county taxation

Roads Conflict

Judge Richard Adams awarded £105 compensation at Limerick County Crown Court for hay maliciously burned at Templebredin on the night of 6 December 1899. The claimant, T. M. English, had sought £116 for the destroyed property and argued that hostility arose from his position during a dispute over the maintenance of public roads. Evidence presented to the court connected the burning with an increasingly bitter campaign for the direct employment of labourers by the newly established local authorities. The case brought a rural employment controversy from council meetings into the formal machinery of criminal injury compensation.