the Coroner on the day when the inquest was held, August 27th, and the woman was kept in prison from that time till the assizes in December.  The “inquest” was not completed on the 27th of August, and after the Coroner adjourned it, two priests drove away on a car from the “public-house” in which it had been held.  That night, or the next day, a man came to a magistrate with a bundle of papers which he had found in the road near Philipstown.  The magistrate examined them, and finding them to be the depositions taken before the Coroner in the case of Ellen Gaffney, handed them to the police.  How did they come to be in the road?  On the 1st of September the Coroner resumed his inquest, this time in the Court-House at Philipstown, and one of the police, with the depositions in his pocket, went to hear the proceedings.  Great was his amazement to see certain papers produced, and calmly read, as being the very original depositions which at that moment were in his own custody!  He held his peace, and let the inquest go on.  A letter was read from the Coroner, to the effect that he saw no ground for detaining the husband, Gaffney—­but the woman was taken before a justice of the peace, and committed to prison on this finding by the Coroner’s jury:  “That Mary Anne Gaffney came by her death; and that the mother of the child, Ellen Gaffney, is guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food and care to sustain the life of this child “!

It is scarcely credible, but it is true, that upon this extraordinary finding the Coroner issued a warrant for “murder” against this poor woman, on which she was actually locked up for more than three months!  The jury which made this unique finding consisted of nineteen persons, and it was in evidence that their foreman reported thirteen of the jury to be for finding one way and six for finding another, whereupon a certain Mr. Whyte, who came into the case as the representative of Father Bergin, President of the local branch of the National League—­nobody can quite see on what colourable pretext—­was allowed by the Coroner to write down the finding I have quoted, and hand it to the Coroner.  The Coroner read it over.  He and Mr. Whyte then put six of the jury in one place, and thirteen in another; the Coroner read the finding aloud to the thirteen, and said to them, “Is that what you agree to?” and so the inquest was closed, and the warrant issued—­for murder—­and the woman, this poor peasant mother sent off to jail with the brand upon her of infanticide.[29]

Where would that poor woman be now were there no “Coercion” in Ireland to protect her against “Crowner’s quest law” thus administered?  And what is to be thought of educated and responsible public men in England who, as recent events have shown, are not ashamed to go to “Crowner’s quest Courts” of this sort for weapons of attack, not upon the administration only of their own Government, but upon the character and the motives of their political opponents?