There are some deviant types who linger on the edge of the law, filled with a mix of fascination and twisted egoism, like the characters who enjoy being present at a murder scene or who move around on the margins of police work and lawyers. Such a one was John Delahunt, a young man who liked to think he was valuable to the forces of law in 1840s Dublin. But he crossed the line into criminality, and in a sense he always was a lawbreaker. His story begins as a creepy and seedy life of a police informer and ends on the gallows.
In 1840 there had been a murder in Dublin – of an Italian boy, Garlibardo, and it had remained unsolved. Like its famous counterpart in London ten years before, it was a sensation. People spoke of a second ‘Italian Boy’ mystery killing, as they had done all over England. But in spite of the following tale of a child murder, there was to be no closure on that case.
In July 1841, a gang of roughs who were supporting O’Connell began harassing and shouting at Captain Craddock, a retired army man. The gang came to attack him when he was ill in bed, but such was the uproar and the level of fear that he was forced to raise himself into action. He grabbed a sabre and stood ready for them. The men, led by some malevolent types called Byrne and Courtney, at first threw bricks and wood at his door and windows, but then they smashed a door panel and forced their way in; one man hurled a brick at Craddock’s chest and caused a severe wound. He then collapsed and was later taken to St Stephen’s hospital.
The report at the time notes that at the trial, when of course the gang were identified, there was a note that ‘The next witness called was a young man named Delahunt, who represented himself as being present at the outrage but asserted that he did not participate in it.’ This is the first we hear of the murderous Delahunt. He was there as an informer. But we also learn something of his difficult and sick temperament, for he ‘broke down’ on that occasion, merely there as a witness.
Then, on Christmas Eve that year, a report was in The Times headed: ‘Mysterious Murder: Coroner’s Inquest.’ The body of a young boy had been found murdered in a stable off Pembroke Road, near Baggott Street. The dead boy was around ten years old and apparently very poor; he had been battered on the head and his throat had been cut. Who was the man who reported the crime? It was John Delahunt, and the journalist had a good memory, noting that Delahunt had been ‘one of the witnesses against Cooney, the tinker who was tried and acquitted of the murder of the Italian boy [July 1840]’. As we have seen in recent times with such killers at Ian Huntley, Delahunt was at the scene and was the first suspect. He was arrested and questioned.