An Irishman's Diary

WRITTEN under the cover “Drapier”, one of Dean Swift’s more famous pamphlets was a protest against Wood’s Halfpence: a currency of dubious worth foisted on Ireland in 1722 by William Wood, who had earned the minting licence with a bribe to the king’s mistress. It was a successful pamphlet too. The currency was later withdrawn and foisted on the American colonies instead.

But the debasement of coinage was not all one way between Britain and Ireland in the early 18th century. Albeit unconsciously, two Irishmen called Gahagan and Conner exacted a revenge for Wood's Halfpence, equally short-lived, before their currency trading landed them in London's Newgate Prison. Their sad demise there is recorded in a grim book called The Newgate Calendar.

The Newgate Calendaronce rivaled the Bible, Foxe's Book of Martyrsand The Pilgrim's Progress, as the volume most likely found in any English home. Charles Dickens would have been among the children required to read it (Barnaby Rudge is a likely result), because as one commentator explains: "It was believed to inculcate principles of right living – by fear of punishment if not by the dull and earnest morals appended to the stories of highwaymen and other felons".

The story of Usher Gahagan and Terence Conner was all the more suitable for moralising, in that neither man would have been regarded, by the standards of the time, as likely criminals. On the contrary, they were gentlemen – indeed poets, after a fashion. And each had been highly educated.

Conner was said to be so familiar with Roman history books that he could locate any subject instantly without resort to the index. He had been born wealthy too, before his father died without a will. This led to complicated lawsuits; so that the estate was in the end only sufficient, as The Newgate Calendarputs in delicately, to meet "the demands of the gentlemen in the long robe".

Gahagan had the added advantage of being born Protestant, which doubled the fascination with his decline from grace. He had even studied law at Trinity College: “But, falling into company with some priests of the Romish persuasion, they converted him to their faith, which was a principal obstacle to his future advancement in life; for as no gentleman can be admitted a counsellor-at-law without taking the oaths of supremacy and abjuration, [he] declined any further prosecution of his legal studies.”

Gahagan’s career was all downhill thereafter. His family disowned him, and although he partially recovered his situation by marrying money, he then alienated his wife in some unspecified manner and she went home to her family. A pariah in Dublin, Gahagan now left for London where, making connections in the book trade, he secured a commission to translate Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man into Latin.

Unfortunately, he also made connections with “women of abandoned character”, and his dissipated lifestyle soon lost him whatever work he had. The downward spiral continued when he met a compatriot called Coffey, with whom he hatched a plan for “the diminution of the current coin”. Specifically, their idea was to file down coins of precious metal, passing off the reduced versions and profiting from the margin.

To this end, Gahagan recruited a third Irishman, his lodger Conner, as a partner in the enterprise. The three secured the necessary tools and went to work. And after several months, the business was sufficiently successful that they expanded by investing in gold “Portugal pieces”, bought from the bank.

Here is where the scheme began to unravel. Their bank transactions attracted the suspicion of a teller who, at the suggestion of his superiors, ingratiated himself with the men, accompanying them for drinks one day to the Crown Tavern in Cripplegate. Their judgment clouded by alcohol, the currency traders mistook this for a networking opportunity, outlining the scheme to their new friend and inviting him to join too.

Instead, of course, the bank teller did what tellers do: he told. So did Coffey who, arrested first, saved his own neck by shopping the other pair. Gahagan and Conner were duly convicted of high treason and sentenced to death. Whereupon, The Newgate Calendarat last found some moral encouragement in their take.

The condemned men’s behaviour was “strictly proper for their circumstances”, it notes: “they were extremely devout and apparently resigned to their fate”.

Resigned as they may have been, however, they did resort to one last desperate stratagem to avoid the rope: namely poetry. Both men wrote high-flown lyrics about their plight, addressed to different members of royalty and incorporating pleas for clemency. Gahagan pinned his hopes on Prince George, the future King George III.

Conner aimed instead at the Duchess of Queensberry, reminding her in verse that she had once been the devoted patron of another poet, John Gay, viz: “Maintain the glory of thy former days/And intercede to save a son of Gay’s;/Nor be it ever said in British land,/That a poor bard was mercilessly hanged.”

The effort was useless, and not just as poetry. Both appeals fell on unsympathetic ears. Gahagan and Conner were instead dispatched to the great bank teller in the sky: on this date, February 20th, in 1749.

fmcnally@irishtimes.com