A Little Porter Never Hurt Anyone

     

     A few weeks ago I subscribed to Find My Past for a month.  One of the most interesting databases available on that site is the one containing the records of the Court of Petty Sessions.  Petty sessions was what one would expect, petty crimes like letting your livestock wander, cursing your neighbor for letting his livestock wander, or stealing a loaf of bread.  It was also where cases of public intoxication were adjudicated.  I found my Connor Ryan of Goldengarden Tipperary in those records several years ago, this time I found my fourth-great-uncle David Crotty of Cullecastle in County Waterford.  Both were charged for imbibing, but the circumstances differed.

     Connor was arrested in Tipperary in 1852 for being "drunk" in the neighboring town of Grenane while David was taken into custody four years later in Waterford with a group of ten other men who were, "found in the unlicensed premises of Julia Quinlan in Tramore", which was a few miles south of Cullencastle.  David and his companions were accused of, "having the appearance of being recently drinking or tippling within".  They weren't charged with drunkenness, just tippling whatever that is.  A British legal term no doubt.  Their fine however, was double what Connor had to pay, two shillings and six pence in addition to another shilling for costs.  That seemed like a stiff penalty, Connor only gave one shilling plus one for costs.

     The image above is a list of those arrested with David.  You can see only James Gaule at the very bottom pled guilty, and next to the names of all but two of the men is written the word "paid".  Those two men were Uncle David Crotty and a man named Patrick Power, both residents of Cullencastle.  This was very interesting to me as David's sister Honora Crotty was my third-great-grandmother, her husband, my third-great-grandfather, was Edmond Power, and they lived in Cullencastle.  It seems quite possible Patrick Power was a relative of Edmond's.

     There was no mention on that page of an arrest of Julia Quinlan, but another search soon found two arrests for her, one related to the incident in which David was arrested:

For that you the defendant, not being a person duly authorized to sell porter or to have such for sale on her premises had a quantity of porter and did sell or cause to have sold a certain quantity of porter to several persons in her house situate at Tramore on the night of Sunday the 19th October 56. 

     That was when it struck me, Julia operated a shebeen.  In the court records Julia was described as a spinster, part of the social group that might have been expected to run such a place.  From the histories I've read, it was often the case that widows and single women kept shebeens to give them a much needed source of income.  In the countryside they were commonly the ones brewing the illegal spirits.  Julia's fine was more severe than David's, I can't quite make out the exact amount she was required to pay, it was either four or five shillings plus costs.  I wish I knew more about Julia, I don't even know her age or place of birth.  All I know for sure is she lived in Tramore in the late 1850's; and was harassed by the local constabulary.  Of course that doesn't mean I'm giving up...