The Northern Guardian. — 1895-04-06 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

THE WITCHCRAFT CASE.  STRANGE STATEMENTS.  At yesterday's hearing, at Clonmel, of the charge of murder arising out of the burning and ill-treatment of Mrs Bridget Cleary, the prisoners were severally asked whether they had any statement to make.  Michael Cleary, the husband, first spoke. He denied that he had put paraffin oil on his wife, or placed her on the fire. He would sooner put himself on the lire than put her on, but her father's family often made an attempt to injure both him and his wife. Both he and her brothers left no stone unturned to injure them, and they never got a chance of doing so till they got a chance of destroying her. He concluded, "So this is the wind up of the whole of it. I have no more to tell. That leavta me with a broken heart behind her." Pat Boland, father of the deceased, who is an old man, and spoke in a weak voice, said: The first night that she was burned they brought her down and they put her on the fire. When she was not taking herbs, says Jack Dunne, "We'll make you speak." They brought her down, Mick Cleary and themselves, and they put her down on the fire. Said Cleary to me, "Have you any faith? Don't you know it is with an old witch I am sleeping?" I said, "You are not ; you are sleeping with my daughter." They brought her down, and they put her on the fire. There was no tire, he might say. Said Michael Cleary, "Call your daughter now in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and I'll have her in spite of the world." When he said that, then the same people brought her up and put her on the bed and left her on the bed, and she spoke as well us ever in the morning. This is all I have to say about that night. The night after then his father was dead, and a man came to tell Michael Cleary that his hither was dead. He sent me to the wake, and himself did not go at all. I went to the wake, and when I came home in the morning I went to bed and spoke to her. She was grand then, and there was no one in with her but Mary Boland. She was grand until the night after, when we were taking a cup of tea, and he asked her to eat a bit of bread along with him, and she said she would. He gave her a small little bit, and she ate two bits. She would not eat a third, and he caught her then and knocked her. He thought to put it in her mouth in spite of her. Says he, "I'll make you take it, you old witch," throwing her across the fire, and that is all I know about it. I had to run away from the stink. Ts make a long story short, he burned her. I have no more to say, but it's himself that burnt her. Cleary then asked Patsey Kennedy to bury her along with him, and Patsey Kennedy said he could not, but he persuaded him, and he went along with him and buried her.  At the close of his statement the old man appealed to the magistrate to let him go home, as he was losing his eight. He said he would come back any time he was wanted. Mary Kennedy next made a statement of a very rambling and incoherent character. She said deceased told her that Michael Cleary was making a fairy of her, and that he had tried to burn her months ago. .  The court adjourned at half-past six o'clock till this morning.