Qualla: Lough Mask Murders

Lough Mask Murders: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 3 January 1882, Joseph Huddy left his home in Creevagh near Cong with his seventeen-year-old grandson John to serve eviction notices on twelve tenant farmers on the lands of Arthur Guinness, Lord Ardilaun. Huddy had been the Guinness family bailiff for more than thirty years. The Land War was at its peak. Tenants across the west of Ireland were on rent strike, organised through the Land League. By four in the afternoon the Huddys had not returned. By the next day, their disappearance had become a regional police matter. Their bodies were eventually recovered from Lough Mask, weighted with stones, after Royal Navy crewmen spent twelve days dragging the lake. Three men were hanged for the killings. Their descendants have insisted on their innocence ever since, and the historical record offers reasons to take that insistence seriously.

Read more: Lough Mask Murders on Qualla

Lough Mask Murders: The Day That Did Not End

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Joseph Huddy began the day in the village of Middle Cloghbrack, also known locally as America, before moving on to Upper Cloghbrack on the southern shore of Lough Mask. The area was densely populated farmland without a defined village centre. Both men were under no illusions abou...

Read more: Lough Mask Murders on Qualla

Lough Mask Murders: What the Police Found

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Tracing the Huddys' movements, RIC officers reached the yard of one Mathias Kerrigan. There they found physical evidence: a bullet mark on the gable end of Kerrigan's house, bloodstains on the wall, and signs of a struggle in the yard. Kerrigan and his sixteen-year-old son Matthe...

Read more: Lough Mask Murders on Qualla

Lough Mask Murders: An Informer in a Frightened Country

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Mathias Kerrigan was held in Galway City Jail for nine months without being charged with anything. In September 1882, he turned approver, meaning he became a state's witness in exchange for his own freedom, and named three men as responsible for the killings: Michael Flynn and Th...

Read more: Lough Mask Murders on Qualla

Lough Mask Murders: Trials in a Language Not Theirs

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The defendants came from an Irish-speaking community. The trials were held in Dublin, in English, before juries that were mostly Protestant. The exchanges between Irish-speaking witnesses and defendants were argumentative and confused, with RIC constables providing the translatio...

Read more: Lough Mask Murders on Qualla

Lough Mask Murders: The Hangings and What Followed

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Patrick Higgins, Thomas Higgins, and Michael Flynn were hanged in Galway City Jail in January 1883. Flynn, asserting his innocence to the end, was described by observers as showing remarkable courage on the scaffold. The Huddys, an old bailiff and a teenage boy, had been killed s...

Read more: Lough Mask Murders on Qualla