Reading through the recently
published Dictionary
of Irish Biography,
I came across an interesting
scion of Sandymount back in the
rebellious times of 1798; Lieutenant
Edward Hempenstall.

Born in Newcastle, County
Wicklow in the 1760s, by the
1790s Hempenstallʼs family
were based in Sandymount
Green, where they ran a school.

At a time when the average
man was around five feet tall,
Hempenstall was an amazing
seven-foot giant, with strength
to match. He was a notorious
Lieutenant of the loyalist militias,
charged with suppressing
the increasingly active United
Irishmen, initially in Tyrone
and later on in Kildare and
Wicklow.

The methods of suppression
used by the militias were,
even by 18th century standards,
shockingly brutal. Suspects
were routinely beaten and often
killed. The militias used flogging,
beatings and the pitch cap,
where a brown paper cap was
loaded with molten pitch, put
on the victimʼs head and then
set alight, burning the victimʼs
face and eyes.

The innocent and guilty alike
were tortured, justice being
no impediment. Flogging was
widely used as it was considered
the most effective way of
extracting information and was
widely feared.

ʻHalf hangingʼ where a person
would be partially hanged
to make him provide information
was a common torture tactic.

Hempenstallʼs refinement
of this method was to use his
own body as the gallows. Using
his immense strength and size,
he would hang the unfortunate
victim off his own back, often
until they died.

He seems to have taken great
pleasure in terrorizing the rural
peasantry and claimed he could
tell if a man was loyal or not by
the look on his face. Unsurprisingly,
he earned a reputation for
cruelty amongst the people he
policed, and he was given the
name ʻThe Walking Gallowsʼ.

It was a folk belief that he was
accompanied at all times by a
devilish assistant in the shape
of a black cow. He was involved
in many atrocities in the years
leading up to the 1798 rebellion
and the bloody suppression that
followed the uprising.

The last known instance of
his cruelty occurred after the
defeat of a party of rebels at
Naas in late May 1798. A witness
saw a prisoner, worn out
after a beating-up at the barrack
yard, hoisted over Hempenstall
ʼs shoulders ʻchoking and
gulpingʼ until given ʻa parting
chuck; just to make sure his
neck was brokenʼ.

There was a degree of justice
in the end for Hempenstall. In
1800 he was afflicted with what
was known at the time as ʻmorbus
pedicularisʼ– infestation of
lice– and his body was devoured
from within by vermin.

After twenty-one days suffering,
he died in excruciating
agony at his brotherʼs house in
St Andrewʼs Street. The legend
was that his bad end was a result
of a curse put on him by
a blacksmith at the time of the
1798 suppressions.

According to Peter Somerville-
Largeʼs ʻIrish Eccentricsʼ
these two lines of verse were
composed on his death:
ʻHere lies the bones of Hempenstall,
Judge, jury, gallows, rope and
all.ʼ

Above: Part of Hepenstal Terrace
in Sandymount. Note the
spelling.