"One night last week the following odd affair happened between a man and his wife who live in Bolton Street, viz he being subject to quarrel when he was in liquor, had often told her he would put her into Bedlam [probably the House of Industry] to prevent her speaking to him for being drunk, and accordingly on said night, assisted by some fellows, forced her into a coach and actually lodged her there; but the next morning the surgeons going to visit the prison found the woman to be in her perfect senses, and to her husband's no small mortification, sent her home to him again, desiring her to send him there, as by his behaviour he seemed to be a proper object for such a place."

The Sligo Champion Saturday, 12 April 1856 Reprieve of John Speed, sentenced to death for the murder of his wife.

"The unhappy man, who lay under sentence of death, was reprieved upon Thursday last. He was found guilty at our last Assizes, of the murder of his wife. He was convicted upon circumstantial evidence. There still hangs much mystery about the affair, which may never be unravelled in this world.

The man was tried by a most upright judge . . . Judge Jackson; and a strong memorial was prepared in his favour by his solicitor, Edward Pollock Esq, This document received upwards of 1,100 signatures. Another memorial was forwarded by the Rev Father Owen Feeney PP of Riverstown, who, most laudably, took an active and zealous part in saving Speed's life and protecting the inhabitants of Sligo from the exhibition of a public execution. The Lord Lieutenant has graciously granted a reprieve. The sentence of death has been committed to transportation for life "We have, again, to repeat, that we rejoice that the love of sightseeing in the rabble has not been gratified in the execution of this man; and to express a hope that, if we do not ourselves, our children will live to hear of a law abolishing capital punishment."

The Kerry People Saturday, 11 April 1903 "The new representative of the wardens is bent on maintaining the worst traditions of the name. The recent evictions on the Derryquin estate, which we report elsewhere, show an amount of callousness and indifference to public opinion, which in the evil annals of Irish landlordism can scarcely be paralleled.

Even the very worst landlords in Ireland . . . men whose names had become synonymous with wrongdoing in its most brutal form, under the new and hopeful condition of things in this country have been softened and have expressed their willingness to meet their tenants in a spirit of giveand-take. But Warden is an exception: he wants his pound of flesh; and hence at a time when the spirit of peace is abroad, when we can almost hear the fluttering of its wings, this man insists on carrying out his nefarious evictions. But eviction is no longer what Mr Gladstone called it . . . a sentence of death. Warden's victims may rest assured that they will not be forgotten, and that long after the power of the evictor is broken for ever, they and their families will reside in happy, though humble homes."