Monaghan Folk Tales by Lally Steve;

Author:Lally, Steve;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

15

HEY JOE!

This is a classic murder story which took place at the turn of the century. This story has become part of the fabric of Monaghan folklore. There was also a murder ballad written about it which is included in this volume.

If you were to look back at the brutal murders that took place on Irish soil, this one may be up there amongst the most gruesome. It took place in 1903 in Clones town, Co. Monaghan. There are some similarities between the crime and The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe, which is set in Clones town.

The man who was murdered was an egg-dealer called John Flanagan and he was visiting Clones on market day to buy lots of eggs to sell on in Belfast. The man who would eventually be convicted of killing him was a butcher based in Clones and his name was Joe Fee. It is said that Flanagan had £80 in cash, and that he somehow came into contact with Fee and was lured to the slaughterhouse on Jubilee Road owned by him and his brother George.

Flanaghan took two helpers to the market with him, Patrick Moan and Joseph Connolly, and when he did not return, they searched the place. It is said that there were queues of farmers waiting to be paid by Flanaghan for their eggs and his family had to be called so they could settle the debts. While they were there, they searched every public house in Clones, thinking that as he liked a little drink, maybe he had got side-tracked and found a drinking partner and forgotten about the eggs altogether. Little did they know that the poor man was no longer on this earth.

In an article entitled ‘A murder cover-up most foul’ in the Irish Times (2014), Frank McNally states that at the trial it came out that Fee struck his victim with a ‘pole-axe’ and then cut his throat, like ‘a pig’s’, before burying him in a shallow grave under quicklime. But the peaty soil at the slaughterhouse had counteracted the lime so the body was remarkably well preserved.

It took eight months for his body to be discovered.

On the day that Flanaghan went missing, Joe Fee bought a spade from a local shop. It was said that he paid off debts and was buying better-quality livestock. I suppose it would have been said that he had come into money and this was suspicious, to say the least!

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