The Killing of Major Denis Mahon: A Mystery of Old Ireland [Hardcover]

Peter Duffy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 9, 2007

At the height of the Irish Famine, now considered the greatest social disaster to strike nineteenth-century Europe, Anglo-Irish landlord Major Denis Mahon was assassinated as he drove his carriage through his property in County Roscommon. Mahon had already removed 3,000 of his 12,000 starving tenants by offering some passage to America aboard disease-ridden "coffin ships," giving others a pound or two to leave peaceably, and sending the sheriff to evict the rest. His murder sparked a sensation and drove many of the world's most powerful leaders, from the queen of England to the pope, to debate its meaning. Now, for the first time, award-winning journalist Peter Duffy tells the story of this assassination and its connection to the cataclysm that would forever change Ireland and America.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a fading November light in 1847, the most desperate year in Irish history, an Anglo-Irish landlord named Denis Mahon—whose ancestral family demesne in County Roscommon tenanted 12,000 poor and mostly starving people—was shot and killed in a roadside ambush. Mahon was returning from a meeting to discuss funding for a workhouse, meant to provide sustenance to the victims of the potato blight—in return for work. Mahon's death has been a source of controversy ever since. Was it justified? Was Mahon himself committing slow mass murder of his tenants? Duffy (The Bielski Brothers) mounts an investigation, but more importantly, marshals his storytelling skills to render vividly the harsh realities and the alternately heartbreaking and appalling politics of the Great Famine. To Duffy's credit, his treatment is evenhanded. Yet he does not lose sight of the larger discussion that the blight engendered in Parliament, where powerful factions seized upon the crisis as an opportunity to persuade the Irish to change their ways—particularly, their loyalty to the Catholic Church. Duffy's effort falters some as he renders numbly the lengthy trial of the men accused of Mahon's murder. Now that peace is at hand between England and Ireland, the timing could not be better for this look back at a deadly blight and the failure of a powerful empire to manage the consequences. There is much here for all sides of the debate to learn. (Oct.)
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Review

“A brilliant examination of an immense tragedy.” (Terry Golway, co-author of The Irish in America )

“A masterfully crafted exploration of how events in far off places can echo down the generations.” (Thomas Kelly, author of Empire Rising )

“A splendid example of the new writing of Irish history.” (Pete Hamill, author of A Drinking Life )

“There is much here for all sides of the debate to learn.” (Publishers Weekly )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1 edition (October 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060840501
• ISBN-13: 978-0060840501
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,288,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent History of the Irish Potato Famine. Culiminating in the Killing of a Protestrant Land Owner, January 1, 2008

By 

Daniel Hurley (Chesapeake, VA.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Killing of Major Denis Mahon: A Mystery of Old Ireland (Hardcover)

Duffy writes a fascinating account of the Irish potato famine during 1846-49 by examining a local community in Ireland that during the famine, now defined as genocide, suffers severely, as all of Ireland does. The severity of the famine is made even worse by actions of large land owners and the English government to remove small plot farmers, to reduce dependence on potatoes and increase alternative agricultural production, that rent by eviction and mass forced immigration during the heights of the potato famine that resulted in over a million deaths and 1.5 million forced or coerced immigrations, many of whom died in transit on over populated ships. Massive relief efforts are slow and not efficient as England initiates limited relief requiring landlords to fulfill part of the financial obligations but what is fascinating was that the famine was widely known in the western world about the level of death as many countries (including the U.S.) offer private or governmental assistance although limited. Soup dispensaries are set up effectively in many cases but are under funded and struggle to stay open and poor houses virtually act like a prison system and are severe on the populace. In Stokestown, Major Mahon, a sometimes absent landlord carries out evictions with less severity than many landlords, pays some subsidies and limited fees for immigration, but still turns many poor out leaving them little in shelter but the ability to remove their thatched roofs to set up as temporary cover. A conflict over relief funding with the local parish priest allegedly fuels the priest to target open criticism on Major Mahan resulting in the priest being accused of inflaming the suffering to commit a severe act of violence. Duffy tells the history virtually before Cromwell to the mass deaths of the Irish famine leading up Mahan's killing and the aftermath. Duffy expertly tells the story of the killing of Major Mahon that shocked England all the way to Parliament, along with the slow revelation of controversial witnesses, resulting in conviction by circumstantial evidence. The strength of this unique telling is the concentration on this local community that reflects what as happening in all of Ireland with the exception of the notable killing of a local elite well connected to England. Duffy covers the trials extraordinary well and this is a great telling of a horrific time in our world history told on virtually a local level of the Irish community.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, December 13, 2007

By 

Eric Heidt (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Killing of Major Denis Mahon: A Mystery of Old Ireland (Hardcover)

This book paints an extraordinary portrait of a time and place in history that can arguably be called one of the greatest human tragedies in modern history. Duffy sheds light on not only the grim physical facts of the Famine, as expected, but plumbs the depths of the social structures that amplified it's effects. It is refreshing to read, in today's media culture of quick conclusions and black/white reasoning, a book which acknowledges the complexity of the interplay of forces that create history, and assumes the reader is intelligent enough to draw conclusions for themselves.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and Well Researched History, May 12, 2009

By 

Dawn Killen-Courtney (St. Louis Park,, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Killing of Major Denis Mahon: A Mystery of Old Ireland (Paperback)

I was fortunate enough to encounter a list of Irish writer's work put together on my local library's site around the time of St. Patrick's this year (2009). With well over twenty books listed, I knew I couldn't get to them all, but was most drawn at the time to Joseph O'Connor's novel _Star of the Sea_, a most intriguing novel that brought me back into close touch with the events of the Great Famine. It is an even more micorcosmically told tale of the whole horrific trajedy than Duffy's since the bulk of it is set aboard a ship full of immigrants and their "betters" above in first class. Though fiction, I was impressed with his research. After finishing it, I wanted more information and searching led me to Peter Duffy's excellent book, which I can't say enough for. It is a very complex subject, with all the politics that was going on at that time, and the recounting of the glacially slow and nearly totally insufficient measures put forth through the labyrinthine channels of the British bureaucracy and writing it in such a way that the reader (this one anyway) was reading avidly to find out what happened next, puts Peter Duffy in a rare catagory of historical writer. This subject is a daunting task, I quake thinking of taking all this on, yet he delivers in spades. Never losing himself in emotionalism as he reveals the most arrogant bigotry and totally insensitve assumptions on the part of some British policy makers is more than I myself could ever have managed.

The losses on so many levels are incalculable, yet the Irish went on, and made very positive impacts in and on their various adoptive countries, though I feel the yearning for what they were so cruelly wrenched away from has never really been erased. To his credit, Peter Duffy helps those many generations away from the events retold here, to connect to the strands of history that brought them to where they find themselves now. I personally feel I could have devoted the time to half a dozen histories of the Famine and not had any fuller understanding of it than what I got here with this book.