William Fitzgerald

343

Maureen Withey on 16th March 2025

William was acquitted of a charge of perjury, but then convicted of theft. Cork Assizes. THE BISHOP’S PALACE. William Fitzgerald was put to the bar, charged with wilful and corrupt perjury, in swearing falsely the Holy Evangelists, before John Hennaed, Esq. Mayor of the City of Cork, in the month of November,  1831, that William Heron bad proposed to. and instigated him to burn the Bishop s Palace in the City of Cork. …. ... The  prosecutor, Mr. Heron, was a respectable shopkeeper in this City. The prisoner had. at a former period, an interest in the house in which Mr. Heron then lived; but the interest was transferred to Mr. Heron, Mr. Jameson, in whom it had become invested purchase.  This sale the prisoner contested, and even when it was effected, he would not quit part of the concerns which he occupied until Mr. Heron, to save the expense and trouble of an ejectment, which would have dispossessed  him at once, paid him twenty-five pounds to give up the premises. Even after this, was annoyed repeated applications ... ….  effect that the prosecutor, Mr. Heron, met the prisoner Fitzgerald, and, under the arch the Market Gate on the Parade, first binding him by oath, communicated to him that the Committees England and Ireland  had decided upon burning the Palaces of those Bishops who had voted against the Reform Bill, and that if those means would not do, they had others of putting the puff out of them. then mentioned the Bishop of Cork’s Palace as one those particularly pointed out by the Committees. The informations went on to state that the conscience of the prisoner being smitten with the enormity of the proposed act, he went the same evening to the Palace to communicate the circumstance to the Bishop, but he was not at home. subsequently—as the date of the informations shewed upwards of two  mouths—preferred them before his Worship the Mayor. The learned Counsel after characterizing it again as one of the most malignant fabrications on record, concluded his statement. …. Southern Reporter, 19 March 1833. William Fitzgerald (acquitted on Saturday on a charge of perjury) was indicted for stealing pair of blankets. The blankets were those which had been allowed him in gaol, and after his discharge on Saturday he took them with him—Guilty.—To be transported  for seven years. Kerry Evening Post, 20 March 1833.

343

Maureen Withey on 16th March 2025

Irish Convict Database by Peter Mayberry. William Fitzgerald, age on arrival, 50, per Java, 1833, Tried 1833 at Cork, 7 years, for Perjury stealing from gaol. DOB, 1783, native place, Limerick. Married, 6 children, Catholic. Brewer.