Roasting a Man Alive: The Case of Mary Rielly, Criminal Lunatic

To His Excellency, the Lord Lieutenant General and General Governor of Ireland. Trusting that your Excellency, through your many generous and kind acts will hear my letter addressed to your Excellency from a poor desolate widow, who is the mother of Mary Rielly who is know [sic] undergoing punishment in Dundrum Lunatic Prison Dublin, for the burn inflicted on Mr Dillon which resulted in his death, for which she was tried on the last July Assises [sic] and sentenced to the Above Prison during your Excellencie's [sic] pleasure, she is the mother of four children also her husband is dead and I am a very old woamen [sic] myself and do not expect to live long, trusting that your Excellency will take my sad case into your kind consideration.

And for your Excellency I will ever pray

I have the High Honor to be your Excellencie's [sic] most faithful subject and dutiful servant

Mary Greham, Kean's Entry, William Street West, Galway.²

This article presents the story of Mary Rielly,³ a thirty-year-old widow from Galway, who was arrested in 1887 for the murder of thirty-five-year-old Michael Dillon. She was found guilty of manslaughter "at a time when insane" and sent as a criminal lunatic to the Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum for Ireland. Her story provides a starting point for the exploration of the gendered impact of the criminal justice system in Ireland during the second half of the nineteenth century.

An analysis of Irish homicide statistics for the second half of the nineteenth century reveals a highly gendered pattern of both crime and punishment. By studying the history of women who killed men during this period, it emerges that—unlike men who killed women—these women were unlikely to use the insanity defense. Mary Rielly was the exception to this rule. She was found to be insane at the time of her crime and sent to Dundrum as a criminal lunatic. This article describes the actual events and the medico-legal arguments that led to her conviction. The significance of the case is discussed within the context of similar cases in which the sentence was execution or penal servitude for life. As such, it forms part of a broader research project on crime and insanity in Ireland in the second half of the nineteenth century and contributes to the expanding field of historical research on crime and punishment ,⁴ insanity ,⁵ and criminal law .⁶

The case of Mary Rielly is also of interest in the context of two current debates—gender and crime and gender and mental health. The first debate is concerned with the gendered nature of crime and its punishment.⁷ It focuses on gender differences in criminal behavior and in legal outcomes. Throughout the world, men feature more visibly in crime statistics than do women, especially for crimes associated with violence. Certain crimes such as infanticide, however, have been linked historically to women. Theorists argue as to the reasons for specific gender patterns of criminal behavior and suggest that as women take a more equal role in economic and public life these patterns will change. In addition, there are gender differences in the ways in which men and women are treated within the criminal justice system. Women have sometimes received harsher treatment than men for the same crime and vice versa. Reasons given for this differential treatment include arguments about the perceived roles of women and men in society, roles that label men as naturally aggressive and women as naturally passive. Women, who act in a way that is "out of character," for example by killing a man, may be treated harshly by the courts, while men who kill women may receive lighter sentences because of a general social acceptance of male violence.

The second debate is concerned with gender differences in the experiences and manifestations of mental disorder...