Gallows Speeches from Eighteenth-century Ireland

Crime narratives provide one of the most vivid means of accessing the reality of criminality in the early modern period.

The publication in late 17th and early 18th-century Ireland of the 'gallows speeches' of over a hundred offenders is, therefore, an event of some cultural significance not previously explored in the Irish context.

The purpose of the present collection is to introduce and to present the texts of those that survive, generally in one copy only, in the holdings of the main research libraries in Ireland, Great Britain and the United States.

With an introduction setting the narrative in their social, national and international context, this collection should appeal to students of law, crime and society; to those with an interest in the history of printing and publishing, language and reading; and to the general reader who is provided with a series of fascinating and otherwise ill-documented life histories from a still under-explored era in Irish history.