victed, and one
would think that this was a subject for rejoicing for all
right-minded men in the county. But what was the result? A
perfect tornado of letters was printed, and resolutions
and speeches appeared in the public press, condemning this
conviction of a moonlighter in Clare as an outrage against
justice."

The Roman Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, in a sermon preached in
December 1912, referring to County Clare said:--

"That county had had an evil record in the matter of crime,
and they were so accustomed to outrages of almost weekly
occurrence around them that it was not easy to shock them.
There was an inoffensive family sitting round the fireside
with a couple of neighbours. They had given no offence, they
had wronged no man, they had crossed no man's path. But that
inhuman beast went to the door and lifted the latch, and
there, at a few yards distance, fired into that innocent group
of men, women and children, as if they were a flock of crows,
killing the mother outright and almost blowing the forehead
off a young girl. There was no denying the fact that that
brutal murder was the natural outcome of the disgraceful
system of intimidation and outrage that had been rampant for
a long time in certain districts of that unhappy county and
of the immunity from punishment enjoyed by the wicked and
cowardly moonlighter. In addition to their other acts of
savagery, they had shot out the eyes of two men within the
last couple of years. A decent, honest man was shot on the
road to Ennis. The people passed the wounded man by and
refused to take him into their car through fear. Not one
of these well-known miscreants was brought to justice. The
murderers of poor Garvey, the cow-houghers, the hay-burners,
were said to be known. In any other country, for instance in
the United States, such ruffianism would be hunted down or
lynched; but there, in the places he referred to, they had
a curtain of security drawn round them by the cowardice or
perverted moral sense on the part of the community amongst
whom they lived.... It was only last Thursday night, before
the county had recovered from the shock of Mrs. O'Mara's
murder, that right over the mountain an unfortunate postman
was shot on the public road between Crusheen and Baliluran for
no other reason apparently than that