page_title: Murder of Ann Ogilby
section_title: Ann Ogilby
hierarchical_section_title: Murder of Ann Ogilby / Events leading to the murder / Ann Ogilby
caption_attribution_description: English: Loyalist mural in south Belfast taken in 1981 Italiano: Murale Lealista a Belfast, Irlanda del Nord nel 1981
context_page_description: The murder of Ann Ogilby, also known as the "Romper Room murder", took place in Sandy Row, south Belfast, Northern Ireland on 24 July 1974. It was a punishment killing, carried out by members of the Sandy Row women's Ulster Defence Association unit. At the time the UDA was a legal Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisation. The victim, Ann Ogilby, a Protestant single mother of four, was beaten to death by two teenaged girls after being sentenced to a "rompering" at a kangaroo court. Ogilby had been having an affair with a married UDA commander, William Young, who prior to his internment, had made her pregnant. His wife, Elizabeth Young, was a member of the Sandy Row women's UDA unit. Ogilby had made defamatory remarks against Elizabeth Young in public regarding food parcels. Eight weeks after Ogilby had given birth to Young's son, the women's unit decided that Ogilby would pay for both the affair and remarks with her life. The day following the kangaroo court "trial", they arranged for the kidnapping of Ogilby and her six-year-old daughter, Sharlene, outside a Social Services office by UDA man Albert "Bumper" Graham.
context_section_description: Ann Ogilby (born c.1942/1943 and sometimes referred to as Anne Ogilby), a young Protestant woman, moved to  Belfast from Sion Mills, County Tyrone on a date that has not been firmly established. She was one of 13 children from a poor family.  Described as a "very attractive girl with dark-brown silky hair and blue eyes", and a slender figure, she embarked on a transient lifestyle, regularly changing her address and employment. The jobs she held were mostly low-paid positions in offices and shops, and she was often evicted for failing to pay the rent. Her striking good looks made her popular with men. In about 1968 she became a single mother, having been made pregnant by a married British soldier stationed in Northern Ireland who had abandoned her and their child after he was transferred to another duty station. She started socialising with a rough crowd, and in August 1972, she met William Young, a married high-ranking member of the then-legal Ulster Defence Association (UDA) with whom she fell deeply in love and began living with him in south Belfast. Young came from the loyalist Donegall Pass area and was a local UDA commander. He told Ogilby his marriage had already broken up and that his divorce hadn't been finalised.   Ogilby by that time had three children by two different men: Sharlene, and twins Stephen and Gary. The boys had been put up for adoption after their birth, leaving only the eldest child, her daughter Sharlene, in her care.
  When Young was interned inside the Maze Prison in 1973, she often visited him. He complained that his estranged wife, Elizabeth never sent him food parcels, despite her having been provided with money by the Loyalist Prisoners' Association (LPA). The LPA was unaware of the Young couple's estrangement. The delivery of food parcels by women to imprisoned members was a long-established practice by the UDA and a "particular source of pride for the organisation". Ogilby was required to make up and send him the food parcels herself which she felt was an imposition as these had to come out of her own money, although she was almost destitute. When Ogilby mistakenly repeated Young's complaint in a Sandy Row pub, the local Sandy Row women's UDA unit (of which Elizabeth was a member) overheard her words and became violently angry, especially as Elizabeth was able to prove that she had been sending her husband food parcels. Ogilby's comments were regarded by the women's UDA as a grievous insult to its integrity, as the unit was responsible for the assembly and distribution of the parcels. The group was already antagonistic due to Ogilby's affair with Young, and her defamatory remarks only added fuel to their wrath. The women considered her behaviour in public immoral, ostentatious, and extremely unconventional because she frequented clubs and pubs on her own instead of with female friends which was the custom in Sandy Row. Furthermore, they believed her loud, outspoken and maverick personality, status as an unmarried mother, and habit of what was described by a local as "flaunting herself" was a cultural infraction that brought shame upon their community.
caption: Sandy Row, south Belfast, where loyalist paramilitaries have always had a strong presence since the early days of the Troubles
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