own mother! Kirwan, you are a bad man, and I suspect that you murdered your wife on Ireland's Eye-though the evidence was not sufficient to hang you-but you never dissected the body of your mother. No, I will never believe it; it is quite against

nature.

The following is the description taken of Kirwan's person, on his committal to Kilmainham Jail:-" Hair brown, eyes grey, complexion fresh, height five feet nine inches, age 38 years."

The following is a description of him given to me by a lady who knew him well, and from whom he was in the habit of borrowing pictures and drawings, to copy :-"A man about the middle height, strong and coarse, with a bad and deter

mined expression of face.

hair, thick bull neck, and

Brown

Brown eyes, dark curly

a soft oily voice. His

manner with ladies was soft and deferential, with

46

AN EQUIVOCAL COMPLIMENT.

an attempt at being insinuating, but he always produced an unfavourable impression."

He was first sent as a prisoner to Spike Island. A convict, who slept the first night in the same ward with him, told me "he had a very determined face, and he made great pause in his talk."

He went from Spike Island prison to Bermuda, where he at once took the first place in that commonwealth of robbers.

"Before you came," said a distinguished housebreaker, raising his palmetto hat and saluting him, "I held the first place in these islands, but I concede that honour to Mr. William Burke Kirwan !"

The compliment was accepted with a grim smile.

"What is Kirwan about now?" I inquired of a prisoner from Bermuda.

"He is very well off, sir. He is in the doctor's shop, helping to make up the medicine; and he gets chicken at his breakfast."

KIRWAN AT BERMUDA.

"Does he get ham with the chicken?"

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"Ham, sir! We all get ham." The island of Bermuda, at one time, abounded in wild pigs, or black hogs.

"But he has been put out of the doctor's shop since I left."

For what?"

"He gave a prisoner, that he didn't like, some pills that didn't agree with him."

I have heard, since penning the last lines, that the convict depôt at Bermuda has been broken and the convicts sent to Australia.

up,