The bloody sport of bull-baiting goes back many centuries, and opinions of it in society have been mixed. The whole business was done with that mix of ritual and carnival that characterised working class culture in past centuries; one account describes what tended to happen in this way: ‘After a coming bull-baiting was advertised, the bull, decorated with flowers or coloured ribbons, would be paraded around the streets of the town… The parade ended, the bull, with a rope tied round the root of his horns, would be fastened to a stake with an iron ring in it, situated in the centre of a ring.’
What happened next was that the various dogs which had been made ready for an attack stood ready to be unleashed; there would follow a series of savage encounters in which lumps of flesh would be torn off the bull and there was a high chance that some dogs would die.
In England, a bill went to the Commons in 1802 to stop the barbarous practice, but was defeated. Not until 1835 did anyone succeed in abolishing it. But back in the eighteenth century it was a common pastime, and one event in 1789 in Dublin escalated into a bloody confrontation between the various people involved. This was just after Christmas that year and the scene turned into a bloodbath.
On St Stephen’s Day, the working classes took their leisure and they were out to hold a bull-baiting session. They took a bull into a field enclosed by a high stone wall and preparations were being made for the entertainment, but there were people around who considered such things far from any kind of acceptable leisure pursuit and they sent for the authorities. The man who came to stop the baiting was Sheriff Vance and he sensibly brought troops with him. But the problem was that the crowd were not prepared to stand and watch as he stopped the proceedings. There was a riot.
Oyster shells and pebbles were thrown at Vance but in reply the soldiers retaliated by firing on the townsfolk. When a man called Ferral Reddy was shot dead, Vance found himself in trouble: in fact the Sheriff was arraigned for murder, and that was after friends of the dead man broadcast the situation, trying to turn public opinion against the man whose actions had led to an ordinary citizen being shot dead.
Archibald Hamilton Rowan was called to a meeting about the situation. Rowan was destined to be in trouble with the law himself just three years after these events; he had come to Ireland as a secretary to Sir Charles Montague and then, just a few years before this, joined the United Irishmen. When secretary of that organisation, he was arrested for seditious libel while in Black Lane in Dublin, and was given two years in Kilmainham, where the famous Wolfe Tone visited him. But in 1789 while he was living in Rathcoffey, he was called to help in the Vance affair.
Not only did Rowan, who loved notoriety and to be given the chance to attract attention, accepted the role of investigator and after that subscriptions were called for to finance the prosecution. With cash being raised and public sympathy with him, Rowan had a cause and he made sure that his actions were visible. As he wrote to his wife about what he had been doing:
I got down at Ellis’s about twelve, and from that time until five I was tracing every step of the military on the fatal day; and the more inquiry I make, the more I am confirmed in the opinion of its being a most diabolical exercise of power. I saw the father and mother of one of the sufferers, whose story is itself a tragedy.
There had been a grievous overreaction, for sure. Even in an era when savage repression of mobs and riots was often condoned, this was savage. Strictly, Vance should have followed the proper course of law and waited until he could find support and authority, then act with caution and discretion.