The Nolagh House of Horror: Ireland’s 1898 Family Massacre

The Nolagh House of Horror: Ireland’s 1898 Family Massacre
News of the Times | Episode 556 | 1898
On a bitter January night in 1898, neighbours in rural County Cavan made a grim discovery: a silent farmhouse, a smashed-in door, and a scene of almost unspeakable horror.

Inside, the bodies of Mary Reilly, her daughter Mary King, and two small children lay motionless on the straw-strewn floor. Their skulls had been crushed with a heavy spade. One child had been smothered beneath its mother's corpse. The other—barely a toddler—may have survived two more days, dying slowly from cold, hunger, and fear.

Even the rats had arrived before the authorities.

This shocking case rocked Victorian Ireland: a locked-door family annihilation, bitter domestic violence, and a trial that revealed more questions than answers. Follow the journey from the chilling crime scene through legal wranglings in Cavan and Belfast, ending with a verdict so unexpected that even the Lord Chief Justice was left stunned.

💥 "Transcended in horror everything comprised in my experience of crime." — Lord Chief Justice O’Brien

🕯 FURTHER PARTICULARS SEGMENT:
We leave the blood-stained fields of Cavan for an icy January in London, where top-hatted gentlemen and bonneted ladies gather—white roses pinned to lapels—to mourn a beheaded king. Over 250 years after Charles I lost his crown (and his head), the Jacobite faithful still marched, toasted, and whispered of royal restoration.

A bizarre blend of political nostalgia, public theatre, and candlelit reverence—this is one of history’s strangest cult followings.

☕ So grab a warm cup of tea, draw the curtains, and let the tales unfold—from one of the darkest farmhouse murders in Ireland’s history… to a wintertime ceremony for a king few ever liked.

👤 Narrated by Robin Coles

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