Christopher Dixon (abt. 1732 - 1796)

Born about 1732 in Killyon, Longwood, Co Meath, Ireland

Ancestors

Died Apr 1796 at about age 64 in Murdered on the Cloncurry Turnpike, just outside the Village

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Biography

Sources

• Valentine Browne, 2nd Baron Cloncurry

Extracts from the Correspondence of Valentine Lord Cloncurry Published in Dublin, James McGlashan, 21 D'Olier Street & William Orr & Co, 147 The Strand, London 1849. See Pages 49 -51 inclusive.

The people disappointed, as I have shown, in their protracted efforts to obtain parliamentary reform, and a full relaxation of the penal laws, had become impatient, and exhibited their impatience in the usual mode, by local tumults and violence.

These were met in the equally usual mode by coercive laws. An Insurrection Act was passed; portions of the country were proclaimed as being in a state of disturbance, and declared to be under martial law; flying camps were established, and a curfew regulation was enforced in the proclaimed districts. How these measures worked will be illustrated by the facts of the following little tragedy.

It happened that the barony of Carbery, in the county of Kildare, was proclaimed under the Insurrection Act, and a camp established in it, which was occupied by the Fraser Fencibles.

One evening, the commanding-officer, a Captain Fraser, returning to camp from Maynooth, where he had dined and drank freely, passed through a district belonging to my father, which was very peaceable, and had not been included in the proclamation. As Captain Fraser rode through the village of Cloncurry, attended by an orderly dragoon, just as the summer sun was setting, he saw an old man, named Christopher Dixon, upon the roadside, engaged in mending his cart. The captain challenged him for being out after sunset, in contravention of the terms of the proclamation. Dixon replied that he was not in a proclaimed district, and that he was engaged in his lawful business, preparing his cart to take a load to Dublin the following day.

The captain immediately made him prisoner, and placed him on horseback behind his orderly. The party proceeded about half a mile in this manner to a turnpike, where the officer got into a quarrel with the gatekeeper, and some delay took place, of which Dixon took advantage to beg of the turnpike man to explain that the district in which he was taken was not proclaimed, and that therefore there was no just ground for his arrest.

While the altercation was proceeding, the poor old man (he was about 80 years of age) [Actually a carpenter, aged 64 years] slipped off from the dragoon's horse, and was proceeding homewards, when the officer and soldier followed him, and having despatched him with SIXTEEN dirk and sabre wounds, of which nine were declared to be mortal, they rode off to the camp.

A coroner's inquest was held on the body, and a verdict of wilful murder returned; whereupon Mr. Thomas Ryan, a magistrate, and the immediate landlord of Dixon under my father, proceeded to the camp with a warrant for the apprehension of Captain Fraser, who, however, was protected by his men, and Mr. Ryan was driven off.

Mr. Ryan applied to my father, who sent me with him to Lord Carhampton, then commander-in-chief in Ireland. We were accompanied by Colonel (afterwards General Sir George) Cockburn; and Mr. Ryan having produced the warrant, and Colonel Cockburn having pointed out the provision of the Mutiny Act bearing upon the ease, we formally demanded the body of Fraser, which his Lordship refused to surrender. At the next assizes, Captain Fraser marched into Athy, with a band playing before him, and gave himself up for trial. The facts were clearly proved; but the sitting judge, Mr. Toler [Mr. Toler was at the time (as well as my memory serves me) Solicitor-General, but sitting as Judge of Assize.] (afterwards Lord Norbury), instructed the jury that "Fraser was a gallant officer, who had only made a mistake; that if Dixon was as good a man as he was represented to be, it was well for him to be out of this wicked world; but if he was as bad as many others in the neighbourhood (looking at me, who sat beside him on the bench), it was well for the country to be quit of him." The captain and his orderly were acquitted accordingly.

Such was the training of both peasant and soldier for the bloody civil war of the ensuing year.

See Also:-

Rebellion in Kildare, Author: Liam Chambers, Publisher: Four Courts Press: Date 1998: ISBN 1-85182-362-x cased// 1-85182-363-8 Acid Free Paper